Unintended Cultivator
Book 11: Chapter 25: A Consolation All The Same

Sen wanted to dredge out every bit of knowledge that Jin Bohai possessed about shadow and darkness qi. Barring that, he wanted to begin immediate experiments with using darkness qi to pass through walls. It sounded like it could prove very useful, but that usefulness would depend entirely on Sen’s familiarity and speed with using the technique. He knew better than most that familiarity and speed came only with grueling, countless hours of practice. And even then, its full value would only be proven under fraught conditions.

If it couldn’t be effectively deployed when he was under serious pressure, it may as well not even exist. There would likely never come a time when he could excuse himself for twenty minutes to try to get a technique to work. He needed to be able to use it at a moment’s notice and summon it even faster. He did have the suspicion that any increase in speed would almost certainly come with an increase in pain. That unhappy thought was tempered by the knowledge that he could at least begin preparing himself mentally for that challenge.

Unfortunately, as much as he wanted to keep discussing cultivation or move on to learning through direct experience, neither of those things was going to happen. He simply didn’t have the time. It had been a feat that bordered on the miraculous that he’d secured an hour or two where no one would disturb him. Sen decided that the things he’d said to open up that time probably weren’t death threats. They were just firm suggestions, he thought. He was almost positive about it. But he’d felt people hovering outside the room for a while. It was a matter of when, not if, they’d intrude.

Not that he shared their usual frantic assumption that every little problem had to be dealt with right now or by directly by him. If anything, he had started to question the basic competence of many of the bureaucrats and even much of the military leadership. So many of the things they brought to him to decide simply weren’t that grave or in need of an immediate resolution. Most of them also would have been solvable by the most modest application of reason by literally any adult with the right knowledge of the situation. In other words, the very people who were bothering him with tiny problems.

Unfortunately, he also hadn’t been able to simply command them to stop doing it. At least a few times a day, someone came to him with a problem that truly did need his direct input or at least an application of his absurd, tyrannical authority to remove the obstacles that prevented someone from solving a problem themselves. He had tried to command them not to bring him problems until they had tried to solve the issues themselves. That had been a miserable failure. It turned out that people were very creative in their interpretation of what try to solve it yourself, first meant.

He was starting to think that it was a conspiracy meant to drown his will to live in an ocean of trivialities. Sadly, there was no proof of that, and he couldn’t even feel justified in yelling at people. He also knew that some of it was everyone trying to get a feel for him, his expectations, and the limits of his willingness to overlook people trying to benefit themselves while carrying out their duties. However, no one was ever going to convince him that it wasn’t at least partially a conspiracy to waste his time. Regardless of the reasons, the whole thing was mentally exhausting.

“You seem distracted,” Jin Bohai chided him gently.

“I am distracted,” admitted Sen, realizing that he’d completely missed everything the other man had said for at least the last minute or two. “We’ll need to stop here for the day. I can almost feel the servants and messengers getting ready to burst into tears or flames if I keep ignoring them.”

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“Yes. The demands of leadership never seem to run out of steam. There’s just no end to the things that other people think you need to know about.”

“How did you deal with that problem in your sect?” asked Sen, hoping against hope for a practical solution.

“I just started executing people,” said Jin Bohai.

“You did?”

“No, but I definitely thought about doing it. It was a tiny consolation, but a consolation all the same.”

“But things did eventually get better, right?”

“Oh, by the heavens, no. And you should be grateful for that.”

“I should?” asked a skeptical Sen.

“You definitely should. If leadership were easy, there would be far more people lining up to try to take your throne.”

“Do you want it? I sell it to you cheap.”

Jin Bohai snorted and said, “No. Even if I set aside that your master would almost certainly murder me in some public and painful way, I know what it takes to lead. Granted, it’s knowledge on a smaller scale, but knowledge all the same. I can make some educated guesses about how much worse it would be to run this city or a country. I think I’ll opt for my somewhat smaller problems and keep working on reaching ascension.”

“Do you think you’ll make it?”

“I think I have a better chance than most. My foundation is strong. I understand my qi type very, very well. I don’t foresee any serious bottlenecks that will trip me up. But, who’s to say for sure? I expect that many before me were in a similar position and still failed to ascend. After all, there are still the tribulations to contend with. It isn’t like they get any gentler when you reach the nascent soul stage. The last one almost killed me, so I’ve been doing everything I can to boost my physical resilience.”

Sen was a little impressed with the sect patriarch. Jin Bohai had turned his own strategy against him. The man had answered the question and even provided a little information, but he hadn’t offered a single detail that could be used against him. At best, Sen could only derive a few ideas about what the nascent soul cultivator might be doing to shore up any weaknesses that would prevent him from surviving a tribulation. Even if those ideas were accurate, there was nothing Sen could do that would prevent Jin Bohai from moving forward with whichever methods he was using. It was a good object lesson in how to do what Sen had done without being quite so obvious and offensive about it. While Sen might not have been looking for that kind of help, he wasn’t going to ignore it either. After all, there might come a day when he wanted to do the same thing, but be more subtle about it.

Rising from his seat, Sen nodded and said, “I appreciate you taking the time to instruct me.”

Smirking just enough that Sen wouldn’t miss it, Jin Bohai said, “Well, that was what I said I’d do. We’ll need to meet again so I can provide some hands-on demonstrations.”

“That would be helpful if it can be arranged, but it’s probably not necessary. I think I’ve got more than enough to work from already.”

That declaration seemed to startle the sect patriarch.

“Really? You’re that confident?”

“I just have a lot of practice at figuring out difficult things on my own. I won’t even be working from nothing with this. It might take me a few weeks, but it shouldn’t elude me.”

“A few weeks?!”

Sen mentally reviewed what he knew about shadow walking and what Jin Bohai had told him about walking through walls before he nodded.

“That should be enough time,” he said.

“I can see now why you said that you frustrate Fu Ruolan in most ways. If you’re right, that is an irritating amount of talent.”

Sen almost made a comment about waiting until he did something impossible, but decided to keep it to himself. There was a full-blown crowd of people hovering outside the room. He walked over to the door, braced himself for the onslaught, and looked back at Jin Bohai.

“You should just have another cup of tea. It’ll probably take me that long to clear them all away.”

Sen felt Jin Bohai extend his spiritual sense and heard the man sigh.

“I think I’ll do just that,” said the man, reaching out for the teapot.

Sen opened the door, and noise washed over him like a wave of sonic aggravation.