Book 5: Chapter 25: Welcome Back
The last few days on the way back to Fu Ruolan’s home weren’t precisely peaceful, but it felt that way compared to fighting a beast tide that included a dragon. Even without his core or dantian topped off, Sen found that most of the challenges they faced were… He hesitated to frame it exactly as trivial, but he couldn’t think of a better term for it. The beasts who attacked them seemed trivial by comparison. Falling Leaf had the right of things about it taking time to gather a substantial number of beasts for an attack. That didn’t solve the mystery of why such a beast tide had occurred in the first place, which bothered Sen more than he liked to admit. When the pair of them finally emerged from the wilds into the semi-tame area that was Fu Ruolan’s domain, Sen exhaled in relief.
He didn’t necessarily feel safe under the nascent soul cultivator’s watchful gaze, but he did feel safe from random spirit beast attacks. They all steered clear of her, lending more credence to Falling Leaf’s claim that they would trouble him less often the higher he scaled the mountain of cultivation. Not that her claim really needed any confirmation. The spirit beasts had all given Uncle Kho’s home a very wide berth as well. It hit Sen that the same thing must have been true of her before the ghost panther effectively adopted him. He’d never really considered that she had been knowingly taking a risk even getting near the place, especially before she knew that Uncle Kho had a soft streak a mile wide. He didn’t realize that he’d been staring at Falling Leaf until she stopped in place and stared back.
“What?” she asked.
“Sorry,” said Sen. “I just never thought about how dangerous it might have been for you to come to Uncle Kho’s house. Why did you do that?”
Falling Leaf squinted a little like she didn’t entirely understand what he was getting at. “The Feng was polite to me. You were nice to me. It stood to reason that the people you went to see would be similar.”
“Really? You just took it on faith that they’d also be nice to you?”
“Plus, I’m difficult to catch if I put my mind to it,” she offered with a smile, but then the smile faded. “I was difficult to catch. I’m not as stealthy as I used to be. You humans never see me if I don’t want to be seen, but other spirit beasts can always seem to pick me out.”
Sen resisted the urge to apologize again. Falling Leaf wouldn’t like it. She’d told him more than once that she’d made her choice and didn’t regret it. She was just struck from time to time by what the choice had cost her. It had been a while since it last came up, and Sen had thought she’d come to terms with it. Still, on the scale of her lifespan, it hadn’t been that long at all. He shouldn’t be surprised that she was still grappling with such a life-altering transition, even if she didn’t bring it up. He looked for a way to lighten the mood.
“Well, you got fingers. That seems like a fair trade.”
Falling Leaf held up a hand and peered hard at her fingers. “They are terribly useful. I don’t have to carry everything in my mouth. They aren’t beautiful like my paws were, though.”
Sen saw an opportunity to cheer her up. “That’s true. You had very lovely paws.”
Falling Leaf beamed at him. “It’s good that you understand these things.”
Sen smiled and started walking again. He mused on the fact that it had been exactly three months to get out to Mt. Solace and back. It made him wonder if Fu Ruolan had some kind of divination technique. Had she known that it would take them exactly that long, or had she simply made an educated guess about how long it would take them? He didn’t expect that she would tell him either way. Sharing didn’t seem like Fu Ruolan’s style. His experience with her storage space told him that much. He was dead certain that there were things in that storage space that could propel him forward in countless ways with his understanding of cultivation, new techniques, and probably a hundred other things he couldn’t imagine. It was also equally clear that she had no intention whatsoever of letting him roam around in that space and look at things. Just thinking about all of the medicinal plants she had stored in there was enough to make him think unsafe and greedy thoughts.
That’s the problem right there, thought Sen. Even if you didn’t take anything without permission, you’d want to. He expected that truth had been written all over his face when he’d taken his little stroll with her into that storage space. For someone like him, though, that had been a monumentally unfair test. All of that knowledge and all of those resources would have tempted anyone, not just him. In his case, though, he knew that he could put alchemy resources to good use, immediately, no study time required. That was a very different kind of temptation from the books, which offered the possibility of growth, but that he couldn’t simply use right now. Not that he would have turned that down either. No, he’d just have to content himself with what she decided to offer. He wasn’t above stealing from his enemies, but Fu Ruolan wasn’t his enemy. While he wouldn’t put her in the friend category either, he thought she nominally fit into the ally group. If Sen wanted to keep her in that group, and he did, then stealing from her or even trying to steal from her was out of the question. Hard as it might be to ignore the existence of all those scrolls and alchemy resources, he’d make himself do it.
