Book 2: Chapter 26: An Unnatural Silence
On previous days, Sen had been making only half-hearted attempts to avoid the Soaring Skies sect members. While he hadn’t especially wanted their company, he also hadn’t worried that they were going to try to harm him. Wu Meng Yao was simply too earnest in her talk of honor. If nothing else, he believed that she would warn him if the other meant to do something to him. Well, if one of them planned on doing something violent anyway. Following the fallout of his decision, Sen decided it was high time to put some real distance between him and the sect members. Then, there would be no accidental encounters when it was time to set up camp. Although, ideally, Sen could find an inn somewhere. While the road was dominated by long stretches bereft of civilization, there were occasional villages and towns. He’d just keep going until it grew too late in the day, or he found one.
Just as importantly, he hadn’t been making use of his qinggong technique while walking. It soaked up more qi than he liked to use, but it was the ideal solution to the problem behind him. If the Soaring Skies sect members and their prisoners could all use qinggong techniques to travel, he suspected they would have been. He’d seen no evidence of that, so he put the technique to good use. He didn’t use it to the technique’s maximum capacity. He reserved that for fights. He didn’t even use to the level he had done when fleeing Tide’s Rest. There was no one pursuing him that he was aware of. Instead, he only used it enough that his passive intake of qi matched the amount he was using.
He didn’t have a good way to measure those amounts, and every small improvement in his cycling technique changed the math a little bit. Still, it gave him something to occupy his mind with as the landscape flew. After an hour or two of travel, he thought he was probably using the qinggong technique to somewhere between twenty and thirty percent of the maximum speed it allowed him. While it was accomplishing the goal of leaving miles between him and his very short-term companions, there was more than a little perfectionist living in Sen’s soul. Like most techniques, Sen had initially settled for just getting it to work. That was often a massive achievement in and of itself.The initial instance of this chapter being available happened at N0v3l.Bin.
He’d been especially proud of getting that qinggong technique to work, though. Master Feng had said that most cultivators didn’t even bother with them until core formation, citing the ridiculous qi consumption using the full-blown technique demanded. Now that he had nothing better to do than attend to that technique for hours on end, Sen put his mind to work on making it work better for him. Sen felt he’d been relying too much on raw force and not enough on precision since leaving the mountain. It just wasn’t a winning long-term strategy. It was fine for when someone at his own stage challenged him, but he couldn’t depend on every cultivator he met being at his stage. It was only pure dumb luck, or perhaps some kind of intervention from the heavens, that had kept him out of the way of higher-stage cultivators so far. Although, once he reflected on it, maybe it hadn’t been as unlikely as he’d initially thought.
Throwing a bit of caution to the wind, Sen increased the amount of qi he was pushing into the qinggong technique. It wasn’t balanced with his qi intake anymore, but he covered what would have been an hour of normal walking in five or ten minutes. A fair trade in his estimation. Yet, when the town proper came into view, Sen drew a swift and complete halt. He’d grown up in a town and spent years out in nature. His senses were finely tuned for what should and shouldn’t be in both environments. An unnatural silence hung over that town and the entire surrounding area. At least, that was what had initially raised Sen’s suspicions. Now that he was studying the town, though, the other problems became apparent.
The gates to the town were open but unguarded. Granted, this town probably didn’t face spirit beast attacks as often as some places, but no town left its gates unguarded. If nothing else, the guards served as an early warning system if someone hostile showed up at the gate. There was no woodsmoke. He couldn’t see any rising from behind the walls, which wasn’t always a problem, but he couldn’t smell any smoke either. Even on the hottest days of the year, people needed to cook. That woodsmoke smell hung over every town without fail, except this one. Of course, the lack of people was the true warning sign. Even if Sen couldn’t see them from where he was, he should be able to hear people moving around, talking, laughing, shouting, or simply encouraging animals to get a cart from one part of the town to another. Yet, all that Sen heard was nothing.
He debated with himself about what to do. There was obviously something very wrong with the town. Part of Sen burned with curiosity. What could have left a town in such a state? Was it a monster of some kind? An illness? Had the wells simply run dry, and people moved on? There could be a challenge in that seemingly abandoned place, something that might let him move his cultivation forward. Although, Sen doubted that. He didn’t seem to get much benefit from physical confrontations. While part of him really wanted to know, Sen was less thrilled by the idea of a brand-new problem. Much like Changpu’s broken heart, the trouble in the town wasn’t his responsibility. Unlike so many things in life, whatever was happening behind those walls was something that he could simply walk away from.
Of course, if there was something truly dangerous in there, he probably had a better chance of surviving it than some random caravan drivers and guards. If it was too much for him, he could simply leave and alert the authorities. Let them hire some sect to deal with the problem if it was beyond Sen. While some other cultivators might feel like they had to stay and finish every fight, Sen didn’t subscribe to that idea. He firmly believed that if someone couldn’t reasonably win a fight but could escape, they probably should. Staying to die for honor alone was an idiotic way to end one’s life. Realizing that he’d already made his decision, Sen summoned his spear from his storage ring. He walked through the gate and into the eerie, silent town.
