Book 3: Chapter 57: Trading Tales (1)
“We all have stories to tell,” said Master Feng, “But I think we all want to hear yours first, Sen.”
At those words, Sen looked down mournfully at the heaping plate of food in front of him. He supposed it was a small enough sacrifice to tell his story first. He did pop a dumpling in his mouth before he answered, though. If he was going to tell that story, he was going to get at least one bite of hot food first. He assumed that everyone there knew about what had happened all the way back in Orchard’s Reach, but he started there anyway. Thinking back, the problems he’d faced there, problems that had looked so serious at the time, all seemed so…trivial. Then again, he wouldn’t have faced those problems if he’d arrived as he was now.
He glossed over the caravan trip, but he did take the time to detail what had happened in Tide’s Reach. He still had a lot of mixed feelings about those events, which wasn’t helped by the varying reactions of his teachers. Master Feng just nodded along like it was all to be expected. Auntie Caihong looked disapproving. Uncle Kho seemed reflective like he couldn’t decide what to think either. What had gotten a unified response was his description of Heaven’s Rebuke. All three of the nascent soul cultivators had just stared at him for a few seconds. It was Uncle Kho who finally broke that profoundly uncomfortable silence.
“Wait, you fused your killing intent with lightning qi? And it worked?”
It was Sen’s turn to stare for a moment before he spoke. “Well, I didn’t know it was going to work the first time I tried it. But I couldn’t see a good reason why it wouldn’t. Does that not normally work?”
“It just isn’t done,” said Master Feng.
“Why?” asked Sen, to which no one had an answer.
“I need to see this, Sen,” announced Uncle Kho, standing up from the table.
“Right now?” asked Sen, glancing down at his still mostly full plate.
“Right now,” agreed Uncle Kho.
So, Sen reluctantly went back outside with everyone in tow. He was a little bit nervous about showing off the technique since he still didn’t really trust it, but these were his teachers. They deserved to see it. He picked out a big chunk of half-exposed rock as his target and drew his jian. He ignored the intense stares of his teachers, then pressed lightning qi and killing intent into the blade. Sen felt a surge of relief when it was just the normal technique, but he still heard Auntie Caihong take a sharp breath when the pitch-black lightning formed around the blade. Then, he shot the technique into the exposed rock. A last-second realization made him raise a shield of hardened air between them and the rock. That turned out to be wise indeed because razor-sharp fragments of stone went in every direction as the rock simply detonated. When the dust settled, he dropped the air shield. There was total silence for nearly half a minute before Master Feng walked over to where the rock used to be and looked down into the crater Sen had left. A moment later Auntie Caihong and Uncle Kho joined him. All three turned to look at him.
“Does it do that to everything you hit with it?” asked Master Feng.
“No,” said Sen, and proceeded to explain what happened when he used it on a person.
Auntie Caihong shuddered. “I’m honestly not sure if that’s better or worse.”
“It’s better,” said Uncle Kho with certainty. “Sen, how do you decide how much killing intent and how much qi to use?”
Sen frowned. “It’s not an exact ratio. It just sort of clicks together when you get the balance right, and you really need to get the balance right. I didn’t always get it right and, well, it’s really destructive.”
“More destructive than this?” asked Auntie Caihong, gesturing at the crater.
Her eyes went wide at Sen’s very energetic nod.
“I’ll have to try this,” said Uncle Kho, idly stroking his beard. “Maybe somewhere less populated. Have you tried merging your killing intent with anything else?”
“Not to speak of. At first, I figured Heavens’ Rebuke was enough, but then things got strange later,” said Sen, holding up a hand to forestall questions. “I’ll explain it when we get there.”
As they were walking back inside, Falling Leaf stepped up beside him. “You have become a hunter in truth.”
“I suppose. Not by choice.”
“There was never a choice. You only thought there was.”
Sen sighed a little but nodded. “Yeah, I know.”
He did take a minute to eat some of his, sadly, cold food before he carried on with the story. He downplayed the flight from Tide’s Reach and his stay at the Luo farm. He tried to skip past most of what had initially happened with the Soaring Skies sect members he’d met on the road but quickly realized that things that happened later wouldn’t make sense if he skipped over too much. So, he just laid it out in the shortest, most direct way he could. The nascent soul cultivators seemed to take it all in stride, but Falling Leaf was giving him the oddest look. He couldn’t parse what it meant and found himself wishing she were still a panther. At least then, he’d have a basic read on her expressions. Yet, of everyone, it was Lo Meifeng who spoke up.
“No wonder they were all so cagey about what happened.”
Master Feng gave her a sharp look. “What do you mean?”
She shook her head. “Sorry, that’s out of order. I hadn’t caught up with them yet.”
Master Feng looked annoyed but just nodded. He became intensely interested in Sen’s story of the abandoned town and the spirit beasts. He asked a lot of questions, most of which Sen couldn’t answer. Sen’s attention was on Falling Leaf, who had gone completely, unnaturally still at the mention of Boulder’s Shadow. When Master Feng finally ran out of questions, Sen turned to her.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“You saw Boulder’s Shadow? Truly saw him with your own eyes?” demanded Falling Leaf.
“Yes. Why? Do you know him?”
Falling Leaf nodded but didn’t explain. Sen decided that he’d come back to that, later, in private. It took a while to explain his narrow escape, the use of a poorly controlled Heavens’ Rebuke, everything that followed with the Soaring Skies members, and the sheer destruction he’d caused with the technique. There was a long pause after that, while everyone processed what he’d said. Of all the things he’d done, the bit with Changpu was the part he worried most would cause some sort of disapproval. Instead, Master Feng just lifted an eyebrow at him.
