Unintended Cultivator

The next morning, Sen woke up early. He’d noticed it more and more since his body cultivation advancement. He needed less sleep, a lot less sleep. Even knowing that moving between major stages meant substantial changes, he’d been a bit hazier about what that meant for body cultivators. With spirit cultivation, he could feel the difference in power between himself and other cultivators. With this transition between body cultivation stages and solidifying the Five-Fold Body Transformation, he was still figuring out what it all meant. He’d gotten stronger and faster. Sen had seen that much with the idiot wandering cultivator who seemingly wanted to die at Lo Meifeng’s hands. He’d crossed the distance in a blink. He’d even noticed stress marks on the wooden floor from when he’d launched himself across the room. Once they were out on the road again, he’d have to find some quiet spot and truly test the upper limits of his strength and speed. Not knowing that kind of information could prove lethal for any warrior, let alone for a cultivator.

Sen had gone downstairs and fetched tea and some food for him Lifen. He’d been so early that the kitchen had barely even opened. So, to amuse himself and to speed things along, he’d helped out in the kitchen for about an hour. The inn owners had gone from shock and horror that a guest was working in their kitchen, to eventual incredulity when they discovered he actually knew what he was doing. He’d just worked with a little smile on his face, remembering better times spent in the kitchen with Uncle Kho and Auntie Caihong. When enough food was ready for himself and any other early risers, Sen gathered up a tray of food and tea. He returned to the room to find Lifen still sound asleep beneath the covers. He poured himself a cup of tea, then stored everything else in his storage ring.

He went over to the window, opened it, and let the cool morning air wash over him for a moment. They were still close enough that he could smell the ocean on the air but without such a concentration of the intense unpleasant odors that had assaulted his sense of smell when they got off the ship. Then, he quietly moved the only chair in the room and just watched for a time as the small town came to life. Such moments were a rare luxury in Sen’s life. Even when he was still, he was almost always still doing something. Cultivating if nothing else. Every once in a while, though, he found that he simply needed to stop, take a brief respite from the worries and demands of life, and just let himself be. He didn’t know if it made him a better cultivator or improved his chances at enlightenment, but he found he was less prone to making rash decisions when he allowed himself those moments.

He heard a rustling from the bed and looked over. Lifen stood and slowly stretched, her skin looking almost alabaster white in the morning light. She seemed to be making a bit more of a production of the stretch than seemed entirely necessary, and Sen caught her peeking over at him to see if he was watching. He gave her a wink and lifted the teacup in acknowledgment. Seemingly satisfied that her performance had been appropriately appreciated, she mostly put on a light robe. It still left enough skin exposed that Sen caught his eyes drifting more than once, which brought a pleased little smirk to Lifen’s face. Before he got distracted again, Sen called the food and tea out of his storage ring. They ate and drank tea for a while before either of them spoke. Ultimately, it was Lifen who broke the silence.

“I really should get that turtle some kind of a thank you gift,” she said, a merry twinkle in her eyes.

“Ah, but what does one get for the divine turtle who needs nothing?” asked Sen philosophically.

“Sacred seaweed?”

The two shared a quiet laugh that was brought to an immediate halt when someone knocked on their door. Both Sen and Lifen stared at the door for a moment with a mixture of uncertainty, apprehension, and anger.

“Who’s there?” demanded Sen in a decidedly unfriendly tone.

Lifen glared at the door, then stood, walked over to Sen, and draped herself across his lap in a fashion that even Sen realized would be absolutely scandalous in even remotely polite company. Then, the impish part of him decided that he wasn’t really bothered by that idea.

“Come in,” he called.

Lo Meifeng came in and her footsteps stuttered a bit when she saw the two of them. For a few unguarded moments, the woman’s face went from surprise to shock, then to calculation, before settling on annoyed, frustrated acceptance. She closed the door behind her and smoothed her expression into rigid neutrality.

“I need to go back into the city today,” she announced.

“Why?” asked Sen. “We were just there.”

“Yes, exactly, we were there. I have to imagine that our demonic cultivator friends have their people looking for a man and two women traveling together. I needed to get you away from the city. Somewhere that even the two of you will probably see trouble coming. Now, I can go back and send my own report in.”

Sen found that his first instinct was to push back, but he was hard-pressed to think of a good reason to do that. In the end, he realized that he just wanted to be contrary with her. He had done his best to bury his resentment of the woman, knowing full well that she was as stuck as he was, but that resentment still reared its head from time to time. Instead, he just nodded. Lo Meifeng looked a little off-balance, as though she’d planned for this to be a fight. Instead, Sen was just going along with it.

“Good. I should be back by the afternoon. Evening at the latest. If I’m not back by then, you get out of here as fast as you can.”

That made Lifen sit up straight on Sen’s lap, which he found very distracting.

“Why should we leave?”

Lo Meifeng grimaced a little. “If I don’t come back, it means that someone either killed me or captured me. I’ll do my best to make sure that they have to kill me or try to kill myself if someone shows up looking for trouble. If they do manage to capture me, I expect that they’ll torture information out of me. I’ll hold out as long as I can to buy you time, but everyone breaks eventually.”

