Unintended Cultivator

After allowing people to see him at the gate, if only briefly, Sen went to one of his least favorite places in the city. He knew his dislike for the palace had less to do with the place than it did with all of the aggravations waiting for him there, but his loathing for all things political had bled through into a more general hatred for the palace itself. The fact that he couldn’t realistically avoid the place only made it worse. Of course, the alternative was allowing functionaries, hangers-on, and nobles to invade Lu Manor. He hadn’t needed anyone to tell him that would be a terrible idea, and he’d swiftly forbidden anyone from entering the manor without permission.

Nonetheless, he had to be available to people. That had come as an unwelcome if not wholly unexpected fact. He had drastically underestimated just how many things he was expected to have opinions on as the new leader of the kingdom. Sen had shamelessly foisted as much of that work onto Jing and his bureaucrats as he could. Despite what he’d heard some people whispering, it wasn’t quite as self-serving as it had looked from the outside. Jing and his people had vastly more experience in dealing with matters at the scale of a kingdom, even if it was a kingdom in turmoil. Not drawing on that experience would have been stupid and destructive.

Just as importantly, though, Jing had been lost. Sen hadn’t officially relieved him of his position as king and never intended to do so. Everyone still treated Sen as the true power in the capital, which he supposed he was. Still, someone had to be in charge after Sen secured this kingdom and began his march to unite humanity, whether they liked it or not. Jing could rule in this kingdom and act in Sen’s name. It would take some work to ensure the man’s survival, but Sen was pretty sure it could be accomplished. Voluntelling Jing that he was going to work on the kingdom’s behalf had given the man purpose again.

Despite trying to use Jing and his people as human walls between himself and all the matters he didn’t want to deal with, there were some things that, apparently, only Sen could decide. He would have been utterly rudderless without his lesser experiences as a sect patriarch and unwilling town leader. Now, those experiences helped him to identify when people were bringing things to him because they truly required his input, and when people were just trying to get into a room with him. He might have been willing to ignore all of that on most days, but there were things that he wanted to see done that couldn’t be accomplished without his input.

“Stop,” ordered Sen.

The five cultivators aborted their attempts at replicating his improved qinggong technique. Despite coming from different sects, they all traded nearly identical looks of frustration and a kind of despondency. Sen was hard-pressed to keep the disappointment off his face. These five had been chosen for their talent, or so he had been told. He’d expected them to learn this in no time. Three days in, they seemed no closer to understanding than they had on the first day. Sen was tempted to call the whole thing off, but he needed other cultivators who could perform this technique.

Unless or until Glimmer of Night figured out a way of both producing communication cores in bulk and allowing them to connect directly, Sen had to have cultivators who could move faster than the average spirit beast and other cultivators. It was the only way to ensure that lines of communication remained even partially open until his hold on the kingdom was firmer. As things stood at the moment, the communication cores were a valuable tool. Unfortunately, they were also tools that remained difficult to produce and that required people to relay the messages. There were simply too many opportunities for failure in that to rely on them too heavily.

Sen regarded the cultivators before he waved a hand at them and said, “Take a break and have some water.”

They probably didn’t need anything to drink, but it would keep them busy for five or ten minutes. That would give Sen an opportunity to rethink his approach. He knew he wasn’t the best teacher, so he wasn’t about to blame all of them for their failure to grasp the technique. If it had just been one of them, he might have chalked that up to a lack of talent. When all five of them failed, that suggested a failure on his part. He summoned the iris lightning blades from his storage rings. Working through a form or two would help to center him. It might also give his mind a chance to come up with a new strategy.

He also needed the practice. Master Feng had made sure that he trained using a jian in each hand, but Sen’s preference had always been to use a single blade. With the prospect of endless battles stretching before him, though, he couldn’t afford to ignore the advantages that dual-wielding would provide him. One of the key disadvantages of dual-wielding for early-stage cultivators was that they struggled to divide their attention without losing focus. Sen had struggled with it, although he suspected his unorthodox training and needing to teach himself how to manage different cycling patterns had offset some of those problems.

Those concentration problems didn’t exist as a nascent soul cultivator. Dividing his attention was no more of a strain than breathing. He just hadn’t developed the habit of using two jian. So, he drilled the dual-wielding forms as his not-very-successful students moped and sipped at cups of water. The practice also let him relearn how his body moved since his breakthrough. He felt his body in an entirely new way. There was no gap between feeling something and recognizing it. It was instantaneous knowledge or so close as to be indistinguishable.

It had been jarring to realize how much those old limitations on knowledge had influenced his fighting. There had been dozens of micro-hesitations in his form where he had used to wait for fractions of a second as information caught up to awareness. Eliminating those micro-hesitations one by one had also freed him of a sense that he was doing things wrong. Now, everything flowed like unimpeded water. The blades cut so fast that he was surprised that the very air itself didn’t ignite. There was no conscious consideration as he moved from one form to another. It was only when he became aware of people’s focused attention on him that he drew to a stop.

Sen looked around and found the five cultivators staring at him with expressions that were uncomfortably close to awe. If that had been all, it would have been fine. Unfortunately, it seemed he had been practicing for long enough to draw a crowd of nobles, bureaucrats, servants, guards, and even a handful of other cultivators.

“Yes,” said Sen, drawing startled jerks from almost everyone. “Even I train.”

There was a brief moment of hesitation before a few people started to laugh. That set off more laughter, although some of it sounded a bit forced to Sen’s ears. He sighed. I just have to live with it, he thought. He waved a hand at the crowd.

“Carry on, if you will,” he told them.

Most of the crowd dispersed until he was left with the five cultivators he was supposed to be training. One of them, a core cultivator from the Calamitous Fist sect, stepped forward from the group. He was almost as tall as Sen, if a lot leaner, and his thin mustache twitched for a moment as he seemed to gather his courage.

“Lord Lu,” he said, falling to his knees and pressing his forehead to the ground, “This lowly one begs that you teach him that divine sword form.”

Sen’s first reaction was simply to say no. He suspected that Master Feng would tell him that he had the right to teach his students anything he wanted. Except, these five weren’t really his students. He also hadn’t intended to train them for combat. On the other hand, using these five as couriers would mean sending them through hostile territory. Speed would help them avoid trouble, but it wasn’t a cure-all for that problem. If they were going to succeed in that role, they might need extra training simply to survive. Plus, a little incentive might induce them all to put in some extra effort to learn the qinggong technique.

He eyed the others. They all looked eager to hear his answer, no doubt planning to mimic the kowtowing man if Sen said he would offer such training. Sen struggled to fault them for that eagerness. Hadn’t he seized the opportunity to grow stronger when he could? He would need to consult with…Well, he’d have to find someone to consult about a body cultivation technique that would carry him through the nascent soul stage. He’d gotten way too many benefits from body cultivation to give it up willingly. Plus, if he ascended, he wanted to arrive wherever he was going with every possible advantage.

When he noticed the increasingly nervous expressions on the cultivators’ faces, he stroked his chin in what he hoped looked like a thoughtful gesture. If he did consent to provide them with some kind of training, he’d have to put restrictions on it to bind them to him in some meaningful way. He didn’t plan to hand out personal training just so they could take it back and give it to their sects. Sen added a thoughtful nod.

“Very well. If,” said Sen, holding up a hand to forestall their burgeoning joy, “you all master this qinggong technique, I will consider providing you with some instruction in the first of the forms you just saw.”