Unintended Cultivator

For all that the pair of them could have probably flown wherever they wanted in the compound, Duan Yuxuan led them through the place on foot. Everywhere they went, there was more kowtowing. The only exceptions were a few, peak core cultivators that Sen assumed were highly positioned in the order. They merely offered incredibly deep bows as the pair of them passed. It was deeply uncomfortable for Sen to watch, even if he wasn’t the object of all that bowing and scraping. The matriarch took it all in with serene grace, occasionally offering a few words to some favored disciple or order member. Eventually, finally, they reached what Sen assumed was the woman’s office. As soon as the door was closed, Sen let out a relieved breath. The matriarch gave him a questioning look.

“Doesn’t all of the kowtowing and bowing get,” Sen chose his next word with some care, “tedious?”

The Matriarch gave him a knowing smile. “Extremely. So, you are presumably wondering why I don’t put a stop to it.”

“It had crossed my mind.”

“I tried to put a stop to it almost five hundred years ago. It was a disaster.”

“Really?”

“No one knew what to do when I came into the room. It made them so uncomfortable that they tried to come up with new things they could do or say to honor me. Then, they disagreed about which of those things was most appropriate. There were duels and disorder. There was chaos. I know you’re a wandering cultivator, so you’ll just have to take my word for it when I tell you that internal chaos will bring down a sect or an order like this one faster than any external enemy. So, I reinstated the bowing and scraping. Order was restored,” said the matriarch as she sat behind a surprisingly plain desk. “Sit.”

Sen sat in the chair opposite the matriarch and waited. He cast a quick glance around the room, but it was just the usual things one might find in an office. There were scrolls and what looked like ledgers, no doubt to keep track of the order finances. There were a few pieces of art on the wall, but Sen didn’t know enough about art to know if they were good, bad, valuable, or worthless. Overall, it was a shockingly impersonal place for someone who presumably spent most of her time there. Sen thought that, if it were his office, he’d probably decorate a bit more just to keep himself from getting too bored. While he looked at the office, he could feel the matriarch studying him. He didn’t know what she was looking for. As far as Sen knew, he didn’t have any hidden depths to discover. He did find himself idly wondering, if the matriarch was as powerful as she seemed, why she’d tolerated such a stupid battle to be fought on her doorstep in the first place. She could have probably run the water cultivators out single-handedly with a single word. After the silence stretched out for several more minutes, Sen finally broke the silence.

“Am I supposed to be asking questions?”

“Do you have questions? Of course, you do. I can probably even guess most of them. You probably wondered why I would tolerate that battle in the first place.”

“I did.”

“Some hatreds run deep. The water cultivators and my own people wanted that fight, or they thought they did. It happens every generation or so. I could have prevented it, or forbidden it, but that would have created a whole different set of problems that would have been far more difficult to predict or control. Minimally, it would have created deep resentment in the order toward me. While I don’t personally care if people resent me, it would have been extremely disruptive inside the sect. People would have chosen sides. There might have been a civil war. In other words-,” she started to say.

“Chaos,” finished Sen. “I suppose that begs another question. Why let me put an end to it? You could have stopped me any time you wanted to.”

“Why would I want to? Tolerating that violence and endorsing it are very different animals, young man. I couldn’t stop it without threatening to topple this order. You, on the other hand, an outsider, a very powerful and frightening outsider, could stop it with minimal consequence. A few might resent you, but not the way they would have resented me. I didn’t expect those heavenly vows, though.”

Sen considered that for a moment. “Are they actually binding on the Clear Spring sect and this order? I didn’t get a vow from you or from whoever is in charge at the Clear Spring sect, just the battlefield commanders.”

“It wasn’t enough to bind me, or my counterpart in the Clear Spring sect, but neither of us is interested in the fight,” said the matriarch. “I expect a few of the peak core cultivators resisted it. On the whole, though, yes, it’s binding.”

Sen nodded. “So, you got what you actually wanted in the long run. An end to the violence.”

Duan Yuxuan waggled a hand in the air. “I got an end to the large-scale violence. Nothing will ever completely stop the violence, but this will keep it to a much more manageable level.”

“Since you got what you wanted, more or less, why am I here?”

“Do you have any guesses?”

“I doubt I’m here so you can thank me. A note would have sufficed for that,” said Sen.

The matriarch offered a small smile at that. “You may be undervaluing your contributions or my gratitude, but you’re right. That’s not the specific reason you’re here.”

“I doubt you care that I commandeered a class on the jian. Especially given that I did it by request.”

“That is also true.”

“So, if I’m not here about something I did,” mused Sen aloud, “then this must either be about something I didn’t do or something about me personally. I didn’t happen to make vague statements about maybe teaching your son alchemy and then, completely by accident, never speak to him again, did I?”

The matriarch laughed at that. “My daughter, actually. Oh, you should have heard the complaining. Don’t worry. I’m not going to intercede on her behalf. It’s good for her not to get what she wants sometimes. Or who she wants, for that matter.”

