Chapter 53: The Path Forward

Chapter 53: The Path Forward

Sen had been so angry with Falling Leaf that he’d stormed inside. He pretended he didn’t feel her eyes on him as he went. He’d argued with her in his head all the way to his room. She didn’t know what she was talking about. She was just a big cat. What could she possibly know about it?

“Bears and wolves,” he muttered. “What does that have to do with anything?”

Yet, as he lay there, not sleeping, what she said kept circling around in his mind, refusing to let him rest, refusing to let him put away his troubles and have the sweet release of sleep. A little nagging part of him said that he was acting like a child. It told him that he was trying to ignore her because she didn’t just tell him what he wanted to hear. He rolled onto his side and tried to ignore that little voice, too. Except, she had talked to him. She hadn’t gestured or given him a serious look. She’d actually talked to him. He knew it was hard for her. She’d told him so. They’d only traded a handful of words that one time. For her, that brief speech in the courtyard was a monumental number of words. Why did it have to be those words, he thought.

He tossed and turned for most of an hour before he gave up and just stared at the wall, thinking it over. It was her last words that truly haunted him. It is the only path forward. She hadn’t said it was the only path. He didn’t know exactly how it worked, but he knew that cultivation could be broken somehow. He could go back to being a regular person if he wanted it badly enough. As Sen tried to think his way around it, he knew that was the heart of the problem. He didn’t want to go back, not really. He didn’t want to forget what being a regular person was like. He didn’t want to treat regular people like they were beneath him. How could they be? The only reason he even had a family name was because Grandmother Lu had decided to give him one for her own reasons.

Going back, though, he couldn’t see himself doing that. He’d learned too much. He’d suffered too much to just throw that all away. No, going back wasn’t the solution to the problem. He’d held that idea in the back of his head from very nearly the first day with Master Feng, but it was long past time that he accepted that wasn’t some kind of escape hatch from cultivation. If going back wasn’t a real path...

“It’s the only way forward,” Sen said. “Forward.”

Sen closed his eyes and took a few deep breaths. If he was going to go forward, and that’s the only real way he could move, it didn’t come for free. He accepted that’s what he’d really wanted. He wanted the strength and power that came with being a cultivator, but he hadn’t wanted to pay the price. Like it or not, and Sen most certainly didn’t like it, the cultivators had their own way of doing things. He wanted to go out and see the world. In fact, it was something he was increasingly sure he’d have to do to keep advancing. Doing that meant he would, inevitably, come across other cultivators. They would expect him to know their rules. Our rules, he corrected himself. He was one of them. He might have trained differently than they did, but that wouldn’t matter to them.

“They’re people, aren’t they?”

“Well, yes, I suppose they are.”

“I’ve seen firsthand how honorable people treat those they see as weaker, as lesser, than themselves. As far as I’m concerned, they are all honorless dogs until they give me a very good reason to trust them. I’d be insane not to prepare for the possibility that they’ll attack me in groups when they think they can get away with it. Can you tell me they won’t? Can you tell me it never happened to you?”

Uncle Kho frowned and then shook his head. “No, I can’t tell you that.”

“Then, I need to learn how to fight, not duel. I need there to be a real risk of injury, just so I learn what to expect from my body. I probably can’t control all of those reactions, but I can learn to work around them. I need there to be more than one person to worry about. I’ve spent all my time learning how to focus on what’s in front of me, but that’s not how fights usually work in my experience. It’s the person you don’t see that gets you the first time. I have to get ready for that.”

“Very well. I suppose we all have been working from a prettier picture than is realistic. I know better. Ming certainly knows better. The heavens know we’ve both done enough fighting. Let me talk with Ming and Caihong. We’ll sort out the right kind of training. Don’t think this gets you out of spear training with me. I still have a lot to teach you before I unleash you on the world.”

“Unleash?”

Uncle Kho grinned. “Did I say unleash? I'm sure I meant send you. Yes, I have a lot left to teach before I send you out into the world.”