Book 3: Chapter 8: Port
The next two weeks fell into something of a routine for Sen and Lifen. They’d get up each morning and cultivate for an hour on deck. Then, Sen began the grueling process of teaching and drilling Lifen on unarmed combat. It didn’t take long for the question Sen had been expecting to come up.
“I don’t understand,” said Lifen between puffing breaths. “I thought you were going to train me to use a weapon. Why am I learning all of this unarmed stuff?”N0v3lTr0ve served as the original host for this chapter's release on N0v3l--B1n.
“What will you do if you lose your weapon or get disarmed?”
“Oh,” said Lifen, looking a little embarrassed. “Right. That makes sense. I guess I was just focused on the idea of a weapon.”
“We’ll get to that. Believe it or not, learning this will actually make learning that easier.”
Sen would keep her at training for most of the morning, before giving her a break and going to help prepare lunch. Sen found that letting her rest and get something to eat in the middle of the day dramatically improved her performance in the afternoon. Unlike his own training days, he left her to her own devices in the evening, often choosing to cultivate on his own to gather qi from the deepening shadows on deck. That particular choice also had the side benefit of letting her cool down for a while if she was harboring any resentment from the day’s training.
While he hadn’t expected any real benefits to his qi cultivation from his recent body advancement, he was pleasantly surprised to find one. While he still had to make a conscious effort to gather qi in the right balance, the work had become much easier. It felt as though his body had become a much more efficient conduit for all five types of qi. He just wasn’t entirely sure why. Unfortunately, he didn’t have the time to really investigate it and made a mental note to explore the issue when he had a touch more free time. While that improved efficiency still wasn’t good enough to allow his passive cultivation to run in the background, it cut down on the total amount of time he spent on cultivation each day. Then, he’d go back to the tiny cabin he shared with Lifen to find out what kind of mood she was in. Some days, when things had gone relatively well, she’d be in a good mood. On those days, she’d want to discuss the training or cultivation. On days when things had not gone well, he’d get icy looks or find her studiously ignoring him.
He took it all in stride as best as he could. Sen hadn’t known exactly how the young woman was going to react to getting training from him, but he had known it was going to mean a change. Yet, his taking on the role of teacher was the least bad option of a very limited set of choices. He expected it wouldn’t have been quite so bad if he wasn’t teaching her something so demanding. Martial skills were one area where, much like cultivation, a poor beginning often meant disaster later. As much as he might have preferred to go easy on her, that wouldn’t serve her well in a real fight. Plus, Sen expected that they would find themselves in a real fight at some point. They could probably run and hide for a while, but it would take an extraordinary amount of good fortune to avoid any contact with the demonic cultivators. They couldn’t walk around in disguise all the time. If their descriptions had been sent out, and Sen had to assume they were, it only took one person recognizing them and it would be a chase or a fight. So, he continued to push.
The ship stopped twice in those two weeks. Both times, Lo Meifeng bid them to stay inside and then stole into the port towns to get a look around. Both times, she came back and simply shook her head. When Sen asked what was wrong, the older cultivator just shook her head.
“My instincts tell me that it’s a bad place for us. I’ve learned to trust those feelings over the years.”
For her part, Lifen looked around with curious eyes. The port city wasn’t nearly as large as Emperor’s Bay, so she wasn’t staring with wonder. But the architecture was a bit different. There was less stone and more wood to be seen. Thatch covered nearly every roof, save for on a few buildings in the distance that Sen suspected were owned by either the local government or the local wealthy. The local speech was a little different as well. Sen wasn’t an expert in languages, so he had a hard time putting his finger on it. The best he could come up with was that the people sounded a little softer, almost like they were slurring their words a little bit in spots where he wouldn’t. That reminded him that he had meant to ask someone about what languages were spoken on the continent. He turned to ask Lo Meifeng about it, but Lifen spoke first.
“Will we stay in the city tonight?” she asked.
Lo Meifeng started to say something before she frowned. In the end, she shook her head. “No, not in the city. Maybe somewhere in the outskirts. There are too many eyes here.”
Lifen looked a little disappointed, but she didn’t object. That made Sen happy. He had no desire to try and keep them from yelling at each other in public. People yelling at each in the street was not low profile. Plus, Sen was already distracted. He’d been hiding since before they got off the ship. He understood why Lo Meifeng had suggested it, but it also made him nervous to have his cultivator senses so limited. He was also having to get used to walking on land again. His body had adapted to the rolling motion of the ship pretty quickly, but he hadn’t quite reverted back yet. On top of that, he was trying to keep his eyes open for trouble. He’d been pretty adept at spotting trouble when he’d been a street urchin, so he leaned hard on those rusty old skills.
Yet, despite Sen’s near certainty that they’d be discovered and attacked, the trip through the port city was quiet. They passed out of the gates with barely an acknowledgment from the guards, aside from one staring a little too long at Lifen’s body. Sen had spent enough time with her to see that she didn’t mean to say anything about it but that the leering bothered her. Sen gave the guard a look so hard that the man flinched, went pale, and immediately found somewhere else to direct his attention. As they moved away from the gate, Lifen gave Sen a bemused smile.
“You didn’t have to do that,” she said.
“Probably not, but it was bothering you,” said Sen, as though that explained everything.
“Is that a good enough reason?”
Sen gave her a baffled look. “Why wouldn’t it be?”
Lifen looked a bit startled at those words, then a light blush tinged her cheeks. Sen didn’t really know what to make of that, so he added it to the long list of mysteries in his life that would probably never be solved.
