Unintended Cultivator

Book 3: Chapter 44: Inferno’s Vale (3)

Once Sen started paying attention to the conversation again, he learned that the fire cultivators had been out on patrol when the real fight started. They’d been trying to make their way back to the main compound but had been whittled down by attrition. Most of this information came from the, it turned out, man whose face had been so bloody. He was visibly older than the other three, two younger-looking men and a girl who looked like she was maybe sixteen. They all deferred to the older man without question, probably because he was a late-stage foundation formation cultivator, while they were all still early stage. Sen let Lo Meifeng do most of the talking because he was angry, and it didn’t seem right to vent that anger on the fire cultivators. They all looked to have had a very difficult day. Plus, he wasn’t really angry at them. He was angry at himself and at Lo Meifeng.

Looking back, his first instinct had been the right one. This was not his fight. It never had been. There was clearly bad blood between the fire cultivators and water cultivators, and Sen didn’t know nearly enough about that situation to have chosen a side. For that matter, Lo Meifeng didn’t have enough information to choose either. She’d come racing in all hot to save a brother that she didn’t even know anymore. Hadn’t known for a hundred damned years. For all she or he knew, her brother had participated in some atrocity against those water cultivators. For all either of them knew, he had orchestrated an atrocity. Sen knew that the smart thing, the rational thing, would have been to wait until it was over, and then gone to see if they could find her brother. Of course, reason didn’t play any part in what had actually happened. Sen could even understand Lo Meifeng’s position a tiny bit. If he walked blind into a situation where he thought Grandmother Lu was in immediate danger, the kind of violence he would likely unleash really would be the stuff of folk tales and legends. And it would have been just as stupid, and possibly just as wrong, as what they’d done.

While he’d accepted death as a harsh but inescapable fact of a cultivator's life, he almost always had a reason for killing someone. He was not in the habit of just picking people at random and executing them because the sun got in his eyes that morning. That was the crux of his anger. He felt like he’d done exactly that to cultivators who had stood exactly no chance against him and Lo Meifeng. He frankly doubted the water cultivators would have stood a chance against either of them alone. He’d read an account written by a general that said there was no honor on the battlefield, and he thought he understood a little better now what that general had meant. He hadn’t fought those cultivators. He’d butchered them. And he’d ultimately done it because Lo Meifeng’s brother, a stranger to them both, was on the other side. Having made that choice, however foolish and poorly thought out, he was committed to a side in a fight that he likely never would have participated in otherwise.

Sen knew that he could just leave. When the full implications had finally settled on him, he had very nearly done exactly that. What had stopped him was the memory of Lo Meifeng’s gauntness after they’d escaped that cult. She hadn’t asked for that. She’d only been there because of him and tugs from his soul. It would have been easy to blame that on Master Feng, to say that he’d ordered her to be there, but she’d gone way above and beyond whatever her original orders had been. He knew that much. She had suffered because of him. She’d endured half a year of near-total isolation, and she didn’t come out of it with a new cultivation method, or deeper insights into her power, or a better functioning core. She just came out of it with whatever scars she had on the inside. So, he stayed. But he was still angry with her for forcing the issue in the first place. He feared he would be much, much angrier before the day was out. Aware of these realities, he kept his mouth shut for the most part.

Things played out about the way he expected them to play out. With two core cultivators at hand, the small group of surviving fire cultivators headed straight for their compound, where the battle was fiercest. Of course, getting there meant cutting their way through dozens and dozens of the water cultivators. Work that largely fell on Sen and Lo Meifeng. And every time he killed one of the water cultivators, another log went on the fire of his anger. By the time they got close enough to see the main body of the battle, there was a forest fire of rage built up inside of Sen. Lo Meifeng and the fire cultivators could all sense it on him. Lo Meifeng, at least, seemed to have some clue about the source of that rage and worked very hard to avoid meeting his gaze. The fire cultivators were mystified, but none of them wanted to set off the obviously furious, incredibly dangerous core cultivator who was throwing around half a dozen different types of qi.

Still, for Sen, there was nothing to do but go forward. He’d picked his side by picking Lo Meifeng as a friend. He’d do his part, and then she and he would have words about this entire thing. He owed her more than a little and had dragged her unwillingly into several bad situations. He couldn’t completely claim a moral high ground on that count, but there was a difference. He’d never done it on purpose. The demonic cultivators and the cult had been secondary consequences. There had been no intentions on his part to engage with things like that. He never would have knowingly enraged a cabal of demonic cultivators. He would never have knowingly led Lifen and Lo Meifeng into the hands of a creepy, half-insane cult leader. The sight of the main battle was enough to knock all of those thoughts out of his head, though.

Sen had thought he understood violence and carnage. He had been so wrong on both counts. The scale of violence in front of him was so much bigger than anything he’d ever seen. The carnage was simply unspeakable. He couldn’t decide what was worse, the mangled, charred, and obliterated corpses or the wailing screams of those who hadn’t joined them yet. There was blood everywhere and the smell of it was trying to crawl inside Sen and find a permanent home. There were body parts on the ground. Sen saw severed arms, parts of legs, and even body-less heads. He watched in a kind of dull horror as those body parts were stepped on or even kicked out of the way by combatants on both sides.

