Unintended Cultivator

It was with those thoughts clouding his steps that Sen approached the gates of the capital proper. He knew that cultivators would often barge to the front of the line and demand entry. It was almost expected. So, Sen took a kind of perverse satisfaction in just taking his place at the rear of the line. He glanced back at his… His mind finally produced the right word, and it dripped with disdain even when he said it in his head. He glanced back at his entourage. Shen Mingxia, Wu Gang, and Long Jia Wei all straightened up when they saw him looking and smoothed their faces into the appropriate expressions of humble respect. Glimmer of Night was, once again, eating something that Sen was certain that human beings wouldn’t consider proper food. I’m going to have to talk to him about that, thought Sen.

It took less than an hour before the exact thing that Sen had been desperately hoping would not happen came to pass. Two lines of royal guards in what had to be their finest uniforms marched out the gate, down the line of gawking citizens, and to him. They formed up in two neat lines with someone Sen didn’t recognize standing out in front. The man saw Sen eyeing him curiously and hastily lowered his eyes.

“Judgment’s Gale?” the man asked.

Sen almost said yes, but then a better idea surfaced in his mind.

“Never heard of him,” Sen lied as he turned and gestured, “but have you met Righteous Wu Gang?”

***

Jing rolled his eyes and, with a sigh, he asked, “Dare I ask what that business with Lady Xie was about?”

Sen winced.

“Oh, yeah, that. So, you don’t really need that house, do you?”

“Well, it isn’t going to exist for very much longer.”

“Why?” demanded Jing, his voice getting stern.

“Don’t be mad at me. They sent assassins after me. Cultivator assassins. You wouldn’t believe the trail of bodies I left behind me getting here. I can’t just let that stand. You know I can’t.”

“I’m uncertain where to begin with all of that. How many bodies are we talking about here?” asked Jing, a look of deep concern on his face.

Sen hadn’t actually kept count, so he approximated.

“Enough to keep funeral pyres burning for days,” said Sen through a wave of emotional fatigue, before a thought struck him. “There isn’t a literal trail of bodies. I cleaned up after myself.”

“That was not my primary concern,” said Jing.

“Really?” asked Sen. “It should have been. Dead bodies are bad business if you don’t dispose of them properly. They can make people very sick.”

Jing started to say something before a thoughtful expression crossed his face.

“I suppose that’s true. Thank you for not littering the kingdom with corpses. Still, you’re sure it was the House of Xie.”

“I made a deal with one of the people sent my way. They were quite happy to tell me who employed them.

“It could be misdirection,” objected Jing.

“I had to kill a nascent soul cultivator. Who else could afford to hire someone like that?”

Jing shook his head.

“So, that’s what that was. In the future, I would appreciate it if you refrained from doing things like that so close to the city.”

“You saw it?”

“Everyone saw it. People thought the world was going to end. There were nearly riots.”

“Oh,” said Sen, feeling sheepish.

“And now there’s a cult.”

“A cult?” asked Sen, a sinking feeling taking hold of him. “What kind of cult?”

“I don’t know the exact details, but I expect they’ll be calling themselves the Church of Lu any day now.”

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Sen stared down at the floor for a few seconds before he said, “I’m going home.”

***

Jing grimaced a little.

“I forgot that you could be quite this ruthless.”

Sen considered the other man.

“No, you didn’t. You need someone ruthless for your plan to keep your foreign guests off-balance to work. You need someone who simply does not care what they think. Someone who won’t be put off by ending them if they try to do something to you. Besides, I suspect that this might even work to your advantage.”

“How so?”

“A ruthless cultivator comes in and wipes out a house in revenge. Rather than starting a feud you can’t win, you find a way to quell that anger and even nominally bring that cultivator into the fold. I don’t understand politics all that well, but I imagine that will probably make you look quite competent.”

“It’d be more impressive if everyone didn’t know that we have an existing relationship.”

“You can’t always get everything.”

“No, you certainly can’t,” said Jing. “So, your goal in all of this is what?”

“I don’t care about controlling a noble house, but it will provide a future for my daughter. A future with options. A future that doesn’t involve needing to stay by my side for the rest of her life.”

“Is she a cultivator as well?”

“Not yet. Maybe not ever. She’s still a little too young for all of that.”

“Is she with people you trust? People who can protect her? Once you start down this road—”

Sen started to laugh.

