Book 5: Chapter 15: Standing Aside
Despite his many attempts to draw Falling Leaf into a conversation during the last week of their trip to Mt. Solace, Sen met with abject failure. She would answer questions with a lone syllable or a shrug. While he recognized the root cause of it, Sen didn’t believe for a moment that he understood it. She had rejected what might well be the only other one of her kind in the world in favor of him, Master Feng, Uncle Kho, and Auntie Caihong. He knew that had to have cost her something, probably something very dear, but he didn’t know what it had been. The ignorance frustrated him because he had the feeling that someone else, someone who had grown up in something more like normal circumstances would have known, would have understood, would have been able to help. All he could do was just sort of be around on the off chance that she decided to unburden herself to him. After a week, though, he was starting to think that she wasn’t going to do that. Or, at least, she wouldn’t do that with him.
Yet, for all his concern over her well-being, Sen couldn’t simply abandon the task they were on. He needed to get those mushrooms, which meant they needed to keep pressing forward. He was relieved that Falling Leaf seemed eager to leave behind the scene of that confrontation with Boulder’s Shadow. If anything, she was pushing harder than he was, which was part of what had him concerned. Still, he couldn’t do anything if she didn’t want him to do anything. He understood that much. At the end of the day, he could only wait for her to decide that she wanted to tell him and focus on the task at hand. And he did need to focus on the task at hand. The journey to the mountain had taken six weeks, which meant that they were already behind schedule. Of course, they hadn’t known exactly how far they needed to go when they set out. Their initial pace through the wilds had been brisk, but they hadn’t been pushing hard. They’d often called it a day early when they came across a convenient inn. They would have to forego most luxuries and a leisurely pace back once they had the mushroom, assuming they could find them in the first place.
Sen was surprised to discover that there was some civilization at the base of the mountain. It wasn’t a city as he understood the word, but it was probably the closest thing this far north. Sen would have called it a town anywhere else. He’d had a few days to consider whether to bother with the place and decided to simply bypass it altogether. He didn’t have the time and wasn’t in the mood to get caught up in any nonsense. He also knew that simply setting foot inside those walls was like sending out an open invitation to all of the local nonsense. So, he and Falling Leaf took a course that would send them wide around the town. It would cost them a little time but better a little wasted time outside the town than a lot of wasted time inside the town. Yet, it seemed the heavens were determined to make this part of the journey difficult for him. He’d felt them approaching long before they arrived, so it was exactly no surprise when a dozen people stepped out of the surrounding cover of the forest to surround them.
A quick sweep of his spiritual sense told him that most of them were regular mortals armed with crossbows. There were a few upper-tier foundation formation cultivators and one core formation cultivator. Part of Sen told him that it would be better to talk this out. Surely, there was some peaceful solution to this problem. Yet, the rest of him knew that it wasn’t going to play out that way. These people had come out here to ambush them. Sen supposed it was his own fault. He’d been experimenting on the trip with tamping down the expression of his cultivation level. The goal was simply to make himself less obvious without going in for full-on hiding. Hiding was helpful, but it limited his senses in ways that he didn’t like in the wild. It was the only thing that Falling Leaf had shown an interest in during the whole last week, so he’d explained it as well as he could and she’d figured out her own version of the tamping-down technique.
Of course, it also came with the problem of making him and her look like easier targets than they were in truth. The population had been so sparse on their way to the mountain that it hadn’t resulted in any incidents, but he supposed his luck had been bound to run out. Sen debated with himself briefly before he looked at Falling Leaf. She looked angry and eager. Well, I guess that decides that, thought Sen.
“Which ones do you want?” he asked her before anyone else could say anything.
His tone was so, so very casual that he saw a lot of alarmed looks exchanged among the would-be robbers. The core cultivator stepped forward. She was a tall woman with a piercing gaze. Her skin was pale and her features refined through the magic of advancement. Yet, her lips were pressed into a hard line as she glared at the pair of them. She had an expensive spear in her hands and handled it with the casual air of someone who knew its use. The woman opened her mouth to say something when Falling Leaf’s furious, bloodthirsty eyes met hers and the words died. Falling Leaf sniffed and gestured at the woman.
“She likes pointy sticks. Show her what the Kho taught you. I’ll deal with the rest of them.”
Sen lifted an eyebrow at her and then shrugged. Sometimes, the best thing a person could do for their friends was simply standing aside.
“As you say,” offered Sen.
The woman with the spear finally found her voice.
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“You will…” she started.
“It’s too late,” said Sen, summoning a spear from his storage ring.
She opened her mouth again when, in a move that might have been choreographed, Sen and Falling Leaf both dropped the techniques tamping down their cultivation levels. The woman with the spear went pale.
“Run,” she ordered.
Sen doubted anyone heard the order, though, because Falling Leaf was already among the mortals and the foundation formation cultivators and the screaming had started. Sen started walking toward the other core cultivator. She held her ground, but it looked like she would have far preferred to take her own order.
