Book 5: Chapter 16: Guest
One of the lessons that Sen learned from collecting plants and alchemical reagents on Uncle Kho’s mountain was that the finding all too often proved easier than the actual harvesting. Many of those plants had powerful defenses that could prove downright lethal to the careful cultivator. Beyond that, humans weren’t the only ones who found those plants and reagents useful. While spirit beasts did not practice alchemy, at least not to Sen’s knowledge, they could often consume those reagents for benefits. The more potent the plants and reagents, the more powerful the spirit beasts who would guard them. That had been at least part of the reason that Uncle Kho’s mountain had been such a dangerous place. There were many very useful things on that mountain, and many spirit beasts had moved in to take advantage. That was something that Sen reminded himself about again as he pulled his spear free from the body of some kind of bird of prey with a metal beak, talons, and even eyes.
“This isn’t actually malicious,” Sen muttered. “They aren’t intentionally trying to stall you.”
Of course, saying it and believing it were two different matters. Yes, Mt. Solace was even more remote than Uncle Kho’s mountain. Yes, Sen strongly suspected that it had been harvested from even less frequently. So, he should have expected unhappy spirit beasts to slow him down. He’d even blown off the first few attacks. What he had not expected was the constant stream of them. He’d been awake and fighting for nearly three straight days as they crawled their way up the mountain. He knew he could keep going for a while, but there were limits. Going without sleep generally meant toning down the combat activities as much as possible. It freed up the qi for things like reinforcing the body as necessary. When combat was nearly relentless, the body only got reinforced here and there. Given that Sen didn’t understand how Fu Ruolan had stabilized his condition, he was not particularly keen on the idea of pushing his body to its limits for extended periods of time.
It wasn’t even that any given confrontation was that difficult. With lone spirit beasts, Sen could often immobilize them with his auric imposition or slow them down enough with it to get off other attacks. For attacks by groups, he’d often deployed his killing intent like a blanket over the area. That was often sufficient to end the threat by itself. But those tactics required concentration and, because Falling Leaf was nearby, a degree of precision. Using those tactics over and over and over again had worn him down mentally. He was still thinking far faster than any mortal, but the spirit beasts were only growing more powerful and faster the higher they went up the mountain. If things kept up the way they had been, Sen knew that he was going to make a mistake that would get him or Falling Leaf badly injured or killed. He leaned on the spear and gave Falling Leaf a grim look.
“We can’t keep going on like this,” he said. “I think we need to hole up for a night.”
Falling Leaf stared up toward the peak of the mountain. He wasn’t sure exactly what she was feeling at the moment, but he was deeply relieved that she was pointing it at something other than him. Making a frustrated sound that never quite became a word, she gave him a questioning look.
“Do we have the time for that?”
She was as aware of the schedule they were on as he was, and it was clearly on her mind. Sen considered it as he too stared up toward the peak. He had a vague idea of where on the mountain to look, but he didn’t know how much farther they had to go to reach it. The mountain was vast. While they’d gotten a goodly way up it, the peak vanished into the cloud cover overhead. It could still be days before they reached the right spot.
“I don’t know,” admitted Sen. “I do know that we can’t afford for either of us to make a bad choice because we were too tired to make a good one.”
Falling Leaf frowned at that before she finally nodded. “Agreed.”
Sen gave serious consideration to just throwing up a galehouse right there, but they had made a lot of noise and spilled blood. While the noise and fighting would keep other things away for a time, the smell of blood would draw attention to their location sooner than later. Rubbing at his face with the hand that wasn’t holding on to his spear, he looked down at the three dead birds on the ground. Loathing the lost time, he still stopped to remove their cores, beaks, talons, and eyes. He didn’t need anyone to tell him that they would prove useful, valuable, or both. While he wasn’t that worried about money, it was still stupid to just leave resources sitting around on the ground. Staring down at the remains of the dead birds, a random thought hit him.
“Do you think these things are edible?” he asked Falling Leaf.
She shrugged. “Most birds are.”
Sen stored the corpses in a storage ring, then headed off looking for a better spot to put up a galehouse. It took about an hour that was mercifully free from any additional attacks before Sen found a place that he considered acceptable. Even after letting Falling Leaf grab whatever cores she wanted, Sen was still freshly stocked on a wide variety of them. He even had enough metal-attributed cores to set up his nasty spike formation. While he took the extra time to set up several formations outside of the galehouse, Falling Leaf took the birds and finished cleaning them. Not that Sen was especially worried that they would make him sick. Auntie Caihong had told him that core cultivators and dual cultivators like him could theoretically eat just about anything without suffering any ill effects from things that weren’t specifically poisons and venoms. He was more worried that the birds just wouldn’t taste good. Once he finished putting up the formations, which went much faster than he expected, he walked over to where Falling Leaf was considering the plucked birds. He eyed them, and then her.
“Then you’re spending time with the wrong strangers,” offered the man with a cheerful smile.
When that got exactly no response from Sen or Falling Leaf, the man actually looked a little hurt. When the silence stretched out to close to a minute with no one doing anything, Sen finally got tired of it.
“I think it’s time that you moved on,” said Sen. “You clearly know that there are formations in place. Take those as a hint.”
The stranger frowned as if he’d abruptly realized that Sen was being deadly serious and not just posturing.
“You’d leave a fellow traveler to the mercies of this mountain?”
“The last fellow travelers we met here meant to rob and kill us,” said Sen. “So, yes. If you aren’t strong enough to protect yourself, you don’t belong on this mountain.”
“Does your very pretty friend feel the same way?” asked the stranger, turning what Sen assumed the man thought was a charming smile toward Falling Leaf.
“I would have already killed you,” said Falling Leaf in a cold, flat voice.
The stranger blinked a few times like he couldn’t quite believe that had failed to get him anywhere. He looked back over at Sen.
“You’re the reasonable one?”
“No. I’m not reasonable at all. I’m also out of patience,” said Sen, leveling the jian at the man.
The stranger grasped that he’d pushed his luck well beyond the limits of Sen’s tolerance. He lifted his hands and backed away.
“I’m sorry I bothered you,” said the man in haste before disappearing into the trees.
“He isn’t really leaving, is he?” asked Falling Leaf.
“No,” said Sen. “I don’t believe he is.”Ñ00v€l--ß1n hosted the premiere release of this chapter.
