Book 9: Chapter 47: Grounded by Normalcy

Sen had fully expected Falling Leaf to yell at him or possibly hit him. Once he stepped a bit closer to the fire and she got a good look at him, though, the anger mostly bled out of her expression.

I must not look very good

, thought Sen. He glanced at Uncle Kho who also gave Sen a considering look. While not as angry as she had been, Falling Leaf was apparently unwilling to let things go entirely.

“You took too long,” she said.

Sen nodded and said, “It was a little more complicated than I expected. I’ll tell you what happened, but I need to sleep first. That was taxing.”

Uncle Kho and Falling Leaf didn’t seem entirely happy with that announcement but didn’t object. Sen walked over to the tent he hadn’t seen in more than a week. Before he crawled into it, he looked back.

“Where is Glimmer of Night?”

“He went to discourage the nearby spirit beasts from bothering us,” said Uncle Kho with a bit of amusement in his voice.

Sen didn’t quite know what was amusing about that, but he decided that it could wait for as long as it wasn’t an active problem. He hadn’t left anything inside the tent, so he needed to summon some blankets and a pillow from a storage ring. The true depth of his mental tiredness struck him when Sen realized he’d been staring at one of his storage rings for most of five minutes just expecting blankets and pillow to fall out of it. Rousing himself he exerted a bit of will over the ring and retrieved the bedding. He didn’t stretch out on the blankets so much as fall onto them. He only had the vaguest sense that his head was on the pillow before sleep claimed him.

It was a mercifully empty sleep that he woke from with a start. He still felt a little foggy, but he took comfort from the fact that he hadn’t dreamed. He’d half-expected to have bad dreams about getting caught or those two cultivators he’d killed in that copse of trees. Now that his mind had gotten a chance to rest, the memory of all those close calls sent chills down his spine. Particularly when he’d been outside the patriarch’s house. He still didn’t know what that technique was that had almost made him walk out into the open. He’d never even known that such a thing was possible.

It hadn’t been working on his mind so much as his feelings. Like it had been dredging up impulses that he’d thought he’d mastered long ago. A shudder went through him. He had to assume that such abilities were rare. He struggled to imagine that it was a proper qi technique, now that his mind was a little clearer. What qi type could exert that kind of influence? No, it had to be something obscure or Master Feng would have warned him about it if not prepared him for it. They had warned him about illusions, even though none of his teachers used them. Trying to shake off the chill of that experience, he sat up and rubbed at his face. He felt the stubble on his face. It might even be thick enough to qualify as a beard. He hadn’t been taking time out of his day to shave, but it was another sign that he’d been inside the Twisted Blade Sect for far longer than planned.

Realizing that he hadn’t had a hot meal since he was last in the camp, Sen decided that everything else could wait until after he’d cleaned up and eaten. He crawled out of the tent, waved at Glimmer of Night and Falling Leaf, and went off to find a small measure of privacy. He resisted the urge to go find a stream or lake to jump into and settled for scrubbing himself down with a wet cloth. He went back and forth about the beard before deciding that it was best to simply remove it. While Uncle Kho somehow made a beard seem almost regal, Sen sincerely doubted that the same was true of him. He suspected that a beard would just make him look like someone who was too lazy to shave. Plus, he was pretty sure that making a beard look neat and orderly would require as much time and effort as simply shaving.

The simple activities help to ground him in normalcy after a week of constant

hiding

and shadow walking. While shadow walking was useful, he was starting to wonder if doing it too often might have some kind of effect on the mind. The in-between place was so utterly disconnected from the regular world in appearance and feel that he almost felt like there must be some negative consequences to spending time there. The problem was that he couldn’t be sure if that place had contributed to his mental state or if the pressures of the situation were to blame. It was one more thing he’d have to look into when or if he ever found the time for such things. Given that cultivators had more time than anyone, Sen was constantly frustrated by his seeming lack of it.

Making his way back to the camp, he settled by the campfire and started to make food. It wasn’t anything special, just some rice, pork, and vegetables. He also made a fresh pot of tea. Despite being simple fare, having hot food to eat again felt almost decadent to Sen. While he knew that he’d only been in that sect compound for a little over a week, it had felt like months. Being free from the constant worry of being seen or caught, being able to simply sit and eat, was almost enough to make him crawl back into his tent to sleep some more. Instead, he set aside his plate, poured himself another cup of tea, and finally looked at Falling Leaf, Uncle Kho, and Glimmer of Night, who had seemingly returned from frightening the local spirit beasts.

A little part of Sen wanted to ask what that had been about, but he worried it would either be intensely interesting or intensely bizarre. Either of those would prove a distraction he couldn’t afford at the moment. Instead, he cycled some earth qi and produced a new, much more detailed model of the Twisted Blade Sect. It felt strange to see a miniature version of the place he’d spent so much time recently, but he shook off the mild sense of disorientation it caused and finally spoke.

