Unintended Cultivator

V13 Chapter 23 – Heavenly Steel

Sen gave his master a wry smile and said, “The last time we did this, you made me go out looking for the things I needed.”

Master Feng broke out in a very amused smile.

“So, I did, and with good reasons. You shouldn’t expect things to be easy.”

“You didn’t even use most of the things I got.”

“Of course, I didn’t. Those things weren’t for those swords. They were for the swords we’re about to make.”

“You were planning this far ahead?” asked Sen.

“You’re so young. It’s easy to forget that. Sen, this barely qualifies as me planning ahead. When I plan ahead, it’s generally for things I expect to happen in five hundred or a thousand years. Given the pace of your advancement, though, it wasn’t hard to anticipate that you’d need new swords sooner, rather than later. I just took an opportunity.”

“If you knew that, what do you need from me? It’s not like I can provide you with real help. I’m no kind of smith.”

“That’s the heavens' own truth. Even if you wanted to be, you haven’t had the time. Unlike alchemy, smithing isn’t something you can race through on natural talent and that frankly disturbing intuition of yours. If you want to forge nascent soul weapons, you actually need a thousand years of experience. Maybe even two. You just can’t learn what you need to learn in less time than that.”

Sen wanted to take offense at those words, but he suspected that Master Feng was just giving him some blunt truth. Also, it wasn’t as though Sen had been harboring some deep longing to become a smith. It was interesting enough. If he ever found himself with a few hundred years without some catastrophe bearing down on him, he might take it up as a hobby. However, he suspected that becoming a truly extraordinary smith started with a calling, and it was a calling he’d never felt. Unless Sen missed his guess, the same was true of other common cultivator professions like making talismans or seals.

Sen had gotten a basic education in those, the way most sect disciples probably did. He could even make some adequate talismans and seals, but it wasn’t because of any special insight. He learned those skills largely by rote and trusted that the process would yield the expected result. It was the same way most alchemists worked, now that he thought about it. However, the very second he was allowed to stop focusing on those skills, he did. In hindsight, he wished he’d devoted a little more time to talismans. He’d underestimated their usefulness until he saw some of the sect cultivators using them.

Now, he had too many responsibilities to acquire largely new skills. The best he’d been able to do was have a few useful conversations with the talisman experts who traveled with the army. Unfortunately, it was as demanding as alchemy at the higher levels. That meant that he wasn’t going to be able to cheat his way to mastery the way he had with alchemy. At least, he didn’t think he would be able to. The only real way to test it would be to try, but that would require hours of devoted practice every day. Hours he simply did not have to give.

Maybe, he thought, just maybe I’ll be able to give it some attention after I ascend

. That was the only part of ascension that held any appeal whatsoever to him. The dim hope that he might be freed from the all-consuming responsibilities that dogged his steps in this world. Not that being freed from those responsibilities would be worth the price. But if he couldn’t escape it, he needed to find something good about ascension. Otherwise, it would probably prove all too easy to grow weary of life and let death claim him.“Are you listening to anything I’m saying?” asked Master Feng rather loudly.

The words snapped Sen out of his thoughts. He shook his head ruefully.

“I’m sorry. I’ve got a lot on my mind these days.”

“I know that, but this is somewhat important. I suggest you find your focus.”

It was a light rebuke, all things considered, but it did tell Sen that he was irritating Master Feng. Given that Sen had asked the man to do this for him, it was hard to find the elder cultivator at fault. There were a great many other things that the man could be spending his time on. Like walking around those ruins. That raised a question in Sen’s mind.

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“Did you get enough time in the ruins?”

A pensive look briefly crossed Master Feng’s face.

“Yes, and no. There’s a part of me that wants to be there. It’s helping me remember things I haven’t thought about in a long time. Of course, the things I’m remembering aren’t all good, and that’s stirred up some old angers that will never be resolved now. You can’t take vengeance on the dead, after all. But since I didn’t do the killing, it’s hard to put those grudges down. Let that be a lesson to you. Settle your grievances whenever you can, or you might never get the chance.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” said Sen, briefly thinking back and trying to remember if he had any unsettled grudges. “Alright, what is it that you need from me to make this work? I assume that I need to be here for this work properly.”

