Unintended Cultivator

Book 10: Chapter 62: I Don’t Need You

“But they’re evil!” shouted the youngest Sen, fists clenched, jaw thrust out.

Sen closed his eyes and forced himself to breathe slowly. This entire thing was beyond infuriating. He couldn’t leave this place. He couldn’t even walk away. He’d tried a couple more times just to find those three other incarnations of himself standing there with those judgmental looks on their faces. He’d tried explaining it logically, over and over again, only for this youngest version of him to come back with the exact same response. But they’re evil! No resort to logic, or reasonableness, or even living, breathing examples to the contrary would sway this youngest version of him. It was a fixed worldview that would accept no cracks in its smooth, simplistic foundation. It was also an emotional worldview formed at a time when Sen and the concept of nuance were years away from their first meeting.

A small swell of sympathy rose in him for all those nobles he’d dismissed out of hand with the snap judgment that they were evil by virtue of being nobles, although it was a very small swell. He knew that not all nobles were evil, but a whole lot of them were truly terrible people. He felt substantially more sympathy for people like Jing and Chan Yu Ming, who had often taken the brunt of his distrust and paranoia by choosing to know him. Looking back, Sen was a little ashamed to admit to himself that he hadn’t really decided to trust Jing until after the man had killed his own father. That was an impossibly unreasonable test by any sane standard, even if the old king was a black-hearted monster who had desperately needed to die. Sen wished that he’d just done it, damn the political consequences, but he hadn’t.

He stared at that younger version of himself. He saw the absolute certainty and utter conviction in those eyes. No words would ever sway that version of him. Nothing would ever sway that version of him. Sen sighed. That’s the point of this, he thought. I keep thinking of him as some younger version of me, but I never really let go of that mindset. I still let myself think that every noble is evil until incontrovertibly proven not evil. It was an indulgence and a stupid one at that. It was a childhood grudge that he’d told himself he’d let go of, but he’d let it linger in his heart all these years. It let him secretly or, he had to acknowledge, probably not so secretly look down on every noble he met. It was a weakness.

Sen looked at that younger version of himself with a bit of understanding and maybe a bit of pity as well. He had to wonder just how much hate he’d poured into that idea to fuel it for all these years. Too much, he thought. This was a sickness inside of him, and some sicknesses had but one cure. They needed to be cut out. He felt the weight of the jian in his hand. Who knew where it had come from, but it had come when he needed it. He shook his head at that younger version of him that was really nothing more than a single idea given a face.

“I don’t need you anymore,” he said.

The jian passed through that younger version of himself, but the pain was all his to bear. He’d abandoned something that was, however implicitly, a core pillar in his identity. Giving it up had consequences. Sen collapsed to a knee and had to use the jian to brace himself up. Something tore inside of him, and there was an involuntary spray of blood from his mouth. He felt blood running from his eyes, his nose, and even his ears. Worst of all, there was a searing inside his mind like someone had driven a white-hot dagger into his skull. Under this avalanche of pain, Sen did the only thing he knew to do. He endured.

Even as parts of himself that had relied on that childish assumption tried to unravel, as his sense of self wavered, he refused to give in to it. He had survived the Five-Fold Body Transformation. He had survived burning devilish qi out of his body. He had survived tribulations. This pain felt worse because it was so deeply personal, but it simply wasn’t on the same scale.

He had built other pillars to support him. Those pillars sank deeper into his mind and his soul. He didn’t need that hate to be Lu Sen. He had built pillars of love and of family. What was that hate worth compared to Ai smiling at him? Nothing. What was it worth compared to the years that Master Feng, Auntie Caihong, and Uncle Kho had spent teaching him and, far more importantly, letting him into their family? Nothing. What could it bring him compared to Falling Leaf’s absolute, unwavering support? Nothing.

“Nothing,” said Sen.

A cracking noise so loud that it threatened to tear reality itself apart thundered down onto Sen. It felt like being on the end of some technique, just one that had been hurled down at him by the heavens. He braced himself more firmly, clinging tightly to the things that mattered to him like they could anchor him in the storm. When the sound finally died away, Sen hazarded a glance up and went absolutely still. That endless expanse of blackness that had been there since he found himself in this place was now broken. High above, impossibly far away, so far away that Sen felt like countless worlds could fill that distance, but somehow still within range of his sight, there was a jagged split in the sky. It looked like some weak spot in an egg had fractured. From that crack, light poured into this murky world.

As that sudden illumination crossed the expanse between them and finally fell onto Sen, it felt like he could take his first breath after a year without air. Strength and vitality poured into him, and he had the uncomfortable realization that his true body had been in a dire state wherever it was. He wasn’t sure that this influx of strength would help that body. He was sure that if that true body died, this was all over. He tried to reach out with his senses, with his qi, with anything to get a clearer picture of what was happening. He learned nothing. It almost felt like some external force had specifically rebuffed his attempts to peek outside this space. He turned his narrowed eyes to a place that he imagined was the heavens.

“Whoever you are that’s been doing all of this to me, I suggest you take great pains to ensure that we never meet,” said Sen.

He was not shocked when he received no answer. Sen did allow himself a few moments to bask in that light. It wasn’t sunlight, but it was close enough that it did a world of good for his mental state. If he closed his eyes, he could almost pretend that he was outside. Loath as he was to give up that little daydream, he had no idea how much time had passed in the real world. It felt like he’d been arguing with that younger version of himself for years. However, his journey through that city-sized mandala several years earlier had taught him that his experience of time and the actual passage of time weren’t necessarily that closely linked.

