Unintended Cultivator

V13 Chapter 66 – Risk and Reward

Shortly after he’d dismissed the elder cultivators, Chou Dai Lu announced herself and entered the tent. Sen glanced up at her from the preparations he was making.

“You called for me, Patriarch.”

“Yes. You have the opportunity to observe today while I make a pill.”

Chou Dai Lu looked like she wanted to say something, but didn’t immediately voice her concerns. Sen did nothing to make it easier on her. There was respect, and then there was too much respect. As his direct disciple, she had adopted too much respect as her basic position. It was counterproductive, even if he understood that his experience did not reflect the normal cultivator experience. Master Feng had been a harsh taskmaster at times, but he’d never been one to shy away from questions. He had certainly refused to answer many of them for a variety of reasons, but he’d never discouraged them. If anything, all of his teachers had encouraged questions and even dissent. So, Sen waited her out to see if she’d do as he’d repeatedly told her to do and ask a question.

“Master Lu,” said a hesitant Chou Dai Lu. “You wish for me to observe you making a pill? Even though I’m not an alchemist?”

“I do,” said Sen. “While you may not be an alchemist, it’s never a bad thing for you to know something about what alchemists do. If for no other reason than to be aware of whether or not an alchemist is trying to deceive you.”

“Do many alchemists do such things?” she asked, seeming both startled and scandalized by the idea.

“Not that I’m aware of, but that’s not the same thing as saying that you’ll never meet a dishonest alchemist. They’re in a particularly good position to deceive, after all.”

“In what way?”

“Oh, let’s say that you take a qi replenishing pill or elixir. Do you feel confident in saying that you would know the difference between a true high-grade pill and a medium-grade pill?”

“No. I can’t say that I’m confident of that.”

“Most cultivators couldn’t say that they are. It’s not a true failing, just a matter of lacking the appropriate knowledge. However, it means that clever alchemists can substitute lower-quality ingredients and keep higher-quality ones for their own use.”

“That’s—” started Chou Dai Lu before seeming lost about what to say next.

“A very cultivator thing to do,” Sen finished for her. “But that’s not the main reason I want you to observe. Epiphanies and inspirations are mysterious at the very best. In truth, no one can say what will or won’t trigger one. Observing a nascent soul cultivator craft a nascent soul body cultivation pill might be exactly what you need. Or it might do nothing. So, I leave it to you to decide if you want to observe or not.”

Sen finished preparing what he could while Chou Dai Lu mulled over the choice. He wasn’t sure what she would choose. Nor did he have a particular opinion about which choice was better. The offer was made more out of a lingering sense that he hadn’t been doing a very good job of teaching her. He’d enjoyed and occasionally felt oppressed by almost constant attention from his teachers. That constant attention had, however, been at least partially responsible for his success. By contrast, his direct disciple only got intermittent attention from him.

Of course, she wasn’t starting from scratch the way he had. By the time he’d gotten as far as she was into the foundation formation stage, he’d long since left the mountain. He figured that she’d probably break through into core formation in the next ten or twenty years, if he had a clear grasp of her rate of progress. Then again, he knew that a lot of things could leave a cultivator stuck at a seemingly impassible bottleneck. He was hoping that opportunities like observing him would help to spark fresh ideas and insights for her, even if they didn’t bring on an inspiration.

The other side of that argument was that she might be better served by spending that time cultivating. By keeping her here, he might inadvertently deprive her of some inspiration she may have come to on her own. There was just no way to know. That was why he left the choice up to her. It was her cultivation journey. He could probably guide her here and there. He could absolutely help her avoid a few obvious pitfalls he’d fallen into face-first. But she had to take ultimate responsibility for her own path in the end.

“I will stay,” she finally said.

“Very well,” answered Sen before he added water to his battered alchemy pot and ignited a fire beneath it.

“You don’t use a cauldron?” asked a baffled Chou Dai Lu.

Sen was sure tales of his pot had spread far and wide. However, it seemed that was one aspect of his dubious legend that people found too absurd to accept.

“I can use a cauldron,” he answered. “I’ve been trained to do so, but I’ve found far more success using this pot.”

“Truly?”

Sen had to hide a smile. It seemed that the oddity of his pot had tricked the woman into doing what she should have been doing all along. Asking questions.

“Truly. Do you know what the defining aspects of alchemy are for most alchemists?” asked Sen as he added shaved thousand-year ginseng to the pot.

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“No, Master Lu.”

“Procedure and precision. Doing things the exact same way, with the exact same kinds of ingredients, every time.”

“Is that wrong?”

“No. It’s not a bad method, in that it gets you more or less consistent results. That’s what most sects want. There are benefits to having piles of healing pills that all provide the same amount of healing, for example. You always know what you’re getting. That makes them a predictable certainty. Predictability and certainty are rare treasures indeed in a battle.”

Sen added powdered water diamond to the slowly simmering mixture. He was already making countless minor adjustments to the brew. Part of him felt like he should hold back on those adjustments, but something in his heart just wouldn’t tolerate it. Not for this pill that he meant to use on himself. Would it make advancing more agonizing if he boosted the quality of the final pill? Almost without question. But he’d long since learned that he couldn’t shy away from pain. It would find him, one way or another. Better to wring the most value out of these ingredients than to shortchange himself.

