Unintended Cultivator

There was nothing around him for miles in any direction save for the wilds. He’d sensed a few spirit beasts as he approached the semi-barren spot, but they had fled the moment he let a little of his killing intent slip free. He was relatively sure that they were low-level spirit beasts, rather than the sapient ones that were leading the charge against humanity. He’d entertained the idea of killing them, but they weren’t the ones who had roused his ire, and he couldn’t work up the motivation to chase them all down. Two weeks. It had been two weeks since word of his attack against the spirit beasts had jolted the waning fighting spirit of humanity across the kingdom. What a disappointment those two weeks turned out to be, thought Sen as he landed.

He stood trembling with barely suppressed fury as he thought about what the humans had been doing in that time. He didn’t understand. It’s so obvious, he thought. How can they not see it? How can they not see that they have to stand together? While there had been that surge in hope he’d been aiming for, it hadn’t ended with humanity banding together. Instead, he was hearing reports of sects setting up their own little kingdoms, often at the end of a blade. The mortal cities were doing practically nothing to coordinate with each other, despite his best efforts.

“At this rate,” muttered Sen, “we’ll never survive. It’s like they want to die.”

His open palm slammed into a boulder the size of an ox. The stone shattered, leaving only gravel that was spread out over a hundred-foot area. He grabbed another, larger boulder, heaved it up over his head, and hurled it into the distance with a wordless shout. He didn’t normally indulge in such recklessness, but there was nothing out there but more of the wilds. Anything that particular boulder landed on was likely to be something he either didn’t care about or wanted dead anyway. It wasn’t enough, though. He spun toward another boulder and lashed out at it with his foot. It exploded under the force and sent deadly projectiles hurtling in every direction. Not enough, he fumed. He needed to give some of this pent-up frustration somewhere to go, some way out of him.

His fists and feet flew at speeds that would have made them invisible to mortal eyes. He’d smashed a dozen more boulders before he realized that it simply wasn’t helping. He was just brutalizing innocent stone when he wanted to be beating sense into the rest of the idiotic human race. He leaned back against one of the few boulders that had escaped his wrath and slid down until he was sitting on the ground. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he’d expected someone to step forward, to take charge, to unify humanity against this threat. That was what happened in all of those stories he’d half-heard as a child. Wasn’t it? Maybe not. Maybe he’d misunderstood or just heard what he wanted to hear.

Instead, whatever semblance of order and civilization that there had been was ripping apart at the seams like a poorly made shirt. I never understood how fragile our society really was, thought Sen. I never imagined it would take so little to bring us to our knees. The rules had all seemed to be set in stone in those days. There were peasants. There were nobles. There was the king and armies. And, of course, there were the cultivators. Those otherworldly masters of terrifying magic and unspeakable strength. Finally, there were the people nobody wanted. People like him. Looking up toward the peak from the bottom of the mountain, from the place where there were more dead than living, the nobles, the king, and the cultivators had seemed immovable. Unconquerable. Invincible. He had thought them impossibly wise beyond anything he could know. It turned out, they were all fools too.

“I wondered how long it would take,” said Master Feng as he landed on top of the boulder that Sen was leaning against.

“You wondered how long what would take?” asked Sen, his voice weary.

“I wondered how long it would take for you to realize that they were never going to do it on their own.”

Sen stiffened. He wondered if he had been so obvious. He stood and slowly turned to face the elder cultivator. Sen had seen Master Feng wear many faces, many expressions, but he’d never seen this one before, and it made his blood run cold. Every last trace of humanity was gone. The humor, the compassion, the annoyance, all of it had fallen away to reveal… Sen wasn’t sure what name to put to it at first. Master Feng was almost blank, his eyes fixed on some place an infinite distance away. He looked utterly alien to Sen’s eyes. Then, the reality struck home. This was Fate’s Razor in truth. This was the cultivator who had marched step by lonely step through the long years, centuries, and millennia. The man who had watched civilizations rise and cultures prosper, only to then watch them fall, not once or twice, but over and over again. The man who could hunt others for their entire lives because, to him, their lives were so very short. As he stood there on that boulder, Feng Ming was the living embodiment of a cold and indifferent god.

“You knew this would happen, didn’t you?” demanded Sen. “You knew they’d fall apart!”

“Of course, I knew. It’s what people do. They’re small, Sen. They’re so very, very small. They only see what’s right in front of them. The thing to be had right now. So, they squabble and scrabble in the gutter over the scraps instead of fighting for the true prize before them.”

There was no surprise in Master Feng. No sense that this had all come as a revelation. He had expected all of this, and he’d kept it to himself.

“Why didn’t you tell me! Why didn’t you warn me!” screamed Sen.

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Master Feng stepped off the boulder and floated down so he could look at Sen directly. A few shreds of compassion bled into that cold mask when the ancient cultivator spoke.

“Because you wouldn’t have believed me. You would have listened, but you wouldn’t have believed. Even after everything you’ve been through, everything you’ve done, you still want to see something good in them. You want to believe they’ll prove that they’re better than they seem.”

“I’m not that kind,” snapped Sen, the denial almost a reflex.

“You are,” disagreed Master Feng. “After all, it’s why you went and brought back that village full of strangers. That waif of a cultivator, however briefly, proved herself to you, and you rewarded her for it.”

