Unintended Cultivator

After taking a moment to ensure that Grandmother Lu was simply tired, rather than injured, and giving her a brief hug, Sen turned to face the last being he’d expected to see. Falling Leaf was still hovering near the injured Zhang Muchen, but no longer crouched directly over his body. Sen walked over to where she stood. He rested a hand on her warm back as he crouched down to examine the old servant who remained still. Sen briefly worried that he might be dead, but he saw the man take a breath, then another. Confident that he wasn’t about to die that instant, Sen turned to look at Falling Leaf.

“I didn’t think I’d find you here,” said Sen.

The big cat regarded him with her steady feline eyes. “Worried. Too many enemies here.”

Sen grimaced but nodded his agreement. “There were. Thank you for helping Grandmother Lu.”

Falling Leaf made a gesture that Sen took as her saying, “What else was I going to do?”

Much to Sen’s surprise, Falling Leaf reached out one of her big paws and gently nudged Zhang Muchen. When the man didn’t stir, she gave Sen a look that was half inquisitive and half insistent. He nodded at her.

“I’m not Auntie Caihong, but I’ll see what I can do.”

Seemingly satisfied by that answer, the big cat wandered away to inspect Grandmother Lu, who watched the ghost panther with wonder in her eyes. The spirit beast even deigned to let the older woman put a hesitant hand on her head. After that, the cat prowled over to the maid, Lin. Unlike Grandmother Lu, Lin looked positively terrified that the spirit beast would eat her. Sen suspected that Falling Leaf found the girl’s apprehension more than a little amusing. It wasn’t that Falling Leaf wouldn’t hurt human beings, but Sen knew her enough to know that she wouldn’t hurt people that she’d gone through all the trouble to help. After all, if she wanted something bad to happen to the maid, the big cat could have simply withheld her aid.

Confident that nothing terrible was going to happen in the other part of the courtyard, Sen turned his attention to the apparently injured man. Sen let his spiritual sense settle over the old servant. The man’s life energy was intact, though weaker than Sen might have preferred. Still, he wasn’t verging on death, which Sen took as a good sign. He knew that Auntie Caihong had ways of pinpointing exactly what ailed a person with a simple sweep of her qi, but she hadn’t been able to teach it to Sen. What she did wasn’t a technique or a cycling pattern. It was a skill that she’d developed and honed over thousands of years. It depended as much on her vast experience with injuries and illness as it did on any native talent. Experience that she couldn’t simply pass on to Sen in a year or two. She at least explained what she did and how she did it. That, along with the body and qi charts that she’d made him memorize, gave Sen a starting point. If he could identify where there were disruptions, he could at least help deal with those.

He spent about ten minutes using his qi to study the older man’s injuries. Sen had a few ideas, but he knew he was out of his depth. He had at least determined that they could move the older man. There were no serious neck or head injuries to worry about. Sen picked the man up and carried him over to Grandmother Lu.

“Where can I put him?”

“I’ll show you,” said Lin, surprising Sen.

The maid was staring at the old man with deep concern in her eyes. Even as she led Sen into the house, she kept looking back at Zhang Muchen’s limp form. She eventually opened a door and gestured. Sen brought the old man into what he immediately realized must have been the man’s own room. He settled the man on the bed and rejoined Lin in the hallway.

“Can you help him?” she asked.

Sen hesitated briefly before he nodded. “I think so. At least, I can help him some. Enough that he should be stable until a regular doctor or a spirit doctor can be called to see him.”

“He’s always kind to me,” she volunteered. “He’s like the mistress that way. I’m not a very good maid, but they’re kind to me anyway. Please, help him.”

Sen nodded again. “I’ll do what I can for him.”

He left the maid there to stand vigil over someone for no other reason than the injured man had been kind to her. Would that I could be more like that man, thought Sen. Yet, he knew what came next, and kindness would play very little role in it. Before that, though, he could bring his meager medical skills to the older man’s aid. It might not be much, but it seemed that it was all the kindness that the world would let him exercise that night. He made his way to the kitchen, uncovered the banked coals in the stove, and get a small fire burning. He took out what he’d come to think of as his potion pot from his storage ring. There was nothing particularly unique about the pot. It wasn’t made of any special materials or enchanted. It just seemed to work better for him than other pots. He thought that maybe it had something to do with the thicker material, but that was a question for some other night.

