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Unintended Cultivator Vol 11: Chapter 47 – It’s Not Your Responsibility
🕑 Added 2025-03-05 09:33:48 +0000 UTCWhen Sen had decided to leave an area of the wilds untouched for the spirit oxen, he hadn’t done it negligently. He had very intentionally made sure that there were no other spirit beasts remaining the area. Still, the fact that some other spirit beasts had successfully fled there was not entirely a surprise or shouldn’t have been. It had likely been inevitable. It was a vast tract of land. More than enough to support the spirit oxen until new growth took firm root in the spring. At least, he hoped it was. The herd didn’t appear malnourished to his eyes. Of course, all of that protected space would be terribly inviting to any spirit beasts that had managed to escape his final blow in the battle. Or those who had evaded the inferno he and the other cultivators were systematically making out of the remaining wilds in the area.
Despite being a huge piece of land, it was still a limited space. The oxen could steer clear of more predatory spirit beasts but couldn’t really flee without abandoning the sanctuary entirely. That made them much easier targets for hunting than they would be in other circumstances. If they did abandon the area, they’d have a long, hungry walk to the next intact piece of the wilds. A journey that some of the young might not survive. The calves were little more than the equivalent of mortals or qi-condensing cultivators. Eating was no more optional for them than it had been for him when he was young. The herd would also be taking the same risk as every other spirit beast that wherever they fled to would go up in flames without warning.
With danger to both sides, the herd had made a hard choice. They stayed where there was food to be found for the young beneath the snow. Sen didn’t like it. He didn’t like it one bit. This was not what he’d intended when he’d left this place unburned. And he meant to fix it. He looked over to Grandmother Lu and Lai Dongmei, only to find them giving him quizzical looks. He would have to explain.
“There are spirit beasts here other than the spirit oxen. I don’t when they arrived, although I can make a few guesses. They’re minimally a threat to the calves and maybe the entire herd. They need to be removed.”
“I can assist you with that,” said Lai Dongmei.
Sen shook his head immediately.
“I appreciate the offer, but I’m not entirely sure what’s out there. If the other spirit beasts panic, I need someone here who can protect Grandmother Lu and herd if something too powerful comes this way. If I run across something strong, I might not be able to kill it and get back here fast enough.”
Lai Dongmei looked skeptical, but apparently decided to keep her thoughts to herself. Grandmother Lu was less restrained.
“I’m not helpless, Sen.”
“I know you aren’t. Against something the equivalent of foundation formation, I wouldn’t worry about you. But what about a spirit beast as strong as a core cultivator? What about three of them? Or five? I’m not willing to risk your life that way for no reason when there’s an alternative.”
“In that case,” said Lai Dongmei, “why don’t I go and clear out the interlopers, while you stay and guard everyone?”
Sen had no immediate response to that. That would work. It just felt off somehow. It took him a moment to put his finger on it, though.
“It’s not your responsibility. The spirit oxen are my allies. I created the conditions for this situation to exist. I should be the one to deal with it.”
“That’s absurd,” said Lai Dongmei with a wave of her hand. “Hostile spirit beasts this close to the city are just as much my responsibility as yours. Besides, from this point forward, your allies are the allies of everyone in the kingdom. Or did you forget, again?”
Sen grimaced a little and said, “I forgot, again.”
Lai Dongmai smirked at him.
“You wait here. I’ll go encourage those unwelcome spirit beasts.”
“Encourage them to what?” asked a perplexed Sen.
“To start their next lives.”
Before Sen could mount another protest, Lai Dongmei shot into the air on a qi platform. He watched her for a moment before she vanished from sight. A few moments later, he felt qi flaring and watched as living things vanished from his spiritual sense.
“You know, I had my doubts about her,” said Grandmother Lu thoughtfully, “but I really do like her.”
Sen could see the merry twinkle in Grandmother Lu’s eyes. He shook his head.
“Yeah, she’s got her virtues.”
“Somehow, I doubt it’s her virtues that caught your eye.”
“Oh, by the thousand hells,” muttered Sen. “It’s not like we’re betrothed.”
“I’m not sure if that’s her loss or yours.”
“Mine. I’m quite confident of that. Incidentally, is there a reason for this embarrassment, or was it just for your amusement?”
“It was certainly amusing, but mostly it let me gauge exactly how serious things are between you.”
“Is this your way of suggesting I take a wife?” asked Sen with a raised eyebrow.
The amusement on Grandmother Lu’s face faded into something far more somber.
“The opposite, Sen. The exact opposite. Maybe, if the world was very different, I might think it was a good idea. As things are now, I struggle to think of worse idea.”
