Unintended Cultivator

V13 Chapter 10 – Don’t Most Things Try To Kill You?

After giving the ghost panther something new to eat, Sen turned his attention to the remains of the city around him. His formations had cleared away most of the accumulated dirt and exposed what remained of the buildings beneath. His first thought was that he’d been too ambitious in thinking they could reclaim this city. Anything made of stone remained, but there was nothing left that had been made of wood. At least, there were no buildings. He could see clear signs of where wooden doors and decorations had rotted away. The condition of the stone buildings was not encouraging.

Sen was forced to reconsider his initial thought that a cultivator hadn’t done this. There was damage that looked suspiciously similar to damage he’d left on buildings when being careless or throwing enemies into them. Then again, he had no idea what had happened to these buildings beneath the earth. Maybe all of the weight bearing down on the buildings had left that damage. The design of the structures that were still mostly intact also left him with a vaguely uneasy feeling. There wasn’t anything obviously wrong with them. He couldn’t sense any negative qi around them. They were just…They were strange.

The vast majority of buildings that Sen had ever seen were plain. There were some exceptions, like the palaces he’d been to in the last year or two. They often had decorative elements and complicated roof designs. Yet, everywhere he looked in this city, he saw ornate carvings of beasts he didn’t recognize. If it wasn’t beasts, it was people in the middle of heroic deeds that he’d never heard about. It felt like being in a particularly vivid dream about a different world where he didn’t understand anything. The feeling was uncomfortable and made him even more leery about the prospect of ascension.

As much as this world frustrated and even pained him, the idea of being forced to go to some other world where nothing was familiar was frightening. He understood the threats in this world. That knowledge allowed him to guard against the worst of them. He also had an intuitive grasp of mortal customs and, to a greater or lesser extent, cultivator customs. Setting aside his blatant disregard and even disrespect for many of those customs, that comprehension let him navigate this world. Sen doubted his capacity to thrive in a world where nothing he knew would serve him. Not that it matters, he thought. I’ll have to do it anyway. And that’s not why I brought this place to the surface.

Now that he could freely walk through this strange, unsettling artifact of long-forgotten history, that tug in his soul had become an insistent pull. He looked at Falling Leaf, who was cheerfully devouring a tray of fruit pastries he’d managed to find in a storage ring.

“Let’s go,” he said. “It might not look like anything has survived here, but there must be something I need.”

Falling Leaf swallowed, nodded, and then asked, “Do you think it will try to kill you?”

Sen jerked at that unexpected question.

“Why would it try to kill me?”

“Don’t most things try to kill you?”

Unable to deny that assertion, Sen said, “That’s not a very encouraging thought, even if it is true.”

“Better to be ready,” said Falling Leaf, before picking up another pastry.

Shaking his head, Sen let the tug guide him along. He could have simply flown them closer to the destination, but the ghost panther’s comment had struck home. While there was nothing in his spiritual sense to suggest the presence of a living creature here, it wasn’t a perfect tool. He could hide from it. He’d seen at least one spirit beast do the same. There could be something that had hidden from view in this place, patiently sleeping away the long years until its enemies died or ascended. Granted, not many things could have survived that long without food.

Again, Sen had to remind himself that he didn’t need to eat. A good meal was just something he enjoyed. If things became desperate, he could survive on qi alone. If he could do it, it stood to reason that there were probably other things that could as well. Devils probably fell into that category. It was also possible that dragons could survive without food if they advanced enough. He wished he’d asked the dragon he met a lot more questions. Then again, looking back, that dragon had treated him much the same way Master Feng and Uncle Kho had in the very early days. They’d admitted that they’d treated his training like an experiment.

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The dragon had shown him techniques and sent him on his way, probably just to see what would happen. If Sen had asked questions, there was no guarantee that the ancient and terribly powerful spirit beast would have answered any of them. That brought up a different concern. Sen thought of the dragons as spirit beasts, but he didn’t know if they actually were. He knew that some mortals thought of them as minor gods. When his teachers had mentioned dragons, it was largely in the context of telling him not to make one an enemy. Their origins had never really come up. He turned again to Falling Leaf. If anyone would know, it stood to reason another spirit beast would know.

