Unintended Cultivator
Book 11: Chapter 36: Competence

Sen had thought that it would feel like a long time when he initially set the goal to march the army in a month. As one thing had piled up on the next, he realized what a naïve thought that had been. He was training the emissaries, monitoring the army, and sidestepping nobles with all their delusions about the things they thought they were owed. The sects were better than the nobles, cowed as they had been by Master Feng and Uncle Kho. Of course, better was not the same as good. There was an almost endless stream of elders trying to get him to reveal the secret of his unprecedented rise through the stages of cultivation. When they weren’t doing that, they were trying to convince him that he’d be better served joining their sects. On top of that, he needed to find the right moment to spring the trap on Kang.

Adding to his frustration was his near-total failure in teaching the cultivators in front of him how to do something he thought was simplicity itself. When he’d originally come up with the idea for very fast-moving cultivators as messengers, Glimmer of Night hadn’t made his advancements with the communication cores. That breakthrough had, oh so very briefly, had Sen thinking that the cultivator messengers weren’t necessary anymore. That beautiful fantasy had lasted for the length of ten seconds. Then, he’d started thinking about it. The communication cores might be faster, and they would provide an unbelievable strategic advantage, but they were only as secure as the people who handled them.

Out of pure necessity, Sen was going to have to give them to people he didn’t know at all. There was the constant possibility of anything being said into a communication core being overheard by unfriendly ears. And there was no way to ensure everyone who received a core would use the cores in private or mind their words as carefully as they should. It wasn’t a matter of if someone would say something indiscreet where they shouldn’t. It was only a matter of when. All of which meant that the cultivator messengers were still likely to be a necessity. They would never be as fast as the cores, but they could be given qi-sealed messages that Sen wouldn’t want discussed openly. Assuming he could ever manage to get any of these supposed geniuses to understand the technique.

***

Zhang Chuntao felt a bead of cold sweat roll down the back of her neck as she stared at Judgment’s Gale. The man who was king in all but name, and only because he’d never bothered to just say that he was the king. The man who had wiped away an army of spirit beasts in a few moments of hellish destruction. The man who was commonly known to share the bed of Lai Dongmei, Matriarch of the Golden Phoenix Sect. The matriarch of Chuntao’s sect. A woman whom no one in the Golden Phoenix Sect wanted to disappoint for any reason. However, despite all of Chuntao’s best efforts, that’s exactly what she was doing. She was being a disappointment.

She had volunteered to come and learn from the Warstorm, thinking that it might help her break the bottleneck that had been plaguing her for two decades. While some elders held that all the necessary wisdom to ascend could be found within the walls of their sect, Chuntao had found that to be more true for some than others. If anyone alive could help her find a way, it would be Lu Sen. The man who had seemingly cast aside every fact and known truth of cultivation. At first, she had even hoped to impress him. It would break her heart to leave the Golden Phoenix Sect. If Lu Sen’s sect held the secrets she needed, though, cultivation was ultimately a path of selfishness. She would, however reluctantly, trade allegiances if it could help her find the way to ascension.

That dream had died before it ever had a chance to blossom. At this point, she was simply praying to the heavens that she managed to master some tiny part of the technique Lu Sen meant them to learn. It wasn’t looking hopeful for her, though. Nor for anyone else standing in that cold palace courtyard. Judgment’s Gale hadn’t said a word or even moved. He’d just stood there, looking at them. She could almost feel him peering into her soul and finding it, finding her, inadequate. He must think we’re all incompetent, thought Chuntao before turning her thoughts to the heavens again. Please. Please help me find the inspiration to learn this.

***

I can’t think of a thing to say to these people that I haven’t already told them twenty times already, Sen moaned inside his head. He knew he’d just been looking at all of them in utter silence for way, way too long. I bet this is disappointing for all of them, he thought. I must look so incompetent right now.

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Chen Miaorui waited with rapt attention. Not that he believed any longer that he was going to master this new qinggong technique. That much had been clear to him after the first hour. What seemed so clear and simple to Judgment’s Gale had been entirely opaque to him. That unfortunate truth didn’t change the fact that he was standing before a living legend. A man whose insights had to be so utterly profound that they shook the very foundations of the heavens. Whatever Judgment’s Gale said next, Miaorui was certain that it would, someday, change the very path of his cultivation journey.

