Unintended Cultivator

“So, where were you while all of that was happening?” Sen asked.

Uncle Kho looked up from the scroll he was reading. They were waiting for Auntie Caihong to finish up with Li Hua. Sen was confident that the woman would be fine, so it was mostly just waiting around. Uncle Kho had joined him in waiting, although he had pulled out one of his seemingly endless collection of scrolls to read. Sen honestly didn’t know how the man could pick things up and put them down and still get anything out of it. If Sen didn’t give a scroll his full attention for long periods of time, he tended to lose track of the details. That might be fine for scrolls about history or agriculture, but the details mattered a lot with cultivation.

“About one hundred feet in the air directly above those fools.”

“You were?” asked Sen, startled that he hadn’t so much as felt the man’s presence.

“I was. I saw it as your challenge, so I didn’t want to intervene unless lives were truly at stake,” said Uncle Kho, answering Sen’s next question. “Although, if you hadn’t killed the one who was waving that poor little girl around like a sack, I would have. I almost did.”

While Sen wished that the elder cultivator had intervened as soon as it all started, he understood why he hadn’t. It was the same reason that Sen and the teachers at the academy didn’t intervene when students came into conflict unless it reached a certain threshold. People can’t always believe that someone is going to step in and save them. It was honestly one of the things that bothered Sen most about the sects. It gave cultivators a false sense of power when they were in one. Unfortunately, that kind of borrowed strength didn’t mean much when put up against true power. After all, even if a sect would avenge you, dead is still dead.

Although, Sen wasn’t sure he had much room to judge there. He had done his best to avoid leaning on the borrowed strength of his teachers, but he also knew it had sheltered him. He doubted the sect leadership in the capital would have been quite as gentle with him when he was dismantling a criminal organization and publicly murdering a nascent soul cultivator if he hadn’t been Master Feng’s student. Well, maybe Lai Dongmei would have still been nice to him, but that was for entirely unrelated reasons. Still, he understood Uncle Kho’s reasoning. Sen had brought this problem down on his own head and the heads of the townspeople. It was his mess to clean up.

And, he had been shocked to discover that while there were injuries, there hadn’t been any deaths. That suggested either shocking incompetence or clear intention on the part of the Twisted Blade Sect. He was leaning in the direction of the latter. He suspected that they had been told he had a fondness for mortals, so the best way to get him to engage was to harass the nearby mortals. They just hadn’t understood who or what they were provoking. Of course, that was damning in its own right. It wouldn’t have taken much effort to learn that provoking him that way was going to trigger an extreme and violent reaction. The kind of reaction that led to a sect war. Except, there wasn’t going to be a sect war. Not the way that anyone expected there to be, at least. He wasn’t going to hurl his small collection of cultivators at a larger, more experienced sect. Doing that would be no better than killing them himself. No, he was going to have to deal with the problem another way.

“I know that look,” said Uncle Kho.

“What look?”

“The look that says that a sect is going to cease to exist. It’s been it on my own face often enough.”

Sen decided that there wasn’t any point in denying it. After all, the whole world was going to know by the time he was done.

“Yes,” agreed Sen. “That’s what’s going to happen.”

Uncle Kho gave him a long look.

“You know that it isn’t just going to be the sect leadership, don’t you? If you go to destroy that sect, you’ll have to kill them all, or so many of them that it won’t make a meaningful difference. Elders, core members, inner sect disciples, and outer sect disciples. There’s a cost to doing something like that. Are you sure you’re ready?”

Sen took a deep breath. He wondered, Am I ready? Does it matter?

“The fight is coming,” said Sen slowly. “One way or the other, there’s going to be death. It’s just a question of who is going to die. If I let the fight come here, it’ll mean letting all the cultivators here fight people they probably can’t stand up against. I know hard challenges are important for advancement, but they aren’t ready. Not for something like that. Asking them to fight that battle is throwing their lives away. So, it doesn’t matter if I’m ready. I created this problem, so I have to solve it. Even if that means doing some things that I won’t be particularly proud of after the fact. It won’t be the first time.”

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Uncle Kho regarded Sen for a moment before he looked away. There was a distant, pained expression on the man’s face.

“I never told you why I started destroying sects, did I?”

“No.”

“Weren’t you ever curious?”

“Auntie Caihong explained a little bit. I just didn’t think I should ask about it. I didn’t want to drag up painful memories. It seemed like a poor way to thank you for all you’ve done for me.”

Uncle Kho gave him a surprised look and smiled. He reached out and squeezed Sen’s shoulder.

“You’ve come a long way, but you still have a good heart.”

“Maybe not as good as I’d like,” said Sen, “but I try to not be terrible.”

“True of us all,” said Uncle Kho before he got that same faraway look. “I had a sister. Dai Lu.”

