Book 3: Chapter 17: Coping
Traveling with Lo Meifeng again was both more and less frustrating than Sen expected. It was much more frustrating because she insisted on keeping up the farce that he was in charge. He loathed that extra responsibility. Sen didn’t want to wonder if every campsite he picked was going to be the one that the enemy found because he hadn’t chosen wisely enough. He didn’t want to imagine what would happen to them all if he made a bad call. Most of all, though, he didn’t like the false nature of it. He knew perfectly well that, if things went wrong, Lo Meifeng would take charge again. On the other hand, it was less frustrating because she could take turns with him on keeping watch and would frequently range ahead and behind to look for pursuit and traps. Sen had offered to do some of that himself, which Lo Meifeng immediately shut down as an idea.
“Absolutely not.”
“You know that I can avoid being noticed,” objected Sen.
“Yes, I do know that, but it’s not the point. The object of this whole exercise is to keep you alive. That means keeping you out of fights unless absolutely necessary. Sadly, it probably will become necessary at some point, but I want to put that off for as long as possible. I’m expendable. You’re not.”
Sen stiffened at those words and locked gazes with the woman. “No. You aren’t. I don’t care what orders you’re working under. You’ve been making me lead, and that means it’s my responsibility to make sure that we all survive. Including you.”
“I appreciate what you’re saying, but-,” she offered.
“This isn’t up for debate. Don’t you dare throw your life away because you think it might buy me a little time. I need live allies, not dead friends.”
Lo Meifeng softened a bit at that. “Alright.”
Sen nodded. “Good. I’m glad we settled that nonsense.”
That extra free time in his day also let him do other important things, like continuing Lifen’s combat training. Sen knew that training was coming years too late to be helpful in their present circumstances. Still, it was laying a foundation for her survival in the Jianghu if they all managed to avoid extermination by demonic cultivator. Her feelings about how ridiculous he was faded into the background a lot once he started explaining to her exactly what his training had been like. The revelation that his training had consisted of non-stop drilling and sparring for as much as ten hours a day had cooled her temper. The two or three hours he put her through were, by comparison, light. Of course, he hadn’t been walking at a cultivator’s pace all day, every day either. He wasn’t sure how well it all balanced, but Lifen was probably better conditioned than she’d ever been before they left Emperor’s Bay. Conditioning wasn’t everything, but it was terribly helpful if you needed to run or fight.
Of course, nothing could cure the frayed patience that came with the certain knowledge that they were being hunted. That knowledge pressed down on them all. They each dealt with it in their own ways. Sen focused on the ever-stronger tugging in his soul. They’d covered enough distance that he could tell that, at some point, he’d have to leave the road and venture into the wilds. The road wasn’t a straight line from east to west, but it was close. The tugging was drawing him to a place that was a bit south of the road. That worried him a little. While he was ready to take that chance, and Lo Meifeng probably wouldn’t care, he wasn’t sure that he could take Lifen into that situation in good conscience.
If they got more than a mile or two from the road or civilization proper, there was a much higher chance of spirit beast attacks. She wouldn’t be entirely helpless in that situation, but she wasn’t really prepared for it either. A part of him wanted to start training her with a jian or spear, immediately, but he knew that was self-serving. She wasn’t ready yet, not really, and introducing a weapon would only serve as a distraction and weaken the foundation of her combat skills. It also meant that she’d be largely reliant on Sen and Lo Meifeng to protect her. They would, he knew, but he also knew how chaotic those fights could become. It would only take one lapse in attention for her to suffer a serious injury or even be killed. Sen didn’t think he could justify that in the name of his own advancement. So, he pondered about how he could both get what he wanted and still be a responsible “leader.”
Lo Meifeng seemingly dealt with the pressure by pretending it didn’t exist, right up until the moment she was ready to explode. Then, she’d vanish for several hours. Sen didn’t know exactly what she did during those side trips, but she always came back calmer. Sometimes, she came back with a freshly slain animal for them to butcher and eat. Sometimes, she came back with a contemplative look in her eyes. Sen thought about asking her where she went on more than one occasion, but she had been right. Curiosity wasn’t always a good enough reason to ask questions. Wherever she was going, whatever she was doing, it was her way of coping. If she wanted to tell him about it, he’d listen. If she didn’t want to tell him, well, it was her secret to keep.
Lifen coped by burying herself in cultivation practice. She’d seemingly settled on water qi as her preferred qi type and was practicing the methods set out in the water-focused cultivation manual Sen had procured for her. Getting a clear read on someone else’s progress with cultivation was something that Sen struggled with. While the qi flows in the ground might seem transparent to him, the qi inside others was often hazy or fully opaque without using his own qi to examine it. He thought she was improving and maybe even getting close to another breakthrough, but it was mostly speculation on his part. While she would no doubt let him look at her qi while she cultivated if he asked, he didn’t ask. It was her journey, and he needed to let her walk it in her own way. Much as with Lo Meifeng, he would talk with her about it if she decided she wanted to talk, but he wasn’t going to press her to discuss it.
Part of Sen wondered how long they could keep up this lifestyle. While he might be okay essentially living in the forest nearly full-time, he didn’t expect that held true for either Lo Meifeng or Lifen. It wasn’t really a life the way that Sen understood most people thought of a life. Lifen had been surrounded by countless people basically every single day of her life. Lo Meifeng was far too comfortable in cities to be anything but someone who spent most of her time in them. For Sen, relative solitude was a relief. For them, he expected it was just another burden. And even he grew weary of the lack of conveniences. There had been little enough strain on his qi resources lately that he’d been able to compress more ambient qi into liquid qi several times. In fact, he’d been forced to do it more and more often as space grew increasingly limited in his dantian.
With the right situation and the right resources, he had the suspicion that he could probably break through to core formation without overly taxing his system. Yet, the situation was not ideal for either him or Lifen to have a major breakthrough. Plus, there was that ribbon of qi in his dantian. With Lo Meifeng’s return, he’d finally been able to devote some real time to examining it. Yet, all of his examinations, poking, prodding, and pondering had generated precious few solid answers. Every time he considered it, he desperately wished that Master Feng, Uncle Kho, or Auntie Caihong were on hand to answer questions, or even just for him to bounce ideas off of for a while. He’d considered talking about it with Lo Meifeng, but he was hesitant to reveal that much about his cultivation to her. He had talked about it a bit with Lifen, which had oddly seemed to win him some extra affection and tolerance from her, but she’d been as baffled by his descriptions as he was by direct examination.
When he peered into this dantian, that ribbon looked almost iridescent. Closer examination seemed to indicate that it was some kind of fusion of all of the qi types he used. Yet, it wasn’t like the liquid qi. It had its own flavor, its own feel, like it was something truly separate and meant to be separate. Without understanding what it was, or what it could do, he was leery about breaking through again. Mostly because he didn’t know if it would interfere with the process, enhance the process, or remain wholly untouched by the process. With something as dangerous and potentially life-ending as a breakthrough, to say nothing of the tribulation that would almost certainly follow, that kind of uncertainty bordered on the terrifying. Yet, there would soon come a point when he would simply have to hazard it or remain forever trapped as a peak foundation formation cultivator. With so many potential threats and enemies facing him, it wasn’t really a choice at all. He had to break through when the opportunity arose. Leaving power he could claim sitting on the table was just asking to die, and Sen planned to live. Sen was so caught up in his own thoughts that it wasn’t until the offensive formation exploded into life and turned some hapless cultivator into charcoal that Sen realized they were under attack.
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