Book 4: Chapter 64: Ruminations

Book 4: Chapter 64: Ruminations

Sen trudged through the door of the house in the middle of the night. It was blessedly quiet. He found his way into the kitchen and made tea. He took his time with it, making it the way he had once done when he lived with Uncle Kho and Auntie Caihong. Then, he sat down and simply held the cup in his hand for most of a minute. He didn’t experience the warmth of it the same way he once had, which sapped some of the pleasure from the experience. Yet, the ritual and the smell of the tea still soothed him. He lifted the cup to his lips and took a sip, savored the subtle mix of flavors, and then swallowed. He hadn’t bought the tea, but it was very good. He’d have to ask the others where they got it.

Sen’s body felt heavy, and it was like his mind was stuffed full of loose material. It had been a long time since he’d felt a tiredness like that, and he knew it wasn’t just from pushing his body too hard. His physical resilience was still as potent as ever. He was tired in places that had nothing to do with the body. He hadn’t killed a few of Tong Guanting’s people or even dozens of them. He’d killed hundreds. It hadn’t even been fighting really. For all intents and purposes, Sen had gone on a rampage as bad as any spirit beast attack and figurately bathed himself in a river of blood. He'd only gotten away with it because they were all cultivator criminals, and anyone who might have stopped him had turned a blind eye.

The civilian government probably couldn’t have stopped him, but they could have made life impossibly difficult for him. Yet, they’d probably been overjoyed to have someone slaughtering semi-immortal criminals who were beyond their normal reach. The other sects in the city had likely seen Tong Guanting and his people as a blight but didn’t want to start a cultivator war in the streets. He still wasn’t sure why the other nascent soul cultivators had tolerated the Shadow Eagle Talon Syndicate and its leader, but he suspected their answer wouldn’t make sense to him. He supposed he could always ask Lai Dongmei if he really wanted to know, but he didn’t suppose he cared that much or even thought that it mattered.

Now that it was over, though, all of those people got to just move on. Sen was the one with all that blood on his hands. He could admit to himself that he didn’t feel the kind of overwhelming guilt he had thought he might. They were all criminals. He’d had personally witnessed some of them threatening and even harming mortals, then watched them laugh about it after. Those kinds of things had gone a long way to assuage his conscience. Yet, he wasn’t naïve enough to think that every person he’d killed had been irredeemably evil. With so many deaths on his hands, it only stood to reason that some of those people might have been redeemed. Of course, the problem he’d faced was the same problem that soldiers faced on the battlefield. Knowing that some of the people on the other side probably didn’t deserve to die was something wholly different than being able to know them on sight.

If he was advancing on his own merits and relative understanding of cultivation, Sen estimated that he should probably still be somewhere in the low end of foundation formation. The irony was that he’d probably still be considered a unique talent in any sect, at least if he was operating in anything like normal circumstances. Yet, looking back, he could see moments where he’d accomplished things that only made sense if he’d gotten profoundly lucky or had some instinct that he couldn’t have gotten by being born on this world. Any time he considered that frankly insane experiment he’d done to expand and reinforce his qi channels and dantian, he’d marveled that he hadn’t simply killed himself. He should have died. It shouldn’t have worked. Not doing it the way he’d done, in a mad rush to finish with advancement bearing down on him. The creation of Heavens’ Rebuke was another moment where he’d done something that no one had ever told him to do or even described. It had just felt like the thing to do.

He suspected that somewhere deep in his soul, he carried some kind of instincts with him from wherever he’d been before or maybe from wherever he was supposed to be. He didn’t really understand the ins and outs of reincarnation, so there was more guesswork there than he’d like. Looking beyond that, though, he could almost feel an invisible hand at work, arranging situations for him. Creating encounters that would rush him forward in one way or another. Encountering Master Feng alone was so unlikely that, considering it in hindsight, it strained Sen’s sense of credulity. Of course, lucky encounters did happen, but they were rare. They kept happening to him. Unlikely situations, unlikely encounters, unlikely moments of enlightenment, and all of them racing him toward ascension. He could dismiss some of these things, but not all of them.

Even if he was supposed to be where he was, someone or something was taking a hand in his life. Arranging things to ensure that Sen wrung the maximum cultivation value out of his time. Yet, those same situations were also pushing Sen to become a more effective weapon. While even he still struggled to accept it, he had killed a nascent soul cultivator. It should have been impossible at his level of development. Sen doubted that anyone else in the early stages of core cultivation had the exact right combination of talents, skills, and experiences to replicate that feat. He cringed inwardly at what he might be capable of if he survived to become a nascent soul cultivator. He suspected it would be equal parts awe-inspiring and terrifying. And Sen had become too jaded to believe for a moment that someone was going to all of the trouble to help make that happen out of some altruistic impulse. If or when he ascended, someone was going to want a return on their investment. And Sen feared that they were going to be the exact kind of people that he would feel compelled to tell no.

Sighing, Sen lifted the cup to his lips again, only to discover the tea had gotten cold. Frowning, he cycled fire qi and warmed the liquid in his cup and the teapot. Hours later, when the others got up, Sen was still sitting at that table, a cup of cold tea held forgotten in his hand.