Unintended Cultivator

Cao Kai-Ming found herself sitting by the fire and not sleeping, again. It wasn’t so much that she needed sleep, but she liked to sleep. It made her feel sharp and that was important. Even a little mental lag could mean the difference between life and death, and life and death had been on her mind a lot. There was every indication that the sect meant to go to war. Oh, there hadn’t been any official word, yet, but she knew the signs. She’d seen them before. The sect was calling people back. Gathering their strength. She was just grateful that they hadn’t canceled this expedition into the wilds. She hated sect wars and would be perfectly happy to drag out this expedition for as long as possible to avoid as much of the fighting as she could. She knew that fighting other cultivators was inextricably tied to the Jianghu, but it wasn’t why she’d become a cultivator.

She’d become a cultivator to help her village. She knew that it was little more than a collection of huts that teetered along by farming on barely arable land, but it was where she had come from. Her parents were long dead, but she’d never forgotten the place or the people there. It had taken time, decades, but she’d found a way to earn enough gold to help the village now and then. She’d become the most valuable thing to alchemists. She’d become a gatherer. One of those rare cultivators who could and would venture into the wilds to gather those invaluable resources that helped make advancement possible. Without her, all of those precious pills and elixirs that everyone relied on wouldn’t exist.

Not that she didn’t have mixed feelings about that. Having met the people in her sect, she would have gladly let most of them languish as qi-gathering cultivators. They were awful to mortals. They were awful to each other. They were just… They were just awful. But supporting them, however loathsome she found most of them, allowed her to ensure that her little village survived. She still had relatives there even if they didn’t know it. She knew it. She made sure that precious food was delivered to them when the harvests were bad. She sent medicines when the periodic plagues that ravaged the country swept through. She was no Judgment’s Gale who saved villages by the score, cast down kings, and had by all accounts started a city in the far north, but she had saved one village. That was enough. It let her sleep. Usually.

These rumors of a sect war, though. It meant fighting other cultivators, most of whom probably had nothing to do with whatever offense had occurred. That was assuming an offense had occurred at all. It wasn’t as though the Twisted Blade Sect really needed a reason to declare a sect war. They never had. She’d often wished that she’d chosen another sect but, by the time she’d understood what kind of place she sworn allegiance to, it would have been nightmarishly difficult to leave. She might have even been killed if she tried. The sect didn’t like to let go of useful resources, and she had proven herself a very useful resource. Yes, the best thing to do was to drag her feet on this expedition.

It would be easy enough. Most of the people sent along on this expedition were morons who couldn’t tell the difference between a fire lily and a water orchid. If she said she hadn’t found what they needed, they’d believe her. More importantly, the sect elders would believe her. In a sect that prized fighting prowess over trivial intellectual pursuits like alchemy and formation building, it was simple enough to trick her seniors. She would need to be wary of Elder Sio, though. Granted, he was practically an elder in name only having advanced with limited combat experience. If he accused her of lying, though, there was no way to be sure what would happen. They might believe him, or they might call him a stupid old man. Either way, she wasn’t eager to find out.

She could still stretch things out even if not as much as she might want to. Most sect wars didn’t last that long. A month, she thought. If I drag it out for a month, by the time we get back, the sect war might well be over. Even if it wasn’t over by then, they’d be at the sect rather than wherever the fighting was happening. Dispatching them would take time. That could at least minimize the combat she’d have to engage in. It wasn’t a perfect fix, but it was a solution that was less terrible than rushing back for the fighting. Feeling more settled, she stood up to go to her tent but a stark feeling of dread washed over the entire camp. It felt like the eye of some dark god had fixed itself on her. Then, the screaming started.

It wasn’t the shouting or yelling that she expected in a battle. It was the screaming of naked terror and pain. Cao Kai-Ming felt rooted in place even as the events unfolded around her. Things seemed to happen too slowly and too fast. She watched as people stumbled out of tents, drawing weapons and racing toward some as yet unrevealed enemy. She thought it must be some powerful spirit beast that had wandered away from the deep wilds. She had eluded such beasts before. Every gatherer who survived as long as she had developed a better-than-average ability to steal away into the darkness and hide. What she saw instead was a man or, at least, she thought it was a man. He seemed to explode out of the shadows to reap a life and then disappear back into them just as fast, leaving nothing but a faint impression of the color blue.

