Unintended Cultivator

Once Sen and Lo Meifeng were out of sight of the temple, they abandoned their casual saunter in favor of qi techniques. With core qi finally available to him, the pair made incredibly fast time as they fled back the way they had come. Sen had a working theory that once they got beyond the range of the field of oppressive energy, they would also move beyond the range of Lan Zi Rui’s senses. Within a few hours, they had passed back into the more mundane, if still hideously potent, dangers of the wilds. Sen kept them moving, though, not trusting that the cult leader wouldn’t still try to track them down and kill them. Sen kept his spiritual sense on full burn and let his killing intent sweep out into the old forest at times to encourage the spirit beasts he sensed to go bother someone less prepared to rain down destruction.

He had them change directions frequently once they moved beyond that field of oppression. Sometimes they went west, sometimes they went south again, deeper into the wilds, and sometimes he brought them close enough to the road people still used that it made him uncomfortable that they might get noticed. Then, he’d have them double back, only to double back again and head off in a different direction. Anyone trying to follow their qi traces would literally find themselves running in circles through some deeply unfriendly territory. It was the best he could do to provide them with a buffer until he could work out something better.

While they didn’t talk, Sen kept a close eye on Lo Meifeng. Her qi reserves seemed as healthy as his own, but she didn’t look healthy. He wondered if she had eaten anything while they were at that awful temple. He hadn’t eaten real food for so long that he wondered if his body would even remember what to do with it. Then again, it wasn’t like he was a normal human being anymore. Neither was Lo Meifeng. He suspected that they’d handle the transition back to regular meals without too much trouble. When the light faded so much that it was threatening to turn into true night, he found them a place to set up camp. It took longer than he would have liked to get everything set up. The once familiar habits that made the process nearly automatic before had gone stale during his lengthy visit to his interior world. Still, they started to come back when he got the fire going and started cooking food. He mentally thanked Feng Ming for giving him a storage ring that preserved food.

At first, Lo Meifeng seemed disinterested in the meal. Once the smell of the stew he was making started wafting around the campsite, though, it seemed to reawaken her native hunger. She showed an un-Lo Meifeng-like impatience about it, asking several times if it was done yet. Sen just shook his head and continued stirring the contents of the pot occasionally. When it was finally done, he dished up some of the stew for both of them and found some bread in his storage ring that he split between them. It seemed that, despite her hunger, Lo Meifeng was concerned about how her body was going to react to food. Sen could see the woman forcing herself to eat slowly, only taking a few bites of stew or bread and waiting. It took her nearly half an hour to finish what was in her bowl. Then, she waited another half hour with a semi-expectant look on her face. When nothing terrible occurred, she let her hunger loose and swiftly consumed two more bowls of the stew. Sen pulled out some fruit and gave that to her.

“I missed food so much,” she said, eying her empty bowl like it offended her. “How did you manage to eat their food and stay sane?”

“Eat? I didn’t eat anything there,” said Sen, before he popped a piece of melon in his mouth.

“Then how-,” she paused. “Is it because of you're body cultivation?”

Sen shrugged. “Maybe, partly. I mostly sustained myself on qi.”

Lo Meifeng sighed. “Of course, because why wouldn’t you just devise a way to do that while in captivity?”

Lo Meifeng shook her head but then seemed to reconsider. “How complicated is it?”

Sen thought it over. “It’s not especially complicated, it’s just hard.”

“I can work hard but not tonight. I’m exhausted.”

Sen nodded. Physically, he felt fine. Mentally and emotionally, he felt drained. “Yeah. I know what you mean.”

Lo Meifeng looked uncomfortable when she spoke again. “So, about Lifen? I’m surprised you left her there.”

Sen gritted his teeth in frustration. “It was the only way. She wasn’t going to come willingly. That would have meant a fight, maybe with her, and almost certainly with that old bastard. I don’t think we could have won that fight. I, we, can’t help her if we’re dead.”

“You’re not wrong,” said Lo Meifeng with pursed lips. “Even when we go back, though, she won’t thank us for killing him. She’ll probably try to protect him like everyone else in that cult will try to protect him.”

“I know, but it still needs to be done. I’m not sure exactly what Lan Zi Rui is, but I know that he needs to be dead,” said Sen, giving Lo Meifeng a speculative look. “So, it’s we, is it? You’re going with me when the time comes.”

Lo Meifeng gave him a savage smile made all the more unsettling by her gauntness. “You’re not the only one with a grudge there. I’m going to slow-roast that piece of shit over a bed of coals for a week. Then, I’m going to get mean.”

“Glad we’re on the same page about that. I was just going to crucify him and cut pieces off until he finally bled to death.”

“Nice,” said Lo Meifeng in genuine appreciation. “For someone like him, that would probably take a long time.”

“That’s what I was going for,” said Sen with a half-smile. “You don’t need to answer this, but I know what happened to me. What happened to you?”

