Sen was so startled by the familiar but long-absent sensation that he completely lost track of everything around him. He focused on that tugging sensation, trying to pinpoint where it was coming from. That proved to be a sowhat useless exercise, as he didn’t glean anything except that it was sowhere farther west of them. He thought it might not be exactly, directly west, but they were going to need to travel for a while before he’d know for sure. Yet, the return of that tugging sensation reassured Sen in so intangible way that he was on the right track. The situation might be dire, and people might be hunting him, but he had a destination again. Knowing that there was an opportunity ahead to learn sothing important, maybe even glean a bit more enlightennt, gave him a purpose that went beyond re survival. That bigger purpose focused him in a way that he hadn’t been focused in so ti.
“What’s going on?” asked Lo ifeng.
Her voice shattered the near-ditative state that Sen had been in for at least a short while. He glanced over at her and found the woman glaring forward, her eyes scanning the road, the trees, and the sky for whatever threat he had seen that she had missed. He shook his head.
“Don’t worry. It’s nothing bad. There’s just going to be an unexpected opportunity for ahead.”
Both Lifen and Lo ifeng were giving him looks like they thought maybe he’d injured his head in so way. Sighing audibly, Sen gestured that they should all start walking again and began explaining. He told them about that first tug back on the mountain and how it had led him to Tide’s Rest. Then, he told them about being led out to the Luo farm by a similar tug. He ended the explanation by giving them his theory that it was a call to opportunities for enlightennt.
“So, that’s why you went to Tide’s Rest and stood on that beach for so long,” said Lo ifeng. “I always wondered what that was about.”
Sen eyed her. “You could have just asked.”
“I could have, but it wasn’t information I needed. Curiosity isn’t always a good enough reason to ask people about things. So things just aren’t your business.”
Sen nodded in understanding. “I suppose that’s true enough.”
“Let make sure I understand,” said Lifen. “You get random tugging sensations in your soul that lead you to monts of enlightennt?”
“Not exactly,” said Sen. “It leads to opportunities to learn things. I didn’t actually get any enlightennt on that beach. And if there was enlightennt at the Luo farm, it was so subtle that I missed it. But, I did learn things at both places, even if it took a while to understand what I learned.”
“So, you get random tugs on your soul that tell you where to go so you can potentially get enlightennt?”
“Well,” hedged Sen, “yeah, I think so.”
“Unbelievable. You’re, you’re, you’re ridiculous!” shouted Lifen.
She stomped down the road ahead of them, muttering what sounded like a string of very colorful profanity to Sen. He stared after her, a little shocked by the reaction.
“That seed a little extre,” he said.
“Did it?” asked Lo ifeng.
“Well, yeah. Don’t you think so?”
“Not really. If I was her, I’d have probably tried to stab you by now.”
Sen gaped at the woman for a mont before he found his ability to speak again. “Why?”
“I’ve gathered enough from our conversation that I know you didn’t have what one might call a happy childhood. I also know that things look kind of bleak right now from your perspective. Yet, even with all of that, you look like you lead a pretty chard life from the outside.”
“Chard life? Are you kidding ? I grew up fighting rats and dogs for the right to eat garbage. I’ve got demonic cultivators breathing down my neck. If they catch , I expect that the best possible outco is that they kill quickly. I’m literally running away right now. I’ve got no plan to deal with them, and I expect that, sooner or later, they’re going to send soone to find who I can’t trick with a clever formation. When that day cos, I’ll have to fight and probably lose. What’s so chard about that?”
Lo ifeng let that all sink in for a mont before she responded. “That’s all true. But here are so other true things. You got taken in and personally trained by a nascent soul cultivator.”
“Three,” said Sen in a weary voice.
“What?”
“I got taken in and personally trained by three nascent soul cultivators.”
“Wait, wait, explain that.”
“Master Feng picked up on the street, but then he took up a mountain. He had a friend living up there.”
“A friend? Are you talking about Kho Jaw-Long?”
“Yeah, Uncle Kho. And Auntie Caihong was there later.”
“And they trained you, too?”
Sen nodded. “Uncle Kho taught about the spear. Auntie Caihong taught about alchemy.”
