Unintended Cultivator

Sen could hear the shouting from inside the meeting room long before he and Lai Dongmei arrived outside the door. The prospect of wrangling all of that pride did not appeal to him. He’d been forced to do similar things with the teachers back at his sect and had not enjoyed it. He suspected that this would be much worse. Then again, he’d been aiming for a certain level of harmony and tranquility in those days. He didn’t care if the people here felt particularly harmonious or tranquil. As long as they obey, he thought, it should be enough. He noticed Lai Dongmei giving the door a disgusted look.

At least, he wasn’t alone in his annoyance with the lack of discipline the raised voices implied. Sen schooled his expression into the mask of cool indifference he’d been favoring recently and, after giving his companion a moment to smooth her features, opened the door and walked in. Silence fell almost immediately, but there was no hiding that people had been arguing with each other. Two cultivators were leaning over the table. Sen wasn’t sure why they were doing that, unless it was some foolish attempt at intimidation. There were also clusters of people around the room with hands hanging limply in the air after his arrival caused them to abandon their gestures. Sen let a frown slip onto his face as he gave everyone in the room a hard look.

“I assume that you’ve spent this time I gave you wisely and are ready to present plans to defend the city,” said Sen. “Barring that, I assume you at least have ideas to share that don’t involve protecting only your own assets.”

Sen waited and watched as discomfort, embarrassment, and shame bloomed on faces throughout the room. He let his expression go a little colder, and some people actually flinched. Without a word, he walked over to the table and took the seat he’d been using earlier. Lai Dongmei claimed the seat to his immediate right. That almost set off another round of childish bickering, but the man who had been representing the Golden Phoenix Sect wisely elected to stand by a wall. Once everyone was seated, Sen let the silence hang over everyone for several long seconds before he gestured at the map. He had intended to let the rest of them speak first, but there was no good way of anticipating exactly how soon the spirit beasts might launch their attacks. It might be days or mere hours. There were at least a few things they needed to know.

“What are your expectations in terms of the spirit beast attack?” asked Sen.

That led to a lot of swiftly exchanged glances from everyone else at the table. Sen didn’t want to believe that none of them had even been attempting to keep track of what the spirit beasts gathering outside their walls were doing. He’d hoped that even in their panic, they would have taken that basic measure.

“Lord Lu,” said a handsome cultivator off to his left. “Our information gathering has been limited.”

“Clearly,” said Sen. “Then, give me your best guess.”

The other man did his best to suppress his anger, but Sen could see the man’s jaw tighten.

Lai Dongmei gave the man a sickly-sweet smile that immediately caused a sheen of sweat to break out on the cultivator’s face.

“So, just what is it in Lord Lu’s report that you doubt? Are you questioning his ability to count? Or is it his truthfulness that you find questionable?” asked Lai Dongmei. “Well, in either case, perhaps you should go look for yourself and return with accurate, unquestionably truthful numbers.”

The cultivator’s expression vacillated between anger and fear before he regained his composure.

“Matriarch Lai,” said the cultivator, “what you’re suggesting is little more than suicide.”

“Is it?” asked Sen. “You seem to have grave concerns about the accuracy of what I saw. If I am as incompetent as your artless implication suggests, I think it would be exceedingly appropriate for you to be the one to supply us with a more trustworthy assessment of the situation.”

The cultivator tried to glare daggers at Sen, but couldn’t quite seem to meet Sen’s eyes for more than a few moments at a time.

“Lord Lu—” started the man before Sen cut him off.

“That wasn’t a suggestion. You obviously weren’t listening when I said that the days of court intrigue are over. You will go. If I’m lying, it should pose no great difficulty for you to demonstrate that. I will even accompany you as far as the nearby forests.”

Sen could see the panic starting to build in the other cultivator. By stating that he’d accompany the man to the edge of the wilds, he’d also cut off any possibility of the man simply saying he’d gone to look while hiding somewhere.

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“If I might offer an alternative, Lord Lu,” said Lai Dongmei.

Sen gave her the kind of thoughtful look that would make most people start looking for escape routes. She knew it was entirely artifice, but no one else would. He finally inclined his head ever so slightly in her direction.

“Proceed,” he said.

“I think you may have overlooked a salient detail. He’s here representing the entire Calamitous Fist Sect, which means the insult came from all of them. It seems more appropriate that the entire sect should participate in gathering an accurate count of the spirit beasts.”

Sen managed to keep his composure, but even he was thrown off by the suggestion. It was as heartless as his threat to execute an entire noble house. If an entire sect went out there unsupported, they would all die. He knew. Lai Dongmei knew it. The cultivator from the Calamitous Fist Sect clearly also knew it based on how he stared at Lai Dongmei with naked alarm on his face. His ploy had been as stupid as the idiot noble’s. Its only redeeming feature was that it had been executed with a bit more subtlety. Lai Dongmei made an airy gesture with her hand and continued.

