Unintended cultivator vo.., p.1
Unintended Cultivator : Volume Four, page 1
UNINTENDED CULTIVATOR
VOLUME 4
ERIC DONTIGNEY
CONTENTS
Summary
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1. Progress at Last
2. Messages
3. One Day
4. Clear Spring
5. Reception
6. Karma
7. Illusion
8. Sealed
9. Good for More than One Thing
10. Will and Water
11. You Peasant
12. Consequences
13. Karmic Considerations
14. Travel Preparations
15. Dubious Kindness
16. Problems and Plans
17. Where’s the Snake?
18. So, What Was the Plan?
19. Anger Management
20. Morning Matters
21. Repaying Favors
22. Herd Mother
23. You Will Stay
24. The Lesson
25. Heart Demon
26. Almost Free
27. Let’s Talk, Part 1
28. Let’s Talk, Part 2
29. Let’s Talk, Part 3
30. Practicing
31. Venting
32. Trust
33. The Capital, Part 1
34. The Capital, Part 2
35. The Capital, Part 3
36. The Prince
37. Royals
38. Speculation
39. Fatal Mistake
40. Blame
41. Politics
42. I’d Do It Gladly
43. Making a Deal
44. The Concerns of Cultivators
45. Legend
46. Heavenly Shadow
47. Investigative Endeavors
48. Genius
49. The Need of the Moment
50. Dirty Tricks
51. Relative Positions
52. Waiting for a Stupid Mistake
53. Hiding from the Man
54. Problems and Solutions
55. What Honor?
56. Keeping Promises
57. Nothing But Bad Choices
58. Necessary, Difficult Things
59. What Makes You Think I’m Playing
60. Actions and Consequences
61. Back to Business
62. The Trap
63. Conversing with the Dead
64. Ruminations
65. There’s Always a Next Step
66. Choi Zhi Peng
67. Courtyard Chat
68. Hello, Your Majesty
69. Mirror
70. Hey!
71. Knowing the Risks
72. Departure
Bloopers
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The Adventure Continues…
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SUMMARY
Time is a cultivator’s greatest ally, until it isn’t…
Emerging from the deep wilds, Sen is now aware of the dangers of his body cultivation method. A method he doesn’t know how to progress. With time running out until his body turns against him, Sen travels to one of the only places he might find the manual that could save him. A place he never wanted to go. The capital.
Of course, the heart of the kingdom holds dangers of its own. Sen is inexorably drawn into the convoluted web of power that controls the vast city. He must navigate court politics, ambitious sects, and the unwanted attention of a criminal cultivator organization.
As he races toward a lethal showdown with cultivator and mortal powers alike, dangerous secrets will be revealed, Sen’s resolve will be tested, and the name Judgment’s Gale will finally be earned.
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CHAPTER ONE
PROGRESS AT LAST
Sen had thought he’d be happy to leave the valley of the fire cultivators behind, and he was…mostly. The only real downside was that one of the fire cultivators, Shi Ping, had come with them. Sen had gotten a heaven-chasing realm spear for taking on the task of bringing Shi Ping along and thought it was worth it. He had swiftly come to realize that it most certainly had not been worth it. Sen had known the man was lazy because Shi Ping had admitted it to him, openly, unashamedly, without hesitation, the very first time they met. What Sen hadn’t realized was that all of that laziness came with a nearly unbearable amount of whining. That whining had crescendoed to hitherto unseen heights in the last day or two. It had reached the point that Sen was giving serious consideration to just killing the man.
“Isn’t it time for lunch?” complained Shi Ping. “We’ve been walking for hours.”
Sen stopped in his tracks, turned, and glared at the man. Shi Ping jerked to a stop and went several shades paler. He seemed to recognize that he had, finally, come up against the absolute farthest reaches of Sen’s patience and was now in legitimate, mortal peril.
Sen growled two words through hard clenched teeth. “Stop. Whining.”
“I’m sorry, I just—” started Shi Ping.
“No more justs, no more buts, no more excuses,” said Sen. “You will stop whining, or I will kill you.”
Shi Ping seemed to find his backbone, or maybe it was his anger, because he glared right back at Sen. “This isn’t fair. I didn’t ask to come on this trip. I shouldn’t have to suffer because you made a deal with the matriarch.”
Sen grew unnaturally calm and still at those words before he said in a very soft voice. “Suffering? You think this is suffering?”
Shi Ping’s eyes went wide as Sen drew his jian and advanced on him.
“No, I just—” Shi Ping started to say.
In a move the fire cultivator never even saw, Sen drove his jian through the man’s leg. Shi Ping howled in pain as Sen calmly pulled the sword free.
“Now, you’re suffering,” said Sen, wiping the blade clean on Shi Ping’s robe. “I suggest you bandage that quickly or something will come looking for an easy meal.”
“You bastard!”
Sen sheathed his sword and gave Shi Ping a flat look. “Don’t fall behind.”
“I can turn around and go back any time I want,” shouted Shi Ping.
“Go ahead.”