“So, as you might imagine, I got a much more in-depth look at that sect than we all expected or than I wanted.”

He went on to confirm where the outer disciples, inner disciples, core members, and elders lived. He specified which buildings he’d planted poisons in and which buildings he wanted to preserve if possible. It took a while to explain the general details before he started to talk about his experiences inside the sect. He left out anything that painted the sect members too much like people. Instead, Sen focused on information that might prove useful once he set off the formation connected to those countless bottles of death he’d planted around the compound. He almost told them about the two sect members he’d killed but stopped himself.

He intuitively understood that the story would strike some people as funny, except he didn’t want anyone laughing about those deaths. He’d killed them because it was what he had to do, not because they had done anything in particular to

earn

death, to say nothing of disgrace. They didn’t deserve to be laughed at after the fact. He’d tarnished their memories enough with the way he’d made their deaths look. He wouldn’t add to that by sharing the story. In a moment of realization, Sen understood that he would probably never tell anyone what had happened to them. It would be too easy for people to misinterpret it or his reaction to it. He wasn’t ashamed that he’d killed them. There’d truly been no other choice in the moment. But he was not proud that he’d sullied their reputations the way he had.

Sen noticed Uncle Kho giving him a strange look. There was an odd moment of understanding between them. Uncle Kho didn’t know the details, but he clearly understood that Sen was holding something back. He also clearly understood that Sen was holding it back because there were complicated feelings attached to it. If there was ever a person who might understand those complicated feelings, it was the elder cultivator. Sen believed that, however justified Uncle Kho had felt when destroying the sect that killed his sister, the man had probably done some things back then that didn’t sit easy in a heart. 𝐑

“After all of that,” said Sen, “I very nearly got caught outside the patriarch’s home.”

“Did you trigger a formation?” asked Uncle Kho.

“Nothing so mundane. One of the elders was there and she did—” Sen paused, still unsure how to describe it. “She did something. It made me want to prove that I could beat formations that I had no realistic chance of unraveling. At least, not ones I could understand in a reasonable amount of time. It was insidious. I’d never felt anything like it before.”

A deep frown settled on Uncle Kho’s face. Falling Leaf looked puzzled. Glimmer of Night was staring at Sen. He focused on the spider.

“Do you know something?” Sen asked.

“It sounds like an inducement web,” said Glimmer of Night. “Although, I cannot imagine how a human cultivator might have learned it.”

“An inducement web?” asked Uncle Kho, sounding both intrigued and concerned. “What’s that?”

“It’s a web pattern that provokes desires. It’s a lure that some clusters use around natural treasures to trick prey. It isn’t intended for humans, though. It’s meant to draw in lesser spirit beasts by enhancing their primitive needs and wants. I don’t know how a human being might react to it, although Sen’s response sounds plausible.”

Uncle Kho stroked his beard. His eyes had a faraway look that they sometimes got when he was deep in thought.

“It might not be a true inducement web as you mean it, but could be some form of cultivator adaptation. Maybe she used talismans to replicate some of the effects,” he mused. “Although, I’m not sure how they would influence emotions that way. Cultivation techniques aren’t particularly suited to mental or emotional manipulation.”

“I thought it might be some kind of soul technique,” said Sen. “I was just guessing about it, though.”

“Maybe,” conceded Uncle Kho. “Soul techniques are rare, though. There are only a small handful that are known, and most of them are only possible for nascent soul cultivators. None of them have that kind of an effect. Unless that elder found a dragon to teach her, I don’t know where she would have learned such a technique.”

“Don’t discount that idea too quickly. I found a dragon who taught me things, after all,” Sen reminded the elder cultivator.

“True. You’re often the exception with those kinds of things, though.”

“Anyway, I just want all of you to be aware of it. As for the patriarch, it sounded like he left the sect,” said Sen.

“You don’t sound like you believe it,” said Falling Leaf.

Sen shrugged.

“I wasn’t at my best when all of that happened. I’m suspicious that whole thing with the elder and the patriarch was for my benefit.”

“You think they knew you were there?” asked Falling Leaf. “Why wouldn’t they simply kill you?”

“I don’t know. I got the feeling that the patriarch and most of the elders truly don’t care if a bunch of the outer disciples die. If anything, it almost seems like they’d welcome it. They might have also thought I was just there to spy. After all, I didn’t go on a killing spree or obviously sabotage anything the entire time I was there. They might have seen it as a way to spread some false information.”

“There’s no way to know for sure. Although, if that was for your benefit, it seems pretty clear that they don’t suspect what’s coming,” said Uncle Kho.

Sen nodded and said, “That seems likely. If anyone had tampered with the formation I set up, it would have gone off. I set it up that way.”

There was a moment of silence before Falling Leaf asked, “When do you want to strike?”

“Tonight. Around midnight. That’s when the formation will catch the most people.”