Book 9: Chapter 41: Infiltration (1)
Wrapped in a cloak of shadow, Sen stared at the distant wall of the Twisted Blade Sect. A traitorous part of him whispered that it wasn’t too late to turn back. He supposed that whisper was strictly correct. He could turn back and abandon the plan. It was possible to do so. It would just mean accepting the pitched battle that would come to the academy and town and all of the death that would follow. Sen knew that he could let that fight come. If it did, he also knew that Uncle Kho, Auntie Caihong, and Master Feng would likely kill every last member of the Twisted Blade Sect. It wouldn’t be the first time any of them did such a thing, but it would be different.
They hadn’t caused the problem. He had. That made this his responsibility. However tempting it might be to let them shed all of that blood, it wasn’t fair of him to ask that of them. Not before he did everything that he could to solve the problem himself. At that point, he could say that he genuinely needed their help. He wasn’t simply shirking an unpalatable responsibility. He wouldn’t just be shamelessly leaning on their strength. Sen had done what he could to avoid that in the past. He wasn’t sure how successful he’d been. It was difficult to judge how much direct or indirect pressure their names applied on his behalf. He was confident that at least some things had gone his way simply because people knew he was connected to them.
The only time he had directly, intentionally involved them was with the demonic cultivators. A choice that they had all assured him was the right course of action. He'd taken their word for it. Part of the reason was because he believed them. He’d seen just a little bit of what those cultivators could do. He could probably stand his ground with most of them now, but he couldn’t have back then. If they hadn’t been going all over the place and running those cultivators down, Sen was confident that he wouldn’t have survived.
The other part of the reason he just took their word for it was because it made him feel protected and safe. He hadn’t been so far removed from those terrible days of living on the street, days filled with panic and fear, to discard anything that made him feel safe. Looking back, he could see that had at least partially driven his stalling on the Luo Farm. Life there had been mostly simple and predictable. That simplicity and predictability had been close enough to a feeling of protection and safety that he hadn’t wanted to give it up. Yet, in the end, he had given it up because it was necessary. The same way it was necessary to move past depending on his teachers to make him feel safe and protected. Now, he was the one who needed to make his people feel that way.
Even recognizing that, he had no idea if he could pull off what he was planning. There were so many things that could go wrong. It only took chance turning against him once to convert his plan into a chaotic fight for survival. Even so, he also had some potent advantages. Shadow walking was so unbelievably rare that it was practically a myth. No one would see that coming. The technique wasn’t impossible to counter, but it was the next best thing to it. His biggest advantage was probably the audacity of it. While the Twisted Blade Sect leadership might have considered the possibility that Sen would lead an attack on their location, they likely thought of it in terms of him bringing a force of people to do battle with the sect as a whole.
He doubted they expected him to physically infiltrate their compound. That would prove a short walk to a swift death for anyone who didn’t possess his hiding ability. With the ability to hide from even nascent soul cultivators, though, he was at a distinct advantage. Again, there was a possibility that someone in the sect could see through it, but one that fell into the absurdly unlikely category. Beyond that, once he was inside the walls, picking him out from all of the other cultivators wandering around the place would prove difficult at best. He just needed to get inside the walls. Of course, the sect leadership wasn’t entirely incompetent. They’d cleared the land around the sect. That meant that there wasn’t much in the way of useful cover. No more second guessing, Sen told himself. You accounted for this already.
Sen made himself stop glaring at the sect walls. Instead, he turned his attention to picking out the best route to get him from where he was hidden in the trees to a shadowed area along the wall created by the flickering torches that the outer disciples assigned wall duty used for light. Fortunately, Sen had people along who were willing and even eager to provide him with some assistance. And it wasn’t long before Falling Leaf and Glimmer of Night once again proved their worth. He felt it in his feet first, the minor tremble that slowly built up to a more serious rumbling. It was hard to keep the grin off of his face when a small horde of spirit beasts crashed out of the forest on the far side of the compound. He watched as most of the guards on the walls disappeared to go defend the sect.
He resisted the urge to activate his qinggong technique. It would have been faster, but would also increase the odds of him being noticed. Even with the distraction of the spirit beasts, Sen couldn’t be certain the hiding ability he already had going would disguise the qinggong technique. He was almost sure that it would hide the technique, but it would likely expose him if even a small burst of qi slipped free. Instead, he dashed toward a small rise in the land that would provide some cover. He barely watched where he was going, choosing instead to keep his eyes on the guards. They were mostly looking toward the far side of the compound where the fighting was happening. Every once in a while, though, one of them would glance in his direction.