Lo ifeng shook her head. “Sun Lifen is right. You are ridiculous. Okay, so, you got years of personal attention and training from three of the most powerful, dangerous, and feared people in the world. Which, by the way, is an opportunity that so sect patriarchs and matriarchs would sell their children to get. Then, within half a year or so, you cow a sect.”
“Two,” said Sen, sounding even more tired.
“Two what?”
“Two sects. I cowed two sects.”
“I,” Lo ifeng said, “don’t even want to know. So, you cow two sects. You have a chance encounter with a divine turtle who helps you leapfrog, what, two or three steps in your body cultivation into the next major stage?”
“Sothing like that,” admitted Sen.
“And on top of all of that, you’ve apparently got the universe itself holding your hand and guiding you toward monts of enlightennt.”
Sen discovered that he was feeling a little sheepish and uncomfortable. “Well, when you put it like, it does kind of sound like a lot of good fortune.”
“Doesn’t it just? Look, I get it. You didn’t really ask for most of those things. They were just things that happened to you. They also didn’t happen all at once. But most cultivators would look at all of that and wonder which god you saved from death in your last life to earn that kind of good luck. I also understand that most people at your cultivation level aren’t dealing with being hunted by a demonic cabal. Most of them don’t live with, what I assu, are the very heavy expectations of three people who are probably going to challenge the heavens and succeed. To , it seems like you’re paying market value for your good fortune. For soone like Sun Lifen, though,” said Lo ifeng, letting the words hang.
“Soone who couldn’t even get cultivation manuals without help from soone like ,” said Sen. “Yeah, it probably looks unfair.”
“It probably looks monuntally unfair. Just keep in mind, she’s only thinking about the benefits. I bet she hasn’t really thought about what it would be like to train under soone like Feng Ming, or Kho Jaw-Long, or,” Lo ifeng visibly shuddered, “Ma Caihong as a qi condensing cultivator or early-stage foundation formation cultivator. I’d be willing to be that she hasn’t even thought about what going through a tribulation is like.”
“So, you’re saying that I should tell her about what it was like?”
“Well, I got most of my training from a peak core cultivator, and that was just about the hardest work I’ve ever done. Training with people a full stage beyond that, I honestly can’t even picture what that’d be like.”
“I guess it couldn’t hurt to offer her so cold, hard facts to offset that jealousy.”
“Well, it might not help. But, no, I don’t think it would hurt, either.”
Sen realized that Lifen was going to need more than a few minutes to cool down, so he busied himself looking for sowhere they could set up camp. He planned to get them back into the habit of traveling at night as soon as possible, but they’d both been up for nearly a full day and night. While Sen could shrug that off, it wasn’t as easy for Lifen. He didn’t see any value in pushing her that way unless it was necessary, and he didn’t think it was. Plus, Lo ifeng looked tired to him. Given that he’d never seen her look tired before, it made him wonder just how taxing her vacation had been. A little sleep would do everyone so good.
When he found a good spot, he led them off the road and way back into the forest. It was almost deep enough that he might worry about spirit beasts taking an interest, but he set up the formations before anything else. Lo ifeng watched him for a while before she ca over and started asking questions.
“Why did you put the flag there? Isn’t it out of alignnt?” she asked, pointing at the last flag he’d placed.
“Oh,” he said, only paying a little attention to her. “It’s because of the qi flow. If you look where the flag would normally go, there’s a minuscule eddy in the qi flow. It doesn’t look important, but it would have created fluctuations in the formation that would have gotten progressively worse the longer it was up. That’s the kind of thing that soone who knows what they’re doing might notice. Moving the flag here looks like it would weaken the formation, but the qi is actually about ten percent stronger in this spot. Although, I’m not sure why it’s stronger there. I suspect there’s probably sothing below that attracts it, but I’m only guessing. Anyway, that extra qi is sufficient to more than offset the variance created by the slightly misaligned flag. I’m actually going to get a stronger formation by doing it this way.”
Sen looked up to see Lo ifeng staring at him with her mouth hanging open a little.
“What?” he asked.
“You can feel the qi flow well enough to identify that there’s an eddy in it, right there?” she said, once again pointing.
“Um, yes? I an, can’t everyone?”
Lo ifeng reached up and pinched the bridge of her nose for a mont before she uttered a single word.
“Ridiculous.”
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