Unintended Cultivator

Book 7: Chapter 18: Focused Consideration

It was both fortunate and unfortunate that Glimmer of Night loved making webs, at least in Sen’s opinion. The spider had made dozens of them at Sen’s request without a single complaint. If anything, he had seemed quite pleased with Sen’s focused attention on the process. That meant there were ample opportunities to see how the webs were constructed. It also meant that there were ample opportunities for Sen to experience the true and magnificent depths of his failure to understand what the spider was doing. Glimmer of Night had tried to find other ways of explaining what he was doing, but even Sen could recognize that the problem was with his comprehension and not the explanation itself. He did consider the possibility that the sapient spiders as a whole were simply interacting with qi in a fundamentally different way than human cultivators.

Even if they were using different methods, though, those methods shouldn’t be out of reach for him. Spirit beasts still relied on cores and qi channels. Qi could come in lots of different types, but no one could make qi operate in ways that violated its basic nature. Even if Sen couldn’t immediately see how it was done, the qi in the webs acted the way that he expected qi to act, even if he couldn’t quite pin down what type of qi it was. It had qualities that reminded him of air qi, but there were other things mixed in with it. Types of qi that Sen was confident that he hadn’t seen before. When he’d asked Glimmer of Night about it, the spider had just shrugged and called it web qi. That struck Sen as a terribly specific and complex concept for qi, which was usually attuned to simpler and broader concepts, like air, fire, and shadow. Since he lacked a better name for it, Sen was left with little choice but to accept the one the spider had given for it.

More importantly, he wasn’t focused on the web qi itself. That was little more than an interesting cultivation puzzle that he’d think about in spare moments for months or even years to come. He was intent on finding a way of manifesting shadow techniques like Glimmer of Night did with webs. Sen could solidify shadow qi. He could already imagine the disruption to entire groups of enemies if he hit them with a solidified shadow web. The technique wouldn’t even need to last more than a few seconds to do its work. That kind of shadow web would have caused havoc with the horde of devilish spirit beasts back at the ruins. It’s a good idea, thought Sen, if I can make it work. The problem was that he couldn’t take the time to brute force it during a battle. If he could co-opt whatever method the spider used for the webs, though, near instant manifestation of shadow webs would prove hard to defend against in the middle of a fight.

Good idea or not, though, he couldn’t seem to make it work. Falling Leaf could tell he was fixating hard on something and offered to keep watch over Ai while he tried to sort it out. He’d spent the last two days away from the galehouse in deep meditation that was only occasionally broken when he tried out some new idea to make it work. He’d felt Fu Ruolan keeping an eye on him from a distance, but she didn’t interrupt. It seemed that she was satisfied that he was putting full effort into the task. Sen was coming to the unhappy conclusion that full effort wasn’t going to be the key to solving the problem. He needed some kind of nudge or insight that was eluding him. Frustrated with himself and the overall lack of progress, Sen turned his mind to the more obscure but equally compelling bit of information that Glimmer of Night had provided. That the inherited web patterns that the Great Matriarch had provided to all spider kind were some manner of roadmap to modifying reality or possibly accessing the layers of reality.

There was more than a little overlap between that and what Fu Ruolan wanted him to do with shadow walking. Except, the spiders were taking it a lot further than mere shadow walking. What Sen couldn’t figure out was why spiders didn’t rule the universe if they could somehow change reality to suit their whims of needs. He’d hesitated to press Glimmer of Night for more information because he had a few suspicions of his own. The simplest explanation was that the other gods, goddesses, and ascended beings had made it clear that they wouldn’t tolerate such a situation. Another possibility was that there had already been a war of some kind over the matter and the Great Matriarch had come out on the losing side. Of course, it was equally possible that the spider divinity was working toward wholly inscrutable goals from utterly unfathomable principles that were well beyond the comprehension of a lowly core cultivator like Sen. Without a better sense of which explanation was true, Sen didn’t see many advantages to asking the questions.

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What he did wonder about was how those inherited patterns conferred knowledge and truths. Glimmer of Night was absolutely certain they did, so Sen believed they did as well. Sen considered that the inherited patterns might serve as a kind of spider code that served in the place of written language. The longer he thought about it, though, the less that felt right. No, whatever was happening there was touching on some deeper truths. He could feel it, the way he could feel vast powers moving behind the world if he concentrated just the right way. Not that he did that very often. There was insight to be gleaned by observing that world behind the world, but the risks to mind and soul were enormous while the benefits were in no way guaranteed. None of that stopped Sen from speculating about whether he could access the knowledge and truths in those patterns if he could see them. He doubted it, but he wasn’t eager to neglect anything that would help him master shadow walking.

He’d have to broach the subject with Glimmer of Night. The good news was the spider was so direct that he’d just tell Sen if it was forbidden. It seemed like there was a solid chance that was the situation given that the patterns seemed to form the central core of spider cultivation. Even so, just asking about it probably wouldn’t cause any meaningful problems as long as he accepted whatever answer he got with good grace. Even if some people wouldn’t believe it was so, Sen was capable of acting with some decorum. He just didn’t meet a lot of people who warranted expending that kind of effort. With a start, Sen realized that he was rapidly drifting away from the reason he had taken up station away from everyone else. That probably meant it was time to head back or at least take a break and do something else.

It was still a couple of hours until Ai would need her evening meal judging by the sun. Sen made one of the shadow balls that he used to help distract the little girl. He tossed it back and forth between his hands as he idly examined the trees around him. Most of them were old. Very old. So old that the lowest branches were dozens of feet above him. With nothing but bark on the trees down at ground level with him, Sen got an idea. He drew his arm back and threw the ball at one of the trees. It hit the trunk and bounced off at an angle. Sen let it dissipate and formed a new ball rather than chase the other one down. He spent a few minutes figuring out how to make the ball bounce back to him, but then it got boring. Thinking about how the first ball had bounced away, Sen started trying to work out how to make the ball bounce between two trees and come back to him. It took close to half an hour to make that happen. Sen felt it as Glimmer of Night approached, but he kept at his game.

“Taking a break. Having fun.”

“Alright, but what are you doing?”

“I’m trying to make the ball bounce between several trees and then come back to me without actively influencing it.”

“I see,” said Glimmer of Night.

The spider watched Sen’s game for a while before he spoke up again.

“Can I try?” asked the spider.

Sen gave Glimmer of Night a surprised look. He wouldn’t have thought the spider went in for such trivial things, but maybe spiders had their own games. Sen handed over the ball and went to stand where the spider had been. Glimmer of Night took maybe six practice throws before he threw it hard enough to make the construct pop. Sen winced as the minor technique was broken, but the backlash was minimal. He gave his head a little shake, made another ball, and tossed it to the spider. The spider nodded, turned, and threw the ball. Sen was torn between outrage and amazement as the ball bounced between six trees before flying back to the spider’s outstretched hand. Glimmer of Night paused for a moment before he adjusted his position slightly. Another throw resulted in the ball bouncing between eight trees before flying back to the spider.

“This is entertaining,” said the spider. “The geometries are fascinating.”

“I think I’m starting to understand why so many people don’t like me,” said Sen.

“Why is that?” asked the spider in a tone of completely unfeigned innocence.

“I—” Sen didn’t have the heart to explain. “It doesn’t matter. Okay, so explain to me how you just did that.”

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