“So, what? Are you telling me that I’m being naïve? Are you saying that none of them are really better than seem?”

“No,” said Master Feng.

That brought Sen up short. He’d expected this to turn into a talk about how everyone was terrible, and he should leave them to their fate. Given how the rest of the kingdom had been behaving, he might have even been receptive to that line of thought. Now, he didn’t know what to expect. ṜΑΝo͍ᛒĚS

“No,” repeated Master Feng. “I’m not saying that. Some of them are better than they seem.”

Sen could feel the unspoken word hanging in the air between them like a qi technique ready to burst into flame and render him into ash.

“But?” asked Sen.

“But not enough of them are in a position to decide things. The ones who are don’t trust the intentions of others in a position to decide things, and they’re right not to.”

“So, we’re doomed?”

“Not at all. Between me, Kho, Caihong, you, and Ruolan, we can hold this region for a very long time. Centuries, if it came right down to it”

“It’d be constant war, though,” said Sen. “We’d have to shed blood for every inch we keep or take, wouldn’t we? This wouldn’t be a town filled with people anymore. It’d just be a place where we train soldiers to kill and die.”

“Yes.”

“And everyone else would likely be doomed?”

“Oh, I expect the capital would hold out for a while. The sects there aren’t just going to roll over if the spirit beasts attack directly, but there are a lot of people living in that city. The capital will have the same supply issues that you’re trying to solve, only they’ll have far less time to solve them. More mouths to feed mean they’ll burn through whatever they’ve managed to store much faster. The same is true for every city and large town. In the end, if nothing changes, they will fall.”

Sen thought he understood what Master Feng was getting at, and he didn’t like it at all. Of course, not liking it didn’t make the elder cultivator wrong. I suppose that’s the trap, thought Sen. He didn’t respond immediately, though. He waited for Master Feng to push, but the man just waited patiently as he looked at Sen with a steady gaze. He’s confident about this, thought Sen. He’s probably right to be, but if he’s so confident, why hasn’t he done it?

“You’re saying that someone has to make them do it,” said Sen. “You’re saying that they need a tyrant.”

“I probably wouldn’t have used the word tyrant but, yes, that’s what I’m saying.”

“If you already knew this, why haven’t you done it? You’re Fate’s Razor. You’re practically a god in your own right as far as most people are concerned. If you stepped forward, no one would oppose you.”

“I expect you could figure it out if you put a little thought into it, but I’ll spare you the mental exercise. I’m not equipped for it. I care about you. I care about little Ai. I care about Kho and even Caihong, for all our differences. I don’t care about the rest of them. Not really. Not enough. I’d use them up, Sen. I’d use them up to win, and I know it. A good leader has to be willing to spend lives in a war, but they should never be eager to do it. They should want to preserve their people wherever and whenever they can. I wouldn’t. I might want to, intend to, but I’d lose sight of the fact those soldiers and cultivators are people. They’d just become resources to me. There’s value in seeing the big picture, but it can blind you to other important things.”

“I have no interest in becoming a king or emperor or whatever it is that someone would need to be to do what you’re suggesting,” said Sen, his voice hard. “I hate that I’m in charge of this little town. Why would I ever want to be in charge of everyone? No. Pick someone else.”

“That’s why it has to be you. People like me would be careless. Others would love the power too much to ever give it up. You? You’d care enough not to waste people’s lives. Then, you’d abandon the job the second the war was over.”

Sen rolled his eyes. The entire notion was absurd. No, he thought. It’s not absurd. It’s terrifyingly negligent. His experience of half-running a half-formed sect and unintentionally seizing control of a town did not make him competent to oversee a kingdom at peace, let alone all of humanity at war. What did he know about directing armies? Nothing, except what he’d read about in Uncle Kho’s scrolls. Having experienced exactly one thing that might be called a full-scale battle, he was certain that was not sufficient preparation. He’d be as likely to cause humanity’s downfall as he'd be to save anyone. Those weren’t even the most obvious obstacles.

“Even if I were willing to take on that role, which I’m not, who’d listen to me? Why would they listen to me? I’m a tiny bit famous and a lot of that fame is based on some less-than-savory decisions on my part. I’m also young. I’m stupidly young for a cultivator. The sects aren’t going to take orders from me, whether they fear me or not.”

Master Feng gave Sen a smile so cold that it made him shiver.

“Sen, I may not be fit to rule, but I’m very fit to explain to others why they’re going to fall in line. As for the sects, nobody wants an angry visit from the Living Spear.”

“Oh, gods. You roped Uncle Kho into this madness already?”

“Heh. You’re either giving me too much credit, or you’re not giving Kho enough. This was his idea. I’m just putting my seal of approval on it.”

“I—” Sen wasn’t sure what to say. “I need some time to think about this.”

The more Sen thought about it, the more insane it all sounded. He definitely needed some time to think up some reasons why this entire farce of a plan should never be allowed to move forward.

“That’s fair,” said Master Feng with a nod. “Okay, time’s up.”

“What?”

“The kingdom is on fire, Sen. All of the kingdoms are on fire unless I miss my guess. You can do something about that. So, it’s time to make a choice. Are you going hide here and protect this one town? Or are you going to save the world?”

“You realize what a monumentally unfair thing that was to say, right?”

Master Feng cracked his first real smile since he arrived.

“You know me. I’m a cultivator. Of course, I don’t play fair.”

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