“Did someone send you?” asked Sen, reaching out and plucking a stray crossbow from the air.
That move seemed to frighten the woman more than all of the bloody carnage that Falling Leaf was inflicting on the rest of the group. He saw her lips compress into that line again before she spoke.
“I’m not going to tell you anything.”
Sen just shook his head. “You will. Because I’m not going to let you die until you do.”
Sen felt one of the foundation formation cultivators cycling for fire. That fool launched a fireball at Sen who rolled his eyes, cycled for fire, and ripped the technique away from the man. There was a cry of pain, although Sen wasn’t sure if was from the loss of the technique or Falling Leaf doing something painful to the man. Sen dismissed the concern and split the fireball into half a dozen smaller fireballs that he made burn hotter and hotter until they turned blue. The other core cultivator seemed to find her balance then and sneered.
“A fire cultivator. You’re all so easy to beat.”
The woman started cycling for earth. Sen didn’t do anything to disrupt her cycling. He just waited to see what she would do. And he waited. And waited. Sen didn’t know who had taught this woman, but she had clearly not benefited from superior training. She also didn’t seem to think that this long pause was unusual. Well, thought Sen, if her training was this poor, it probably stands to reason that most people around here received similarly poor training. When she finally managed to pull together her technique, Sen was disappointed. He had been expecting something massive, something unique, and what he got was a technique that he could probably deploy while half-unconscious. He felt a handful of earth spears forming around him. Sighing to himself, Sen cycled for earth and stamped his foot down once, driving his qi down into the ground and disrupting the woman’s technique. She staggered to one side as the backlash made blood leak from her eyes. Sen shook his head again.
“I guess this is what they mean by a teachable moment,” said Sen after sense returned to the woman’s face.
He cycled for earth qi again and drove it into the ground. A heartbeat later, the woman was staring with huge eyes at the dozens of razor-tipped earthen spears that sprang up around her.
“So fast,” she breathed in awe.
Sen waved a hand and the spears collapsed back into the earth. He gave the woman a hard look.
“Who sent you?” asked Sen before he shook his head. “On second thought, I don’t actually care who sent you. Are they going to be stupid enough to send anyone else to interfere in my business? Do I need to go to town and make an example of someone?”
The woman looked around at the suddenly silent woods around them. Sen followed suit and realized that Falling Leaf had apparently finished her work. There was… There was a lot of blood and limbs littering the surrounding area. Just as Sen was about to prod the woman for an answer a bloodcurdling scream cut through the silence. The woman stared in the direction that barely human noise had come from before she turned a ghastly expression on Sen.
“No. No one will bother you. Now, kill me. Kill me before she comes back.”
“Before who comes back?” asked Falling Leaf, seeming to materialize out of nowhere no more than a few feet from the woman.
“Stay back!” shouted the woman as she stumbled away.
“You didn’t kill her?” Falling Leaf directed at Sen.
“I just wanted to know how much of a hassle this is going to cause us. She says that no one will bother us after this.”
“Do you believe her?” asked Falling Leaf.
“I think she was probably too frightened to lie.”
“Do you want to let her go?”
Sen looked inside himself and realized that he honestly didn’t care. “Up to you. I don’t have an opinion.”
Sen watched as shadows hardened around the ends of Falling Leaf’s fingers into a very frightening set of claws. She advanced on the other core cultivator, who swung her spear almost reflexively. A blurred movement on Falling Leaf’s part and the spear was sheared into two pieces. Falling Leaf had those claws sunk into the skin of the other cultivator’s neck before the severed part of the spear hit the ground.
“Did you lie to him?” she asked.
Sen could feel the earth cultivator trying to cycle, but her terror overrode her concentration. The woman finally spoke.
“No.”
Falling Leaf seemed to weigh that word. “I believe you. So, I won’t make you suffer.”
There was another fast motion, and the cultivator’s head was separated from her body as neatly as the spear had been divided into two. Falling Leaf turned to face him, as though expecting him to say something. Sen glanced at the dead core cultivator. He felt like he ought to feel something about all of this, but it was pretty clear that all of these people had come out here looking for easy victims. He was very confident that if he and Falling Leaf had been as weak as they were pretending to be that they wouldn’t have survived. He didn’t have any empathy to spare for people who operated like that. He’d killed plenty of people in his life, but he tried not to victimize people who stood no chance against him.
Instead of commenting, he pulled out a container of water and a cloth. He walked over and gestured at Falling Leaf’s hands as he took the stopper out of the container of water. He poured clean water over her hands and then handed her the cloth. Once she finished wiping her hands, she gave him an uncertain look.
“Did it help?” he asked.
“I… It did.”
“Good,” said Sen, glancing upwards and judging how much time they had left until sunset. “We should get moving. Unless you want anything from these people.”
Falling Leaf shook her head, and the two set off leaving the remains of the bandits to the mercies of nature.
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