“Are dragons spirit beasts?”

She gave him a look that suggested she wished he’d asked her something else. After thinking it over for what seemed like an excessive amount of time, she shrugged.

“Maybe,” she finally said.

“You don’t seem very sure about that.”

“Dragons are rare. They don’t speak to anyone but other dragons—” she paused. “And you. We, spirit beasts, do not question them. Perhaps the Feng or the Kho would know.”

Sen nodded. It made sense. He hadn’t gone looking for a dragon. He’s just stumbled across one that was, as far as Sen could tell, amused by him. That situation could just as easily have ended with him dead. He’d been so overwhelmed at the time that it stood to reason that any sapient spirit beast that found a dragon would be equally overwhelmed. Unfortunately, now, the answer to that question was important. Sen very much wished to avoid any situation that included fighting a dragon. He would do it if there was no other choice, but he’d embrace almost anything that let him stay away from that outcome.

Sen knew that there was some superstition at work there. Dragons were so close to being myths that there wasn’t a lot of actual information about them. He’d actually spoken to one and couldn’t say anything useful about their strength or abilities. Yet, their reputations were fearsome. They could be benevolent, if one believed the stories. Those same stories also said they could be capricious or downright vindictive. Sen had to work very hard not to acknowledge that the same thing also applied to him. As the pull inside of him grew almost uncomfortable, Sen looked around. Then, he sighed in frustration.

They were standing outside of what was, unmistakably, the remains of a sect compound. Those compounds all seemed to have a certain feel to them, and this place had that feel to it. He didn’t know if it was something about the walls or the way the buildings were arranged. Then again, it might have been the obvious remains of formations that he could see. His enthusiasm for tracking down the source of the tug evaporated immediately. If anything, he was tempted to sink this city right back to where it had been. Whatever was waiting in there for him to find, it was almost certainly going to be something that brought him pain. It would probably trigger another unwanted advancement with his luck. If not now, then it would happen at some inconvenient time in the future.

“I think we should go back. This was all interesting, but I don’t think there’s actually anything here for me.”

Falling Leaf gave him a long, steady look before turning her gaze to the ancient sect compound.

“Is that because there really isn’t anything, or because you don’t want anything from a sect you don’t know about?”

“I’d say that both of those things can be true.”

“How?” asked Falling Leaf, her eyebrows scrunching together.

“Okay, no, they can’t both be true, but they can both be good reasons for us to go back. Let’s just say that there really isn’t anything here.”

“You can’t avoid it,” said the ghost panther, her expression serious.

She knew better than most the exact form of Sen’s worst fear, and that it wasn’t death. In that respect, Sen and the ghost panther were of the same mind. Death was just death. He’d fight to live, but if death found him, it found him. He’d regret that it took him away from the people he loved, but he also knew that killing him wouldn’t come cheap. If someone managed it, he would have made them earn the kill. In that situation, his regrets would be minor.

“I know I can’t avoid it. But I can try to delay it.”

“Can you afford to give up power? Power you might need?”

Sen exhaled slowly before he said, “You could have just pretended with me for a little while. We both know I’d never be able to just leave. Even if I tried, I’d end up coming right back here. The curiosity alone would have made that inevitable.”

Falling Leaf shifted in place like she was uncomfortable. It was an odd sight from the usually confident ghost panther.

“I’m not good at lying,” she admitted.

“I didn’t say lie. I said pretend. They’re different.”

That seemed to confuse her even more.

“How?”

“You know, I’m actually going to have to think about that,” conceded Sen. “I know that they are different, but I’m not sure how to explain the difference.”

The pair stood there in a somewhat awkward moment of silence before Sen gestured at the hole in the wall where a gate once stood.

“Okay. I’m done avoiding this. Let’s go find out what new misery the heavens have in store for me.”