Book 3: Chapter 21: A Different Path

Where Sen had set a brisk pace before, he set a brutal pace now. He wanted as much physical and psychological distance from that fight as he could get. Although, he wanted those distances for very different reasons. The physical distance was practicality at work. Someone sent those people, and Sen was already wishing that they’d captured someone alive and sane enough to ask them questions about that person. He knew that probably wasn’t realistic, that trying to do that would likely have ended with their captures or death, but he was feeling very information-starved at the moment.

Whoever

that order-issuing person was, they were going to notice when two dozen qi condensing and foundation formation cultivators, to say nothing of a full-blown demonic core formation cultivator, just never came back. They may as well have thrown a sign up into the air that said, “We are here.” Then again, the murderous trail that Lo Meifeng left in their wake probably did the same thing. Either way, they needed to get away from the actual site of that last piece of slaughter before someone turned up that they couldn’t fight. Of course, up until the end of that fight, Sen would have said that they didn’t really stand a good chance against a late-stage core cultivator of any stripe.

That thought brought him back around to why he wanted psychological distance from that fight. There was too much he didn’t understand about what had happened. He’d known that Heavens’ Rebuke was powerful. He’d expected it to do a lot of damage, even to that late-stage core cultivator. What it had actually done, no one could have predicted

that

. Of course, that was part of the problem. The technique he’d actually used wasn’t Heavens’ Rebuke. Not really. Not the way he’d intended it. It was more like Heavens’ Rebuke’s older, angrier, much more hideously deadly sister. And the worst part was, he didn’t know how he’d done it. He wasn’t entirely convinced that

he

had done it. He’d gone over the last moments before he’d launched that technique a hundred times.

It had all happened so fast that he couldn’t be certain, but it seemed like that ribbon of strange qi in his dantian had acted

on its own

. That was absurd because qi wasn’t sentient. It didn’t make decisions. Yet, Sen was almost positive, that was what had happened. He knew for damned sure that he would never have introduced a new variable into a technique at that moment. Especially since he knew how dangerous it was when that specific technique was poorly controlled. He would have considered adding anything to it in the moments before he launched it as an invitation to blow himself up. That he hadn’t gotten blown up had, at first, seemed like pure good fortune. Now, he wasn’t so sure. He had theories, so many theories, but they were all so outlandish that he didn’t even bother considering them again. Still, he had to know if that qi was, despite all information running to the contrary, somehow self-aware. He looked inside himself, almost glaring at that ribbon.

“Can you hear me?” he thought at it.

The ribbon continued in its lazy rotation around the edges of his dantian. Sen frowned, not sure if he should feel relieved or disappointed. If it had reacted in some way, at least he’d have an explanation for what had happened back in that clearing. He tried again.

“Are you aware?” he asked it, giving the ribbon a little poke.

The ribbon did nothing. Sen let himself feel the tiniest bit of relief. Of course, that only left him with even more ridiculous ideas that he liked even less than the idea of self-aware qi living in his dantian. If self-aware qi wasn’t the answer, and

he

hadn’t done it, that only left some outside force acting

through

him. That idea was disturbing for Sen on a lot of levels. The very idea that some other power could reach inside him and make his qi act outside of his control was frightening. Sure, it had been helpful, sort of, this time, but that didn’t mean it would be helpful every time. Even more importantly, he couldn’t imagine what kind of being or force could do such a thing. Maybe the heavens could do it, but he really didn’t know. That absence of knowledge drove a sliver of ice into his heart.

If he couldn’t trust that his qi was under his control, then he couldn’t fight. And Sen needed to be able to fight. It wasn’t optional. His survival hinged on it. So, in the absence of good answers, or any answers, he did the only thing he could think to do. He ran. It was a short-term solution, but it beat the other options. He just wished that he had somewhere to run to, somewhere he knew would be safe for him, Lifen, and Lo Meifeng. Not a forever place, since he doubted such a place even existed, but somewhere they could stop for a week or two without their paranoia on full burn for the whole time. He knew that Lifen couldn’t keep the pace he was setting forever. She fell asleep very nearly the minute they stopped each day, usually pausing only long enough to eat and bathe. Although, she hadn’t uttered so much as a word of complaint. She’d gotten a close and personal look at what they were up against, and it had frightened her. She was just as motivated to put some distance between them and their enemies as Sen.

Lo Meifeng was keeping up okay, but even she was looking tired. Of course, she’d looked tired when they reunited. Sen was pretty sure that she wasn’t a body cultivator, but her more advanced spirit cultivation was enough to bridge the gap, at least for a while. Even so, Sen knew that they needed a plan with some details. Run and hide was great as a big-picture strategy, but it didn’t offer much in terms of day-to-day tactics. Plus, behind it all, there was that tugging on his soul getting stronger and stronger the farther west they went. Part of him thought they should just follow that tugging. It had led him to relative safety before. Of course, it had also led him straight into conflict with the Stormy Seas sect. That tugging didn’t seem to particularly take his safety into account. It was more neutral than that, simply pointing out places he could learn things. Unfortunately, he could theoretically learn things fighting for his life, just as easily as he could learn things holed up in a cave and cultivating.

All of those thoughts kept churning through his head as they raced down the road in the moonlight. It might have driven him mad, eventually, but Lo Meifeng dropped into place beside him. He glanced over at her, but she didn’t say anything for a while. He couldn’t tell if she was gathering her thoughts or had just gotten tired of running with Lifen. In the end, she did speak.

“Have you given any thought to how they found us?” she asked.