He also thought it might take centuries of contemplation to unravel whatever divine riddle the man spoke. Once Miaorui did grasp it, though, it might even change the Thunderous Fist Sect itself. After all, the man had been standing there in silent contemplation for most of ten minutes. Whatever came next would surely be momentous.

***

Think, think, think, Sen mentally berated himself. You figured out how to fly. How hard can it be to explain this in a way that makes sense to someone other than yourself?

***

The longer that terrible silence dragged on, the more certain Zhang Chuntao became that Lu Sen was going to dismiss them all from this training entirely. She shuddered to imagine what would happen then. She would have to return to the sect in utter disgrace and explain how she had failed so completely to glean anything from possibly the most talented cultivator in the world. She wasn’t sure she could bear up beneath that kind of shame. What would the elders say? What would Lai Dongmei do? It wouldn’t shock her to be cast out of the sect for tarnishing their honor in such a fashion. She also had no idea where she would go. She hadn’t kept track of her family. She didn’t see the point after her parents and siblings died. She thought she might have some great-great-great nieces and nephews out there. That assumed the war hadn’t swallowed them whole like it had so many others.

***

Sen straightened up when he finally had an idea. That motion was met with a collective intake of breath from all the cultivators who had been watching him. He withheld the look he wanted to direct at them. He thought he finally saw his mistake. His explanations had become increasingly technical and esoteric as the days went by. He’d assumed that he was talking beneath their level of understanding and adjusted accordingly, but what if they were having the opposite problem? What if he hadn’t made it simple enough at the start for them to understand? Suppressing a smile, he summoned a water skin from a storage ring.

He held it up so they could all see it. There were looks of confusion. That was okay. Confusion could always be remedied. Inattention would have been a different matter. He pulled out the stopper and poured some water out. He caught the water with a combination of water and air qi and spread it out to make a kind of platform. Then, he placed the water skin onto the makeshift platform. He gestured at it, and the platform moved around, slowly weaving between the students.

“This is how most of you use your qinggong techniques at your level of advancement,” said Sen. “Correct?”

There was a murmur of yes and some nodding heads.

“There’s nothing specifically wrong with that. It’s what most of you were taught. It’s functional. Adequate. It’s also wasteful.”

He summoned the platform back to himself and plucked the water skin from it. The water that made up the platform splashed to the ground when Sen withdrew his qi. He adjusted his grip on the water skin so there was a lot of internal pressure.

“This is what you should be doing to master the technique.”

Sen summoned a dagger and, without any ceremony or explanation, he poked a small hole in the bottom of the skin. Water shot out of the hole. He held the bag up so everyone could see it. At first, the confused looks lingered. That had Sen half-convinced that he’d failed, again. One by one, though, he saw the light of understanding coming alive in their eyes. I’m so glad they understood, he thought. Maybe they won’t think I’m completely incompetent.

***

Zhang Chuntao managed to keep from bursting into tears of relief as she finally understood what the man had been talking about, if only just. His explanations had been so advanced that they’d lost her completely. He’d been talking about things she’d never even heard of before, like partitioned qi flow regulation, focused burst intensity, and patterned momentum. This, though, she could understand. It didn’t make everything he’d said before clear, but it was enough.

I just hope he doesn’t tell the matriarch that I was so incompetent that he had to simplify things to the point of stabbing a water skin to let me understand, she thought.

***

It all became clear to Chen Miaorui in an instant. It wasn’t the qinggong technique, or not just the qinggong technique, but so much more. He’s seen beyond the immediate to the deeper metaphor that Lu Sen had been imparting with his deviously simple example. Cultivators were always focused on more power. You cultivated to gather power and refine it. You built it up. Yet, that had only managed to carry Chen Miaorui so far. He’d felt his own momentum slowing as the simple acquisition of more power led to fewer and fewer insights. The water skin was a person’s cultivation. You could fill the bag and fill the bag until it was ready to burst, but you acquired true strength only through the proper focusing of that power at the right place and time. A thought overwhelmed Chen Miaorui.

How could I have been so blind?

When divine qi poured into him, he could only smile at the thought of all the other riddles Lu Sen had given them to unravel.

***

Sen blinked as the man from the Thunderous Fist Sect was inundated with divine qi. That’s unexpected, thought Sen. What in the thousand hells could the man have gotten out of me stabbing a water skin that led to an inspiration?