Book 10: Chapter 7: I See Madness Has Taken You
Sen walked along the wall that separated the town from the rest of the rest of the world. Once the word had spread that the spirit beasts had begun their war, all pretenses had been abandoned. The cultivators in Sen’s sect had been explicitly put to work expanding and reinforcing both the physical wall and the formations it contained. Similar work was being carried out around the sect compound itself. It had been a tiny bit amusing to watch the mortal townspeople stare in awe as the once sturdy wall rose in height and expanded in depth at a nearly visible pace before their eyes. Before, cultivators and particularly nimble mortals could walk on top of the wall. Now, anyone could safely and easily stride its length. He had taken to walking on those walls several times a day. Some of it was simply to be seen by the cultivators and mortals tasked with keeping watch. He’d thought it was foolish when Master Feng suggested it.
“No one cares about seeing me on that wall,” Sen complained. “They’ve got enough to do without me distracting them.”
Master Feng shook his head in a mildly disappointed way.
“Things are different now. When this was a sect, your presence was a distraction. Now, this is a fortified town preparing for war. Like it or not, you are their general. People need to see their generals. It improves their morale. Helps them find inner strength.”
“Shouldn’t cultivators be finding that strength anyway?” asked Sen.
“Yes, but many won’t. It’s just one more of a countless number of reasons that bottlenecks happen to most cultivators. It’s all well and good to say that you need to develop inner strength. It’s something else entirely to do it.”
He’d been both surprised and maybe even a little disappointed to discover just how right Master Feng had been. He was willing to forgive the mortals. They’d spent most of their lives developing skills to make enough money to survive. They hadn’t spent countless hours cultivating, honing their martial prowess, and supposedly becoming stronger. It worried him just how brittle the confidence of his cultivators truly was in practice. They always straightened up and seemed more certain whenever he passed by them. He did his best to keep any judgment off his face. He’d usually pick someone to speak with, if only briefly, on all of these walks. Again, it seemed to bolster their morale and confidence. This isn’t good, thought Sen. What will they do if an actual attack comes?
Even so, it did let him expand his spiritual sense out into the distance. His awareness could stretch for miles. Aside from Uncle Kho, Master Feng, Auntie Caihong, and Fu Ruolan, he had the best chance of noticing spirit beasts approaching through the wilds. The problem was that he couldn’t be on the wall all of the time. He still had a sect to run and a town to help govern. That meant putting in the time with the sect and town leadership, but he could do it while he was walking. Granted, that would only be useful if spirit beasts came in force during the brief periods he was paying attention, but it still made him feel a little better to do it. At least it was something. That was the other reason he’d taken to making the multiple wall walks every day.
His frustration had mounted as the days passed and the reports kept coming in. Sen made himself listen. He made himself issue orders. He made himself stay. Everything inside of him wanted to race off to the hottest points of the fight and make a difference. The first problem was the same problem that had initially kept him in place. Everything was too far away for him to get there fast enough. That fact alone might have been enough to make him push for advancement into the nascent soul stage if it would have made enough of a difference. It wouldn’t have. He’d asked some very pointed questions of his nascent soul teachers about it, and they had confirmed that while it would make him faster, it wouldn’t make him that much faster.