“What?” asked Shi Ping, looking a little shocked and nervous, even as he hastily bandaged the wound.
“I said, go ahead. Go back. What do you really think is waiting for you there? If I read these tea leaves correctly, you’re on your absolute last chance with the matriarch. I think you know it, too. If you go back, I bet that all you’ll get is a swift death or expulsion from the order. For someone like you, expulsion is just a slow execution because you will not survive alone in the world. So, you can either quit whining all of the time, or you can go back. I really don’t care which you pick.”
Sen stalked away from Shi Ping and didn’t even bother looking back to see what the man did. A little farther up the road, Lo Meifeng slowed down to walk next to him. She eyed him curiously but didn’t ask whatever question was obviously on her mind. Sen rolled his eyes and looked at her.
“What is it?”
“I’m just a little surprised at you. I mean, sure, I’d have stabbed him yesterday or possibly after the first hour. You’re usually a little more patient than this.”
“Patience is for people who deserve it.”
“And he doesn’t?”
Sen gave her a sharp look. “Are you saying that you think he deserves patience?”
Lo Meifeng laughed. “Not in the slightest, but I’m not really known for my kindly feelings toward others. I’m curious why you think he doesn’t.”
Sen reached up and pinched the bridge of his nose. It didn’t provide any physical relief. Sen didn’t really experience physical pain any longer unless he was injured in some grievous way, but the action did provide a bit of a psychological balm. He glanced up at the sky and debated whether or not to tell her. There was a time not very long in the past when he would have opened up to her about it without hesitation. Now, though, everything to do with her was passed through a filter of distrust. He found himself wondering how she’d use whatever information he gave her to manipulate him again. He hated thinking and feeling that way, yet he couldn’t shake it either. He also knew there was some value in forgiveness, but she’d cut that path off when she told him she didn’t regret it. Part of him just wanted to forget the whole thing, while part of him wished he’d left her behind. In the end, though, he had to talk to someone.
“Ever since I formed my core, my anger has been harder to control. Well, no, that’s not exactly right. It’s like it’s been amplified, which has made it harder to control. Shi Ping just pushed on that anger until I couldn’t keep a leash on it anymore.”
Lo Meifeng frowned at that and fell silent for a while. Much to Sen’s disappointment, she didn’t have much to offer by way of encouragement.
“That’s a new one on me. I have a theory or two, but nothing solid. It could be something to do with the nascent soul that should be developing in your core. It’s connected to you, to your experiences, and you’ve had a rough year. It may have soaked in some of the anger you’ve experienced and, now, it’s reflecting that anger back to you .”
“Let’s say that’s true, how do I get a grip on it? I can’t just go around stabbing everyone who gets on my nerves.”
“Well, that’s not true. You absolutely can go around stabbing everyone who annoys you.”
“Ha. Oh, ha. You are so funny,” said Sen in his driest deadpan.
“Like I said, this is a new one for me. That nascent soul theory is the best I’ve got for the why, but it might not even be true. If it is true, I honestly have no idea how you’d deal with it. I suppose you could look for happier, less stressful things to do. Look for moments of enlightenment about the nature of calm.”
“Balance,” said Sen. “If I’ve been giving that nascent soul nothing but anger and stress, I need to give it something to balance those influences.”
Lo Meifeng shrugged. “It can’t hurt.”
“Thanks,” said Sen, and almost managed to not sound grudging about it.
Lo Meifeng almost managed to look like it didn’t bother her. “Sure. I hope it helps.”
After a while, Shi Ping came limping up behind them. Sen looked back at the man and raised an eyebrow.
“Any comments to share about the conditions?”
Shi Ping just shook his head and said, “No.”
Progress at last, thought Sen. Now, let’s see how long Shi Ping can keep it up. I give him until dinner. Yet, the man surprised Sen. Dinner came and went without more complaints or incessant whining. When the man refrained from moaning about everything the next morning, Sen found a little pity inside himself and made the man a healing elixir. Sen thought about making it weak enough that it wouldn’t heal the leg injury all the way, but Shi Ping’s limping really had slowed them down the day before. Sen hoped that the long afternoon and evening of pain would stick with the man for a while. He knew there were no guarantees, but Sen reasoned that he could always stab the other leg if the man got excessively obnoxious again.
In the meantime, Sen tried to reflect on things like the nature of calm and the feeling of peace. He didn’t experience any moments of enlightenment, but he hadn’t really expected to be blessed that way. He did draw some conclusions, though. Anger and violence were, in his experience, abrupt things. They usually came and went in a flash. His own experiences with them were unusual. Being hunted by demonic cultivators for all those months had kept his anger on a constant low simmer, and forced him to be ready for violence at the drop of a hat. Those kinds of things could take root in the heart if a person wasn’t careful, and Sen feared he hadn’t been careful enough.
On the flip side, he thought that things like calm and peace were more of a process. They were things a person had to strive for and actively cultivate, just like they cultivated qi. Starve a dantian of qi, and a person would have very few options available the next time they needed to perform a technique. He’d been starving himself of calm and peace, if not by intention, so did that make him more prone to anger and violence? Sen thought that it almost certainly did. He just wasn’t sure how to break those habits yet. Sen looked around and realized something. He caught up with Lo Meifeng.
