Unintended Cultivator

The next two weeks fell into something of a routine for Sen and Lifen. They’d get up each morning and cultivate for an hour on deck. Then, Sen began the grueling process of teaching and drilling Lifen on unarmed combat. It didn’t take long for the question Sen had been expecting to come up.

“I don’t understand,” said Lifen between puffing breaths. “I thought you were going to train me to use a weapon. Why am I learning all of this unarmed stuff?”

“What will you do if you lose your weapon or get disarmed?”

“Oh,” said Lifen, looking a little embarrassed. “Right. That makes sense. I guess I was just focused on the idea of a weapon.”

“We’ll get to that. Believe it or not, learning this will actually make learning that easier.”

Sen would keep her at training for most of the morning, before giving her a break and going to help prepare lunch. Sen found that letting her rest and get something to eat in the middle of the day dramatically improved her performance in the afternoon. Unlike his own training days, he left her to her own devices in the evening, often choosing to cultivate on his own to gather qi from the deepening shadows on deck. That particular choice also had the side benefit of letting her cool down for a while if she was harboring any resentment from the day’s training.

While he hadn’t expected any real benefits to his qi cultivation from his recent body advancement, he was pleasantly surprised to find one. While he still had to make a conscious effort to gather qi in the right balance, the work had become much easier. It felt as though his body had become a much more efficient conduit for all five types of qi. He just wasn’t entirely sure why. Unfortunately, he didn’t have the time to really investigate it and made a mental note to explore the issue when he had a touch more free time. While that improved efficiency still wasn’t good enough to allow his passive cultivation to run in the background, it cut down on the total amount of time he spent on cultivation each day. Then, he’d go back to the tiny cabin he shared with Lifen to find out what kind of mood she was in. Some days, when things had gone relatively well, she’d be in a good mood. On those days, she’d want to discuss the training or cultivation. On days when things had not gone well, he’d get icy looks or find her studiously ignoring him.

He took it all in stride as best as he could. Sen hadn’t known exactly how the young woman was going to react to getting training from him, but he had known it was going to mean a change. Yet, his taking on the role of teacher was the least bad option of a very limited set of choices. He expected it wouldn’t have been quite so bad if he wasn’t teaching her something so demanding. Martial skills were one area where, much like cultivation, a poor beginning often meant disaster later. As much as he might have preferred to go easy on her, that wouldn’t serve her well in a real fight. Plus, Sen expected that they would find themselves in a real fight at some point. They could probably run and hide for a while, but it would take an extraordinary amount of good fortune to avoid any contact with the demonic cultivators. They couldn’t walk around in disguise all the time. If their descriptions had been sent out, and Sen had to assume they were, it only took one person recognizing them and it would be a chase or a fight. So, he continued to push.

The ship stopped twice in those two weeks. Both times, Lo Meifeng bid them to stay inside and then stole into the port towns to get a look around. Both times, she came back and simply shook her head. When Sen asked what was wrong, the older cultivator just shook her head.

“My instincts tell me that it’s a bad place for us. I’ve learned to trust those feelings over the years.”

While Sen would appreciate getting off of the ship, he wasn’t going to dismiss her concerns. He’d traveled clear from Orchard’s Reach to Tide’s Rest based on nothing more substantial than a feeling. While he had a limited pool of interactions with other cultivators to draw from, he got the impression that they all relied on their instincts and intuitions to help guide them through life. He didn’t know precisely what Lo Meifeng was sensing that gave her those warnings, but he was ready to give her the benefit of the doubt until those instincts proved faulty. Besides, he thought, it’s not like I’m any better equipped to identify these risks than she is. The simple fact that she had survived until the middle of core formation suggested that her survival instincts were probably pretty solid. If Sen’s experiences in the Jianghu were even a little bit representative, he had to accept Lo Meifeng had found a way to navigate or overcome a lot of dangers along the way.