“Or,” she said, “I suppose that he could get down on his knees, admit his stupidity, and beg for Lord Lu’s forgiveness.”

Sen had to give it to her. She’d boxed the man in quite neatly. If he refused that last suggestion, it was tantamount to condemning his entire sect. If he accepted it, their sect would become an object of ridicule. Sen doubted that anything in the world could stop that story from spreading. Even if the story didn’t spread to the public at large, there were witnesses present from most of the major sects. They wouldn’t forget that humiliation, and they wouldn’t let the Calamitous Fist Sect forget it either. In one move, that sect would be rendered a second or even third-rate sect in the eyes of the cultivator community. It would likely take generations if not centuries for them to recover from it.

The cultivator sat there frozen. He was, no doubt, making similar calculations and realizing exactly how badly he had damaged his sect. Sen was honestly a little surprised that the man had done it in the first place. He’d seen Sen cut down a nascent soul cultivator and come within a breath of ending a noble house in the bloodiest way possible. It was almost like the man hadn’t been paying attention. Sen wasn’t inclined to give the fool a chance to think it all the way through.

“What’s it going to be?” asked Sen.

Every eye in the room was fixed on the man. It seemed that he’d come down on the side of survival. He rose from his chair, stepped away from it, and dropped to his knees. He also looked like he was trying to swallow something very sharp and jagged. Sen was less than sympathetic to his plight.

“Lord Lu,” said the man in a voice made rough by shame or fury. “I, Tan Dexing of the Calamitous Fist Sect, apologize to you. I made baseless assertions about your honesty.”

Lai Dongmei fixed the man with a bland look and said, “What else?”

Tan Dexing clenched his fists so hard that Sen could see blood dripping onto the floor. It took the cultivator most of a minute to work up to saying his next words.

“I am unforgivably stupid.”

Sen stared at the man with no expression on his face for an uncomfortable length of time before he finally said, “Very well. I suppose there’s no need to send your sect out to confirm what I’ve already seen.”

Tan Dexing bowed forward until his head touched the floor before he rose and went to retake his seat.

“No,” said Sen, making the other man freeze in place. “You can stand by the wall. Adults are speaking at this table.”

Sen wouldn’t have been surprised if Tan Dexing attacked him immediately, but it seemed the blow to his self-esteem had given the man at least a few moments of common sense. The Calamitous Fist cultivator trudged to stand by the wall.

“Now that we’ve settled that foolishness, let me tell you about the thing that you clearly haven’t recognized yet,” said Sen. “The spirit beasts are assembling a massive formation around the city.”

There was an immediate outcry from the cultivators in the room. A few seemed to grasp exactly how catastrophic that might be. Sen made a mental note to find out who those people were. The rest started shouting denials that spirit beasts could ever hope to make any kind of formation, let alone one that large. Fed up with the constant distractions and disruptions, Sen unleashed some of his killing intent on the cultivators in the room. A few were knocked unconscious while the rest lurched in place. His goal was achieved, though. They had stopped talking over him. He withdrew his killing intent.

“It is real,” said Sen.

“Lord Lu,” said a cultivator woman he hadn’t met before. “Spirit beasts are largely mindless, violent creatures. How could they be assembling any kind of formation? Even if they were, formations of that size aren’t possible.”

Sen gave her a level look. She wasn’t being obviously defiant. Those comments were things she accepted as facts. He knew that wasn’t the case, but he supposed this at least warranted some discussion.

“Many spirit beasts are mindless, but some of them are terrifyingly intelligent. I’ve stood in the presence of several who would view everyone in the room as little more than annoyances. Minimally, there must be some sapient spirit beasts out there keeping the mindless ones under control. As for making formations, any spirit beast of sufficient intelligence could accomplish the task. They might not get there in quite the same ways that we do, but they can get there. I saw the evidence of it with my own eyes. As for large-scale formations, they aren’t impossible. They’re difficult and disgustingly time-consuming, but they can be created. I’ve done it.”

That drew looks from the cultivators. Again, some of them wore this disbelief on their faces, but others seemed ready to accept his assertions about the possibility of the threat.

“I don’t know exactly what the formation is intended to do,” admitted Sen. “That would have taken a level of close scrutiny that I didn’t think the spirit beasts would tolerate. Even so, it’s easy enough to surmise that it won’t be good for the city. It might be intended to bring down the walls. It might be meant to do something else. Regardless, disrupting that formation is a priority. I have some thoughts on how to do that. Even if what I have in mind is possible, it won’t be close to enough to stop all of those spirit beasts. So, we need a plan to defend this city.”

He reached out and tapped the map.

“I want ideas.”