Unintended Cultivator-Chapter 30Book 10: : The Difference Between Life and Death

Sen watched as some of the qi-condensing cultivators worked forms with their weapons. It took a true effort of will to keep his expression calm and neutral. None of them were bad. He reminded himself of that repeatedly. They were all adequate. Some might even rise to the level of gifted for their level of advancement, but they weren’t what he would consider good. I really was spoiled when it came to my weapon instruction, he thought. He didn’t consider the failings he saw before him the fault of their teachers. Cultivators were as hamstrung as mortals by the limits of their talent. That applied to teachers as well as students. He was faced with the hard truth that if he wanted cultivation or martial geniuses, they needed dedicated attention. It was attention that no one had the time to give them.

If these cultivators wanted to achieve greatness, they would have to seek growth through the harder path of experience. Something that the world was conspiring to give them in abundance. Sen had very intentionally distanced himself emotionally from these cultivators. The odds were very good that the majority wouldn’t live to see the end of the war. That was another grim truth that he was forced to accept. They had sheltered here in relative safety under his explicit protection and the tacit protection of the nascent soul cultivators who came and went, and those who stayed. That protection would soon come to an end. He would have to leave. Some of these woefully underprepared cultivators would have to leave. It was only a matter of time before Master Feng and Uncle Kho returned. It might be days or it might be another week or two, but the moment was swiftly approaching.

That he had burned weeks of time trying to crack the problem of communication nodes and come up empty did nothing to aid him in appearing calm. Part of him knew that the successive string of failures was inevitable, but he felt pressure to produce the miracle that they all needed. Worse, this was one of those handful of things that he honestly could not pass off to anyone else. He could leave Glimmer of Night to work on it alone, but the two of them were the experts in this particular area. He’d even gone to ask Auntie Caihong if she knew of anyone that would be able to help with it. She’d given him a few names, but only after stating repeatedly that they might, maybe, possibly could offer some assistance… If the wind was blowing right that day.

All of those qualifiers that she had put in front of the names had told him everything he needed to know. It was possible they could help, but it wasn’t likely. It had been disappointing, if not much of a surprise. People with an understanding of shadow qi were all but nonexistent. He had tried to rope Fu Ruolan into helping since she was on that rarified list. She had listened patiently, well, she had listened to him and Glimmer of Night explain what they had done and what they wanted to do. Then, the elder cultivator had bluntly asked them what in the thousand hells they were doing talking to her about it. Another answer that had oh so clearly communicated that her knowledge of shadow qi was insufficient to the task. It was also an answer that suggested he wouldn’t find anyone else with the requisite expertise. At least, he wouldn’t do it quickly enough to be useful.

“I don’t suppose there are any other spiders we could ask about this?” Sen had asked Glimmer of Night in a moment of desperation.

The spiderkin had done him the courtesy of not just saying that was a stupid idea. Instead, he had asked the most pertinent question.

“There are a few that I am aware of,” said Glimmer of Night, “but could you trust them with this information?”

The answer was, naturally, that he couldn’t do that. He might want to do it because desperation was the mother of so many terrible choices, but too many lives hung in the balance to let desperation push him into taking that final, critically moronic step. It was that answer that had driven Sen outside to see the sky and breathe some fresh air. Of course, it had also been an ideal time for him to see the exact state of fighting skill these poor fools were going to take into battle with them. He could only console himself with the knowledge that they were infinitely better prepared than all of the mortal soldiers who were fighting and dying. Even so, he might be able to give them all a slightly better chance of survival if he did a little instruction himself.

It couldn’t be anything too extreme or too far from what they were learning already. Of course, what they were learning at this stage was so far behind what Master Feng had expected Sen to have fully mastered that he could probably show them almost anything. Still, it also needed to be something they could accomplish, which ruled out teaching them Heaven’s Rebuke. Most of them weren’t so entrenched in the mindset of mastering only one kind of qi that it was impossible. What they lacked was sufficient killing intent. He knew that killing intent itself could be wielded as a weapon directly if you had enough of it. It could also be used to buy a precious half-second of time. At the qi-condensing stage, a half-second was often enough to decide the outcome of a fight. The length of those moments grew shorter and shorter as one ascended up the stages of cultivation, but there was little he could do to prepare them for fights against something that much stronger.

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He walked over to where the largest group of students were practicing with the wooden swords he’d had made for that exact purpose. It was simply too dangerous to let them practice with real swords until they’d mastered the essentials. Something he figured that they could all do with another ten or fifteen years of dedicated study. That was unkind, Sen chided himself. None of them are close to incompetent enough to be an unintentional danger to other students. Everyone within sight fell silent and came to a stop as he approached. Sen found it a little eerie, but he couldn’t see a way to stop it. So, like more and more things in his world, he decided to just live with it.

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“I’m gratified to see you all working so diligently,” Sen said and hoped it sounded genuine. “But, if your instructors will allow me to intrude, I think you could all benefit from a bit of instruction on killing intent.”

