Unintended Cultivator

Book 2: Chapter 5: Misdirection

It took a little convincing at the gate for the guards to let him out. In the end, Sen made up a story about his sick grandmother, silently praying that Grandmother Lu never caught wind of the tale, and pressed a piece of silver into each man’s hand. Sen wasn’t sure if it was the story, the bribe, or some combination of the two, but the guards relented and opened a small door enough for Sen to slip out. Once he was actually outside of the wall, he paused before he turned north and started walking. As much trouble as the splashy mud puddle sect had been so far, he suspected that they wouldn’t simply ignore the death of one of their foundation formation stage cultivators. Sen had gotten the very clear impression that sects saw the rules of the Jianghu as something that only applied when it benefited them.

He did hope that the nature of the man’s death would make it look like a disappearance, at least for a little while. Sen could cover a lot of ground in a few hours. He could cover a ridiculous amount of ground in a day. Still, he expected that they would send someone to look for the man, and then send four or five people for him to take honorable vengeance. That silver he’d handed over to the guards might be enough to get them to look the other way while he left, but Sen didn’t expect it would buy their silence if sect cultivators came asking hard questions about him. No reason to make it easy for them to find him. If he could confuse the issue a little more by laying down a false trail, that would be all the better. Leaving at night made it easier. He didn’t need to travel for more than a mile before the curve of the road and the surrounding forests obscured him from any normal observation.

He went another mile before he decided it was time to get creative. While he had never gone hunting with Falling Leaf, she had imparted a fair amount of working knowledge to him about how tracking worked. First, he channeled wind qi and let it slowly whirl around him, picking up his scent. Then, he sent that wind qi down the road for as far as he could control it, before having it veer off the road on the opposite side of where he planned to go. He made sure that it compressed some grass and broke some twigs. Sure signs that he’d left the road there. Then, using a bit more wind qi, he compressed the air around his body enough to keep his scent contained. He cycled up his shadow qi for a few moments and sent his shadows into the wooded area to judge the best place. Then, he got a running start and launched himself off the road into the forest.

It was only in those kinds of moments that Sen truly appreciated the advantages that body cultivation had provided him. He cut through the air, passing cleanly between trees and over bushes before landing nearly thirty feet away from the road. Granted, it wasn’t a perfect solution. If anyone spent enough time, energy, and resources, they would eventually figure out that he’d come this way. He was just betting that he’d be far enough away by then that he could vanish into the population of another town or city. Just one more wandering cultivator passing through. Or, he thought, I could pass myself off as a mortal instead. Nonstop hiding would be taxing, probably impossible. Still, if he could keep it up for a day or two in the next place he stopped, that would help muddy the waters even more.

Sen pushed those thoughts to the back of his mind and focused on what was before him. He planned to move through the forest for the next several hours, running parallel to the southern road. He checked his dantian and sighed. Doing all of those techniques earlier had been effective, but it had also put a serious dent in his qi reserves. The qi gathering method that was always on in the background was doing its part to refill those reserves, but it was slower than Sen would like. He had never appreciated Uncle Kho’s formations properly until he left the mountain. There had always been abundant qi at that house up on the mountain. Even away from the house, the mountain was still rich in qi. In these tamer locations, the qi was thinner and less potent. When he could find the time and safe location, Sen resolved to set up his own temporary qi gathering formation.

“Sure, safe,” he grumbled to himself. “Maybe just when I’m not in immediate danger.”

Still, while his reserves were lower than he’d like, he wasn’t out of qi by any means. He cycled a little bit of shadow qi to let him get a clear sense of what was in front of him for the next twenty or thirty feet, activated his qinggong technique, and started running. Much as he had when running all of those laps around Uncle Kho’s home, Sen fell into an almost meditative state. He reflexively adjusted course to avoid large obstacles and often went straight over small obstacles. He sensed spirit beasts a few times, but they seemed content to let him pass by unchallenged. When he knew that he’d left the city far, far behind, he edged his way over to the road proper. Checking that there was no one on the road, he stepped out to get a look at the sky. The canopy in the forest had largely obscured it, making it difficult for Sen to track the time. He grimaced at what he saw. He only had an hour or two before dawn.

While Sen’s body was keeping up with the demands just fine, constantly using qi techniques for that long wore the mind down. He needed sleep. He checked his dantian again. He needed more qi. Muttering under his breath about the angry swamp sect, Sen trudged back into the forest, well beyond the sight of anyone looking from the road. He almost mechanically put up his tent. Then, he rallied enough to concentrate on setting up a two-layer formation. The inner formation was a qi gathering formation. It wasn’t too powerful, but it ought to cut down on his recovery time a bit. The outer formation was an obscuring formation. Even someone using their spiritual sense would just see this little patch of ground as more forest unless they were dramatically more powerful and skilled than Sen. It would also encourage any spirit beasts to ignore this spot in the forest. It wasn’t perfect protection, but it was the best he could reasonably do with the resources he had to hand.

Sen took a few minutes to eat some of the rations he kept in his storage ring. He felt a surge of renewed anger at Cai Yuze, while also fully aware of the futility of that anger. Still, he hadn’t even gotten to finish his chicken and broccoli. It hadn’t been Auntie Caihong good, but it had been a lot better than the simple meals he’d eaten most nights while traveling with the caravan. He may not feel the need to eat quite so acutely or as often as he once had, but he was a long way away from Master Feng’s ability to completely disregard food for long stretches of time. He also wasn’t beyond the basic pleasures that sitting and eating provided. There was something intrinsically, Sen considered the right word, human about it. While all living things ate, only human beings took the time to prepare their food in such complicated ways. At least, Sen wasn’t aware of anything else that did so. It transformed eating from a function that one had to do for survival, into an experience that one could enjoy in solitude or with others. Sighing in regret as he finished his rations, Sen settled down on his blankets. Satisfied that he’d done what he could to make himself safe, he let himself drift off into sleep.

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