V3 Bloopers

V3 Bloopers

He did take a moment to study his dantian and the odd ribbon of new qi but left off almost immediately. There was no obvious damage to the dantian. Figuring out that new qi was important. He knew it. He also knew that it was something that he wasn’t going to understand with five minutes of casual study. Even so, it was an effort to turn his attention away from it. Any change in his dantian that he hadn’t initiated was a cause for concern. Changes could mean unexpected results, which he’d learned was almost always problematic. Still, he had pressing medical needs that required much more immediate attention. Turning to the problem at hand, he let his mind slip into that hazy place of unfocused focus that let him pick the right ingredients for the problem at hand. He started with the base ingredients, wood-aligned ginseng for general-purpose healing, wind-aligned five-flavor fruit for the blood, and sunflower root as a general reagent for the other ingredients.

After that, the ingredients became more specific to his needs. He used earth-aligned crown flower to help repair and reinforce his bones. Metal-aligned serpent weed would help balance the elixir. Ingredient after ingredient went into the pot until it felt right. Sen had been so consumed by the process that it took him completely off-guard when he sensed a giant looming presence nearby. He looked around and his mouth dropped open in shock and awe. As the fang-filled maw slammed closed around him, Sen had just enough time to think, “Was that a dragon?

***

“That really hurt,” complained Sen, his mind veering away from even trying to remember the details.

“I expect it did. The Five-Fold Body Transformation isn’t for the weak. It is where your body transformation was headed, though. I just helped ensure that you made the last few steps. Although, speaking of pain, you should brace yourself,” warned Elder Bo.

“Brace myself? For what?” Sen asked, sitting up in alarm.

“Tribulation,” said the divine turtle.

Sen remembered Master Feng talking about tribulations. What had he said they usually were?

“Oh no,” said Sen, looking up at thick, dark clouds overhead. “Not lightning.”

“No,” said Elder Bo, “not lightning. Something far worse. Far more deadly.”

“More deadly than lightning?!”

“Yes. You face the tribulation of the peach pits.”Trace the lineage of this substance back to the dawn of Nøv€lß¡n★

And as if the divine turtle's words had triggered it, a peach pit moving at the approximate speed of a crossbow bolt beaned Sen in the head, drawing blood as it did. Then, it was as if all the light in the world was snuffed out. Sen looked up and saw thousands of peach pits hurtling toward him.

“This is so unfair,” he complained.

***

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.

Sen just stared at the two of them, not quite believing what he was hearing.

“Let me make sure I’ve got this straight. You’re willing to risk exposing us, getting us all captured, and probably tortured to death, all so you can have baths?”

Years later, when someone asked him if the cat killed the demonic cultivator, Sen’s only answer was, “Well, I never saw that guy again.”

***

“I know this was my suggestion,” said Lo Meifeng, “but she’s got a point. I go where you go. So, if you keep going, I pretty much have to go. If you decide we should take a pass, and I really want to you decide that, I will gladly slog through another hundred miles of this forsaken forest in any other direction.”

Sen kept his mouth shut for a minute and tried to think it through. That tugging inside his chest had turned into a relentless feeling that almost dragged him along. Yet, there was no guarantee that he was going to get anything of value if they reached the right destination. Even more importantly, the others weren’t experiencing that tugging feeling. Even if he got something valuable from it, there was a good chance that they wouldn’t. That oppressive feeling that just got worse and worse the farther they went was a pretty solid indication that something or someone ahead did not want to be bothered. Even a month ago, Sen might have pressed forward regardless of anything anyone else had to say. This time, he reminded himself of the lesson he’d struggled toward during his core formation. I can be more than one thing. He could be reckless and headstrong, but he didn’t have to be that way all the time. He could also be the kind of person who did silly things like listening to good advice. He looked in the direction they’d been heading, then made his choice.

“Then we go somewhere else,” he said.

“What? Really?” asked Lifen, sounding a little stunned.

“You made your case. Lo Meifeng agrees with you wholeheartedly. I’m not dumb enough to think I know better than everyone else.”

“They are wise to fear this place,” said a voice from the trees.

Sen let his spiritual sense and qi swirl out all around them, but he sensed nothing. The voice continued.

“You are wise in that you would heed their advice.”

A positively ancient old man stepped out of the forest. He eyed them all the way sometimes eyed a hot meal.

“Where did you come from?” Sen asked, wondering why his senses had failed him so utterly.

“From the forest. I guess they keep you around because you’re pretty,” said the old man before he reached into a pocket and held something out. “Would you like a piece of candy?”

Even Sen knew better. “Oh no, I’ve seen this show. You own a creepy van, don’t you?”

“It’s not creepy!” shouted the old man. “It’s a classic!”

***

Gathering himself, Sen stood and glared around the battlefield. Then, he took a step up into the air on a cushion of qi. Then he took another, as though he were climbing a stairwell into the heavens. He began cycling for the things he thought he’d need, shadow, fire, wind, and lightning. He tapped his core qi for this to make sure that the statement he was about to make was grand enough. He climbed until he hovered above the field nearly twenty feet in the air. He could feel the collective attention on him, waiting to see what he would say and what he would do. He started weaving the qi into something new, something he’d never made before, and lifted his jian.

“I am Judgment’s Gale,” he projected across the field, using air qi to amplify his voice like it was the voice of creation itself.

Then, he shot that woven technique into the sky. A swirling mass of fire, shadow, and lightning began spinning overhead. As it swelled outward, the unnatural storm swiftly blotted out the sun and cast the vale into a darkness akin to night. Sen added the final touch to the technique. He cycled up metal qi and sent a beam of that skyward. For a long moment, nothing happened. Then, a massive, glittering spinning metal ball descended from the clouds.

“This battle is over,” he boomed across the field, “but the disco dance battle has just begun.”