Sen straightened up in his chair at that. “Well, that’s not ominous.”

“I suspect you’re safe,” said the matriarch.

Then, through a basic process of elimination, Sen finally figured it out. “This isn’t about me at all, is it? This is about Feng Ming, Kho Jaw-Long, or Ma Caihong, isn’t it?”

“Yes. Feng Ming, specifically, but all three indirectly. They’ve been out looking for you when they weren’t obliterating sects and cleansing the world of demonic cultivators.”

Sen nodded. “I thought they might be. We sent a message to Master Feng. Let him know we were alive and where we were going.”

Duan Yuxuan sighed. “I worried that might be the case.”

“I shouldn’t have told him I was alive and where I was going?”

“Don’t be foolish, boy. Of course, you should have. I just wish that you had been going somewhere else. I have a complicated history with Feng Ming. Although, I suppose nearly every nascent soul cultivator has history with every other nascent soul cultivator on the continent. It’s almost unavoidable.”

“Why?”

“We’re a small group. Occasionally, someone ascends, or dies, but membership is fairly stable. People that powerful, who live that long, well, you intersect with each other sooner or later. It’s usually just happenstance. You’re in the same city at the same time or you’re both looking for a particular treasure. We make an effort to keep things civil because the alternative means a level of destruction that most of us find unacceptable.”

“And you’re worried that some of that unacceptable destruction is going to happen here, if-,” started Sen.

“When,” corrected the matriarch.

“When Master Feng comes calling.”

“I don’t know, and that’s the real problem. He might just wander up to the gate and ask to see you. He might also fly in here like he means to shatter the face of the planet if we don’t turn you over to him immediately. It could just boil down to his mood. That is why I’d prefer it if he saw you, safe and hale, before he sees me.”

“I see. You’d like me to be the welcoming committee when he turns up.”

“I would very much appreciate that.”

Sen shrugged, “It’s no skin off my knee. I’ll do it. Although, I kind of think that this could have been handled with a note, too.”

“It could have, but I wanted to get a look at you for myself. See the young monster that Ming built.”

Sen sniffed. “I’m no monster.”

“No? I suspect most of the people who came up against you in a fight felt differently about that. I’ll grant you this, though. You’re more thoughtful than I would have expected from one of Ming’s students. He tends to be a very straightforward sort of person. Moves in straight lines. You’re a little more flexible, and a bit more twisty in your thinking. Caihong’s influence, do you think?”

Sen shrugged again. “Probably. Or Uncle Kho.”

“Hmmm. Well, whether you meant to or not, you did perform a service for my order. I would reward you. What would you wish of me?”

Sen thought about it for a while. He didn’t really have any pressing wants. He did have one need, though.

“I don’t suppose you have a manual for the Five-Fold Body Transformation lying around somewhere?”

The matriarch’s eyes went wide, and she shook her head a little. It looked like she was trying to shake off a bad shock.

“Ming really is building a monster, isn’t he?” she muttered. “No. We don’t have it, but I can think of three places where you might find it. Although, whether you can get any of those places to part with even a copy is another matter altogether. The Golden Phoenix sect in the capital has a copy. The Clear Spring sect claimed to have it, but that was almost fifteen hundred years ago, and I never saw it with my own eyes. So, it might have just been a boast. A nascent soul cultivator named Fu Ruolan has one, although I’d advise you to seek her out only when you’ve exhausted all other possibilities.”

“Why?”

“She’s powerful and unpredictable. She’s also eccentric, even by cultivator standards. I honestly can’t predict how she’d react to you. She might kill you out of hand. She might decide to keep you for two hundred years as an amusement or a pet. She might also simply give you what you want on a whim. As I said, she’s eccentric.”

“I appreciate the information and the warning. I don’t suppose you can tell me more about the Five-Fold Body Transformation Technique.”

“I am…aware of it, but I have no direct knowledge about its methods. I know only that it’s extremely potent and dangerous to practice.”

“Dangerous to practice,” repeated Sen. “Of course, it is. Well, thank you for telling me that much.”

“Is there nothing else you wish for? Cultivation aids? Treasures?”

Sen gave it a bit more thought. “I can also use another jian or spear.”

The matriarch smiled. “Spoken like a true student of Feng Ming and Kho Jaw-Long. I’ll see to it that something appropriate is brought to you.”

Sensing the dismissal, Sen rose from his seat. As he was about to leave, he glanced back at the matriarch who was already peering down at a scroll. He hesitated and then asked.

“Matriarch Duon?”

“Yes?”

“What does your daughter look like? I haven’t gotten many names since I’ve been here.”

“Oh, you’d know her as soon as you saw her. Pure white hair. Only person in the order with hair like that.”

Sen nodded. “I remember her. Thank you.”

Duan Yuxuan waved a hand at him, and Sen took the invitation to leave that time.

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