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The fact that he hadn’t died probably meant that it hadn’t been that long in the capital. Still, there was no way to know how long they could hold out. He hadn’t shared all of his plans with anyone, just in case there was a spy in the ranks somewhere. He’d had an idea or two that, if they were following the plan, would have been ideal for him to help turn the tide. Now, he wished he’d been a little more forthcoming with those ideas. It would have probably taken a nascent soul cultivator to pull some of them off in his stead, but it might have been worth it. He shook off those thoughts. For the moment, he was still stuck here. He had to deal with this problem first.

However, now that he had a better idea of what was going on, he didn’t bother trying to engage the other versions of him in conversation. They weren’t personalities that could be convinced. They were ideas or concepts or principles that he’d held onto that were somehow at odds with who he was now and who he understood that he’d need to be in the future. That simplified things a little. Of course, he knew it wasn’t as simple as just slashing at them with his jian. He needed to understand the problem and then reconcile the problem within himself.

Then again, he thought. Maybe it’s not really that complicated. Hard, maybe, but not complicated. After all, he knew what these other two represented. The second oldest version had accused him of being soaked in blood. That wasn’t complicated. He was soaked in blood. Rivers of it. He also understood where the horror came from. He’d meant to live a much more peaceful life than he had. He supposed he’d even made some promises to himself about it. He’d planned to wander the world and just see it, to stand in wonder of it. The ideas sounded so very naïve to him now, which wasn’t to say they were bad goals. They were admirable. They might have led him to very different outcomes. At least, they might have in some other, very different world.

Reconciling this problem was fundamentally harder, though. Rejecting blind hate was easy. It offered nothing of worth. Rejecting a noble ideal was something else entirely. It was made harder still because he just didn’t know what kind of world he might find himself in after ascension. He had his dark suspicions, naturally, but he didn’t know. It might be a world where that kind of life was possible. He didn’t want to reject that ideal only to learn he couldn’t take it back later. However, he wasn’t living in that world now. He had to survive in this world first.

That aspiration to live a peaceful life had left him with a lot of guilt he couldn’t resolve over actions that, on reflection, had been largely unavoidable. Oh, he had certainly gotten himself into avoidable situations that led to bloodshed, but avoiding bloodshed outright as a cultivator was an impossible fantasy. Life and death violence was as fundamental to being a cultivator as cycling qi. It was a harsh truth, but it was a truth. Yet, on some level, he’d been holding himself accountable to that impossible dream. Much like his irrational hatred of nobles, this goal was flawed by inflexibility and a lack of nuance.

His younger self had cast it as all or nothing with no regard for the reality around him. The goal itself wasn’t the problem, only his conception of it. This wasn’t something he needed to reject outright. It was something he needed to modify to account for circumstance. He stared at that younger version of himself for a long moment before he spoke.

“I don’t need you as you are.”

Sen would aspire to live as peacefully as he could while recognizing that any meaningful peace would be a long time in arriving. This would free him from the guilt that came with judging himself against an impossible ideal. Sen watched in mixed horror and fascination as cracks appeared all over that younger version of himself like some kind of macabre spiderweb. Slowly, pieces started to fall away. Sen almost expected them to reveal some kind of void space. Instead, they revealed a different version of him. A version that looked exactly the way he looked now.

He still felt some pain inside, but it wasn’t the same kind of pain. He wasn’t throwing aside a long-held belief. He was acknowledging the flaws of his own design. Not a pleasant task, and he did end up spitting up a little more blood, but it proved a much less catastrophic experience. The new mirror image of him simply faded from view until nothing remained. There was another of those all-consuming cracking noises. Sen braced himself again as he was buffeted by the unleashed forces, but that influx of strength he’d gotten earlier made it easier to endure.

He cast his gaze upward again and saw another vast crack breaking the surface of eternal darkness. The new crack intersected with the first. It was longer and wider, as though it had gained ground courtesy of the weaknesses the initial crack had introduced. More light poured into the world and descended on Sen. He felt stronger and somehow more complete than he had before. It felt like his qi and his spiritual sense were almost within reach. It seemed like he only needed to reach out his hand and grab them, but something told him that wasn’t the case.

Instead, he turned his attention to the last of the younger versions of himself. This one was the easiest of the three. Striving to find balance was a sound goal. He didn’t need to reject it. He didn’t even need to modify it. His failure to achieve balance wasn’t a failure on his part, although it had taken him a long time to realize it. The world itself was fundamentally unbalanced. He didn’t know if it had always been that way or if it was just a matter of the times he lived in. Finding balance in a world like that, in times like these, was to chase madness. He’d be undercut at every turn, as he already had been. To survive in these times, he didn’t need balance. He needed to be a little mad himself. Fortunately, he knew a fundamental truth.

“I can be more than one thing,” he told that last version of himself. “I don’t need you right now.”

This was a goal that had to be set aside and allowed to rest while the world tried to tear itself apart. When the madness had come and gone, when the blood and the fire were done, he could pick this goal up again. The final version of him looked back at him in silence. Then, as if understanding Sen’s intention, his eyes fluttered closed like he was going to sleep. Sen watched as the final younger incarnation of himself seemed to fall into that vast darkness like it was a warm, welcoming bed. He felt a brief moment of sadness.

“If only the world were a place where I needed you right now,” said Sen quietly.

Shaking his head, he looked up. This time, the crack seemed to split the heavens in two. More and more cracks shot out from that vast, sky-rending fissure. Sen was bombarded by noise at the same time as he was bombarded by light. Power like nothing he’d ever felt before rushed into him like it meant to fill him until he burst. He kept bracing for pain or for the need to struggle, but it never came. The struggle was already over. The tribulation had come and gone. This was…

“Advancement.”