“How long should we wait until we go?” Sen asked, no longer distracted at all.

“Sunset. If I’m not back by sunset, just go.”

“Sunset. I’ll make sure we’re gone one minute after if it comes to that.”

Lo Meifeng seemed to search for something to add to those grim instructions and came up with nothing. She offered Sen and Lifen a shallow nod, then vanished from the room. There was a long, tense pause following the older cultivator’s departure. Then, Lifen stood up and returned to her breakfast. Well, she pretended to at any rate. She moved food around on the plate a bit and took a few sips of tea, but Sen didn’t see her actually eat anything. Eventually, she looked up at Sen, and he saw a fear in her eyes that hadn’t existed before.

“I knew this was going to be dangerous, but I didn’t think about things like torture. Or someone else getting tortured to find out where we are.”

It was Sen’s turn to grimace. He’d been worried that Lifen hadn’t considered all of the possibilities. He had considered the very real possibility of a long, excruciating death at the hands of demonic cultivators. He hadn’t framed it to himself quite the way Lo Meifeng had, but he certainly didn’t plan on letting him be captured alive. He’d kept those poisonous plants for a reason. There also wasn’t much he could do to alleviate Lifen’s fear, and he had even scarcer reasons to do so. She should be afraid. She should probably be more afraid than she was.

The only reason Sen wasn’t paralyzed by fear was the knowledge that he’d sent the names of those demonic cultivators to Master Feng and, almost certainly by proxy, Uncle Kho and Auntie Caihong. He didn’t need a message back to know that those three would erase those demonic cultivators from existence. They’d consider it a duty and a public service, without even considering that it would help protect Sen. That knowledge reassured him that this chase wouldn’t last forever. He didn’t need to run for the rest of his life. He just needed to outpace the demonic cultivators until demigods of blade, lightning, and poison fell on them like the wrath of the heavens.

Sen decided to offer what comfort he could. “It won’t be like this all of the time.”

“How do you know?” she demanded.

“We know they’re hunting us. That’s bad, but it also means we’re on our guard. But I know what’s hunting them, and they don’t.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Old, powerful cultivators make a point to wipe out demonic cultivators at any and every opportunity. I don’t really know why, but I have it on the very best authority that it’s the case. I sent a message to some of those old monsters letting them know exactly where to find a whole bunch of demonic cultivators and who they are. It probably hasn’t started yet, but I expect that the next year or two is going to be very bad for demonic cultivation on this part of the continent.”

“So, what does that mean?”

“For right now, it means that we run any time any of us so much as gets a bad feeling. Down the road, I expect we’re going to move way down the priority list for the demonic cultivators as they get culled. I don’t know exactly how long it will take, but there will come a day when we can stop running and looking over our shoulders every second.”

It wasn’t much comfort, but it seemed that the mere promise of being able to stop running, eventually, was enough for Lifen. The rest of the day dragged out for Sen. After the first few hours of simply sitting around their room, counting the seconds, Sen announced that they were going to go for a walk. He’d thought Lifen might object, but she seemed as eager as he did to have something to do. They walked beyond the town proper and looked at the fields of crops. Sen told her what he knew about them, and she told him some things he didn’t know. When he gave her a surprised look, she offered him a sheepish shrug.

“I like plants. I read about them when I can find new scrolls or farming manuals.”

“Do you want to own a farm?”

It seemed like a strange goal for a cultivator, but no stranger than challenging the heavens. Lifen laughed then, seeming to finally shake off some of her dark thoughts.

“I’d be a terrible farmer,” she said. “Don’t get me wrong, I could probably do the work, but I’d get bored growing the same five crops year after year. I might grow flowers or medicinal herbs one day, though. Maybe a little garden. Find a spot somewhere that no one knows me, and no one will bother me. That would be nice, I think.”

“It can be,” said Sen.

Lifen gave him a questioning look. “Oh?”

“The people who trained me. They lived somewhere like that. So did I, for a long time.”

“Do you miss it?”

“I do. It was dangerous sometimes, but I miss it a lot.”

“How was it dangerous?”

“Uncle Kho built his home in the wilds. Deep enough that you pretty much had to be a core cultivator to even get there. It was safe enough inside the walls, but once you got outside there were a lot of spirit beasts.”

Lifen thought about that for a while before she said, “I might pick somewhere a little less hostile.”

Sen laughed. “That’s probably a good plan.”

As the day wore on, Sen slowly directed them back to the inn. When they got back, there was no sign of Lo Meifeng in the common area or her room. A brief chat with the owners revealed that they hadn’t seen her since she left that morning. As the afternoon inched its way toward evening, Sen’s tension rose and rose. Lifen looked equally unhappy. When sunset was almost on them, Sen turned to Lifen.

“Go get anything you left in the room.”

She gave him a quick nod and vanished up the stairs. She returned a few minutes later, having changed into clothes more appropriate for traveling. As the last lingering edges of the sun made their final descent over the horizon, Sen stood up from the table and gave Lifen a grim look.

“It’s time to leave.”

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