“Oh, I’m not worried about that. Anyone who goes looking for her in the immediate future will have to contend with Auntie Caihong and Uncle Kho. I don’t see that ending well for anyone who turns up with a mind for giving my little girl some trouble.”

Jing stared at Sen with a dumbfounded expression on his face.

“You have the Living Spear and Alchemy’s Handmaiden babysitting?”

Sen thought it over, nodded, and said, “Yeah. Oh, and Fu Ruolan is probably lurking around as well. She’s not a fan of, well, anyone really, but she’s rather fond of Ai.”

“Let me see if I understand this properly,” said Jing, slowly rubbing his temples. “You have three nascent soul cultivators, some of the most powerful beings in the world, one of them a madwoman, standing guard over one little girl?”

“When you say it like that, it sounds unreasonable.”

***

He stumbled his way through translating a few more manual names. The Iron Strike or possibly the Metal Fist Manual. The Sky Strider’s Fury Manual or, just because it felt more right in his head, the Stormbearer’s Wrath Manual. The last manual title he translated seemed to pop into his mind without any effort at all. The Shadow Gate manual. Sen felt an almost tangible pull to open the cover and see what he could unravel of the old text, but it wasn’t the time for that. Regretfully, he returned the manual to a shelf that had at least a dozen others waiting to be looked at and turned his attention to the storage treasures. There were a number of rings with what seemed to Sen like ridiculously primitive security measures on them. Their contents ranged from the largely useless, such as robes, to the expected, such as pills and elixirs. However, Sen would need to remove them from the storage treasures to get a feel for how good or bad they might still be. Having been inside the treasures, it was entirely possible that they would retain their potency. He might even learn a few things from them with a bit of study. He’d also be happy to lay claim to the additional medicinal plants and reagents he found.

He turned his attention next to an ornate box. The measures designed to keep anyone but the rightful owner out of the box were substantially better than the ones on the rings, but that only meant that it took him three seconds to bypass them instead of one. When he opened the box, though, he almost immediately slammed the cover shut again. He spun to look at Long Jia Wei, who was staring at the box with a confused look on his face.

“What was that?” asked the man.

Sen sighed and waved the man over. The damage was already done. When Long Jia Wei was standing next to him, Sen reached out and opened the ornate box again. The ex-sect assassin stared down into the box with awe.

“Is that what I think it is?” he asked.

“Yes. That is the Rubber Ducky of the Heavens.”

***

“How can I help you?” she asked, eying them both.

There was something evaluative in that look. It made Sen feel like the woman could determine their personal wealth at a glance. Based on her expression, she had decided that they were too poor to even breathe air in this shop but was far too polite to say so. Sen kept a neutral expression as he spoke.

“We both need something for a formal event. And we need it by this afternoon,” announced Sen.

“I’m afraid that will be quite impossi—”

The woman’s words choked off as Sen casually placed a fistful of gold taels on the counter. The woman’s eyes went almost impossibly wide at the fortune before her.

“We will both need something for a formal event, at the royalpalace. And we need it by this afternoon.”

The woman behind the counter dragged her eyes away from the gold and up to Sen’s face, and a kind of dawning recognition took place. All those stories racing around the city about the new Lord Lu, the legendary Judgment’s Gale, the king’s friend who had come for some unknown purpose. Her gaze drifted down to his robes. His blue robes. Robes that bore the telltale signs of having been through some violence. Her eyes darted around the shop before she clapped her hands together sharply.

“The shop is closed for the day. Please return tomorrow.”

There was a long pause before people started protesting. The woman looked like she was about to start screaming at people. Sen lifted a hand to forestall the explosion of verbal violence.

“I’ll handle it,” Sen told her. “Hey, Larry!”

A moment later, a massive spirit ox appeared inside the shop as if he’d always been there. Sen happily patted the ox on the head before he started pointing at the now bewildered customers.

“Those people are having trouble finding the door. Would you help them find it, please?”

Larry let out a moo that could only be described as gleeful before he started crashing through tables and screaming erupting from all corners of the store. Nodding in satisfaction, Sen turned back to the store manager. The woman wore a horrified expression.

“So, I was thinking I’d need something in blue,” said Sen.

***

This concludes Unintended Cultivator, Volume Eight. Sen and company will return in Unintended Cultivator, Volume Nine.