Unintended Cultivator

Ma Caihong stared at Sen with a slightly stunned expression. It was like she either didn’t know what to say or couldn’t believe that he had spoken those words aloud. The stare persisted until Sen started to fidget.

“I don’t mean to be troublesome,” he said. “I just don’t know how. If you show me, I’ll do my best.”

“You. Wait,” said Ma Caihong. “What?”

“He can’t,” said Master Feng, appearing at the gate.

Sen turned to look and gaped at his master. In all the time Sen had known him, Master Feng had been a generally calm, collected man. The things that bothered him swiftly disappeared like a stone sinking into a pond. As Master Feng stalked into the courtyard, though, he looked almost mad. His clothes were torn, scorched, and soaked through in places. His hair looked like it had been through a terrible windstorm, hanging down around his face and shoulders. There was a wild, fey light burning in his eyes. Sen’s eyes traveled down to Master Feng's clenched fists. They were coated in still-fresh blood, the thick liquid slowly dripping off of them onto the stone beneath his feet. Feng walked toward Ma Caihong, his steps deliberate, his gaze unwavering. She didn’t back away, but Sen saw the uncertainty, the wariness on her face. Feng stopped mere inches from the woman.

“He can’t show it to you,” growled Feng. “He doesn’t have it yet.”

“H-, how can that be?”

“He’s had all his training here. With us. Where it’s safe. Before that, he was smart. He stayed out of situations where he’d need it.”

Ma Caihong’s eyes shifted from Feng to Sen and back again. “Then he has none at all?”

“None. We can’t send him into the world like that. And we don’t have decades to teach it to him slowly. As for your concerns about the mountain,” said Feng, lifting one of his hands, “I’ve dealt with it. There’s nothing left alive on this mountain that can just kill him out of hand, except you, me, and Jaw-Long.”

Ma Caihong’s eyes went wide. “You can’t mean that you-.”

Bloody spirit beast cores spilled into the courtyard from Master Feng’s storage ring. Sen’s eyes went wide as dozens of the cores appeared. Their impacts sounded like a stone rain.

“I pacified the mountain.”

“Ming, I never meant-,” started Ma Caihong.

Master Feng turned away from the woman like she didn’t exist. He walked over to Sen, that frightening light in his eyes never dimming.

“Have you shown her your qi techniques?”

“No, master.”

“Do that. Don’t forget to show her how you hide.”

“Yes, master,” said Sen, offering the man a deep bow.

“Good,” said Feng, his gaze boring through Sen to a place deep inside the core of the world. “That’s good.”

Then, the old cultivator walked away toward the bathhouse without looking back. Sen glanced back at Ma Caihong. She was staring after Feng, her expression sick again and terribly, terribly guilty. She looked down at all of the cores on the ground and shook her head. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and looked at Sen. She gestured to the cores.

“You should gather these up. They’re worth a fortune out there in the kingdom.”

Sen walked over to the cores and stared down at them. “Where should I put them?”

Ma Caihong put a hand to her face. “Right. No storage ring. Wait here.”

Sen waited patiently for a few minutes, then went and fetched a bucket of water from a nearby spring. He rinsed the cores off in the water, setting the clean ones to a side. He was stunned by the variety. Some were no bigger than a plum and nearly the same color. There were others the size of small melons with striations of color running through them. He even came across one that was pure black. He crouched there with that one in his hand for a long time. He could almost hear it speaking. It felt like, if he could just concentrate a little harder, he’d be able to make sense of it. The spell was broken when Ma Caihong and Uncle Kho came out of the house speaking quietly to one another. They split apart with Uncle Kho walking toward the bathhouse and Ma Caihong walking to Sen. When she saw what he held in his hand, she lifted an eyebrow.

“May I see that?” She asked.

“Of course.”

Sen handed it up to her. The woman peered at the core for a long moment. Then, she studied him, and he felt something other and slightly alien seep into him for a moment. He jerked away from the intrusion, but it vanished before he moved more than an inch. She nodded to herself.

“I’ll hang on to this one,” she said. “I can make something useful for you with it. As for the rest of those, put them in this.”

She held out a plain ring made of a dark gray stone. Sen hesitantly took it and held it in his hand for a moment. He knew it had to be a storage ring. Sen felt conflicted about taking it, though. On the one hand, here was an object that he had wanted so badly. On the other hand, he realized that he was angry with this woman. The things she had said to his master had driven the man into what had to be a mass slaughter out on the mountain. Master Feng had not looked well after doing that, either. He wanted to demand answers from her. Why had she said those things? Why had she brought up that name, Cai Yumei? Sen reminded himself that this was her home, not his. It wasn’t his place to demand answers from her. Gritting his teeth, he slipped the ring onto a finger. It took a few minutes and some coaching from Ma Caihong, but he finally managed to get the ring to work. One by one, the cores disappeared into the ring. He could save them for his master, he decided.

As angry as he was, Sen knew better than to not ask important questions. “How much can I fit in here?”

“Oh, it’s not too big. There’s enough room in there for basic camping gear, a couple of swords, and a couple of weeks’ worth of food, if you’re rationing a bit. You should also be able to fit some extra clothes in there.”

Sen blinked. She’d just described more things than all of Sen’s possessions. He gave her a bow.

“I thank you for the kind gift, Ma Caihong.”

She waved it off. “Ming would have gotten around to giving you one eventually, but you needed one now. So, there you go.”

Sen watched as her eyes drifted over toward the bathhouse. He contemplated saying something to get her attention, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to do anything helpful for her. His master was clearly in pain right now, even if Sen didn’t understand it. It was her fault. If she was suffering because of that, Sen felt that some little bit of justice was being served. Still, she managed to refocus her attention on him.

“So, Ming said something about your qi techniques. I suppose that is the last thing on the list.”