“What do you lose with that method?”

Sen did smile at her that time. That was a good question. One he was glad she’d come to on her own.

“The unique. What you lose is the unique. I’ve made healing elixirs out of mediocre ingredients that only late-stage core cultivators can use. With the ingredients I have access to now, I could probably make things that only late-stage nascent soul cultivators could use. I rarely bother to make such things because there are so few people who can use them. But I can make them. That’s the difference. Too much fixation on procedure and precision stifles the mind, which seems to stunt creativity.”

Sen summoned a jade box from a storage ring, opened it, and withdrew the first of three equal parts of the fire eagle heart. He dropped that into the pot. While he was willing to enhance the result, if he could, Sen was being careful not to stray too far from the original recipe. He had no desire to once again struggle to find a way to complete a body cultivation process that was killing him. Once had been enough for a lifetime, even a cultivator’s lifetime. The liquid in the pot bubbled furiously, but the combination of wood and water qi from the ginseng and water diamond soothed the wild fire qi of the heart.

Only when the liquid had returned to a low simmer did Sen add the second piece of the heart. He was one more forced to wait, although not as long as the manual had suggested it would take. The qi fought to find equilibrium, but a generous amount of assistance from him sped that process up substantially. He finally added the third piece and was once more forced to wait and assist. Now that he was seeing the qi interactions, he realized that the entire third piece was probably more than the recipe actually needed. That was frustrating. If he’d been able to reserve even half of that last chunk of the fire eagle heart, he could have done some interesting things with it.

He did add a tiny bit more of the shaved ginseng and powdered water diamond. It was a subtle change that took place, but he felt it as the liquid became more correct than it had been. For a time, Chou Dai Lu fell silent as Sen added other staggeringly rare and wildly expensive ingredients that subtly shifted the overall balance of the mixture even as the liquid slowly evaporated away. This was where the true art of it came into play. Other alchemists would have timed the moment until they added the metal-attributed spiral silk or the earth-attributed blood iron. Sen waited until it felt like the right moment. Then, there came a time when there was nothing to do but wait.

“Master Lu?”

“Yes?”

“This is a body cultivation pill you intend to take yourself?”

“It is.”

“What will it do?”

Sen gave the woman a wry grin. It would normally be considered impolite for one cultivator to ask another cultivator a question like that. It was dangerously close to asking for someone to reveal their weaknesses. With a student, though, getting answers to those questions was valuable, if still a little dangerous for the teacher. Of course, that assumed that the teacher had answers.

“I genuinely don’t know,” Sen admitted. “No one has performed this body cultivation method in thousands of years. I doubt if there even is anyone out there to ask. I know that this method will work for me because of the ingredients and qi types involved. But the actual effects on my body? I could only guess.”

“Isn’t that incredibly dangerous?”

“Naturally,” answered Sen. “But all cultivation is incredibly dangerous.”

Sen held out his left hand, palm up, and said, “Risk.”

Then, he held out his right hand, palm up, and said, “Reward.”

He moved his hands up and down as though they were the opposite plates on a scale before he continued.

“The size of the reward must balance against the size of the risk. The higher you climb, the more intense the risks and rewards become. At the nascent soul level, I’m trying to forge a body that can carry my fully developed nascent soul after ascension.”

Sen saw it on Chou Dai Lu’s face when she understood his meaning. He was nearing the end of his path, when his body cultivation would have to overcome mortality itself. Of course, the risks were insane. How could they be anything less? The heavens wouldn’t tolerate anything that was remotely easy at his stage of advancement. After all, every step he took was another step away from natural order and natural law. The heavens might let cultivators do it, but they would make those cultivators pay for the privilege.

“Doesn’t the wrath of the heavens frighten you?” asked his disciple.

“Frighten?” asked Sen in a musing tone. “No, I don’t think frighten is the word for it. I’ve faced death too many times in my life to be truly afraid of that. The heavens might kill me, but so could a spirit beast. Death is always a possibility, and fearing it is pointless. The result is still the same. Reincarnation. That being said, I’m not eager for this life to end. So, I do respect the wrath of the heavens. Only a fool wouldn’t. And I never, ever underestimate it.”

He fixed the woman with a look that said that she shouldn’t underestimate it, either. Not if she was wise. She nodded her recognition of his implied words. While part of his mind had been on the conversation, the other, more intuitive part had been monitoring and adjusting the mixture in the pot. He felt it as the alchemical soup reached a threshold. Taking one steadying breath, he brought out the shadow lotus and rested it on the top of the bubbling liquid. Then, he swiftly covered the pot with a lid and held it firmly in place.

For a few moments, he simply observed as the shadow qi in the lotus suffused the mixture. He wanted to ensure that the process would finish as it was meant to without intervention. It was only when he was satisfied that it would that he started to intervene. Adjusting the mixture was smoother than he expected. He found that rather than fighting a constant battle, it was more like massaging the qi where it caught on something. Sen didn’t know how long he focused on that, but there came a moment where everything in the pot abruptly compressed. There was a burst of qi that likely spread for a mile in all directions. Chou Dai Lu’s eyes were wide as she stared first at the pot, and then at him.

Offering her what he hoped looked like an enigmatic smile, Sen said, “Well, shall we see what I’ve made?”