Book 7: Chapter 6: Inaccurate Analogy

Book 7: Chapter 6: Inaccurate Analogy

Sen turned his gaze back and forth from the corner to where Fu Ruolan now stood. His teachers had told him about things that were like what he’d just seen, but this was different. The techniques he’d been told about were just advanced movement skills. They seemed to make someone disappear and reappear, but it was just magnified speed. There was also something called teleportation, where someone literally disappeared and then reappeared somewhere else. That had something to do with having a space qi affinity and remained firmly beyond Sen’s understanding. Yet, that was supposed to be instantaneous, and with Sen’s spiritual sense, he would have been immediately aware of their new location if they were close enough to be a threat. Fu Ruolan had vanished from his senses and been gone for long enough that he’d had the time to stand up and examine the corner. In fact, it had been about as long as it might have taken someone to casually walk across the room.

Master Feng had also told him about shadow travel techniques, but the way they had been described it sounded more like a hiding technique than a true travel technique. The cultivators used shadow to obscure themselves, and some even managed to briefly take on the insubstantial nature of shadows. It made them harder to sense, find, and track, but that didn’t seem to be what Fu Ruolan had done either. She hadn’t been obscured. She had been gone. Like she stepped outside of reality altogether and then stepped back into reality somewhere else. Sen frowned. He wondered if that was exactly what she had done. The very idea would have seemed impossible to Sen back in his mortal days, but he’d been a cultivator long enough to only ever put things into categories like probable and improbable. Stepping out of reality sounded more like an improbable technique than a probable one, but he had to keep in mind that he was dealing with a nascent soul cultivator. Sen frowned.

“It looks like you aren’t happy with the potential explanations. Good. That means you’re likely on the right track,” said Fu Ruolan. “So, tell me. What do you think I just did?”

“I don’t know,” answered Sen. “You say it’s something to do with shadow affinity, but I don’t see the connection. To me, it felt like you stepped right out of tangible reality and stepped back in again, somehow.”

Fu Ruolan lifted an eyebrow at Sen. “Well, that was annoyingly accurate. I guess Feng Ming and his cohorts wouldn’t have put up with you if you weren’t quick.”

“I don’t know about that. Besides, it’s not like I know how you did it or where you went.”

“True enough,” conceded Fu Ruolan. “So, let’s start with the where since that’s probably the more interesting part. Where do you think I went?”

Sen thought hard about it. No matter what he came up with, though, it just sounded absurd. Eventually, he just gave up and went with the stupidest idea that passed through his head.

Laughing a little, he answered, “I think you stepped through that shadow into some separate realm where all the shadows dance and play.”

His amusement faded as Fu Ruolan glared at him. He swallowed hard to clear the sudden lump of concern in his throat.

“Did someone explain this technique to you?” asked Fu Ruolan.

“No,” said Sen before hurriedly adding, “I didn’t think that was the actual answer.”

“No? You just picked that out of the air and happened to be right?”

Sen reached up and rubbed at the back of his neck, where all the hairs had suddenly stood up on end.

“Yeah,” said Sen, his voice a little weak.

A part of him wanted to explain, except that there was nothing to explain. He’d guessed. No, he hadn’t even guessed. He’d picked the answer that he was certain was wrong. Yet, Fu Ruolan seemed convinced that he’d pulled some kind of trick on her, and Sen couldn’t figure out how to convince the woman that it had just been a stupid coincidence. Fu Ruolan eyed him suspiciously for an uncomfortably long time before she sniffed in a decidedly unimpressed way.

“Well, now that you sucked all of the fun out of the answer, that’s what the technique does. Well except for that part about the dancing and playing,” she said.

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“How does that even work?” asked Sen.

“I’m going to go ahead and assume that your working knowledge of space qi techniques is limited.”

Fu Ruolan nodded. “Both are legitimate concerns. Anything else?”

“You didn’t stay in that other realm for very long. Is there a limit on how long you can stay there?”

“For practical purposes, let’s say yes. It varies from person to person based on a lot of things we won’t get into right now, but there is a hard limit for everyone. Stay in that other realm for too long, and you don’t come back.”

“Because you die?”

“No one knows. People have their theories, but theories are all they are. Well, I suppose someone might now, but they aren’t spreading the information. The only solid fact we have is that, beyond some threshold, you don’t return. Maybe you die. Maybe you get transformed into something. As you might imagine, it’s not a subject that anyone is eager is study firsthand.”

“You can add me to the list of people who don’t want to discover the truth for themselves,” said Sen.

Fu Ruolan snorted. “So, there is a tiny shred of caution buried deep inside of you. I was starting to wonder.”

Sen considered everything he’d just learned and noticed a bit of a logical disconnect.

“Are you saying that anyone with a shadow qi affinity can do this? If they could, it seems like something that Master Feng would have warned me about.”

“A shadow qi affinity isn’t that common,” admitted Fu Ruolan. “In fact, it’s one of the rarer affinities out there. As to your question, no, not every cultivator with a shadow qi affinity can do it. You need a strong affinity to use this particular technique.”

Sen’s eyes narrowed. “How strong?”

“Quite strong,” said Fu Ruolan without quite meeting his eyes.

A suspicion formed in Sen’s mind.

“How many people have a strong enough affinity? Ten percent of cultivators? Five percent?”

“Four,” said Fu Ruolan.

“Four percent?”

“Four people that I’m aware of, including you.”

The value of the technique that he was going to learn went way, way up in Sen’s mind. If it was that rare, it meant that it was something that most cultivators wouldn’t be protecting against. Hells, he thought, most sects probably wouldn’t bother with it either. Why would they? It was one thing for sects to protect themselves against threats that were likely. But only the most paranoid of sects or one with a reason to think someone with that skill would target them would bother defending against it. If nothing else, it meant that most sects would have a hard time holding him if he got even a brief window of opportunity to act. Sen smiled.

“In that case, what’s next?”