“Well, it’s not so much that I need you. I need your qi and your killing intent. But when I need them, I’ll need you to be there at that moment. It won’t wait for hours while someone tracks you down, and you manage to disentangle yourself from whatever headache someone has pulled you into.”

“We didn’t do this last time. What’s changed?”

“You’ve changed, for one. Nascent soul qi and core cultivator qi are not the same. Something I’m sure you’ve deduced by now, particularly since you ripped an ancient city straight out of the ground. We could have done this last time, but the benefits would have been marginal. This time, the benefits will be much more apparent.”

“And what is it that we’re actually doing?”

“I’ve heard a lot of names for it, but I just think of it as tuning the weapons. In this case, we’ll be tuning them to you and that monstrous technique of yours. You probably never noticed, but you lose a lot of efficiency channeling that through your swords.”

That made Sen blink a few times. He didn’t recall any lost efficiency, but, then again, would he have recognized it? If that loss was always there, it would have just seemed normal. Plus, Heavens’ Rebuke was so terrifyingly destructive that most of the things on the receiving end didn’t survive it. He’d never thought to compare the results of using the technique directly against using it through the swords. Dead was dead, no matter how you looked at things. It would probably have been impossible to judge if someone was ten percent less efficiently dead.

Of course, he was going to come up against increasingly powerful enemies the longer this war dragged on. What seemed like a meaningless loss of efficiency now might mean the difference between killing one of those more powerful enemies and merely wounding them. A possibility that was much more on his mind now that he’d been bled almost dry by raising that city. His constant passive cultivation had restored some of his qi, but it was a fraction of his old reserves. In an extended fight with a powerful foe, there was a real possibility that he’d die simply because he lost the ability to use techniques. He’d seen it happen to other cultivators, and he didn’t want it to happen to him.

“Alright. This city seems be under control. I’m sure they’ll survive without me for—” Sen paused. “How long will this take?”

Master Feng idly brushed the bottom of his chin with a thumb and said, “A few days? A few weeks? It’s not something with a predictable schedule. Especially not when you’re involved. You have a way of disrupting things in bizarre ways.”

“Well, they know where to find me,” said Sen. “Is there anything else different that I should know about?”

“Yes. The metal I’m going to use for this is very, exceedingly, ridiculously rare. Among its many irritating features is that you can only forge it once, so we need to get this right the first time. I’m liable to kill anyone who comes in here with news of anything less than a full-blown uprising or a mass invasion of spirit beasts.”

“I will have guards posted to turn everyone away,” said Sen. “What is the metal?”

“It’s called Heavenly Steel, which is an absurd name. It’s not steel in any meaningful way. But that’s what they call it. It wasn’t worth fighting people about the name.”

“Why do they call it that?”

“Because every once in a while, a rock falls out of the sky. Even more rarely, that rock has metal in it that people can harvest. Even more rarely than that, they discover Heavenly Steel in the rock. Then, a minor war breaks out between people like, well, us,” said Master Feng, gesturing at Sen and himself. “But I’ve been around a very long time, so I’ve managed to acquire some of it here and there. I figure this is as good a time and reason as any to put some of it to use.”

“I feel like I’m taking advantage of you. If anyone should have a sword made from that, it’s you.”

Master Feng gave Sen an incredulous look.

“I already do. I’ve been using this sword,” he patted the jian at his hip, “for the last fifteen hundred years. I’ve only needed to sharpen it once, thank the heavens.”

“Still—” started Sen, only to be cut off.

“Assuming we both ascend, you’re going to have all of forever to find a way to repay me for this kindness,” said Master Feng with a roll of his eyes. “If you feel that you simply must.”

Sen wasn’t entirely happy with that arrangement, but at least the elder cultivator hadn’t forbidden him from trying to repay that kindness.

“I will repay you.”

“As you like,” said Master Feng. “Now, go post those guards so we can get to work.”