Book 3: Chapter 16: Ridiculous
Sen was so startled by the familiar but long-absent sensation that he completely lost track of everything around him. He focused on that tugging sensation, trying to pinpoint where it was coming from. That proved to be a somewhat useless exercise, as he didn’t glean anything except that it was somewhere farther west of them. He thought it might not be exactly, directly west, but they were going to need to travel for a while before he’d know for sure. Yet, the return of that tugging sensation reassured Sen in some intangible way that he was on the right track. The situation might be dire, and people might be hunting him, but he had a destination again. Knowing that there was an opportunity ahead to learn something important, maybe even glean a bit more enlightenment, gave him a purpose that went beyond mere survival. That bigger purpose focused him in a way that he hadn’t been focused in some time.
“What’s going on?” asked Lo Meifeng.
Her voice shattered the near-meditative state that Sen had been in for at least a short while. He glanced over at her and found the woman glaring forward, her eyes scanning the road, the trees, and the sky for whatever threat he had seen that she had missed. He shook his head.
“Don’t worry. It’s nothing bad. There’s just going to be an unexpected opportunity for me ahead.”
Both Lifen and Lo Meifeng were giving him looks like they thought maybe he’d injured his head in some way. Sighing audibly, Sen gestured that they should all start walking again and began explaining. He told them about that first tug back on the mountain and how it had led him to Tide’s Rest. Then, he told them about being led out to the Luo farm by a similar tug. He ended the explanation by giving them his theory that it was a call to opportunities for enlightenment.
“So, that’s why you went to Tide’s Rest and stood on that beach for so long,” said Lo Meifeng. “I always wondered what that was about.”
Sen eyed her. “You could have just asked.”
“I could have, but it wasn’t information I needed. Curiosity isn’t always a good enough reason to ask people about things. Some things just aren’t your business.”
Sen nodded in understanding. “I suppose that’s true enough.”
“Let me make sure I understand,” said Lifen. “You get random tugging sensations in your soul that lead you to moments of enlightenment?”
“Not exactly,” said Sen. “It leads me to opportunities to learn things. I didn’t actually get any enlightenment on that beach. And if there was enlightenment at the Luo farm, it was so subtle that I missed it. But, I did learn things at both places, even if it took me a while to understand what I learned.”
“So, you get random tugs on your soul that tell you where to go so you can potentially get enlightenment?”
“Well,” hedged Sen, “yeah, I think so.”
“Unbelievable. You’re, you’re, you’re ridiculous!” shouted Lifen.
She stomped down the road ahead of them, muttering what sounded like a string of very colorful profanity to Sen. He stared after her, a little shocked by the reaction.
“That seemed a little extreme,” he said.
“Did it?” asked Lo Meifeng.
“Well, yeah. Don’t you think so?”
“Not really. If I was her, I’d have probably tried to stab you by now.”
Sen gaped at the woman for a moment before he found his ability to speak again. “Why?”
“I’ve gathered enough from our conversation that I know you didn’t have what one might call a happy childhood. I also know that things look kind of bleak right now from your perspective. Yet, even with all of that, you look like you lead a pretty charmed life from the outside.”
“Charmed life? Are you kidding me? I grew up fighting rats and dogs for the right to eat garbage. I’ve got demonic cultivators breathing down my neck. If they catch me, I expect that the best possible outcome is that they kill me quickly. I’m literally running away right now. I’ve got no plan to deal with them, and I expect that, sooner or later, they’re going to send someone to find me who I can’t trick with a clever formation. When that day comes, I’ll have to fight and probably lose. What’s so charmed about that?”
Lo Meifeng let that all sink in for a moment before she responded. “That’s all true. But here are some other true things. You got taken in and personally trained by a nascent soul cultivator.”
“Three,” said Sen in a weary voice.
“What?”
“I got taken in and personally trained by three nascent soul cultivators.”
“Wait, wait, explain that.”
“Master Feng picked me up on the street, but then he took me up a mountain. He had a friend living up there.”
“A friend? Are you talking about Kho Jaw-Long?”
“Yeah, Uncle Kho. And Auntie Caihong was there later.”
“And they trained you, too?”
Sen nodded. “Uncle Kho taught me about the spear. Auntie Caihong taught me about alchemy.”