He set the pot on the stove with some water in it, then began pulling out some of the medicinal herbs and other alchemical materials he’d gathered over the previous year or so. The man had suffered some minor injuries, but nothing that could really account for his unconsciousness. Sen worried that the true culprit was simply age and that the demands of the fight had overtaxed his system. There was only so much that he could do about that ailment. When it came to mortals, age was the injury that no one could heal. Yet, Sen wasn’t wholly without options. He chose ingredients that would help strengthen the man’s body, support his organs, and quicken his mind.

He also added components that would help flush some toxins out of the man’s system. He felt a brief surge of guilt over that, given his own miserable experiences with toxin purges, but this would be a comparatively gentle experience that happened over the course of a week. Sen might not have bothered with it, save for Auntie Caihong’s insistence that those toxin buildups burned years off of a mortal’s life. He stood there, monitoring the elixir, occasionally adding a new ingredient to balance out the qi profile or simply stirring it to keep the reactions even. When it had boiled down sufficiently, he used a strange sort of cloth that let liquid pass through to strain the unprocessed ingredients out. Auntie Caihong called it cheesecloth, for some reason, and she strongly suggested he buy it in bulk whenever he found some for sale. Given how useful he found the cloth, he expected to take that piece of advice.

“You did that like you’ve been doing it for a hundred years,” said Grandmother Lu.

Sen jumped a little at the sound of her voice. He hadn’t heard her enter the kitchen. He hadn’t even had his spiritual sense extended to warn him of people approaching. It was a sloppy mistake. Sen was grateful that it had happened in Grandmother Lu’s home, instead of somewhere where that kind of mistake would prove immediately fatal. He gave her a small smile and shrugged.

“I practiced a lot up on the mountain,” he said, by way of explanation.

“It seemed like you practiced a great many things on that mountain.”

“They were good teachers. I learned a lot,” he said, checking the temperature of the elixir. “Do you have something to store this, something with a stopper?”

Grandmother Lu found a small jug that Sen deemed clean enough, and he poured the elixir into it. He left a little in the bowl, though. Stoppering the jug, he handed it to Grandmother Lu. She eyed the jug like she wasn’t sure why she was holding it.

“Sen?” she asked.

“Oh, it’s for Zhang Muchen. Two or three large spoonfuls in the morning and evening, until it’s gone. It should help him recover. At the very least, it’ll help him recover enough that a real doctor can take a look at him. I’ll give this to him now, though,” said Sen, waving at the bowl.

“You say that like it’s a task on a list.”

“It’s not over. You know it’s not.”

Grandmother Lu closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “I know. So, you mean to finish it?”

“I do. If the mayor had just let it go, I would have done the same. If he’d just sent people after me, I might have even let that go. But this,” Sen gestured as though to encompass the entire house, “was too much. They knew where I was, and he sent people here anyway. He sent people here to kill you because he thought it would hurt me, or maybe just because he likes ordering people killed. I don’t know. More importantly, I simply don’t care why anymore.”

“So, you’ll go to the mayor’s house and what? Kill them all?”

Sen’s mouth dropped open, and he found that he didn’t have a good answer to that question. He hadn’t thought about it. He’d only been thinking about killing the mayor.

Grandmother Lu continued. “I understand your anger. I’d happily gut that man and watch him bleed out, but he won’t be the only person there. There will be guards, maids, and servants. Will you kill all of them too?”

“No,” said Sen through a shuddering breath. “Of course, I won’t.”

A touch of relief softened Grandmother Lu’s face. “Good, because I couldn’t have stopped you. Having seen you fight, I’m not sure anything short of a full core formation cultivator could stop you.”

Sen blinked at those words. He thought she was probably overselling it a bit. It had been dark in the courtyard. There was a lot happening. He’d just done something flashy. It was easy to overestimate. Taking another deep breath, he looked at the older woman.

“What do you think I should do?”

She laughed. “I think you should take your vengeance, and maybe get a little for me too. Just don’t leave a massacre in your wake while you do it. Be smart. If you can’t be smart about it, then take a cue from that magnificent spirit beast of yours and be stealthy.”

“Stealthy,” repeated Sen, a big smile breaking over his face. “I can be stealthy.”