Unintended Cultivator

Once they clear of the congestion around the city gates, Sen had recalled a trick he’d used once long ago to speed up a cart. He used his qi in a modified qinggong technique on the wheels of the carts and wagons, as well as the hooves of the oxen pulling them, to reduce the overall load and increase their speed. It wasn’t until they’d gone a few miles that the stark contrast between his power now and his power all those years ago really struck him. Doing that for one cart and one ox had been a challenge for him then. Now, he was doing it for an entire caravan and it was little more than a background concern in his head. Cultivators really do have too much power, he thought. No wonder the world makes them ascend when they reach a certain level.

He glanced into the back of the wagon he riding in and hid an embarrassed wince. Glimmer of Night was sitting there, serenely watching the countryside and ever-thinning signs of civilization fly by. There had been so much going on that Sen might have left the spider behind if Long Jia Wei hadn’t reminded him that the spider had come along. It made Sen wonder why he had joined them for the trip in the first place. He’d thought it was so the spider could learn more about interacting with humans, but Glimmer of Night had kept himself holed up in that same little room for the duration. Not that Sen had any room to really complain. He’d done similar things during advancements or when pursuing new alchemical ideas. And it wasn’t as though Glimmer of Night had been a nuisance to anyone. Aside from people leaving food outside the room for him, he hadn’t added to anyone’s workload.

Shen Mingxia was also in the back of the wagon. Her eyes were closed and she wore an expression of concentration, so he assumed she was cultivating. After the incident with that idiot ambassador, he’d let her bow out of any additional events. Getting experience was one thing, but he didn’t bring her along to put her in actual danger. She’d seemed both relieved and a tiny bit disappointed. Sen had been curious about that disappointment but didn’t ask. It wasn’t really his business why she felt a given way about anything. He let his eyes drift over the rest of the carts and wagons and sighed.

I’m going to have to make some new buildings when we get back, he thought. There wasn’t going to be enough space for everyone, and he intended to keep the children a little separated from the rest of the people at the academy. Some of that was purely practical. Having Ai wandering around anywhere she wanted to go was one thing. Having a couple dozen mortal children wandering around at will would inevitably result in problems. The last thing he wanted was for one of them to get hurt because they stumbled into the wrong area while some cultivator was practicing something dangerous. He might be rewriting all of their futures, but he wasn’t going to intentionally create a situation where they could die. Not that I imagine they would appreciate that consideration, thought Sen.

The other part was that he didn’t want the children getting the idea into their heads that they would ever be anything but peasants. He could almost feel a much younger version of himself glaring at him for even having that thought. On the surface, it was such an arrogant noble thing to think. He had hated nobles so much for acting on thoughts like that. For pushing people down just because they could. Now, he was the one stepping on other people’s necks just because he could. Except, it wasn’t just because he could. He had a longer view of things now. He recognized threats in a different way than he once had. He shook off the thoughts. He’d gone around and around with it and there just wasn’t going to be a perfect solution.

People were people. People held grudges, especially when you took things away from them, and he had taken everything from the Xie family. Nothing was ever going to change that fact. No amount of wishful thinking about people’s better natures would change that reality or the consequences. That meant that no Xie child would ever learn how to properly wield a weapon. No Xie child would ever become a cultivator. It would simply be too dangerous otherwise. Maybe not to him personally, but it would be too dangerous to Ai. Unless she becomes a cultivator, whispered a traitorous voice in his head. Sen knew it was a possibility, but it made him want to scream every time he thought about Ai enduring the kinds of things that he had endured.

He pushed the thought away. That was a problem for the future. He had right now concerns to occupy him. Sen had made sure that they hired some people with experience in this kind of travel. One of the things he’d talked with them about was the problem of setting up camp. Specifically, how long it would take to do it, and how long it took to prepare food for this many people. Since they were dealing with so many mortals, and so many children, the advice he’d gotten was to stop when they had several hours of daylight left. Even with his quiet help to speed things along, this first day had given him a better sense of how long it was going to take to actually get home. He sighed. Weeks. It was going to take weeks. He’d already known that, deep down in his heart where truths he hated went to live, but he’d hoped that it wouldn’t be the case. Resigning himself, he called a halt.

He’d intentionally picked a spot between towns and villages to discourage any of the children from wandering too far. He was going to be very annoyed if he had to track down children who ran away. While the wilds here weren’t very wild, most mortal children held a deep, abiding fear of them. They didn’t know or need to know that Sen had already frightened away anything within a few miles that might pose a threat. Time to get to work, thought Sen. He needed to clear enough space for them to set up camp. He called over one of the experienced caravaneers and they talked it over for a minute.

Once Sen had a clear picture of how much room they’d need, almost twice as much as he would have thought, he started to cycle qi. After a brief pause to consider, he lifted himself up into the air high enough for everyone to see him. Everyone watched for the next few minutes as he used multiple types of qi to rip trees out of the ground, split and dry the wood, smooth the earth, and cause a healthy layer of grass to grow. Two relatively small stone structures rose out of the ground over a deep pit in the ground. With so many people, he figured everyone would appreciate a little privacy to relieve themselves.