So, he was a little surprised when, at the third stop, Lo Meifeng came back and told them to gather their things. It was a remarkably short process. Sen kept most of his belongings in his storage ring. He’d given Lifen one once it was clear that she’d be coming along, so she generally followed suit. Less than an hour after Lo Meifeng had come back, Sen was bidding farewell to the captain. The older man gave Sen a toothy grin.

“It’s been an experience having you on board, cultivator,” said the man. “I’ve got one hells of a tale to tell.”

Sen was suddenly alarmed at the idea of the captain and crew telling wild tales of the cultivator or cultivators who saved them. The captain must have read the distress on Sen’s face because he shook his head.

“Don’t worry,” said the man. “We’ll keep it quiet for a while. Those stories always work best when they’ve had a little time to fade.”

“I’d appreciate that, captain,” said Sen with a bit of relief.

“I’m not sure what you’re running from, but I hope you get away from it.”

Sen laughed a little. “Me too. Good luck to you, captain. I hope your future journeys are a bit less eventful.”

The captain shrugged at that. “That would be nice, but the sea is a dangerous occupation. You don’t become a sailor because you want a calm, boring life.”

The two men traded bows, and then Sen was walking off the ship with Lo Meifeng and Lifen. Sen did his best to ignore the smells that assaulted his heightened senses. There was the strong smell of the ocean, of course, which Sen actually liked. Unfortunately, there was also the smell of fresh and not-so-fresh fish all over the place. Beneath that were the smells that always came with having too many people crammed into too small of a place. There was the stink of garbage, human waste, and the sour smell of unwashed human bodies. His recent advancement had made his sense of smell even sharper than before, so it took a lot of effort to block out that stink that seemed to want to invade his nose and never leave.

For her part, Lifen looked around with curious eyes. The port city wasn’t nearly as large as Emperor’s Bay, so she wasn’t staring with wonder. But the architecture was a bit different. There was less stone and more wood to be seen. Thatch covered nearly every roof, save for on a few buildings in the distance that Sen suspected were owned by either the local government or the local wealthy. The local speech was a little different as well. Sen wasn’t an expert in languages, so he had a hard time putting his finger on it. The best he could come up with was that the people sounded a little softer, almost like they were slurring their words a little bit in spots where he wouldn’t. That reminded him that he had meant to ask someone about what languages were spoken on the continent. He turned to ask Lo Meifeng about it, but Lifen spoke first.

“Will we stay in the city tonight?” she asked.

Lo Meifeng started to say something before she frowned. In the end, she shook her head. “No, not in the city. Maybe somewhere in the outskirts. There are too many eyes here.”

Lifen looked a little disappointed, but she didn’t object. That made Sen happy. He had no desire to try and keep them from yelling at each other in public. People yelling at each in the street was not low profile. Plus, Sen was already distracted. He’d been hiding since before they got off the ship. He understood why Lo Meifeng had suggested it, but it also made him nervous to have his cultivator senses so limited. He was also having to get used to walking on land again. His body had adapted to the rolling motion of the ship pretty quickly, but he hadn’t quite reverted back yet. On top of that, he was trying to keep his eyes open for trouble. He’d been pretty adept at spotting trouble when he’d been a street urchin, so he leaned hard on those rusty old skills.

Yet, despite Sen’s near certainty that they’d be discovered and attacked, the trip through the port city was quiet. They passed out of the gates with barely an acknowledgment from the guards, aside from one staring a little too long at Lifen’s body. Sen had spent enough time with her to see that she didn’t mean to say anything about it but that the leering bothered her. Sen gave the guard a look so hard that the man flinched, went pale, and immediately found somewhere else to direct his attention. As they moved away from the gate, Lifen gave Sen a bemused smile.

“You didn’t have to do that,” she said.

“Probably not, but it was bothering you,” said Sen, as though that explained everything.

“Is that a good enough reason?”

Sen gave her a baffled look. “Why wouldn’t it be?”

Lifen looked a bit startled at those words, then a light blush tinged her cheeks. Sen didn’t really know what to make of that, so he added it to the long list of mysteries in his life that would probably never be solved.

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