Book 2: Chapter 60: Passage
Sen was pleased to discover that being on a ship didn’t bother him particularly. It took him a few hours to get used to the motion of the ship. After that, though, he was fine. He chalked it up to his body cultivation. Lifen, on the other hand, wasn’t that lucky. She was ill for days. So, Sen divided his time between cultivating and making sure the poor girl drank some water or ate some weak broth. Cultivating at sea was a wholly different experience from cultivating on land. On land, there was always a mix of qi types. The exact mix would change based on factors like geography or what was trapped in the soil in a given area, but there was a mix. At sea, there was almost nothing but water and air qi available. Of everything else, there were only hints. For pure air or water qi cultivators, it would be a boon. For Sen, it was a constant challenge. He could let his qi become a little unbalanced based on immediate need, but only a little.
If he let that imbalance get too pronounced, it would be bad for him. He’d made that mistake on the mountain, once, and had no intention of doing it again. It forced him to get creative, in some ways, and it forced him to push his limits. To get access to fire qi, he volunteered to help in the galley. Even on a ship, where fire was an existential threat if it ever got out of control, men expected hot meals. Volunteering let him stay close to the stoves and soak up enough fire qi to keep himself in the proper balance. To cultivate shadow qi, he just needed to wait for dusk. Metal qi was trickier. There was very little metal on the ship or in the water. For that, he needed to pull out all of the weapons he had in his storage ring and very nearly sit on top of them while cultivating.
The biggest challenge, though, was finding earth qi. They were too far from land for it to just show up in the environmental qi. There were no ready sources of earth on the ship save for some sandbags, and even those were very poor sources of earth qi. They’d been separated from true earth for too long, exposed to too much water, and so they served as little more than a weight to keep the ship balanced. For that, Sen had to push himself hard. He’d been forced to drive his senses, his qi, down through the endless expanse of water beneath the ship. He’d very nearly given up, always finding nothing but more water. Perhaps there is no bottom, he thought. Finally, though, he’d cracked through some internal limit, pushed his awareness down a little farther, and found what he’d been looking for.
There was earth qi to be had, profound, untouched, nearly limitless earth qi for that matter. It was just trapped beneath an incalculable amount of water. It had been such a relief to feel that rush of pure, stable earth qi into his dantian that Sen almost overcorrected in the wrong direction. He had to forcibly cut himself off from that pure wellspring of earth qi before he damaged his own cultivation. So, much as he had back on the mountain, Sen forged himself a new routine. Early in the morning, he’d help in the galley to collect fire qi. Then, he’d sit on deck and drive his awareness down beneath the water of the sea to gather earth qi. Back to the galley to help with lunch, then he’d gather water and air qi. After dinner, he’d sit in the cabin and gather metal and shadow qi. There was enough wood in the ship that he could passively gather that as he went through the day.
Lifen spent most of her time in their cabin, reading through the cultivation manuals Sen had found for her. Sometimes, he’d find her practicing the techniques and offer the occasional insight if he had one. Mostly, though, he left her alone. He well understood the challenges of unraveling a cultivation manual. It could take an absurd amount of time and sustained concentration, depending on how obscure the manual author decided to be. He didn’t think any of the manuals Lifen had were quite as bad as the one he’d worked from, but it was hard to judge. He needed different things from his manuals than she did.
She did seem to be making progress, though. Depending on the day, he’d find her with an abundance of one kind of qi or another in her system. She had, wisely in Sen’s opinion, set aside the manual focused on fire qi until they got back onto land. She did seem to have a strong affinity for water qi, but it was also absurdly easy to access water qi out on the sea. Even so, she didn’t seem to have to work quite so hard to gather it and store it as she did with the other qi types. He’d decided he’d give her another week to play around with the manuals and different qi types before asking her if she had any preferences. He had considered talking to her about using multiple qi types, but that was his path and a difficult one. He wasn’t sure if he should talk to her about it. On the one hand, he thought he should present the option, so she had a full understanding of the choices available. On the other hand, most people seemed to have enough trouble just dealing with one qi type. He set the question aside to be dealt with later.
As for Lo Meifeng, she seemed to revel in the opportunity not to have to deal with anyone for the first several days. She only came out of her cabin occasionally to have something to eat and, seemingly, to make sure Sen hadn’t fallen overboard or gotten himself eaten by some kind of sea monster. Then, she’d vanish again. It turned out that even her desire for solitude had limits. After five days of largely ignoring everyone, she came out on deck one afternoon to find Sen. He’d meant to be gathering water and air qi, but there was something off about them that day. Something he couldn’t quite put his finger on. Sighing, he looked up at Lo Meifeng.
“I never did ask,” he said. “Where is this ship going?”
Lo Meifeng laughed. “It’s only occurring to you to ask about that now?”
Sen shrugged. “I never had a destination to begin with. The clue is in the name, wandering cultivator. I was just seeing the world. This ship is going somewhere. It’s somewhere I’ve never been. That seemed good enough.”
Lo Meifeng had a thoughtful look when she answered. “I’ve booked us passage as far as the southern coast. We don’t have to go that far, but we can. The ship will stop in a couple of ports along the way. We can just pick one of those at random and leave, or we can ride it all the way down the coast. I’d prefer to pick a port somewhere, but that’s just me.”
Sen lifted a shoulder in an I-don’t-care gesture. “It’s all the same to me. As long as you think we’ve put enough distance between us and whoever might be looking for us to give us a head start, I’m fine with it.”
“It’s always hard to know about that. We left a lot of confusion in our wake back in Emperor’s Bay, but someone determined enough might still manage to untangle the mess. It’s an open question about how long it will take them to sort through the information. This ship is privately owned by the captain, so there shouldn’t be a record of us taking passage on it but,” Lo Meifeng shrugged that time, “there’s no real way to know. No matter where we disembark, we’re taking a chance that someone will be waiting for us there.”
Sen stood, stretched, and leaned against the railing. Part of his mind was still preoccupied with the strange impressions he was getting from the water and air qi.
“Use your best judgment. I know almost nothing about avoiding pursuit. I’ll follow your lead as far as that goes.”
“You aren’t as reckless as I thought you were,” she observed.
She gave him a sidelong glance, almost like she wanted to see how he’d react to her words.
Sen gave her a wan smile. “I probably am, sometimes, but I try to avoid being a complete moron. I intend to survive this. If that means listening to someone else, I can do that. If that means running away in the middle of the night because things feel wrong, I can do that too.”
“Good, because you probably will have to do exactly that, and a lot of other unpleasant things. You know this will get bloody sometimes, right?”
Sen made a sour face but nodded. “Yeah, I assumed it would.”
“You can’t hesitate because they definitely won’t. That girl down in the cabin can’t afford for you to hesitate. Second-guessing because you aren’t certain you’re standing on the moral high ground will get you killed. It will probably get us all killed.”
Sen loathed what those words implied, but he also knew that the woman was probably right. He’d have to make some hard choices. Sometimes, he’d have to make those choices without all of the information. He was very sure that it would make sleeping at night harder but better to be tired than dead.
“I understand,” he said.
“I hope so.”
They stood there at the railing for a time in silence. Sen frowned down at the water and then out at the horizon. Lo Meifeng noticed.
“Is there something wrong?” she asked.
Sen cocked his head a little to one side, as though it would help him hear the messages the qi was carrying better. He couldn’t be sure, but he thought he knew what was happening.
“I think there’s a storm brewing out there,” he said, gesturing to the horizon.
“There’s always a storm brewing,” she said. “Always.”
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