Sen clenched his teeth in frustration. He

had

given that problem some thought. He just hadn’t gotten anywhere with it.

“I honestly don’t know. My formations are as tight as I can make them. I hide as much as I dare. Even Lifen has tightened up her qi presence. Your influence?”

“I might have shown her something,” said Lo Meifeng with a practiced nonchalance.

“So, no, I don’t have any ideas. I also don’t have any ideas about how to keep it from happening again. I am open to theories and suggestions.”

Lo Meifeng was quiet for a long time before she finally said, “We’re too close to the road. Granted, you do a good job of finding us camping spots well away from the road itself, but you’re cautious about not taking us too deep into the forest.”

“I-,” started Sen.

“I know why you do it. Normally, I’d even agree. But no matter how good we are, we can’t avoid leaving some signs that we entered or left the forest. If they send out enough experienced hunters and trackers up and down the road, they can narrow our location.”

“So, you think we should travel through the forest itself?”

Lo Meifeng shook her head. “I think we should cut through the wilds. At least for a while.”

Sen glared at her. “I seem to recall you saying something along the lines of that being insane.”

“And it was, when the threats were still vague, and people weren’t attacking us at our campsite. Now, the risks have changed.”

“Lifen’s cultivation hasn’t. Not enough,” said Sen quietly. “Her combat training hasn’t. We’d be taking her somewhere she couldn’t possibly survive on her own. If she got separated from us or if you and me both died, she’d be doomed. Honestly, I’m not even sure how likely your survival is.”

Lo Meifeng gave him a mirthless smile. “And what about you? Do you think you’ll just take a stroll and come out the other side?”

Sen huffed something that might have been a laugh. “Not likely. I’d only give me even odds, maybe a touch better with the new body cultivation advancement. Besides, where would we go? At the end of the day, our destination is always going to be somewhere along the road.”

“We’ll go wherever it is that you keep looking over there,” she said, gesturing to the southwest.

Sen jerked a little. “What do you mean?”

“Any time you get distracted, you start looking that direction like there’s something to find. So, we’ll go there and find it.”

Sen shook his head. “It’s another one of those soul tugs. I’m sure that there’s something to find there, but that doesn’t mean we

want

to find it.”

Lo Meifeng shrugged, “We aren’t going to find anything else that we want to find heading straight down this road, either. We need to change the field for a while.”

Sen pondered on the possibility for a while before shaking his head again. “I can’t make this decision by myself. I know where you stand. I’m going to talk to Lifen about this. She’s going to be in the most danger, so I’m going to leave it in her hands.”

Lo Meifeng looked frustrated by that pronouncement, but she nodded. “I suppose she should get input in the decision.”

Sen dropped back to jog beside Lifen. She spared him a brief smile but seemed to be devoting most of her attention to keeping pace. Sen put a hand on her arm and slowed to walk. Lo Meifeng noticed and stopped.

“I’ll scout ahead,” she said and took off down the road.

Lifen took a few moments to catch her breath before she looked at Sen. He could see the curiosity in her eyes and some trepidation.

That’s odd

, he thought.

I didn’t expect that until after I explained things

.

“So, here’s the situation as Lo Meifeng sees it,” said Sen.

He laid out the problem for her, and then he told her Lo Meifeng’s proposed solution. Lifen paled as he described the plan of action. Once he was done, he gave her a few moments to process it.

“Through the wilds,” said Lifen. “She wants to go

through

the wilds.”

“That’s the simple version, yes,” answered Sen.

“Is she insane?”

Sen hesitated. “Probably not. She’s sort of hard to read sometimes.”

Lifen rolled her eyes, but the moment of levity did seem to help. She paced back and forth on the road for most of a minute, her brow furrowed, and her lower lip caught between her teeth. If things hadn’t been so serious, Sen might have found the expression charming. She finally came to a stop and looked at him.

“I’m already a liability on the road. I’d be utterly useless to you in the wilds. You and Lo Meifeng would have to protect me constantly. I’d slow you down even more than I do right now.”

“That might be true, but it’s also irrelevant.”

“You could just leave me behind,” she said, putting on a brave face.

“They

know

about you. That means you have to come with us, whatever we finally decide. We can’t just stick you somewhere and hurry away because there’s nowhere safe to leave you. They found us out here in the middle of absolutely nowhere. They’d find you in any town or city we passed through. For now, at least, we stick together. The question is, how do we proceed? Do we continue on the road, or follow Crazy Lo Meifeng’s advice and cut through the wilds?”

Lifen laughed, but Sen caught more than a few hints of hysteria in the laugh. “Don’t ever let her hear you call her that.”

Sen winked. “I’ll keep it between us. So, what do you think?”

“I get a vote?” she asked, seeming surprised.

“No, not exactly. This time, you get to decide. Lo Meifeng and I can probably survive the trip. It’ll be dangerous for us, but it’s theoretically doable. You’re the one taking the most risk if we follow her plan, so you get to make the call.”

Lifen spent a long, long time staring out at the moonlit forest. “It’ll keep happening, won’t it?”

“What?”

“The attacks. They’ll keep finding us on the road, won’t they?”

Sen weighed his words carefully. He didn’t want to sway her decision with his own preferences, but he didn’t want to lie, either. “It seems likely. If we go through the wilds, though, there will still be attacks. It’ll just be spirit beasts instead of people. There’s danger either way.”

Lifen bowed her head, considering, praying, Sen wasn't sure, before she nodded to herself. “We go through the wilds.”