Lo Meifeng idly flicked small pieces of dead grass into the fire for a while before she spoke.

“Nothing special. They didn’t try to torture me or anything like that. They were drugging the food, though. I could deal with it, but not too often. So,” she gestured to her face, “this. That old man came to my cell every day for months, trying to get me to sign on with him. That was tedious. Beyond that, well, you were stuck in a cell for months as well.”

“Yeah. That was lonely.”

The conversation faltered there for a little while before Lo Meifeng gave him a considering look. “Still, it seems like your experience was a little different from mine. You learned something while you were in that cell.”

Sen nodded. “I learned a few things.”

Sen talked to her about the cultivation trance, subsuming himself in his inner world, and developing a new cultivation method that worked with his core. She listened attentively, only rarely asking questions to clarify some point she didn’t quite understand. After he finished, she cocked her head to one side and then the other.

“So, what was the me that you imagined like?” she asked.

“Really? All of that, and the thing you care about is what my imaginary you was like?”

“What? Wouldn’t you want to know?”

Sen thought it over for a moment. “Yeah, I guess I would. Well, she was pretty much the same as you, but less interesting. And she wore her hair differently.”

Lo Meifeng’s hand shot up to her hair. “What’s wrong with my hair?”

“Nothing. I just wondered how it would look if you wore it loose. So, that’s how I imagined you.”

Lo Meifeng frowned at him, while her hand kept reaching up to touch her hair. Sen wasn’t even sure she knew she was doing it.

“Why was I less interesting?” she asked.

“Those imaginary people could only do and say things that I could imagine them doing and saying. Real people are more unpredictable. The less you know someone, the more unpredictable they are. I don’t really know you that well, so you surprise me pretty regularly. That imaginary version of you, she never surprised me.”

“Is that why you stopped imagining people? They were boring?”

Sen shook his head. “No. I stopped because I wanted them to be real too much. At some point, I was going to start letting myself think they were real. If that happened, I knew I’d never wake up again.”

“No wonder everyone says that deep cultivation trances are so dangerous.”

“I think you’d be okay. Assuming you did it under slightly better conditions.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Staying sane enough to do what you’re there to do, waking up when it’s over, depends on a strong sense of self. You clearly have that.”

Lo Meifeng let out a quick laugh. “Thanks, but I think I’ll still pass.”

“Too risky?” asked Sen.

“Not enough benefit, at least for me. It’s possible that you actually needed to do that to get a cultivation method that worked for you. I’m just a lowly fire qi wielder. There’s plenty of manuals out there for people like me.”

“Lowly?”

“Compared to people like Feng Ming, yeah.”

Sen recalled something that Lo Meifeng had said to him once. “You may be setting the bar a little high there.”

Lo Meifeng clearly recalled the same conversation because she smirked. “You don’t have the corner on that particular market. Still, now that we’re back in the world, what’s the plan?”

“I don’t know. I doubt those demonic cultivators are still scouring that road looking for us. Not after all this time. But they probably are still looking in bigger cities and towns.”

“We need to stop somewhere so I can send in a report. We didn’t just vanish for the demonic cultivators. We vanished for everyone. What do you imagine your Master has been doing the last six months?”

A chill went straight through Sen’s heart. “Probably leaving a trail of destruction a mile wide looking for us.”

“Pretty much what I thought, too.”

“Alright, we’ll stop somewhere, but we’re not going anywhere near civilization for at least a few weeks.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re going to draw a lot of the wrong kind of attention in a city looking that gaunt.”

“Oh, right. I don’t feel different, so I keep forgetting. So, we take a little time to fatten me up and then go?”

Sen stared at her. “Come on, even I know that’s a trap.”

“They grow up so fast,” said Lo Meifeng in a mournful voice. “Still, we should make some kind of plan beyond stopping in a city to send a message.”

“Frankly, I’m not all that impressed by what my plans have led to so far. So, what do you think we should do? Where do you want to go?”

Lo Meifeng's brow furrowed as she considered the problem. Sen didn’t rush her, content to just sit by the fire and feel the breeze gently pass over his face. He saw her look over at him, uncertainty writ large across her features.

“There is one place we could go. It’s a place I always wanted to go. There are people there who could teach me some things. You too, I expect. It’ll take a while to get there.”

“I don’t mind long trips. What is this place?”

“It’s called Inferno’s Vale.”

“That doesn’t sound like a friendly place.”

Lo Meifeng laughed. “It’s just got a lot of natural fire qi. Someone decided to get poetic about naming the place. There’s supposed to be a, not a sect exactly, but an order of people there. People who specialize in fire qi.”

Sen didn’t even think about it. One destination was as good as another as far as he was concerned. More importantly, anywhere he could learn to become stronger and more dangerous was a place he wanted to go. It was a step on the path to the destruction of Lan Zi Rui.

“Inferno’s Vale, it is.”

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