Unintended Cultivator

Book 12: Chapter 60: Nothing Special

Book 12: Chapter 60: Nothing SpecialElder He looked across the caravan and wondered exactly what he should be feeling. After all, they were abandoning their homes. In his case, a home he had occupied for centuries. His life in Tide’s Rest had not been affluent by cultivator standards. The Stormy Ocean Sect was small and had never been rich. It was more of a training ground for the rare sparkling talent that appeared in the region. Most of those would leave for more powerful sects in places like Emperor’s Bay or, in a few cases, the capital. Those exceptional talents and geniuses needed to go to those larger sects to find their way.

Elder He had never been one of them. He had followed a plodding path in his small sect. Advancements had come slowly, although he was certain that he had not yet reached a final bottleneck. He had thought, with another century, a lucky encounter or two, and the right insights, reaching nascent soul was a possibility. However, he hadn’t done much to make that happen. In Tide’s Rest, he had been a nearly unparalleled powerhouse at peak core formation. It had grown easy to be complacent with no one to drive him along. He had gotten comfortable helping to run the sect and teach the disciples. Certain that time was on his side, why push so hard?

Of course, time had not been on his side. While he’d been tucked away in this quiet corner of the kingdom, the world had gone mad. Demonic cultivator cabals. The death of the king. The spirit beasts going to war. Demigods from cultivator legends revealing themselves. Part of him wanted to blame Lu Sen. All of this had started when that impossible boy had strolled through Tide’s Rest, terrifying some disciples and killing another. However, Elder He knew that was unfair. However deeply involved Lord Lu might be in events, the man couldn’t be blamed for most of them.

The cabal had certainly existed long before Lu Sen discovered their existence. It didn’t matter where it had come from. The revelation of the cabal’s existence would always have drawn out the old monsters. They all seemed to have a particular loathing for demonic cultivators that transcended any personal differences they might have. The spirit beasts had to have been preparing for this since long before Lu Sen was even born, if reports of his age were accurate. His arrival only seemed more important because it had affected the Stormy Ocean Sect directly. Nonetheless, every time Lu Sen appeared, it seemed to cause upheaval.

Elder He sighed. He knew he was overreacting. It was irritation. That boy had said something to Zhu Fen and Sun Xue that had been eating away at them. They had both become withdrawn and taken to, if he didn’t know better, guarding the wagon that carried the street rats of Tide’s Rest. He didn’t bear those children any ill will. Whatever was happening, it clearly wasn’t their doing. Elder He was just baffled by the girls’ fixation on them. When he asked them what Lord Lu had said, they had tried to explain. The explanation fell short of clarifying the situation to him.

He suspected that something more had been happening in that moment, something they didn’t know how to sense. It was common enough. After all, a hundred cultivators could witness the same thing and yet only one might glean an inspiration from it. Unfortunately, because they couldn’t articulate it, he didn’t know how to guide them. Worse, it wasn’t clear whether he should try to guide them. The wrong word at the wrong time could prove disastrous if they were on the cusp of something.

“What is it?” asked a voice from right next to him.

Elder He nearly attacked before he realized it was Lu Sen. Yet, he couldn’t feel the man’s presence at all. It was unnerving.

“Lord Lu?”

“You’ve been glaring at me for three days now. Just get it off your chest.”“What did you say to Zhu Fen and Sun Xue?”

Lu Sen blinked at him in confusion.

“I didn’t really say anything to them. I just told them that I was like those street rats back in Orchard’s Reach.”

“Surely, you said more than that.”

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“Well, I told them a bit of what it was like. Being hungry, cold, and afraid all the time. Honestly, what I said was nothing special. Anyone who’s ever gone without could have told them the same things.”

That lined up with what the Fen and Xue had said. He just hadn’t believed it.

“That’s it?” asked an incredulous Elder He.

***

Sun Xue glanced at the children in the wagon for the hundredth time that day. They were huddled together, wrapped in blankets. They looked just like any other mortal children to her. Yet, his words felt like they had been carved into her mind. When I look for examples of strength, I look to those children. With no power at all, they have fought far more demanding battles than you have ever faced

. And they live to speak of it. Was this something that was just beyond her grasp? Did she need to suffer as they had suffered before it would become clear? Lord Lu had been right. When she sought examples, she had always looked to her elders and her seniors. They had traveled farther down the path she wished to travel. Surely, they knew more than she did.Yet, Lu Sen had gone so much farther and so much faster than anyone she had ever heard of. Many legendary cultivators had carved their names across history, but there were no stories of growth and power like his. People often talked about one person winning a great battle, but it was always about how their contribution had turned the tide. Even in sect battles, victory was always the result of one group overcoming another. Never, ever, one person taking the field and crushing all that stood before them. With him, though, those tales were literal. Facts to be reported.

She took a certain grim amusement from the knowledge that she was even a very small part of his story. Sadly, her role in it was a particularly disgraceful one. At the time, she’d just been following the direction of her seniors and helping her friend. Still, it hadn’t taken much reflection to recognize just how dishonorable it had all been. Sun Xue had offered her thanks to the heavens every day since that Lu Sen had shown mercy. Now, she would have to offer her thanks that he was not a vengeful ruler. Another cultivator in his place could have and likely would have demanded her slow death for her actions on the beach that day. Seeing what that man had become, and the near certainty that people would speak of him for the next five thousand years, she could only hope that history would forget her entirely.

However, that impossible strength and speed of advancement had to mean something. If any cultivator had secrets to shake the heavens and the earth, it was him. He could have said anything to them, or nothing at all, and yet he had spoken about these children. He had spoken about their strength. Nascent soul cultivators didn’t speak because they liked the sound of their own voices, so his words had to have deeper wisdom than she was seeing. Was there a flaw in her thinking? Perhaps even a flaw in how cultivation was taught?

She had always seen strength and power as inseparable and perhaps even interchangeable. But Lu Sen had spoken about them as though they were barely related. Or, at the very least, the strength he valued was not the strength of raw power. The battle against the self, she thought. He had spoken about despair and hopelessness, but maybe those were just examples. Perhaps the real battle of self, the place where one built true strength, was the battle against one’s own worst nature. After all, she had been too willing to accept the advice that sounded like it would serve her best interests. Pair that with the arrogance that everyone in the sect took for granted, and the kind of person it left was nothing at all like those children.

In fact, it was nothing at all like the person she remembered being the day her parents had brought her to the sect. She had been full of promises about being the kind of cultivator who protected people from danger. Yet, instead, she had become a danger to other cultivators. Would her dutiful, honest father, the man who never had an unkind word for anyone, look on who she had become with pride? No, she didn’t believe he would. She had lost that battle with her worst nature. In truth, she had never fought that battle at all. She had surrendered her best intentions with barely a backward glance.

She had built the power, but not the strength of self to wield it wisely. It was no wonder her cultivation journey had slowed to a crawl, but that journey wasn’t over yet. The person she been was still inside her. Buried deep, perhaps, but she was still there. She could still become the kind of person, the kind of cultivator, that she had set out to be. The path forward was less clear to her, less certain, but it felt…It felt right.

***

Sen hazarded a glance at Elder He as they watched divine qi pour down on Sun Xue.

The elder turned to give him a flat look and said, “What you said was nothing special? Do you have anything not special to tell me?”

Sen pinched the bridge of his nose and said, “We don’t know that had anything to do with me. I imagine she’s been building up to this for a long time. I’m sure it’s just a coincidence.”

“How many coincidences like that have happened before?”

“None,” said Sen confidently before whispering in the smallest voice he could manage, “this week.”