Unintended Cultivator

Sen’s first reaction was to go find someone older and wiser to make this decision. Barring that, he just needed to find someone other than him. I’m not qualified to make this choice for the entire town, he thought. I should ask…Then, it hit him. There wasn’t anyone else to ask. In this place, there was no other authority to shamelessly dump this unwanted decision onto while he fled to do something else. He could certainly ask Master Feng, Auntie Caihong, or Uncle Kho for their advice, and they would give it. But advice was all he would get.

They had made it clear to him that they didn’t intend to gainsay his decisions in the town or sect. On the one hand, it was a courtesy they were showing him. On the other, it was lesson they were teaching him about responsibility. He’d started a sect and more or less laid claim to a town without thinking about all of the consequences. The fact that he hadn’t really set out to do either of those things was a big part of the lesson. They would not save him from this.

Others in the sect might object if he let these unknown spirit beasts stay. He almost laughed out loud at that. Of course, they’re going to object, he thought. Who am I kidding? If I was in their place, I’d object. The townspeople would have things to say about it, as well. The cultivators in the sect could likely defend themselves if these spirit beasts were a threat. The townspeople were another matter. If spirit beasts that were already inside the walls decided to do some killing, there was painfully little the mortals could do about it. The sect members would eventually bring the killing to a halt, but it wouldn’t happen before a lot of people died. That possibility was enough on its own for him to summarily dismiss the idea and leave these spirit beasts to their fates. He owed the townspeople and those at the academy his protection. Inviting these spirit beasts inside their defenses felt a lot like betraying the trust that all of those people had put in him.

The only thing that kept him from immediately telling the spirit beasts to leave was Falling Leaf. She had been adamant that he not kill them. Of course, not killing them was different from trusting them or letting them stay. The truth was that Sen was deeply suspicious of all of them. What better way to set up an ambush than to feign opposition to the beast king and get inside the walls? Even if the people inside the walls were as suspicious as Sen, people were also lazy about things they saw as regular. If some spirit beast walked by a particular stretch of wall every single day, people would quickly learn to dismiss the behavior.

Then, when the moment of betrayal came, it would be easy for a malicious spirit beast to help the enemy breach the walls. They could undermine the formations or simply kill some guards and open the gates. There were more insidious possibilities that made Sen’s stomach churn. How easy would it be to poison the food supply or the wells? The cultivators might survive it, but any mortal unlucky enough to get the tainted food or water most likely wouldn’t get through it. Even if they did, they’d likely never return to their former health. The kind of damage poisons and toxins did inside the body were often irreparable if not caught early enough, even for someone possessed of Sen’s skills.

Then, there was always the possibility of assassination. Sen wasn’t too worried about himself or the nascent soul cultivators, but the leadership of the sect was made up of core formation cultivators. They were in no way easy to kill, but it could be done with the right combination of weapons, skills, and surprise. If even one of these spirit beasts had ill intentions, Sen could wake up one morning to find that the functional head of his sect had been neatly cleaved from the body. Not a wholly insurmountable challenge if he was given some time to fix it, but he was under no illusion that he’d get that kind of time. A blow like that always fell within hours of the main attack itself.

He studied each of them in turn. The bird-man was still on its knees, head pressed to the ground in abject supplication. There was an odd bear with mostly black and white fur, save for a wide ring of bright red fur around each eye. That spirit beast was staring at him with the soft, wet, black eyes nestled into that red fur. Eyes that seemed to plead with him for mercy that he was in no way sure he was prepared to offer them. There were two large wolves with stark white fur and eyes a disturbing, pale blue. Their paws looked to have been carved out of ice itself. Small patches of soil were even freezing beneath those paws. He couldn’t have said how he knew, but he knew that one was male, the other female, and that they were mates. Unlike the bear, they stared at him with defiance in their eyes, as though he was the one who had something to prove to them.

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Sen’s inclination to send them away hardened at that look in their eyes. He met those stares with one far colder and unforgiving than the one he’d used on the bear.