V6 Bloopers
Sen had seen a lot of strange spirit beasts in the depths of the wilds, from the damnable bear-cats to birds made entirely of fire. He’d even once been attacked by something that looked like the bastard child of a pangolin and a massive ivy plant. However, all of his experience with spirit beasts had happened on land. Most of his incredibly limited experience with water life extended only to fish. He’d heard about other kinds of sea animals and spirit beasts from Captain Chen but that had been poor preparation for the thing that launched from the ocean's surface. As it drove upward, the water swelled briefly like a wet dome or some kind of bubble. When the dome burst, Sen’s mind didn’t know what to do with the information it received. The beast looked like a massive stuffed child’s toy that resembled a bear.
“What in all of the hells?” asked a dumbfounded Sen to absolutely no one.
The enormous bear thing spread its arms wide and spoke in a voice that rolled like thunder across the water.
“I am the Galactic Friendship Bear. Sent to you with a message of peace and universal harmony.”
Sen blinked furiously, certain that his eyes were deceiving him. However, the creature steadfastly refused to change into something that looked like Sen should kill it immediately. The bear spoke again, its voice reverberating in Sen’s chest.
“I bring you tidings of goodwill, citizens of,” the thing paused, as though trying to remember something. “Citizens of human-compatible planet, designate 12,783.”
“Wow,” said Sen. “Peace, harmony, and goodwill? Did you ever come to the wrong place.”
***
Sen gave the turtle an icy, hostile look. “The last time I took advice from you, it almost killed me. If this meeting had happened six months ago, I would have done everything in my power to murder you and turn you into turtle soup. So, no, I don’t want any more advice from you.”
Elder Bo looked genuinely shocked, or at least that was how Sen interpreted what happened to the turtle’s face.
“I don’t understand. How did my advice almost kill you?”
“Do you know how many copies of the Five-Fold Body Transformation manual there are?”
“I can’t say that I do.”
“Two that anyone knows about. One of which is trapped inside a space treasure that’s been locked from the inside. The other was in the hands of a nascent soul cultivator who did not want to be found. I spent years trying to find a copy of that manual. I was dying an inch at a time, my own body cultivation turning against me, searching the wilds for that nascent soul cultivator. I was moments from death when she found me.”
“But you did survive. Look at how powerful you’ve become.”
“Powerful,” snorted Sen. “I almost died fighting a spirit beast a few weeks ago.”
“A spirit beast that no other cultivator at your advancement would have even considered fighting. And you killed it.”
Sen glared at the divine spirit beast. “Was that your doing as well?”
“Of course,” said Elder Bo as though it was all perfectly obvious. “You can’t run an experiment without solid empirical testing.”
Sen went very still for five seconds before he drew his jian. “Turtle soup time.”
It turned out that the turtle wasn’t particularly good at fighting, but Elder Bo did make for a fine soup.
***
Li Yi Nuo stared at the man she only knew as Judgment’s Gale and tried to decide what to do. She refused to let it show on her face, but his last words had frightened her. They hadn’t been boastful, the way she would have thought that something like that would sound. He’d sounded like a man earnestly pleading with someone not to make a terrible, terrible mistake. Worse still, he was calm. He was far, far too calm for a man who should be expecting at least the possibility of violence. There was a stillness to him, and that stillness spoke to a bone-deep resolve to do what had to be done, even if meant doing things he didn’t want to do. Her heart told her to just let it go and run away as fast as she could. He’d let her. She knew that much. He’d all but said it. He didn’t want the fight.
Of course, if she ran away, she would fail in her mission. She would dishonor her master and his faith in her. She’d never be able to return to the Vermilion Blade Sect. Yet, if she didn’t, elders would die by the score so she could avoid facing the consequences of her cowardice. For all intents and purposes, he anointed you as the young mistress of the Vermilion Blade Sect, her master had said. It might be an honor, but it was also a responsibility. She couldn’t let her fear, however rational it might be, divert her from her course. She had been tasked to bring this man back to the sect. That’s what she would do. As if he could read her very thoughts and intentions, Judgment’s Gale looked at her with an expression of boundless sadness.
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“So be it,” he said.
Li Yi Nuo summoned a spear from her storage ring, one of the treasures that had been bestowed on her. It was a heaven chasing spear. It was the kind of weapon that most cultivators could only dream about possessing. Weapons like those could turn the tide in a battle. She studied him as he gave the spear an interested look. Will he relent rather than face such a weapon? He gave her a nonchalant shrug and took out what looked like a scroll. Is it a talisman? Then, he started muttering under his breath about what sounded like the ingredients to some kind of food. She hurled herself at him in a fit of wounded pride. Ten seconds later she was chasing after him as he strode down the road, smiling broadly, using her spear as a walking stick.
“Give it back,” she complained.
“No,” said Sen.
“Please, give it back.”
“No. Misbehaving children lose their toys. Everyone knows this.”
***
Laughing River got a gleam in his eye that screamed mischief. Sen thrust a finger at him.
“No! Whatever you’re thinking, just no.”
“Oh, you should have given it a minute. You’d have enjoyed it,” said the fox, before shooting Li Yi Nuo a big smile. “She probably wouldn’t have. Did I mention that I’ve met Lai Dongmei?”
Sen felt an abrupt sense of relief that he’d put a stop to whatever the fox had planned.
