Book 3: Chapter 9: Cultivator Chou

Book 3: Chapter 9: Cultivator Chou

Once they were out of the city proper, Lo Meifeng seemed to relax a little. At least, Sen thought she did. Her answers to the occasional questions that Sen or Lifen asked were less sharp and terse. It wasn’t much in the grand scheme of things, but Sen liked to take his victories where he found them. Despite relaxing slightly, Lo Meifeng kept them moving until nearly sunset. At that point, they had moved beyond the city and the dense crush of buildings that had gone up beyond the city walls. Instead, they were traveling through the smaller towns and farming villages that seemed to dot the landscape beyond every city. While Sen would have been perfectly content to simply find a spot off the road, both of the women emphatically declined that option.

“Some of us require a proper bath from time to time,” said Lo Meifeng with an unimpressed look.

“Agreed,” said Lifen, giving Sen a nearly identical unimpressed expression.

Seeing those two women put forth a united front made the back of Sen’s neck itch and brought on vague worries about some kind of impending, world-destroying catastrophe. So, Sen promptly shut his mouth. It wasn’t as though he’d personally deprived them of baths. He actually liked baths. There just hadn’t been one on the ship, so everyone had to make do with scrubbing themselves down with a cloth and a small basin of water. Or, in Sen’s case, jumping down into the ocean for a brief swim most days. It wasn’t exactly the same as a bath. He’d still found it necessary to wash himself down occasionally to remove some of the lingering salt on his skin if nothing else. It was with those thoughts in his head that Sen walked along in the wake of Lo Meifeng and Lifen as they searched for a place to stay that had a bath.

Once they’d found a small inn with both free rooms and a bath, the decisions were made without much input by Sen. Before he knew it, they were checked in for the night, and Sen was left to his own devices while the women claimed the bath. Sen felt it was a true testament to their feelings on the matter that neither woman had sniped at the other even once after the subject of baths came up. Since he had no belongings to stow in his room, Sen made his way to the front of the inn in search of food. He’d finished his food and was sipping on a mug of rice wine when the front door of the inn opened and a brute of a man with a thin beard and faded scar across one cheek sauntered in. Even with his hiding ability suppressing most of his senses, the man was close enough that Sen could tell he was a cultivator. Sen sighed and hoped that the man would just take a room and leave everyone be.

“I am Chou Bai, the wandering cultivator,” the man thundered to the room.

Sen lifted an eyebrow. The other people in the room looked nervous, but no one said anything. The wandering cultivator seemed to deflate a bit when no one seemed to know who he was. The man tried again.

“I am Chou Bai, the man who slew the dread lightning serpent of Eternity Pass.”

There was more silence until someone said, “Where’s Eternity Pass?”

The cultivator deflated even more, walked over to the owner and asked for a room. Sen felt a moment of relief, but then Lifen and Lo Meifeng came down the stairs, looking very refreshed from their baths. The wandering cultivator’s eyes fixed on them, his chest swelled, and he bellowed again.

“I am Chou Bai, the wandering cultivator.”

Lifen simply lifted an eyebrow at the man before she continued on toward Sen’s table. Lo Meifeng eyed the man up and down and sniffed.

“I,” she said, “am not interested.”

As she went to follow Lifen around the man, he reached out to grab her arm.

“There’s no need to rush,” said Cultivator Chou.

“Wait!” shouted the man, holding up a bottle of something.

By the time Sen registered that it was just a bottle of wine, it was nearly too late to abort his attack. As it was, his jian had sliced cleanly through the bottle. The ambient lightning around the blade vaporized the liquid instantly, which made the bath stink like alcohol. Sen arrested the blade’s motion a hair from the other cultivator’s throat. It was close enough that Sen could see and smell the skin scorching from the lightning he’d never stopped channeling. The wandering cultivator gritted his teeth against the pain but didn’t try to do anything.

“Why are you here?” Sen demanded.

“I thought you were her.”

“Her who?”

“From downstairs,” he said. “I brought the wine to apologize.”

“Given that I don’t believe that for a second, do you really think she would have?”

“It’s true.”

“So, you were just going to invite yourself in to watch her bathe?”

The implications of that hadn’t seemed to occur to the man before then because he turned bright red in embarrassment or shame.

“No. Of course not, I, I just didn’t think it all the way through.”

Sen frowned at the man. “Do you have some kind of death wish? I’m asking you, honestly. Because it’s the only explanation for intruding on the bath of a woman who slapped you around like a misbehaving puppy and threatened to cut your head off. So, if you do, just say so and I’ll end your pain right here.”

“No,” growled the man. “I do not have a death wish.”

Sen was minimally satisfied that man wasn’t there to try to assassinate him, so he took his jian blade away from Cultivator Chou’s throat. The wandering cultivator took a deep breath and gingerly touched the burned spot on his neck. Sen took another step back and gave the man a firm look.

“In that case, here are two pieces of free, probably life-saving advice for you. First, don’t walk in on a stranger’s bath, ever. Two, you need to stay away from that woman downstairs. There is a near absolute certainty that if you bother her again, in any way, that she will literally cut your head off. Now, if you don’t mind,” said Sen, pointing to the door with his jian, “I’d like to finish my bath.”