Unintended Cultivator

Sen started by pulling out the small, enchanted box that Master Feng had given him. “With compliments of Master Feng and Auntie Caihong.”

Grandmother Lu took the box and, with more nervousness than Sen thought was wholly appropriate, she opened it. The room was almost immediately overwhelmed with a potent medicinal smell and a burst of qi. Grandmother Lu quickly snatched a piece of paper out of the box and closed it. She read over the note. Then, she read it over again. Sen watched all of this growing curiosity. When Grandmother Lu looked like she might burst into tears, Sen’s curiosity transformed into alarm.

“Grandmother? What’s wrong?”

The older woman’s head snapped around toward him, and she burst into laughter. “Wrong? Oh, you dear boy, nothing is wrong.”

“Then, why do you look like you’re going to cry?”

“I suppose it does pay to know old monsters. They didn’t tell you what these pills were?”

Sen drew himself up straight. “I didn’t ask. They were a gift for you.”

“They’re to help me break through.”

“Oh, they’ll help you get to late qi condensing? I thought you were stuck. No more breakthroughs.”

“So did I. By all rights, I should be. But, no, they aren’t meant to help me reach late or even peak qi condensing. Not just that, at any rate. If they work, they should help me break through to foundation formation.”

“That would be-,” Sen trailed off, unsure what word was appropriate.

“A miracle,” Grandmother Lu finished for him. “It seems your teachers can make the impossible, possible, every once in a while.”

Having seen Master Feng casually flying from wall to wall, and Uncle Kho summoning massive bolts of lightning from a clear sky, Sen was forced to agree. He decided that he shouldn’t be shocked that Auntie Caihong could work miracles on that level in her own way. It seemed that she was just a little subtler about it. Sen smiled at Grandmother Lu.

“Then, I look forward to being a nuisance for you for many, many years to come.”

“A nuisance,” laughed Grandmother Lu. “Oh, yes, you’ve been nothing but a burden. Constant trouble. I don’t know why I put up with you.”

“It’s your saintly nature, I’m sure,” said Sen, working very hard to hold back his own laughter.

For several long moments, Grandmother Lu simply watched the box. She’d occasionally reach out to touch it, as though to reassure herself it wasn’t a dream. Sen couldn’t really blame her for her disbelief. She’d thought her life was going in one direction, and Master Feng and Auntie Caihong had sent it careening in a very different direction. They did this for me, Sen abruptly realized. It was even sort of obvious, although he’d managed to overlook it. As much as Sen respected Master Feng, Uncle Kho, and Auntie Caihong, he understood the vast gulf between them. They had all talked about how cultivators and mortals lived in two different worlds, but Sen thought that there was actually a third world for people like the peak nascent soul cultivators. They might interact with the mortal world or the Jianghu from time to time, but they didn’t really live in either of them. They were too old, had experienced too much, and simply held too much power. They truly were separated from everyone else. More importantly for Sen, they knew it. They knew that Sen needed at least one person who lived in the mortal world or the Jianghu that he could trust. They had picked Grandmother Lu to be that person for him. Well, Sen amended, I picked her, and they followed through. A surge of fresh gratitude for the elder cultivators warmed Sen’s heart. Still, there was another gift. Sen pulled out the package that Uncle Kho had provided.

“This,” said Sen, “comes with the compliments of Uncle Kho.”

With visible reluctance, Grandmother Lu put the box with the pills into the storage ring Sen had gifted her. Then, she pulled the package over and opened it. Sen peered over her shoulder with intense interest. Uncle Kho’s cryptic words about Grandmother Lu had stuck with him. What the package revealed left Sen feeling a little perplexed. There were two fans inside a wooden case, both open to reveal idyllic scenes painted on their surfaces. Sen felt a little let down. Grandmother Lu, on the other hand, looked stunned. She reached out with a trembling hand and touched one of the fans. As soon as her finger made contact with the fan, she jerked her hand back and covered her mouth. Then, with a speed that impressed Sen, the older woman snatched up the fans.

She took the fans through a series of movements that made Sen reevaluate the gift. With the fans in motion, he caught the telltale glint of metal along their sharpened edges. Sen could see moments of hesitation in Grandmother Lu when she was either trying to remember the next movement in the form or waiting for muscle memories to kick in that hadn’t seen use in more than half a century. Still, she had clearly been trained in their deadly use at some point. She had said that she came from a family of cultivators. Sen hadn’t pried, as the memories were painful for the woman, but he wondered just what those cultivators had done for work when they weren’t busy being awful parents.

After a time, Grandmother Lu put the fans back in their case with nearly as much reluctance as she had stored away the pills. However he had divined the information, Uncle Kho had clearly struck true with this gift. Sen did make a mental note to ask the man about it the next time he saw him. Grandmother Lu beamed at him, as though he’d personally chosen the gift for her. Still, he smiled back at her, glad to see that the fans had made her so happy. She started shaking her head.

“I wonder how he could have known?”

“Grandmother?”

“Fans are uncommon weapons, even in the Jianghu. They were something of a symbol for my family. Do you think this Uncle Kho just guessed?”

Sen weighed that question. “He isn’t the kind to just guess outright. If it was a guess, it was an educated guess. Although, I can’t imagine where or how he would have come across information to connect you to the fans.”

Grandmother Lu shook her head again. “You know what? I don’t even care. Please thank him for me the next time you see him.”

“I will.”

Sen had been giving some thought to their situation with the gold while the older cultivator reacquainted herself with using the fans. He suspected those specific fans had meaning for her beyond their utility as pure weapons. After all, the woman owned a trading company. If she had wanted fans like those, she likely could have bought them for herself without too much trouble. Sen pushed that to the back of his head where he’d taken to storing mysteries about the nascent soul cultivators. He brought his attention back to the present, where a satchel full of money was threatening to send everything into another spiral of violence. Sen didn’t crave violence to begin with, and two days straight of real violence had been more than enough to make him desire an extended rest from it. He’d considered something that they hadn’t really discussed.

“Grandmother, do you think we should just give them the satchel?”

He’d initially dismissed the idea because he expected that it was the mayor’s stolen money. The mayor had proven himself a hostile force, so it seemed unlikely he’d just let things go if they gave back the money. Then again, it was a lot of money. Getting it back without trouble might just pour a little oil on troubled waters. Besides, Sen sort of enjoyed the idea of bribing the mayor with his own stolen money. When he looked over at Grandmother Lu, though, she was shaking her head.

“I thought about it,” she said. “It’s tempting, but I doubt it will stop anything. If it is the mayor, he’s all but declared a blood feud with you. So, I’m sorry, but you shouldn’t expect that to go away. If it’s someone else, they won’t want any witnesses around to spread rumors about all of that gold. No, much as I wish it were otherwise, this will all end in blood.”

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