Unintended Cultivator

Sen stepped into the building he’d named the Spider’s Lair in a moment of poor decision-making. The name had stuck, mostly due to Glimmer of Night’s immediate approval. The building itself was set in a mostly unused corner of the compound. It was also one of a handful of buildings that were off-limits to virtually everyone because Sen didn’t want Glimmer of Night to reflexively kill some foolish qi-gathering cultivator with more curiosity than sense. The existence of the building came about as a matter of pure necessity.

When he and the spider had first come up with the idea for the communication cores, it became almost instantly obvious that it couldn’t be located at Fu Ruolan’s home. Any information that came through the cores would likely need to be handed off almost immediately. While her home was close enough for Sen to go back and forth without too much trouble, the same was not true of pretty much anyone else in the sect. Beyond that, even if she were willing to let what Sen suspected would become a strategic resource be there, she wouldn’t tolerate the presence of all the messengers it would require. Hence, the Spider’s Lair was born.

Not that the inside of the lair would seem particularly special to anyone who saw it. It was basically a stone box with no windows. The cores themselves didn’t require any kind of special surroundings to function, although Sen had worked a few basic formations into the walls. Most of them were simply there to strengthen the building and increase the qi density inside a bit. The cores were housed in a cabinet-like structure that was full of small cubby spaces. That made it easy for Glimmer of Night to monitor them and alert Sen if people were trying to contact them. Sen also knew that eventually, they would need to let other people inside. In fact, they would probably need a much bigger building with individual spaces where people could monitor a few cores exclusively, but they weren’t there yet. It also wasn’t the reason Sen had come that day.

“Were you able to do it?” Sen asked.

Glimmer of Night was actively manipulating a web in one corner with threads so fine they were almost invisible. Sen watched as the threads moved through a series of tiny adjustments. He didn’t know if the spider could always do that or if it was a sign of improved control, although he suspected the latter. Apparently not finding what he was looking for, Glimmer of Night made a tiny gesture and the threads dissipated. He turned to look at Sen with his liquid black eyes and nodded. He walked to another corner, picked up a bag, and held it out. Sen walked over and took it. He glanced inside before simply putting a hand into the bag and moving all of the cracked cores into a storage ring.

“Is that enough?” asked the spider.

Sen guessed that he had about fifty of those cores in his ring now.

“I certainly hope so. If it isn’t, that probably means that my plan failed utterly and not having enough cracked cores will be the smallest of my problems.”

“Fair.”