Lo Meifeng shook her head. “Sun Lifen is right. You are ridiculous. Okay, so, you got years of personal attention and training from three of the most powerful, dangerous, and feared people in the world. Which, by the way, is an opportunity that some sect patriarchs and matriarchs would sell their children to get. Then, within half a year or so, you cow a sect.”
“Two,” said Sen, sounding even more tired.
“Two what?”
“Two sects. I cowed two sects.”
“I,” Lo Meifeng said, “don’t even want to know. So, you cow two sects. You have a chance encounter with a divine turtle who helps you leapfrog, what, two or three steps in your body cultivation into the next major stage?”
“Something like that,” admitted Sen.
“And on top of all of that, you’ve apparently got the universe itself holding your hand and guiding you toward moments of enlightenment.”
Sen discovered that he was feeling a little sheepish and uncomfortable. “Well, when you put it like, it does kind of sound like a lot of good fortune.”
“Doesn’t it just? Look, I get it. You didn’t really ask for most of those things. They were just things that happened to you. They also didn’t happen all at once. But most cultivators would look at all of that and wonder which god you saved from death in your last life to earn that kind of good luck. I also understand that most people at your cultivation level aren’t dealing with being hunted by a demonic cabal. Most of them don’t live with, what I assume, are the very heavy expectations of three people who are probably going to challenge the heavens and succeed. To me, it seems like you’re paying market value for your good fortune. For someone like Sun Lifen, though,” said Lo Meifeng, letting the words hang.
“Someone who couldn’t even get cultivation manuals without help from someone like me,” said Sen. “Yeah, it probably looks unfair.”
“It probably looks monumentally unfair. Just keep in mind, she’s only thinking about the benefits. I bet she hasn’t really thought about what it would be like to train under someone like Feng Ming, or Kho Jaw-Long, or,” Lo Meifeng visibly shuddered, “Ma Caihong as a qi condensing cultivator or early-stage foundation formation cultivator. I’d be willing to be that she hasn’t even thought about what going through a tribulation is like.”
“So, you’re saying that I should tell her about what it was like?”
“Well, I got most of my training from a peak core cultivator, and that was just about the hardest work I’ve ever done. Training with people a full stage beyond that, I honestly can’t even picture what that’d be like.”
“I guess it couldn’t hurt to offer her some cold, hard facts to offset that jealousy.”
“Well, it might not help. But, no, I don’t think it would hurt, either.”
Sen realized that Lifen was going to need more than a few minutes to cool down, so he busied himself looking for somewhere they could set up camp. He planned to get them back into the habit of traveling at night as soon as possible, but they’d both been up for nearly a full day and night. While Sen could shrug that off, it wasn’t as easy for Lifen. He didn’t see any value in pushing her that way unless it was necessary, and he didn’t think it was. Plus, Lo Meifeng looked tired to him. Given that he’d never seen her look tired before, it made him wonder just how taxing her vacation had been. A little sleep would do everyone some good.
When he found a good spot, he led them off the road and way back into the forest. It was almost deep enough that he might worry about spirit beasts taking an interest, but he set up the formations before anything else. Lo Meifeng watched him for a while before she came over and started asking questions.
“Why did you put the flag there? Isn’t it out of alignment?” she asked, pointing at the last flag he’d placed.
“Oh,” he said, only paying a little attention to her. “It’s because of the qi flow. If you look where the flag would normally go, there’s a minuscule eddy in the qi flow. It doesn’t look important, but it would have created fluctuations in the formation that would have gotten progressively worse the longer it was up. That’s the kind of thing that someone who knows what they’re doing might notice. Moving the flag here looks like it would weaken the formation, but the qi is actually about ten percent stronger in this spot. Although, I’m not sure why it’s stronger there. I suspect there’s probably something below that attracts it, but I’m only guessing. Anyway, that extra qi is sufficient to more than offset the variance created by the slightly misaligned flag. I’m actually going to get a stronger formation by doing it this way.”
Sen looked up to see Lo Meifeng staring at him with her mouth hanging open a little.
“What?” he asked.
“You can feel the qi flow well enough to identify that there’s an eddy in it, right there?” she said, once again pointing.
“Um, yes? I mean, can’t everyone?”
Lo Meifeng reached up and pinched the bridge of her nose for a moment before she uttered a single word.
“Ridiculous.”
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