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Fu Ruolan wasn’t waiting for them when they came into sight of her strange little house. That was a relief to Sen’s mind. He wasn’t quite ready to deal with the questionably sane woman. Instead, he and Falling Leaf made their way over to the more extravagant version of a galehouse that Sen had made for them. It wasn’t exactly nicer than the ones he might make out in the wilds. Shaped stone was shaped stone regardless of location. It was more spacious and came with a few extra bells and whistles. Sen had made a proper stove for the kitchen using nothing but metal qi and his imagination. He had not told Falling Leaf that it took him six tries to get it right. There was a room for him to do alchemy, as well as a dedicated bathhouse complete with drains.
He had been thinking about how to get water to run into the house for the kitchen and bathhouse, but that was more a matter of convenience for Falling Leaf than anything else. He could fill and heat the bath with his qi. Summoning water in the kitchen called for nothing more than a careful application of qi or simply dipping into his storage rings. So, running water persistently got put off. The furniture in the place remained the stone constructions he had initially made with a few later modifications for basic comfort. If they were going to spend years in the place, though, he thought he should probably invest in more comfortable furniture the next time he ventured out to civilization. Even cultivator bodies could get stiff and sore sleeping on stone blocks for long enough.
It was the bathhouse that Sen was most interested in. He’d been thinking for days about soaking in the tub and letting it wash off the residual dirt and stress from the journey. He very nearly claimed it first, but in an act of what he saw as supreme self-sacrifice, he let Falling Leaf go first. He was happy that Fu Ruolan waited until after he got his turn to soak before she showed up. She even did them the courtesy of knocking. Sen opened the door and invited the elder cultivator inside. She looked around, curiosity glinting in her eyes, but seemed a little disappointed by the space. Neither Sen nor Falling Leaf had much interest in decorations. Everything in the place had a useful function of one kind or another. After satisfying her curiosity, Fu Ruolan turned to them.
“Welcome back,” she said.
“Thank you,” said Sen.
Falling Leaf nodded, but chose not to speak.
“I take it you succeeded,” said Fu Ruolan.
Sen accessed his storage ring and summoned three of the dusk mushrooms he’d collected. He held them out to Fu Ruolan. She looked at them, and Sen felt her spiritual sense touch them for a moment.
“Good. You can put them away.”
Sen frowned at the woman. Why had she sent him all the way to Mt. Solace for mushrooms that she didn’t intend to take? Still, he did as he was told. She smirked at him in a way that suggested she knew exactly what he was thinking. He tried to hide his annoyance and mostly succeeded. Fu Ruolan flourished her hand and a piece of paper appeared in it. She held it out to him.
“I would like you to make that,” she said.
Sen took the paper and read it over. His frown deepened. It was an alchemical recipe for a pill. A recipe that used the dusk mushrooms.
“I don’t make pills,” he finally said.
“Aren’t you an alchemist?” she asked sweetly.
“I am,” said Sen, feeling like he was stepping into a trap.
“Alchemists make pills,” said Fu Ruolan.
“This alchemist doesn’t,” said Sen.
“Then, you aren’t an alchemist. Not really. More to the point, you agreed to do as I said. I want that pill.”
“I don’t know how to make pills. I never learned.”
“Caihong was too soft on you,” said Fu Ruolan flourishing her hand again and producing a small manual. “I suggest you learn. You have two months.”
She tossed him the manual and left the galehouse. Sen looked down at the manual. The cover was blank, so he opened it up and leafed through a few pages. It was an alchemy primer. At least, he thought it was at first. Looking more closely at it, he realized that only the first part was a primer. The rest of the manual got into increasingly complex applications of alchemy, a fair bit of it that Sen only understood in the vaguest of terms. The time pressures that had finally lifted from his heart when they got back descended on him again twofold. He honestly didn’t know if he could learn what he needed to learn in two months. Pill refining wasn’t something that people just picked up as a hobby. It was practically its own discipline inside of alchemy.
“You look ill,” said Falling Leaf.
Sen tried to smile at Falling Leaf, but he worried it came out as more of a grimace. “I’m pretty sure she just set me up to fail.”
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