Unintended Cultivator

The next few days were a flurry of activity, at least for Sen and Auntie Caihong. Much like the question of whether he should help the cultivators in his sect advance, there was an equally problematic question that Sen had been willfully ignoring for some time. Should he help the mortals who were hovering on the cusp of becoming cultivators make that leap? From the perspective of coming and ongoing conflict with the spirit beasts, the answer was obviously yes. His conscience told him something else altogether. He wouldn’t be giving them some kind of miraculous opportunity to elevate themselves and their families. That would have been the case in different times when these mortals would have had time to grow into their new strength and advance at a sane pace. Now, they would be expected to fight.

Sen knew from his extensive reading that war was not kind to either foot soldiers or the lowest ranks of cultivators. It wasn’t that their commanders were careless, although that was sometimes true. It was simple numbers. These newly minted cultivators would be expected to fight against spirit beasts who would likely match or exceed them in strength and outnumber them. Learned skill and coordinated support could help smaller forces overcome numerically superior foes. Yet, it was always a fraught proposition with victory constantly balanced an a jian’s edge. A single misstep and the battle was lost. Even without mistakes to hamper them, such victories always came at a cost in blood. That was the opportunity that Sen would be offering them. The opportunity to die in a war that humanity might be doomed to lose anyway.

For all of that, he couldn’t quite bring himself to decide that he wouldn’t make the offer. There would be many who would curse him for not letting them make that choice for themselves. Others would curse him for not seizing every possible resource to achieve victory. He could live with the latter if it came down to it. He wasn’t sure he could live with the former. Cultivation was risk, it was true, but it was also about choices. The choice of what risks to take and when. The choice of pursuing ascension or accepting the lesser reward of a life that eclipsed a mortal one in a thousand ways great and small. The choice to wander or to seal oneself away inside a sect for decades or centuries at a time.

Sen knew that he could argue that it was his choice whether or not to kindle cultivation inside those mortals, but that was a liar’s logic. He felt empowered to make such a choice for himself but was not empowered to make that choice for everyone else. Cultivation did not belong to him and him alone. The right to fight was not his solitary and exclusive domain. He could warn them of the realities but that was as far as his choice could go. Every man and woman would have to make the final decision for themselves. As they should, he thought a little wearily. I can’t bear that choice for them.

So, he threw himself into alchemy. It wasn’t even difficult alchemy. Well, it wasn’t difficult for him and Auntie Caihong. After all of his mad experimentation on himself, the insights he had gained, and tutelage from not one but two nascent soul alchemists, the prospect of making pills and elixirs that could ignite the fire of cultivation in someone’s dantian was almost trivial. Unlike so many things in alchemy, this work didn’t require that he make something specifically for every person. In fact, it couldn’t be done that way because there was no way to know what kind of affinities a person would have before they took those first few halting steps into cultivation. The challenge was simply making pills that could fuel that ignition for most affinities.

Sen had a much broader view of affinities than many cultivators, so his version of the elixir was far more complex than something a sect alchemist might devise. They would make something that could fuel any of the common affinities of earth, fire, wood, water, and metal. Sen’s version included much less common affinities, such as lightning, shadow, and wind. In a perfect world, it would have included dozens of potential affinities, but he lacked the time and resources to produce such things in quantity. It rankled him a bit, but he contented himself with making something that was only vastly superior to something a sect alchemist might do instead of miraculously better. It never even occurred to him that he burned through several fortunes worth of alchemy resources to achieve results he found only barely acceptable.

“You shouldn’t look so dissatisfied with your work,” noted Auntie Caihong as she filled another stone vial and stoppered it.

“It isn’t—” he hesitated. “It isn’t what it could be.”

“So, you’re not satisfied with crafting something that would make half the alchemists on the continent weep blood? You won’t be happy until you make them all weep blood?”