“Have you seen Falling Leaf recently?” he asked.
“Not since this morning. She said she was going to scout ahead, didn’t she?”
“She did,” admitted Sen, “but that was almost six hours ago. It seems like she’d have come back by now.”
“You know her better than I do. Is this unusual for her?”
Sen had very intentionally withheld Falling Leaf’s true nature as a transformed spirit beast from Lo Meifeng. That meant that he couldn’t explain to Lo Meifeng that he really didn’t know what was normal for human Falling Leaf. She could be in trouble, or she could just be reveling in being free to come and go as she pleased. Still, if she had carried over most of her personality in the change, then a long absence like the one he’d noticed wouldn’t be out of character for her. He thought that he was probably just carrying some leftover paranoia from the days of being hunted.
“I guess not,” he said. “I should probably talk with her about making regular check-ins, though.”
It was maybe all of ten minutes later when Sen spotted Falling Leaf not just running but sprinting toward them down the road. Her face was locked into an expression of grim determination. Sen sighed.
“Oh, what now?” he said.
Then, he saw the bear-cat spirit beast that was chasing her, and whatever tiny bit of progress he’d made with his anger disappeared. Lo Meifeng also noticed the approaching girl and spirit beast.
“What is it with us and these bear-cat things?” she asked.
“What is that thing?” shouted Shi Ping, drawing his jian almost reflexively.
“It’s a spirit beast,” said Sen, “and I’m about done with this particular species of them.”
“It doesn’t seem like they’re done with you,” muttered Lo Meifeng.
“Yeah, I noticed that. Maybe it’s time that I send a stronger message,” said Sen.
CHAPTER TWO
MESSAGES
Falling Leaf was closing on them fast, which meant that Sen had a finite amount of time to decide what he wanted to do. Of course, that limited time wasn’t quite as limiting as they had once been. Much as advancements in the formation foundation stage had refined his brain and improved the speed and clarity of his thinking, the transition into the core formation stage had done the same and benefited from a similar advancement in his body cultivation. That meant that decisions that would have once seemed absolutely rushed and been made on instinct more than reason were now things that he could approach with almost clinical detachment. He let his spiritual sense wash over the spirit beast and estimated that it was probably the approximate equal of an early or middle-core formation cultivator. That put it at least one solid step above him on the power scale.
Of course, raw power wasn’t everything, and the beast was coming at them in a very convenient straight line. Maybe it thought that brute strength would get the job done. Maybe it just wasn’t that smart. Either way, Sen meant to take advantage of that fact. He cycled for a variation of earth qi, metal qi, and what had become his go-to for most combat situations, lightning. Then, he drove that qi down, deep inside the world, searching for what he wanted and what he needed. He started walking toward Falling Leaf and the bear-cat spirit beast. It was the calm, measured walk of a man about to deal with an unpleasant task, but not shirking from it. As fleeing Falling Leaf saw him, she got a mildly concerned look, but he just bobbed his head to the left a little, indicating which way she should go. Once the bear-cat spotted him, it lost all interest in Falling Leaf and adjusted its course toward Sen. It was big enough that Sen guessed it probably weighed close to seven hundred pounds. Not that it would matter much with what he was planning.
Sen closed his fist and started hauling the combination technique up from the earth. It felt like it took the technique a long time to build up momentum, although he understood that it was really only a second or so. It just seemed like a long time because there was a bloodthirsty spirit animal bearing down on him with a jaw full of rending, tearing death at its disposal. Yes, thought Sen, it really does think that brute force will get the job done. Oh well. When the beast got within ten feet of him, it did what so many beasts seemed to do when they closed in on a kill. It leapt at him.
“Mistake,” said Sen, and let his fist launch up into the air like he was trying to deliver an uppercut to the sky.
A vaguely fist-shaped mass of stone and metal that had lightning coursing through it shot up from the ground. It took the bear-cat in its unprotected belly. The spirit beast that had been flying through the air with claws extended folded over that stone and metal fist like a limp doll. Sen heard as much as saw the lightning seek a home in the flesh and blood of the spirit beast. Then, the giant fist stopped moving. Of course, momentum had the spirit beast by then. It was thrown a good fifteen feet in the air. Sen took that opportunity to take a handful of steps forward to position himself for his next attack. There wasn’t going to be anything fancy with the second attack. As the smoking form of the bear-cat fell out of the air and came level with Sen, he simply hit it with every ounce of strength he could wring out of his body cultivation-enhanced muscles and bones. He even used a bit of core qi to enhance and reinforce his entire system. There was a noise like dry twigs being stepped on by something heavy, and then the bear-cat’s direction was altered again as the full force of Sen’s blow was transferred into its body. It flew back in the direction it had come from for nearly five feet before it dropped to the ground and commenced a tumbling roll that Sen thought would be really painful for anything with bones.