Sen wasn’t sure how to feel about any of what she was saying. It didn’t precisely hurt, but it had skirted close to that territory.
“I’m not sure I understand,” he finally said.
Grandmother Lu pursed her lips briefly before she said, “You’re about to fight a war. A war that may very well kill you. Even if you did marry, you’d be gone. If you died, you’d leave a widow behind you. One who never had the chance to live any sort of life with you. She’d have nothing at all to soften the bitterness of that.”
“And if I lived?”
“You return to someone harboring the resentment of being abandoned for years. Either way, nothing good could come of it.”
Sen couldn’t pretend that she’d said anything he’d wanted to hear, but it wasn’t that far off from things he’d considered before. It hadn’t been in the context of going off to a long war, but rather to his inevitable ascension. He couldn’t form those kinds of bonds in good conscience. In truth, he’d feared he’d done something terrible to Ai by adopting her the way he had. That decision was already made, though, and nothing could change it.
“You don’t need to worry, Grandmother. I’m not that selfish or that unkind.”
“I didn’t think you were. Still, the heart can blind you to hard truths and there are precious few people left who can tell them to you.”
“Have I become that unapproachable.”
“It’s not you. It’s power. Power puts those walls up whether you want them or not.”
“True enough,” conceded Sen, although his attention was elsewhere.
He’d been following Lai Dongmei’s rather swift progress in eliminating the spirit beasts. Now, though, she was on the far end of the sanctuary area and something had just appeared in his spiritual sense. Something that hadn’t been there until now and was far closer to Grandmother Lu and the herd than Sen felt even remotely comfortable with. He might not have worried about it, except that it burned a little too brightly in his spiritual sense. At the same time, the information his spiritual sense usually returned to him was wholly absent.
That made him far more nervous. It also made him feel, yet again, like he wasn’t competent for the role he had assumed. He couldn’t help but wonder if a truly powerful spirit beast been hiding in this sanctuary and biding its time. In retrospect, it was an obvious thing for him to have sent people to check for. No, he thought. I should have been checking for that myself. Now, with two nascent soul cultivators within striking distance, whatever was out there must have decided that it’s odd of successfully hiding from them both wasn’t good enough.
“What’s wrong?” asked Grandmother Lu, her war fans appearing in her hands.
“There’s something powerful close by,” said Sen. “Please go guard the herd. I don’t want you getting caught up in the edges of a battle between me and a nascent soul spirit beast.”
“Are you sure that’s what it is?”
“Sure enough,” said Sen, his eyes locked in the direction of that new presence.
Grandmother Lu hurried to where the spirit oxen herd was clumped together. He could hear the frightened sounds the calves were making. The strongest members of the herd had formed a protective circle around them, but they weren’t like the herd mother he’d met so long ago with Falling Leaf. It was obvious to him now that she had been a nascent soul spirit beast. The herd leader here was probably equivalent to upper core cultivator. Strong enough to buy a little time, maybe, but not strong enough to drive off something that felt as powerful as what was out there.
Sen could feel Lai Dongmei racing back toward them, but even at her ridiculous speed, it would still take her a few minutes. Sen had the feeling that whatever was about to happen would likely be over by then. While one-on-one fights always felt like they took a long time to him while they were happening, he knew that most rarely lasted for more than a minute or two. He summoned the two lightning iris jian that Master Feng had made for him. Sen rarely used them, but they did conduct lightning more efficiently than anything else. He had a feeling he might actually need that small edge in the fight to come.
He pressed lightning qi into the blades. They began to crackle with that power and cast the area around him in an eerie, flickering light. No sooner had he done that, than he saw the presence in his spiritual sense streak toward them at what could only be nascent soul speeds. Sen took one last glance toward Grandmother Lu and herd, and then he forced all of his attention on the incoming threat. There could be no distraction with something that might well have more power than he did. Sen took a breath and waited for his instincts to tell him the moment was right. He could hear trees being knocked down or their trunks exploding. Not yet, he thought. He felt the tremors in the ground beneath him. Not yet, he told himself. There was a swell of qi that seemed ot wash over him.
“Now,” he said in a cold voice.
He swept his two jian forward. Something he couldn’t see burst into the clearing and, because of its own speed, couldn’t avoid the wall of lightning that Sen had thrown into its way. There was an animal roar of agony. I’m committed now, he thought and burst toward the source of that noise.
Comments
DeAndrea Harris
Are we finally getting the BearCat matriarch?!
Trevor Mergen
Thanks!
Palmer Evans
Great chapter!
Angela Roberts
And it's on!
Barbara Collier
Here we go!!!
Kanyau
His first true nascent soul fight. Let's GOOO!
Abdulaziz ALRumaih
Thanks for the chapter