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Part of her felt like she should help, throw herself into battle, and help stop this slaughter. Another part of her watched on in grim satisfaction as Kong Hao, who took pleasure in beating outer disciples to the point of death, had both his arms broken beneath the raw force of a single blow from an impossibly heavy jian. A moment later, she heard the man’s neck snap as the attacker backhanded the man. There was an explosion of motion, a flurry of terrible violence, and five more martial specialists had their lives snuffed out. Mou Wei launched a twisted blade strike, the metal qi technique that the sect was famous for, only to have the attacker physically catch it, rip it out of the air, and crush it. Blood exploded from Mou Wei’s eyes, nose, mouth, and ears from the backlash. Lightning ignited around the stranger’s jian and a bolt of it punched a hole in Mou Wei’s chest.

Cao Kai-Ming had seen violence. She had seen death. But she had never seen anything like this before. One man. One solitary cultivator had flickered through shadow, cast lightning, and exhibited the kind of unbridled physical power that she’d only ever heard about in stories. He had passed through their camp like a dark wind and left nothing but death in his wake. The thing she couldn’t understand was why. Why had this cultivator chosen to attack them? Had they wandered unknowingly into the domain of some hidden master? They were known to punish trespassers but that typically came after a warning. If they had gotten such a warning, they would have left as fast as their cultivation could carry them. She’d gotten so caught up in trying to understand why this was happening that the stranger was within striking distance before she registered it.

She stumbled back and tripped over something. Her mind was so disoriented by what she’d seen that she lost her balance. It took a moment to realize that she’d tripped over a body. The man killed someone that close to me, and I didn’t even notice? She forced herself to look up at the person she was certain was going to send her to her next life. He was impossibly pale and impossibly handsome. She knew it was a ludicrous thing to notice when oblivion was at hand, but she couldn’t help herself. He was looking down at her with empty eyes. No fear. No hesitation. No remorse. There was nothing there to interpret. She looked down at his robes. They were dark in the night, but she could tell that they were blue. It didn’t matter. It was just something to look at other than his eyes.

“Why?” she asked.

“Because your masters are fools,” said the man.

“Who are you?”

“Does it matter?”

She supposed it didn’t matter. It’s not like she’d remember anything in a moment or two. She just wanted to know. The man must have read that yearning to know because he sighed a little.

“Judgment’s Gale.”

Cao Kai-Ming’s eyes snapped back up to the man’s face and then pieces started falling into place. The rumors she’s heard about a sect war. Were the elders insane? They meant to declare war on Judgment’s Gale? The Divine Wind himself? No wonder he’d attacked them. A cold feeling passed through her when she realized what it meant that he was here, this far south, this far away from his own sect. He had come to start the war first. And in wars, there were innocent victims. Victims like her. She saw him lift that jian, prepare to cut her life short with one stroke, and three words tumbled out of her mouth.

“Cold Stream Village,” she blurted.

That empty, indifferent expression he wore cracked with confusion.

“What?” he asked.

“I help them. I send food, or medicine, or money when they need it. I just—”

She didn’t even know herself what she meant to gain through this outburst. It wasn’t her life. He clearly meant to leave no survivors. What did she want from him? It came in a bolt of clarity.

“Will you look after them?” she begged.

She didn’t even care that it wasn’t how cultivators should act. What was dignity in the face of destruction? If begging would secure her little village the help it needed, she’d disgrace herself a thousand times. His expression smoothed out.

“Yes,” he said.

Cao Kai-Ming didn’t feel relief. She was too afraid for that. She did feel some tiny shred of accomplishment that she had helped her village. Who knew? With a benefactor like Judgment’s Gale, perhaps they might even flourish. Then, everything went dark.