At some point, he stopped really analyzing what he was seeing. His mind just noted it when three core cultivators combined their strength and sent a massive fireball on a collision course with a tight grouping of water cultivators. Those cultivators, in turn, erected a half-dome of water that intercepted the fireball. There was an explosion of steam as the two massive techniques collided. The core cultivator and the people behind the half-dome all survived that collision of power, but that explosion of steam had killed dozens of people on both sides who were too close. Sen thought that they were probably the lucky ones. The people who had been too close, but not quite close enough to die were all thrashing on the ground, screaming in agony at the burns that covered most of their bodies. In a moment of realization, Sen understood the futility at work before him. There would be, could be, no victory here. There would only be the question of who suffered the most losses.

How many cultivation geniuses will die in that battle before they can ever reach their potential, Sen wondered. How much accumulated wisdom will be lost?

“What a waste of talent and knowledge,” said Sen, not even aware he was speaking out loud. “And for what?”

“For honor,” said one of the young fire cultivators with total certainty of the very stupid.

Sen turned such a look of angry disgust on the young man that the older fire cultivator physically stepped between him and the young man. The older cultivator held up his hands in a placating gesture.

“Please forgive him, senior. He’s too young and apparently too stupid to know any better.”

Sen looked over the older cultivator’s shoulder at the young man. The younger cultivator had gone a shade of green, having seemingly realized how close he’d come to death in that moment. Sen pointed out at the battlefield, at the dead, at the dying.

“I want you to point to the honor out in that slaughterhouse.”

The young cultivator’s eyes swept over the field. Sen couldn’t tell if it was the first time he’d really seen something like it, or if it was the first time that he’d really thought about it, but the kid didn’t point at anything. He just looked a little greener and refused to meet anyone’s eyes. Satisfied that the point had been made, Sen turned his attention back to the older cultivator.

“Peace. He may well die today, but it won’t be by my hands. Where do we need to get you?”

The older cultivator stepped up next to Sen and surveyed the field. He didn’t look directly at Sen when he spoke quietly enough not to be overheard.

“He is young in truth. Barely twenty.”

Sen glanced at the man. “He’s no younger than I am, and I can see that this won’t do anything but kill a bunch of people for nothing.”

That seemed to shock the older man. “Really? And already a core cultivator?”

“I didn’t plan it this way,” said Sen with a shrug.

“Then, the heavens smile on you.”

Sen grimaced. “Less than you might think. So, where in that nightmare do you need to go?”

The older man surveyed the battlefield again and pointed to a cluster of activity near the compound gate.

“There. We’ll report in and then…,” the man trailed off.

Sen understood. They’d report in and then, in all likelihood, get sent right out to die.

Sen dropped his voice. “You could stay out here. We won’t mention that we saw you.”

The older cultivator stared out at the battle for a full ten seconds before he shook his head. “I’m grateful that you’d do that, but we have to go report in. It’s our duty.”

Sen disagreed with that idea wholeheartedly, but it wasn’t his place to try to convince the man to abandon a duty. “Very well. We’ll get you there. Meifeng?”

The woman stepped up on his other side and kept her eyes fixed firmly forward. Sen thought that was probably wise. He pointed out the spot where they needed to go.

“I’ll lead us in,” said Sen.

“I can do that,” offered Lo Meifeng. “I…I understand that you hate everything about this.”

“I do. Doesn’t change the fact that putting me in front is the smart choice,” said Sen, forcing down all of his anger and misgivings. “Body cultivation makes me better at soaking up physical damage. Plus, I’ve got more tricks. We’ll talk about this later. For right now, let’s just get it done.”

“Alright,” said Lo Meifeng in a subdued voice.

“You lot,” said Sen, pointing at the fire cultivators. “I’m going to lead. Lo Meifeng is going to watch the back. We’re going to be moving fast. Don’t get distracted. Don’t fall behind.”

Sen waited until he got a nod from each of the fire cultivators. Then, he sheathed his jian and summoned the ascendant-level spear from his storage ring. He heard a gasp from one of the fire cultivators, but he ignored it. He put everything away that wasn’t directly related to getting from where he was to where he needed to get the fire cultivators. He started cycling for lightning, fire, wind, and shadow. Expecting that he’d need it the soonest, he fed some of the lightning qi into the spear. It soaked in the qi and the oddly sword-like spearhead crackled with the power. He heard another sharp intake of breath. He studied the battle between where they were and the compound gate. He stopped focusing on the individuals and tried to see how everyone was moving on a bigger scale. He waited until he felt he had a sense of the flow of things. Then, when he thought he knew where things would thin out in about a minute, he spoke.

“Get ready,” he said, letting his focus narrow down until only the battle in front of him existed. “Now!”