Unintended Cultivator

Sen was working extremely hard to only pay attention to what was in front of him. Unfortunately, it was a task made difficult by the excessive boredom involved with that. There were no spirit beasts or even any other travelers to occupy his thoughts. Occasionally, at the farthest reaches of his spiritual sense, he’d catch the briefest snatches of the presence of spiritual beasts. He’d been hopeful that he might be able to make use of those to deal with his other problem. Sadly, they all fled in pure terror at the merest touch of his spiritual sense. Sen didn’t bother extending his spiritual sense behind him. He knew what he’d find there, and it wasn’t something he felt like dealing with at present. While he could avoid noticing the man with his spiritual sense, he couldn’t close off his regular senses.

That left him hearing it every time the man failed to avoid a tree branch or some other obstacle in a mad rush to keep pace. Sen had done nothing to make that any easier, futilely hoping that if he made it difficult enough that the stranger would just go away. He’d been hoping for that ever since he walked away from the stranger after refusing to kill him. Sen had returned to the campsite and made a galehouse with an angry burst of earth qi. The stranger had come stumbling up behind him and demanding that Sen satisfy honor, only for Sen to slam a very heavy stone door in the stranger’s face and seal the door for good measure. That had seemed like it would be a sufficient message.

Yet, when Sen had gotten up the next morning, he’d found the stranger kneeling outside the galehouse. The moment he’d seen Sen, he’d started demanding that Sen kill him so that the stranger could die with honor. Sen had shaken his head at the idiot and taken off toward the road using his qinggong technique. Instead of taking the not even remotely subtle hints, the man had started chasing him, yelling that Sen was denying him his rightful death. Sen had picked up the pace until the stranger had lost the breath to continue berating him. That had reduced the amount of noise, which relieved Sen, but the man hadn’t stopped chasing after him. Sen had eventually stopped to eat something for lunch. The stranger had come staggering up, given the food in Sen’s hands an astonished look, and immediately started demanding that Sen finish their fight. For honor. Sen had stood up and stowed his food in a storage ring before shaking his head again.

“Why me?” he’d asked, his eyes turned heavenward.

That same irritating process had continued more or less unabated for the last two days, making Sen ignore towns and villages where he might otherwise have stopped for a slightly more comfortable night of rest. Some part of him hoped that the relentless travel might wear the other man down. Unfortunately, while Sen’s qinggong technique was a little better and a little more efficient, letting him keep a bit of distance between himself and the stranger, it seemed that the other man’s body cultivation wasn’t going to give out on him soon. Having already decided that he wasn’t going to give the man what he wanted, he didn’t plan to back down on that now. Yet, it also left him with a persistent irritation. Realizing that his patience was going to wear down eventually and that he’d do something rash, which was no doubt what the stranger was hoping for, Sen left himself slow down and stop. He turned and waited for the stranger to catch up. The man’s eyes brightened when he saw Sen standing there. Before the stranger could get a word out, Sen spoke.

“Why do you persist in this pointless pursuit?”

“Because you owe me an honorable…”

Sen cut him off with a gesture. “I owe you nothing and honor least of all. What possible reason could I have to release you from your imaginary shame.”

“Honor demands…”

“Honor is an empty plate. It feeds no one. It serves no purpose. It is a poor excuse cultivators use to kill each other and that the powerful invoke to impose their wishes on others.”

The stranger looked appalled and incensed at Sen’s brusque denial of honor, its demands, and its hold over them. Sen was hard-pressed to care about the man’s overblown reaction. He supposed it would be some kind of mild heresy in some circles, but Sen didn’t usually travel in those circles. Even when he did, he’d seen a lot more posturing about honor than actual honor. All of those nobles and cultivators could learn a thing or two from Wu Gang. That was a man who took honor seriously and, as far as Sen could tell, for the right reasons. Sen was fairly certain that he’d left honor behind in Tide’s Rest when he’d killed that sect fool. Every time he thought back on it, the more he hated that he’d done it. In hindsight, Sen had a far better understanding of what he’d been capable of at the time. He could have simply disabled the sect idiot and left him for someone to find. Of course, he hadn’t known that at the time. He’d suspected he could, but suspicions were poor armor in a fight. Sen sighed. And he’d been so angry at the time. He knew why now, but that felt like a poor excuse too. Some of that had to have come from him, and this stranger seemed determined to pull on those same strings, to anger Sen until he did in anger what he wouldn’t do in cold blood.

