Unintended Cultivator-Chapter 54Book 10: : A Kind Boy

Save for the occasional rise and fall of Lu Sen’s chest and the beads of sweat on his forehead, the man might have been dead. At least, that was what Lai Dongmei thought as she stared down at him. She knew that something was wrong but lacked the training to understand what. It was an unusual feeling of powerlessness that gripped the nascent soul cultivator in that moment. She felt compelled to do something. However, there was nothing to do. Rarely did anyone wish for the presence of Ma Caihong, but that was exactly what Lai Dongmei wished for then. Terrifying as Alchemy’s Handmaiden could be, she would formulate a plan or at least know what ailed Lu Sen. Knowledge would empower Lai Dongmei to act. She could go out and shake loose rare reagents or natural treasures from the other sects with money, promises, or dire threats. Yet, ignorance fed the powerful apathy that kept her rooted in place.

Nor was it undiluted affection that drove her need to act. If Lu Sen succumbed to this mystery ailment and the city managed to drive off the spirit beasts, they would merely trade one calamity for another. She could almost picture Feng Ming, Kho Jaw-Long, and Ma Caihong descending on this city in grief-fueled rage, determined to wash away the stain of Lu Sen’s fall with an ocean of blood. Nor did she imagine for one moment that the sects here would serve as any kind of meaningful resistance to them. Feng Ming beating his own brother until the man barely clung to life was far too fresh in her mind for even cultivator arrogance to overcome. Feng Bai had thrown technique after technique at Fate’s Razor to no avail. Feng Ming had used nothing but his hands.

While Lai Dongmei theoretically stood in the same cultivation stage as those three, that display alone had reminded her that the gulf between cultivators in the same stage could be monumental. She was capable of doing things now that would have seemed like miracles to her childhood self. She thought so, anyway. That small, mortal girl was very, very far in the past, so it was possible she was imagining things that just weren’t so. Those old monsters were capable of doing things that her present self found miraculous if fundamentally more terrible. Those capable of bridging such gaps in cultivation stage, as Lu Sen seemed to do more or less at will, were vanishingly rare. If those three came here united in their need to punish everyone who had allowed harm to befall their treasured student, it would be an overwhelming tide of death from which none would escape. She glanced at the closed door and sighed.

“Do you mean to simply hover out there, or will you come in?” asked the nascent soul cultivator.

She’d heard the other woman in the hall, pacing, breathing, and muttering things. There was a momentary pause before the door opened and Lu Jia stepped into the room. She offered Lai Dongmei a brief bow that might or might not have been as deep as it ought to be before her eyes turned to Lu Sen. She carried a bowl over the table by the bed and set it down. Lai Dongmei watched with curious interest as Lu Sen’s adoptive grandmother sat on the bed, dipped a cloth into the bowl, and wiped the sweat from his forehead. She set that cloth aside before soaking another and resting it across his brow. There were several long minutes of silence as they both just watched Sen, their eyes tracking it every time he breathed. Lu Jia finally looked at Lai Dongmei.

“You look concerned,” said Lu Jia.

“You seem surprised by that,” offered the nascent soul cultivator.

Lu Jia seemed to consider her words carefully.

“I didn’t think it was that kind of relationship, considering how different you are. I thought it was just physical,” she said.

There hadn’t been any judgment in those words. The woman was just relating something she’d taken as a basic fact or truth. A thin, wavering ghost of a smirk crossed Lai Dongmei’s lips.

“Well, it certainly is that, but it’s not as though we never spoke.”

Lai Dongmei was aware, as Lu Jia certainly was, that they were being inappropriately informal. She also found that she didn’t particularly care. She got enough of that kind of rigid, formal respect at her sect. She could count on one hand the number of people she could be casual with, and one of them was unconscious in the bed. A memory floated to the top of her mind. Sen had once suggested that she could just leave since there basically wasn’t anyone who could stop her. It had been a charmingly naïve suggestion. It was true that no one else could stop her, but she was bound by chains of responsibility that she herself had forged in the rise to matriarch. Still, there was a kernel of truth in there. She could just decide that Lu Jia could be informal with her, at least in private. After all, no one could stop her.

“What would the two of you talk about, I wonder,” murmured Lu Jia, her eyes back on Sen.

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It hadn’t been a question, not really, but she decided to answer anyway.

“A lot of things. He’s led a remarkably busy life for someone his age. I’d barely left the sect at all when I was his age. Even now, I think he’s seen more of this country than I ever have. Did you know he sailed down part of the coast when he was fleeing that demonic cultivator cabal? I’ve never even seen the ocean, let alone set foot on a ship that could sail on it.”

Lu Jia looked startled at those revelations and seemed a little flummoxed about what to address first.

“I… I suppose he did mention something about a boat once. He’s annoyingly lax about giving me details when he thinks it will make me worry.”

