Book 3: Chapter 6: Cultivation Mysteries
Sen tried to get what rest he could while Lo Meifeng’s boat approached, because he suspected there would be little enough rest after she arrived. He made a point to commit the name Elder Bo had given him for the body cultivation technique he’d, almost accidentally, used. Five-Fold Body Transformation. Sen didn’t really understand what that meant, or even what it entailed for his current level of body cultivation. For that matter, he didn’t even know what relative stage of body cultivation he was in anymore. He had been in the body cultivation equivalent to foundation formation, but he’d also never faced a tribulation before. Master Feng hadn’t been terribly specific about them, other than to say that they could happen at any advancement, but they almost always happened between major stages of cultivation advancement.
Given that it had been Sen’s first tribulation ever, he suspected that his body cultivation was now the equivalent to core formation. It did make him wonder what that actually meant, though. With core formation, there was a fundamental change in how the dantian operated, how one processed qi and used it. With body cultivation, though, it likely meant a similarly fundamental change in how the body worked. Of course, the only real way to understand any changes to his body would be to perform tests. With Lo Meifeng bearing down on him like an angry mother hen, he didn’t expect he’d get much opportunity for that. She’d want to stick him on the boat and take him back to the ship as soon as possible. He did try to take advantage of the few precious minutes of solitude he had available to him. One of the mysteries that had vexed Sen was why body cultivation and spirit cultivation operated separately. Granted, they had only diverged for him very recently, but for most cultivators following both paths, the advancements came entirely independently.
None of his teachers had a good explanation for why that was. Sure, the body and spirit were different, but they were also connected to each other in profound ways. That the entire cultivation world took it for granted that they should be developed independently bothered him. It seemed irrational to him. If anything, it seemed to him that every cultivator would want a cultivation development technique that helped them develop both simultaneously. Again, his own experiences with simultaneous advancement hadn’t been terribly pleasant, but he’d been doing it by accident. It seemed to him that a well-developed cultivation system would account for those realities and develop cultivation aids and resources to help limit the negative side effects. The longer Sen lay there pondering the oddities of cultivation, the more he found himself frowning over something Elder Bo had said in passing. As though elder divine spirit animals said anything in passing.
“Why was that my first tribulation?” Sen asked himself out loud.
He had passed from qi condensing to foundation formation without a hint of heavenly lightning or any other kind of tribulation. What had been the difference? He’d had a divine turtle baby-stepping him through this advancement. If anything should have shielded him from heavenly retribution, it seemed that the presence of the turtle would have done it. Yet, it hadn’t seemed to slow down the tribulation at all. Unless, he thought, it did. It wasn’t like he had another tribulation to compare it to. Maybe that had been the heavens version of a light rebuke to acknowledge the turtle’s participation. That was an idea that put a chill in Sen’s soul. He’d survived the tribulation, but he thought it only would have taken another minute or two of those lightning strikes to kill him. His makeshift protection was on the verge of collapse at the end.
Still, none of that explained why he hadn’t suffered under the heavens lash before this advancement. What had been different about those advancements? What had been different about this one? Sen hadn’t landed on a complete answer to that question by the time Lo Meifeng arrived, although he had an inkling about it. Once she arrived, though, he had to put those thoughts away. It was too hard to concentrate on them around all of her shouting. He let it go on for about five minutes before he lost his patience.
“Enough,” he commanded.
Lo Meifeng was so shocked by either the command or his tone that she fell silent. Instead, she just stared at him with an incredulous expression.
Sen took a breath and continued. “At no point did an older, more experienced cultivator warn me that there was an elder divine turtle following us around. Then again, I might have been even more eager to go if I’d known. You know that cultivation has risks. Some of those risks are bad, like offending demonic cultivators. Some of those risks are necessary, like following through on fortuitous encounters. If I was anyone else, would you really have discouraged me from taking the advice of a divine turtle?”
Lo Meifeng’s cheeks turned a little red in embarrassment when Sen pointed out that she should have known there was a vastly powerful spirit beast trailing them. When he asked flat out about taking the turtle’s advice, she sighed.
“No. I wouldn’t have. Only a fool ignores a divine turtle.”
“So, beyond that, what would have changed if you’d come along? Would you have prevented me from gathering medicinal plants? Refused to let me make a healing elixir?”
“No,” she admitted. “But that’s not the point. It’s my job to protect you. I can’t do that if you run off by yourself all the time. Especially when a divine turtle is going to trap us all on the damn ship.”
“Wait. What?”
“The turtle sealed us up on the ship for the entire duration of your little date on the beach. Now, imagine how that might have gone if it had been something less friendly and benevolent than a turtle. What if you’d caught the attention of a sea dragon instead?”
Sen really stopped to consider that possibility. Dragons weren’t innately hostile to humans, but they weren’t especially predisposed to like humans either. Dragons were proud, arrogant, and terrifyingly powerful by nature. In most myths and tales, encounters with dragons ended badly for the humans involved. Sen was good at some things, but he didn’t expect that he would have fared much better at keeping a dragon happy than the people in those stories.
“That would have been bad, probably,” he admitted. “But do you really think you could have protected me from a sea dragon?”
“Not a chance. Not for long anyway. But I could have bought you time to run away, to escape, to do that hiding thing that you do so well. I know you hate having me watching you all the time. I really do understand why it’s frustrating for you. But until something changes in the situation or my orders, it’s the reality for now. I’m not asking you to like it. I’m just asking that you don’t actively work against me doing my job.”
“I really don’t most of the time,” said Sen.
“I recognize and appreciate that. I just need you to recognize and appreciate that we assess risk differently. I have to think about the worst possible version of events. So, while something like this beach looks harmless enough to you, I see it as a pit filled with potential disaster and hordes of rampaging spirit beasts.”
There was a time, not that long ago, when Sen would have snickered at the idea of a horde of rampaging spirit beasts. After his experiences in that town that had been stripped of all human life, the possibility seemed all too real. Sen rubbed his eyes. His body had mostly finished healing, which was truly amazing and remarkable, but he’d been through a lot that day. He felt wrung out. He just wanted to sleep for a while and maybe roast an entire cow to eat. Maybe a boar would be good as well. Oh, and some ducks would be delicious. Sen forced his mind away from food with an effort. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt so hungry. He’d gotten very used to being able to skip meals without consequence when necessary. At that moment, though, he felt like he could eat through everything in his storage ring. He made himself focus on Lo Meifeng.
“I will try to not make your job harder. I can’t promise I’ll succeed all the time, but I really will try.”
“That’s all I ask, that you try.”
“Fair enough. Now, seriously though, how did you miss that turtle?”
He’d meant it to poke a little fun at the woman, but he was also curious what she’d say. Instead of answering, she just lifted an eyebrow at him.
“How did you?”
Sen didn’t have an answer for that. True, he hadn’t been actively looking for spirit beasts, but he had been keeping a pretty close watch on the surrounding area. He supposed that the turtle must have been using some kind of technique like the one that Sen himself used. The turtle was, no doubt, a master of water qi. So, maybe there was some version of the technique that used water to blend a person into the background. Sen looked out at the ship and sighed. He’d have plenty of opportunity to try to work out how something like that might work. On the bright side, he should also have some time to try to decide just where and how enlightenment fit into the cultivation puzzle. If there was a reason that he hadn’t been suffering from tribulations so far, he thought that it was probably tied up with his active pursuit of moments of enlightenment.
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