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“Honor is what guides us all,” said the stranger. “It ensures we behave in the proper way to the proper people.”

“Really? And when you invaded my campsite and refused to leave? What tenet of honor were you serving? When you attacked me, where was your honor?”

“That’s,” the man paused, “that’s different. I was serving the wishes of my master.”

“And his wishes allow you to ignore all other demands of honor? It excuses you for imposing your unwanted company on me. It pardons your attack on me. That is cheap honor indeed.”

The stranger flinched as though he’d been slapped.

Sen continued. “Beyond that, you expect me to uphold your honor. Why should I do this for you? Why should I help you maintain the fantasy that you ever possessed honor in the first place? That helps only you while imposing karmic debts on me. You don’t want honor. You want the veneer of honor. And I will not give it to you. Seek your redemption elsewhere.”

With that, Sen turned and continued on his way. For a blissful period of about five minutes, he thought that his words might have accomplished something. Then, he felt the stranger moving behind him again. Sen mentally braced himself for more demands that he kill the man or more ranting about honor. However, when Sen stopped that evening, the stranger kept his distance. Sen wasn’t sure what to make of it. He gave serious thought to the idea that the man would attempt to force the issue or plan some kind of ambush. Nothing came of it, though. Instead, the next morning Sen felt the stranger exactly where he’d left him. Far enough away not to be an obvious problem, but close enough that he could keep track of Sen. Sen mostly dismissed the man from his thoughts. If the idiot wants to follow me around, he can, thought Sen. I’ll leave him behind when I reach the coast. Sen knew that he could simply hide and move through the forest itself, but that was a lot of trouble and effort. The road was far more convenient, even in the winter.

Sen mostly managed to ignore the stranger’s presence, but it wasn’t until the afternoon that the man truly fell away from Sen’s attention. Sen was standing on a small rise and staring down at a village when the stranger finally approached him again. The man looked down at the village for a moment before turning his eyes to Sen.

“Do you mean to stop here?” asked the man.

Sen glanced over at the stranger and said, “Yes. Once I’ve steeled myself.”

The other man looked back down at the town and stared hard at it. It was as if he thought he could force some answer from it through sheer willpower. When his efforts revealed nothing, he looked to Sen again.

“I don’t understand. What is down there that could make someone like you hesitate?”

Sen once again wished the man would simply disappear back to whatever master had sent him in the first place. Taking a deep breath, he stowed his feelings as much as he could. They wouldn’t be helpful in that village. He gave the stranger a pitying look.

“They’re dying,” said Sen. “All of them are dying.”

“A plague village? No one should go there.”

Ignoring the man, Sen started walking down the road. He had heard about things like this from Auntie Caihong. It was almost always impossible to figure out how the illnesses found their way into the village or town, but it was usually one of the elders or children who got it first. Sen corrected himself with a mental snarl. One of the poor elderly or children contracted it first because their health was always fragile. Of course, the more prosperous people didn’t see it as a problem. Just one less poor person, but the illnesses never stayed confined to the poor. The communities were always a little too tight-knit and the sickness invariably spread. More than one place had been left all but abandoned in the wake of these illnesses. There were occasional survivors, but a handful of people couldn’t rebuild the complex set of crafts, food production, and services that let a community survive. Sometimes they tried, but more often than not they simply migrated somewhere else.

The stranger called after him. “Why would you go there?”

Sen turned and gave the man a glare that made the stranger take a step back.

“What do you have to fear, cultivator?” demanded Sen, contempt dripping from every word. “Bearing witness to something unpleasant? No mortal illness is going to infect you. I’m going there because no one else will, and there’s a chance I might be able to save a few who would otherwise die. If I can’t do that, then I may be able to ease their suffering. If that tiny measure of mercy is too complex an idea for your vaunted honor, then be gone!”

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