Lai Dongmei thought about the story he’d told her and realized that it probably would have made the other woman worry. He probably imagined he was being thoughtful, even if she knew that the mystery was no doubt worse than the actual tale would ever have been. It was sweet in a clumsy, fumbling sort of way.

“You’ve never seen the ocean?” asked Lu Jia.

Lai Dongmei shook her head and said, “The opportunity never presented itself.”

“You should go if we survive this. It’s worth seeing.”

“You’ve seen it?”

Lu Jia nodded with a thoughtful look on her face.

“Several times. I never sailed on it, but I think something like that might have scared me half to death. This damn boy,” she muttered, looking back at Sen. “He’s fearless. Even as a child, he was fearless. I bet he walked onto that boat without a second thought.”

Lai Dongmei was abruptly hyper-focused on the other woman. Sen had made a few offhand comments about his childhood, told her a couple of stories, but he’d been remarkably close-mouthed about the subject. She’d been intensely curious about what had forged him into the very odd man he’d become but thought it better to wait until he decided to talk about it. If Lu Jia was willing to volunteer information, though, why waste such a golden opportunity? After all, not all lucky encounters were world-shaking.

“Fearless? I always imagined him wandering around and getting distracted by things,” said Lai Dongmei.

It was a pretty obvious ploy since she knew he had been without a home in some sense, but Lu Jia was distracted.

“He couldn’t afford to be distracted. It would have been the death of him. Surviving with no shelter is hard, and the people there were cruel to him.”

“Cruel, you say?” said Lai Dongmei with narrowed eyes.

She entertained thoughts of visiting that place and expressing her displeasure, but those ideas were swiftly swept away by the other woman’s next words.

“Not all of them, I suppose. And he took his vengeance on the worst of them. The ones who made a sport of beating him. Most people were simply indifferent, but that’s a cruelty all its own to a kind boy,” said Lu Jia as some old pain crossed her features. “I think that hurt him more than the fights. He’s so big now. You wouldn’t have imagined it then. He was always half-starved, but he used to share his food with me. He’d steal bread or whatever else he could get his hands on, and he’d bring it to me.”

Lai Dongmei gave the woman a perplexed look and asked, “Why would he do that?”

“I was different then. My body cultivation was stalled. I was old. Feeble. My own children ignored me, but not him. You should have seen him bargaining with Feng Ming. He looked almost feral, but he wouldn’t go off with that man until he was sure I would be taken care of. This damned, reckless, fool boy—”

The words choked off as Lu Jia buried her face in her hands, seemingly no longer able to suppress her worry and fear. Lai Dongmei was startled by the open display of emotion. Cultivators rarely allowed themselves such outbursts, even in private, for fear that someone would overhear them and try to capitalize on a perceived weakness. Of course, Lu Jia wasn’t in a sect, and Lu Sen was family. They were in the heart of Lu Manor. If there was anywhere the woman could shed tears over the uncertain fate of her grandson, this would be that place.

While Lai Dongmei had worked hard to master the appearance of cultivator indifference, she wasn’t as heartless or inhuman as most imagined. She walked over and gently rubbed Lu Jia’s back as the sobs shook the woman. It didn’t last long, a few minutes at most, before the other woman stilled and then angrily wiped at the tears on her face. The nascent soul cultivator stepped back as her mind whirled. She’d learned a lot about Lu Sen and his grandmother in a very short time. She wasn’t sure it changed how she thought about either of them, or even that it should, but it had deepened her understanding of them both a little. She noticed Lu Jia reach out and rest her hand on Lu Sen’s arm.

“He’s still a kind boy,” she whispered. “Even if this terrible world seems determined to burn that out of him. Can you help him?”

Lai Dongmei grimaced and shook her head.

“I’m not a healer. If I knew what was wrong, maybe I could do something, but—” she trailed off.

It wasn’t that there were no healers or alchemists in the city. Her sect had them, as did all of the others, but Lu Sen was terrifyingly vulnerable right now. He always seemed so capable and dangerous when he was awake that she found it jarring to see him as he was. It wouldn’t take much for someone to kill him as things stood, which meant that she had to implicitly trust anyone who might attend to him. Of the people who might be able to help, she wasn’t sure she trusted any of them that much. Not even the people from her own sect. She sighed. She might trust them least of all to be left alone with an unconscious Sen. No, the person she needed to help him was also the person in the worst position to offer that help. Sen himself. If he didn’t improve, though, she might have to bring someone. She started to say just that when her head whipped around.

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“What is it?” asked Lu Jia, clearly alarmed by the baleful stare Lai Dongmei was directing at an empty patch of wall.

“I need to go,” said the nascent soul cultivator. “I just heard the soldiers talking on the wall. It’s started.”