“You’ve actually met Lai Dongmei?” Li Yi Nuo said in an awed voice.
“I have,” said Laughing River. “So has Sen.”
“You have?” demanded Li Yi Nuo whirling toward Sen.
“Yep,” said Sen without elaborating at all.
“You have to tell me everything.”
“Yes, Sen, you should tell her everything,” agreed Laughing River with amusement dancing in his eyes.
Sen thought it over. “Alright. Well, to be perfectly honest, she spent most of her time complaining about this terrible lover she had. It was some fox she had a fling with like a thousand years ago or something. Apparently, his manhood was less than magnifi—”
“That’s enough!” shrieked Laughing River, who had gone completely white in the face
***
“Silence! Both of you!” shouted Li Yi Nuo. “A nine-tailed fox and a folk hero are about to go off and do something that people are going to tell stories about. Don’t even bother telling me that people won’t know because those kinds of stories always get out. If you two think you can drag me out here and then cut my sect out of that kind of glory, you’re delusional! I’m staying. And if you think taking me all the way back was going to be inconvenient before, imagine how much more trouble it will be with me fighting you the entire way. So, which one of you is going to show me this so-called army of evil creatures and spirits?”
There was a protracted silence as Li Yi Nuo stared expectantly at Sen and Laughing River. Sen had been worried about something like this. He glanced over the fox who had a thoughtful look on his face. It left Sen feeling unsettled. Laughing River looked at Sen.
“You know, I could always…”
“No,” said Sen, feeling so, so tired.
“It really wouldn’t be that hard.”
“I know it wouldn’t but still no.”
Li Yi Nuo looked relieved at those words.
“Really?” asked the fox.
“Actually, the readers don’t like her that much. Go ahead.”
“What?” screamed Li Yi Nuo. “The readers love me!”
***
At first, Sen tried to keep track of their progress by leaving a trail behind them as he had done before and flying up to see how far they’d come. After what he thought was the equivalent of a few days, he simply gave it up as pointless. The complexity of the path they were forced to walk made it all but impossible to measure progress in a meaningful sense. He simply gave in to the monotony of the walking. With the buildings all looking alike and the roads all made in the same way, the environment fell away from his notice. He drifted into something that was almost a trance. Every once in a while, he’d snap out of it and call for a halt. He’d pass out food, and they’d all rest for a while. Yet, even those breaks started to blur together. Conversation was sparse and usually faded to nothing after a few minutes. For Sen’s part, it was simply that he didn’t think of anything he wanted to say.
He didn’t notice when it was happening. The farther they walked, the less it looked like a city around them. The buildings melted away into a forest, and Sen found himself traversing a beaten dirt path that slowly carried him through foothills covered in tall grass that he didn’t recognize. The path carried him to the base of a mountain where it transitioned from packed dirt into narrow stone steps that led up the mountain. His eyes tracked up and up. There had to be thousands of steps that he could see and likely more beyond that. However, he didn’t hesitate. He simply placed a foot on the first step and started to climb. After all, what were thousands of steps to Sen. The ascent took hours, then days, and just when he was certain it would become weeks, things changed.
The path widened, leveled, and transitioned to some smooth rocklike material he didn’t recognize. There were two lines down the middle of the path for no discernable reason. Sen was about to go poke at the lines to see if they did something when he heard this bizarre mechanical roar. He looked behind him and saw some manner of bizarre yellow… Sen thought it must be a vehicle. It appeared to have wheels. It roared up to him and then came to a shrieking halt. A pale man with heavy stubble and a flat, floppy hat squinted at him from inside the vehicle.
“Get in, kid. We ain’t got all day,” said the man with a strange accent Sen didn’t recognize.
“Who… What are you?” asked Sen.
“I’m Louie, interdimensional cabbie to the stars and, apparently, wayward cultivators. Now, let’s go. You’re running late, and the universe has a schedule to keep.”
A door opened in the vehicle, exposing some kind of bench positioned behind the other man. Sen tentatively slid onto the bench. He eyed the door suspiciously when it closed on its own.
“Hang tight, kid. I’m gonna have to give a bit of extra gas if we’re gonna get you there on time.”
“What’s ga—” Sen started to ask.
The end of that question was lost in Sen’s manful scream as the vehicle shot forward at entirely suicidal speeds.
“Kids these days. I tell you,” muttered Louie as he shook his head in disappointment.
***
“It’s a temporary solution. I’m only here for a handful of years. Besides, I’m not deluded. I’m no kind of parent. I have no business whatsoever trying to raise her. I will try to make other arrangements for her. Better arrangements.”
The nascent soul cultivator’s lips pursed as she made an objection even she didn’t really seem to believe.
“The wilds are no place for a child.”
Sen lifted an eyebrow. “Are you saying that you’d let something happen to her?”
“Don’t be stupid. Of course, I’m not going to let anything happen to her.”
Sen did everything in his power to keep his expression calm and neutral. Fu Ruolan was not fooled. She rolled her eyes.
“Don’t be smug,” complained the nascent soul cultivator.
“Sorry,” said Sen. “It could be worse. At least she’s adorable.”
“I guess that’s true.”
“And when the other seventy-five kids arrive, you’ll barely notice them.”
This ends Unintended Cultivator, Volume Six. Sen and company will return in Unintended Cultivator, Volume Seven.
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