“So, you lopped it off? Just like that?”
“It seemed…necessary, at the time,” said Sen, a little defensively.
“Oh, of course, you had to do something to him. You can’t let such a blatant challenge go unpunished,” said Master Feng. “I’d have probably just killed him.”
Auntie Caihong rolled her eyes. “You could get away with that. What sect would dare come after you?”
“Fair,” said Master Feng.
Lo Meifeng spoke up again, “I came in after all of that.”
Understanding sparked in Master Feng’s eyes. “Yes, that does make more sense now. I’d have been cagey if I were them, too.”
Sen took the opportunity to shove a bit more food in his mouth before he continued. He’d been talking for a while and was getting tired of it, so his storytelling became less detailed and more fact-centered. He discussed his time in Emperor’s Bay, the fight outside The Silver Crane, and the discovery of the demonic cultivator’s notebook. There were occasional questions, but mostly they just listened to him talk. He made Lo Meifeng explain her ridiculously complicated plan to escape Emperor’s Bay without immediate pursuit since he hadn’t understood it all that well in the first place. He liked his plans straightforward, while she seemed to relish in having plans with lots of moving parts. He hadn’t planned to spend much time talking about their time on the ship, but his trick with keeping the ship intact underwater prompted another long series of questions. Fortunately, he could pass the storytelling back to Lo Meifeng at that point, as she was the one who fought the cultivator. Of all things, it was his brief stint on the beach with the divine turtle that prompted the most exaggerated response.
“You met Elder Bo,” said Uncle Kho. “How is that meddlesome old bastard? I haven’t seen him in a thousand years.”
“He seemed…healthy,” offered Sen, not sure what else to say.
“Meddlesome old bastard is right,” muttered Master Feng. “The Five-Fold Body Transformation. What was he thinking?”
Sen perked up at that. “Do you know how it works?”
Master Feng grimaced a little. “Only in general terms. It’s rare. Very rare.”
“That’s because it’s stupidly dangerous,” seethed Auntie Caihong. “Most people who try it, die. If I find that turtle, I’m going to make him into soup.”
Sen deflated a little. He’d been hoping that one of his teachers would know the details about the body cultivation path or, even better, have a copy of the manual tucked away in a storage ring somewhere. Still, he supposed it had been a long shot. As experienced as the nascent soul cultivators were, they couldn’t know everything. He had considered simply going back and speaking with Elder Bo about the body cultivation approach, but his intuition told him that would be a mistake. The divine turtle had only approached him after he saw Sen do something interesting. That suggested that the turtle valued action. Sen suspected that he would only get information from the old turtle after he’d exhausted more conventional means of getting the information. It was frustrating to have been put on a path he didn’t know anything about, one that killed most of the people who tried to walk it, but he was on that path now, like it or not. Even if he wanted to get off of that path, he still needed to understand it first. He was so lost in his own thoughts that it took him a minute to realize that everyone was staring at him expectantly.
“Oh, right. Sorry,” he said.
Sen skipped ahead to the fight in the forest with the demonic cultivators and the strange behavior of Heavens’ Rebuke. That got sharp looks.
“Wait, you mean that that strange ribbon of qi, and you better believe we’re coming back to that, acted on its own?” asked Uncle Kho.
“That’s about the size of it,” said Sen.
“And the new version ate that demonic cultivator?”
“That’s the best way I can think of to describe it,” said Sen.
Master Feng shot Lo Meifeng a look, but she just shrugged.
“That’s how it looked to me,” she said.
“I’ve never even heard of something like that before,” said Auntie Caihong, the worry clear on her face. “Innovation is one thing, but qi acting on its own to insert itself into a technique? That’s frightening. It’s a wonder the whole thing didn’t explode in your face, Sen.”
“Agreed,” said Master Feng.
“I know. That’s why I’ve been leery to use Heavens’ Rebuke. It’s also part of the reason why I haven’t gone experimenting with fusing my killing intent with other kinds of qi.”
“It’s a quandary,” said Uncle Kho. “The only real way to understand what’s happening is to experiment, but experimenting could get you killed. We’ll all need to give this some thought.”
Sen waited to see if any wisdom would be forthcoming, but none was. The sun had long since gone down, and he was very tired of talking, but he pushed through. He talked about the second fight, the unintentional moment of enlightenment, and forming the ribbon of heavenly qi. That got a few startled looks, but no one interrupted. Maybe they sensed he was losing whatever tiny shreds of enthusiasm he had for the process. The tale of their time trapped at the cult drew such a look of wrath from Auntie Caihong that Sen drew back a little.
All she said was, “I see there’s someone else I need to visit.”
Sen chose not to dwell too deeply on what that meant for the cult leader. He’d been dreading the next part of the story ever since he started, mostly because he wasn’t sure how best to handle it. He saw Lo Meifeng shoot him a furtive look, as though she were trying to gauge his mood. In the end, he decided to skip over how they got involved with the battle in the valley entirely. He let everyone think that they stumbled into it after they showed up. When he finished that story, Master Feng burst into laughter. It wasn’t what he’d expected. The old cultivator just kept laughing and laughing.
“What?” Sen finally demanded.
“You show up, slap down the Clear Spring sect’s sword genius, and set the sky on fire. Then, you straight up, boot-to-throat, tell them to stop or else you’ll kill everyone?”
“Well, I don’t think I’d describe it exactly that way.”
“Then, as if that wasn’t enough, you browbeat them into making vows to the heavens and put a permanent end to two thousand years of conflict. If I didn’t know for certain that you had no intention of doing any of that when you got up that morning, I’d think you were some kind of mad genius.”
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