Unintended Cultivator

V13 Chapter 50 – Stillness

Sen had expected an overwhelming feeling of relief when he closed the door to the room he’d chosen for his brief bout of secluded cultivation. It never manifested. At least, not the way he had anticipated. There was definitely something to be said for knowing that no one was going to bother him unless a true crisis emerged. However, he’d thought the weight of responsibility would slip from his shoulders, and it hadn’t. The burden was, at best, only slightly lessened. That had rarely been a problem for him in the past. Sen had always found it easy to push away the rest of the world and focus on cultivation. Now, though, it seemed the world had a firmer grip on him than he’d fully understood.

“I wonder if this is how Jing felt as king?” Sen asked the bare walls around him before he frowned. “Yes, I imagine that this is exactly how he felt. No wonder he looked tired so much of the time.”

Sen paced the room in a slow circle, over and over again, hopeful that the repetition would help calm his mind. I should have learned how to play an instrument, he thought. He didn’t know if playing would soothe him, but it would give him something to do while he waited. A part of him wanted to just sit down and cultivate. It wasn’t like he couldn’t do it. That process was so familiar to him now that it took no concentration, let alone true effort. Solitude, on the other hand, was a rare and precious commodity. One he didn’t wish to waste thinking and rethinking problems to which he’d already devoted countless hours of thought. He wanted stillness. Stillness of the mind. Stillness of the heart. Stillness of the soul. Treasures of which he found himself painfully poor on most days.

Truth could be found in stillness. Even in battle, the moment of stillness before one acted was often more important than the actions themselves. Things were revealed in that moment, about one’s opponent and oneself. There was truth in the stillness of a lake on a calm day. A moment when the heavens were reflected on the water. A tacit reminder that the potential to reach ascension could be found in the imperfect world of mortals and cultivators. Yet, it was in internal stillness that the most important truths could be found. Truths about one’s place and one’s path. Even a path as unnatural as Sen’s own. He froze in place for a moment and, knowing the futility of it, tried to force his inner world to stillness.

When that inevitably failed, he returned to his slow pacing around the room. He wondered if this was the consequence of racing ahead. Of never being able to take the time to consolidate and reflect properly. He knew his foundations were still solid. Master Feng, Uncle Kho, and Auntie Caihong had seen to that, but there was simply no replacement for time spent. He hadn’t gotten the countless years to contemplate, nor been allowed the luxury of true failure. How could one be at peace with themselves when they barely knew themselves? His teachers had all walked their paths for century after century. They didn’t question themselves because they had asked themselves every question about who they were and what they believed. War had overtaken him before he’d been able to explore those depths.

Worse, cultivators were supposed to grow into their power, not have it thrust onto them. Mastery came with experience, not simple possession. Any fool could possess a sword. He also wasn’t foolish enough to mistake being able to use that power for understanding it. Any fool could swing a blade, but it took devoted effort to understand when, where, and how to swing it properly. That was all before a person could ever hope to delve into the deeper truths that genuine masters touched on in their greatness. It was only after they found those truths that their blades became truly sharp. Truths that continued to elude him.

Yes, he was skilled, but it was skill that anyone could reach by following the same path. A path had been marked by brute force and relentlessness more than finesse or insight. Some might say those were their own path to mastery, but Sen knew better. How could he not, as someone walking that very road? The skills had come. True. The power had come despite his best efforts. The insights, the understanding, the very things he feared he needed most were fragile wisps of mist that he could see. However, he was far too rarely able to grasp them. He closed his eyes as he continued his lonely circle around that empty room.

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He could ignore these problems most days. The constant needs of the war and his endless conquest were powerful distractions. They were even legitimate concerns. But ignoring the problems that were accumulating in his cultivation was in no sense solving them. At best, he was briefly forestalling a dangerous debt in knowledge. A debt that either the heavens or the spirit beasts would collect from him if he continued on as he had been. However, knowing he couldn’t ignore these problems forever didn’t provide him with a solution. Nor could he rush down any path that looked promising. Doing so might well prove lethal, as more than one cultivator had learned at the cost of their lives.

“Why did this all have to happen so fast? So close together?” he whispered to himself. “If I’d been given even a century—”

He didn’t let himself finish that thought. It was self-pity. Even if it felt justified to him, and was something he’d only speak aloud when alone, it wouldn’t help. It couldn’t fix anything. This uncertainty was the same reason he’d hesitated to advance his body cultivation. He had gathered what he needed for the first three pills. More than enough for even him to begin the process. He possessed the knowledge and skill as an alchemist to make them. Yet, even with those, the things he was most certain of aside from the sword, he was keenly aware of his own terrifying ignorance.

The effects of those pills were things that he only partially understood. And, unlike the Five or, more appropriately, Six-Fold Body Transformation, he wasn’t obligated to take them to survive. He could simply stop where he was. He doubted anyone would object. He’d taken body cultivation farther than most cultivators ever reached. Farther than many even dreamed. If he abandoned body cultivation, though, it meant that he was also abandoning available strength. Strength he might well need. And that’s the damnable crux of it, he thought. I have to keep racing forward because, right now, I need that strength. Even knowing full well that every new step puts me more at risk of devastating failure due to ignorance, I can’t afford to stop.

Sen knew that he wasn’t the first cultivator to face such a dilemma. Every cultivator who ever faced a challenge for which they felt inadequate had confronted it. It took some down the path to demonic cultivation. It convinced others to try to force advancements for which they weren’t ready. Most, deprived of ready resources, simply had to face those challenges as they were. Yet, unlike them, Sen did have ready resources. He could push forward. The heavens would, undoubtedly, shower him with qi at the barest sign that he meant to advance again. If only his own, ever-growing ignorance didn’t frighten him so much and with so much reason.

And now, when he needed it most, he could not find stillness.

It wasn’t lost on him that most cultivators would find his hesitation baffling. The very idea of rapid advancement was the lure that killed so many young cultivators. It was a sign of their own failures of understanding. None had scaled so high on the mountain so quickly before. They couldn’t comprehend the many chasms that he could so clearly see. Chasms of ignorance that would swallow him whole with a single misstep. A prospect made ever more likely as the path he walked, one that had once seemed so wide, had grown as narrow as a blade of grass.

And he could not find stillness.

Accepting that the hours of relentless pacing had done no good, he sat down in the center of the room. If he was going to cloister himself in the room, he should do something more productive than walking in a circle. Beast cores by the dozens appeared from his storage ring and were directed by flows of air qi into piles. A swift application of stone qi let him carve formations into the walls, floor, and ceiling designed to contain and concentrate qi in the room. A negligent gesture, and every beast core shattered in a way designed to release the qi contained within. From one moment to the next, the room went from a place where anyone could comfortably sit to one that would likely kill any mortal or qi-condensing cultivator who stumbled into it.

As he sat there in that silent room, absorbing that released power, Sen prayed to unnamed gods to help him find stillness.