Unintended Cultivator

Sen was still staring at the goat and trying to figure out what he should do next when Falling Leaf bounded into the clearing. She skidded to a stop when she saw him and then hurried over. She looked him up and down with the most intense look in her eyes that he’d ever seen. Once she seemed satisfied, the big cat went over and circled the goat’s body. He watched as she sniffed it a few times, then went over to the goat’s severed head. She looked over at Sen, then pawed a couple of times at the goat’s horn. He frowned and walked over to her.

“Do you want that?” He asked.

She pawed at it again, then bumped her head against Sen.

“You want me to take it.”

She bumped her head against him again and then sat down. Sen sighed, looked down at his bloody jian, and got started. It was easier than he thought it would be, but it was grisly work. When the ghost panther went over and pawed at the body, Sen didn’t even ask. He knew what she wanted him to do. He cut the goat open and did his best not to gag as the still-warm organs spilled out. Even with that out of the way, he still had to root around inside the thing until he found the beast’s core. It was about the size of an apple and had a faintly metallic, silver sheen to it.

“You should eat if you’re hungry,” Sen told the big cat, as he pulled out a water skin.

While Falling Leaf made a meal of the goat’s remains, Sen rinsed the core, the horn, and his hands. He slipped the core and horn into his storage ring and then cleaned the sword’s blade. He examined the edges closely, looking for any kind of damage. He was surprised that he didn’t find any. He supposed that the goat must have been closer to him in cultivation than he’d thought. Otherwise, even with Sen’s qi reinforcement, the blade should have shown some kind of damage. He waited for Falling Leaf to finish her impromptu meal. He debated about whether he should do something with the goat’s remains, bury it maybe, but ultimately decided to leave it. Something or a lot of small somethings would eventually come along and dispose of it.

He turned away from the unpleasant sight and continued on his way. He would have preferred to stop sooner and set up camp, but he wanted a healthy distance between him and the goat remains. There was no good reason to put himself in the line of anything that went looking for an easy meal. He’d walked for maybe an hour when something inside him stirred with apprehension. He dove forward into a roll. It almost worked. The claw of a giant hawk raked across his calf and he shouted in pain. He could already feel blood pouring out of the wound. He forced himself back up, keeping as much weight off his wounded leg as he could. His eyes scanned overhead, now that he knew where the danger was coming from. Yet, the foliage and the dimming evening light obscured everything above the canopy.

He searched his mind for a solution. He didn’t know how birds hunted, but he supposed that anything that swooped down from the sky must mostly depend on sight. He needed to take away that advantage. He almost used a shadow qi technique, but he didn’t want to overdo things. He cycled his qi a different way and spread it out around him. To Sen’s frantic mind, it seemed to take forever, but a thick mist started to form around him. Once it got started, though, it picked up speed, spreading out faster and faster, rising up around him. He didn’t waste time. Instead, he crouched down and crawled away from the place that he had been, stupidly, he realized, just standing. It wasn’t a very heroic move, but Sen didn’t care about that. He heard the sound of wings flapping not too far overhead. He felt the downward wind pressure scattering his precious mist.

He couldn’t fight the massive hawk as long as it stayed in the air. He needed to get it down to his level, where he could, maybe, have an advantage. He didn’t have a lot of options to make that happen. Worse, anything he could think of would mean changing qi types, which would mean giving up the mist. He wished that he could use more than one kind of qi at a time. He paused then. He couldn’t remember ever asking about that. Had Master Feng ever said you couldn’t cycle two types of qi at the same time? Had Uncle Kho? Sen couldn’t think of them ever saying that. Then again, they might have thought it was obvious. What if you could, though, he mused. He started moving again. The giant, stupid bird kept shifting position and blowing the mist away.

Sen decided that he didn’t really have anything to lose by trying. If it wasn’t going to work, he assumed he’d know it almost immediately. He relegated the mist cycling pattern to that part of his mind that he usually tasked with constant cultivation. Then, he focused inward. He’d need a second stream of qi coming from his dantian. When he tried to make that happen, Sen almost quit. It was such a mental effort to try to siphon off even a bit of qi for a second stream that it made his head start to pound. Either that, or he was losing so much blood from that leg wound it was giving him a headache. He just kept crawling away and focused harder. It was slow, so very slow, but he managed to bleed off some qi from his dantian. He felt himself sweating, felt the blood pounding in his temples, but it was working. He had to bend every last bit of concentration on it, but he sent a parallel stream of qi through his channels on a different pattern.

That hurt. It hurt enough that he had to stop moving and just breathe. He eased up on the amount of qi he was using for the mist technique. It didn’t stop the pain, but it reduced it enough that he didn’t want to scream anymore. More importantly, he could feel the fire qi building up. He waited until he heard the bird flapping again. It was closer than he would have liked, but that made things easier. He eased back toward it using one hand. The other hand was slowly accumulating fire qi, so he didn’t dare put it down near the fallen branches, twigs, and dry evergreen needles. When he heard the bird flap again, directly overhead, he stood straight up and sent a fireball into one of the bird’s wings. The fire scorched away the massive feathers and seared the skin beneath. The hawk shrieked out its agony with a sound so loud it left Sen all but deaf.

Then, the problem with his plan became apparent to Sen. Without the use of one of its wings, the bird fell out of the air, directly at him. Sen tried to stumble away but realized he’d never get far enough away for it to matter. Instead, he drew his jian, set the most stable stance he could on his injured leg, and committed to taking the damn bird with him into the next world. In the next instance, a semi-visible form hurtled out of the trees off to Sen’s side. It leapt into the air and slammed against the bird’s body. The form seemed to compress down and then leapt away. The combination of the impact and the leap away pushed the bird off course. It didn’t miss Sen by much, but it was enough. If he’d felt a little better, he might have marveled at the sight of the bird’s head a mere foot from him. As it was, Sen didn’t let the moment pass him by. The bird was stunned by the impact, so Sen used the jian for what it did best. He thrust the blade straight into the bird’s eye and kept thrusting forward.

The bird’s whole body convulsed and nearly ripped the weapon out of Sen’s hand, but then it went still. Sen jerked the blade free. He let go of his two cycling patterns to conserve some energy. His leg gave out immediately, and he crashed to the ground. He glared balefully at the bird’s body. A flickering flame inside him grew steadier and brighter as a mist spread out around it.