Sen was shocked at that particular revelation. Then, he felt stupid for being shocked. Master Feng had a brother, so why would it be a surprise to learn that Uncle Kho had family? It was just hard to imagine any of them with family. They were so old, so powerful, almost gods in their own rights. To Sen, it was like they occupied some reality other than the one he was in. He thought he should say something, but Uncle Kho started speaking again before Sen could think of anything relevant to say.

“We were very close. She was barely a year younger than me. We grew up in a place not that different from that little town where you grew up. Our parents were farmers. It was a simple kind of life, but my sister and I did everything together. We even started cultivating at about the same time. Of course, the world was a little different then. There were more wandering cultivators and fewer sects. It wasn’t unusual for wandering cultivators to find a little village they liked and stay there for a couple of generations. What’s forty or fifty years when you have centuries ahead of you? That’s what happened in our village. A wandering cultivator came one day and just stayed.

“Gong Ah Lam was her name. She said she wanted to try her hand at farming for a while. I honestly don’t know that she ever grew a true crop. Looking back, I think she was just tired of traveling, but life in a farming village isn’t very exciting. You have to find things to do. She decided that she’d try to teach basic cultivation to any of the village children who wanted to learn. I wanted to learn. I don’t know that Dai Lu actually cared that much about cultivating, but I was doing it. So, she did it. She was good at cultivation. Better than me. Good enough that Gong Ah Lam didn’t think that she could teach my sister well enough. So, she took my sister to a sect that she knew about. I was so jealous. I was so angry at her for being better than me at something she didn’t even seem to care that much about. I didn’t even say goodbye.”

Sen didn’t even dare to breathe. Uncle Kho’s eyes were wet, and it didn’t even look like he was seeing the room they were in. He was seeing something thousands of years in the past. After a shudder, the elder cultivator started to talk again.

“Regret is a terrible thing. It can eat a man alive. I regret that choice. I regret that I couldn’t find it in myself to pretend to be happy for her. It wouldn’t have cost me anything that mattered. She loved me so much. She only started cultivating so we could do that together. I regret not saying goodbye. I’ll always regret that,” whispered Uncle Kho before he shuddered again. “She went off to the sect, and I threw myself into cultivation. I swore that I’d show her who the real cultivator was. She wrote to us, to me, but I never wrote back. Every time she advanced, it felt like she was taking something from me.

“Eventually, I became a wandering cultivator. You know how hard it is to get letters to or from anyone when you’re constantly moving. I avoided going anywhere near her sect. I didn’t want to see her. Not until I was ready. Not until I made myself into a legend. It was centuries. I only found out she was dead by accident. I overheard some people talking about how some young master had taken a Kho Dai Lu from her sect. It’s funny how things that you thought were so important become nothing when you think your family is in danger. I went to her sect, found someone who would tell me what happened. Then, I went looking for her. I didn’t get there in time. He didn’t even give her a proper funeral. It took some convincing, but I discovered where they just threw her body. I found what was left.”

Uncle Kho fell silent. He was shaking. Sen could feel the rage bleeding off the man. Thousands of years and he was still this angry. Sen didn’t know if it was anger at himself, at the young master who took his sister, or at the sects. Maybe it was all of them, not that Sen would ever ask. Uncle Kho bowed his head for a moment before he carried on with the awful tale.

“I was barely a core cultivator then. I had no business declaring war on a sect, but I did it anyway. I started with the young master. He died badly and very, very slowly. I made sure of it. I might have let it go there, but he told me a lot of things about his sect before he died, about what kinds of things they did behind those walls. It took decades. I haunted that sect. I killed their most promising students before they could advance. I hunted them when they left the sect on missions. I found poisons. The very rare, very expensive kind that can kill nascent soul cultivators. One by one, I killed them until the sect disbanded. Then, I hunted the rest. I killed everyone who ever wore that sect patch. I didn’t care if they played a role in my sister’s death or not. They were all guilty.

“I thought that would be the end of it, but it turned out that sect wasn’t unusual. Not really. So, I started punishing sects. The more powerful I got, the more powerful the sects I would destroy if I found out they were doing things I didn’t like,” said Uncle Kho with a bitter laugh. “I became that legend I wanted to be but only because of what happened to my sister. I think she would have rather had a brother.”

Sen didn’t have any words. He couldn’t imagine that kind of pain. He wanted to provide some kind of comfort to his teacher, but he didn’t have any to offer. What did he know about family? So, they stood there in silence until Uncle Kho’s eyes lost that faraway look. He turned to look at Sen again.

“I hate sects. Even knowing what I know about the role they play in keeping the kingdoms across the Mountains of Sorrow at bay, I still hate them all. Caihong has her own opinions about them, but if you want my help for this, I will give it. Gladly.”