Sen fell silent as qi-condensing, foundation formation, and even a handful of core cultivators gathered closer. Even the instructors were standing there with their eyes fixed on him. He didn’t know what kind of enlightenment they were waiting to get. If they hadn’t mastered their killing intent by core formation, he doubted they ever would. Then again, maybe they would get something from it. His eyes searched over the crowd until they landed on an exceptionally tiny woman.

Sen had been both surprised and not surprised that Mo Kai-Ming had chosen to stay after he’d helped her advance to foundation formation. He’d been surprised because, at the time, he wasn’t even trying to run a sect. All he’d been offering was training in the jian and the spear. He'd been unsurprised because, while she hadn’t said much outright, it had been clear that the world had mistreated her rather badly. This place had been a refuge from some of the worst things that could happen to ill-prepared cultivators. When he’d finally bent to the inevitable and let the academy become a sect, she had been inducted as one of the very first disciples. He’d kept a distant eye on her. She was dutiful, hardworking, and talented enough. He thought that early core formation would be as far as she would climb as a cultivator, but he suspected that would be accomplishment enough for her.

“Mo Kai-Ming. Step forward.”

“Yes, Patriarch!”

She hurried forward with an embarrassed look on her face. He could see other disciples looking at her with confusion. It was easy to read the questions on their faces. Why does the patriarch know her by name? Is she special in some way we haven’t seen? Should I try to make friends with her? He’d likely made her life more complicated by singling her out, but he didn’t know the names of very many of the disciples. She’d just had the misfortune to be on hand when he needed a volunteer. Even so, the whole situation gave him an odd sense of déjà vu. She hunched her shoulders a little at all of the sudden attention but still offered him a very formal bow. He gave her an assessing look when she straightened up.

“I assume your teachers have included killing intent in their instruction,” he said.

“Yes, Patriarch.”

“And you’ve practiced?”

“I have, Patriarch.”

“Very well, then. Please show me.”

Mo Kai-Ming was slow, agonizingly slow to Sen’s way of thinking, in summoning her killing intent. He tried to remember if he’d ever been that sluggish with it and decided that he must have been at some point. It wouldn’t be right to chastise her about it. Aside from the slowness, her killing intent was mostly what he expected killing intent from a foundation formation cultivator to be like. It hung around her in a hazy cloud that stretched about four or five feet in every direction. None of it managed to infiltrate his own qi and mental defenses, but it was more potent than most cultivators at her stage could muster. That suggested to him that she’d done some hard things that she’d chosen not to discuss.

“Good,” said Sen.

He wanted to give her a bit of encouragement before the teaching started. Auntie Caihong called it the honey and whip method. If you give someone some honey first, the whip won’t sting so sharply. At least, he thought that was what it meant.

“Thank you, Patriarch,” said Mo Kai-Ming with a bright smile.

He nodded in acknowledgment and said, “Killing intent is a useful tool. It can disrupt an enemy’s focus, even leave them momentarily helpless. These are invaluable in battle. Of course, if your killing intent spreads too far, it can do the same thing to your allies.”

Mo Kai-Ming started to look down at the ground, clearly taking his comments as a rebuke. He needed to put a stop to that in a hurry.

“It’s also where everyone starts,” he said in a loud voice. “Fortunately, it’s not where you need to finish. Observe.”

Sen drew his jian and held it out to his side where it would be clearly visible to everyone. He sheathed the blade in his killing intent. The blade looked the same, but he knew that it didn’t feel the same. Students took in sharp breaths or leaned away from the blade.

“With practice, you can learn to focus your killing intent. You can direct it. You can sharpen it until it holds an edge as keen as any blade. This allows you to inflict it on your enemies with razor precision while sparing your allies. With enough practice and discipline, you can even learn to do this.”

Sen carefully allowed the tiniest sliver of his killing intent to reach everyone present. He kept it to the briefest touch. He wanted them to learn something, not go into convulsions. Even that level of care proved insufficient for a few of the observers who collapsed as soon as they came in contact with his killing intent. He also saw many pale, sweaty faces and more than a few people took a staggering step or swayed in place. It was only when they had all mostly recovered that everyone seemed to realize that it had been a shared experience. That drew more than a few stunned looks, even from instructors who should have known better than to allow expressions like that cross their faces in front of students.

“Your task for the rest of the day is to practice focusing your killing intent into your weapons.”

Sen stayed for another hour. Giving advice, correcting potentially dangerous errors, and hoping that knowing this might make the difference between life and death for at least one of the disciples. Of course, the outside world must have known he was doing something because it promptly intruded. Sua Xing Xing’s assistant, Chen Lei, came striding up to him at a pace that just barely missed being a run. She bowed and quickly drew him away from the crowd and their obviously curious ears. Sen erected a wind barrier to keep the conversation private.

“Patriarch,” said Chen Lei. “Sua Xing Xing sent me to get you. There is a message she believes you need to hear.”

“A message?”

“Yes, it’s from the king.”