Cultivator Feng wasted no time, walking directly to the town’s western gate. It wasn’t a direct path to the mountain, which Sen knew to sit north of the town. Yet, there was no Northern gate. East or West, those were the only choices. For all that Sen spent most days on his feet, and all that the cultivator looked to be keeping an easy pace, the young man struggled to keep up. He found himself almost running in the cultivator’s wake. He worried about what might happen once they left the safety of the town and entered the wilds. There were no roads to the mountain, no paths, at least none that Sen had ever heard about. He supposed that there might be one that the cultivator knew of, but he suspected that normal things wouldn’t pose much trouble for the man.

As they approached the Western gate, though, the older man slowed and let Sen catch up. Not sure what he was supposed to do, Sen walked a pace or two behind the cultivator. He’d seen servants act that way, so maybe that was what his new master expected. Feng glanced over his shoulder and gestured to his side. Sen hurriedly stepped up next to the man.

“Observe, disciple,” ordered Feng.

Sen wasn’t sure what he was supposed to observe, but he nodded. “Yes, master.”

They were nearly at the gate before Sen finally saw what his master had, apparently, expected. They were at a distance, but he saw the faces of the noble brats who had troubled him so often. They looked angry, violent, and vengeful. Exactly the kind of looks that someone of Sen’s station desperately wanted to avoid. Yet, there they were, blithely uncaring of the fact that Sen wanted no conflict with them. He didn’t want conflict with anyone. A boy from the streets always lost that kind of fight. On bad days, boys like him lost their lives in the process.

He also saw faces he only knew vaguely. Still, he marked them with care. There was the mayor’s son, Jiang Hao. He was lean with an almost fox-like face. Sen wondered if that was what the mayor had looked like as a young man. There was Wu Gang. He was a bulky boy that had often held Sen’s arms while Jiang Hao beat him. There was a pale beauty that Sen had never seen before, slender and poised, but her expression twisted with fury. There had to be a dozen of them. Each and every one of them rejected by the cultivator and blaming Sen for that disaster.

“Do you see?” Cultivator Feng asked.

“I do, master.”

“Do you understand?”

He did. Sen would likely return to the town, one day. He didn’t know how long it would take, but probably not that soon. Years, probably. Yet, these were the people who would hold that grudge. They would secret it away in their hearts, feeding that private flame with their resentment and frustration. Then, they would seek to vent that bitter flame on him if they discovered his return. Sen wondered if, perhaps, he should simply never come back to the town. Even as he thought it, he knew that was an empty idea. He would come back if only once. He would seek out Grandmother Lu, or her grave, and pay his respects.

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“I think I do. They’ll seek vengeance on me for taking what they think was theirs.”

Feng gave Sen an appraising look. The answer, it seemed, was more insightful than the cultivator expected.

“Half right,” Feng announced.

“Master?”

“You understand half of the lesson. The part you neglected, possibly the more important part, is that those people are why you should attend most closely to what you will learn.”

Sen thought that over for a moment. He didn’t know what he would learn, so it was hard to understand where it would fit into things. Still, if Feng was so certain, Sen would take it at face value. At least, he would until or if he learned better.

“I see. Thank you for the lesson, Master.”

Feng made a noise that could mean anything. Then, ignoring the guards and whatever procedure was normal, he strode through the gate with Sen close behind. As soon as they cleared the gate, the cultivator turned almost immediately North, walking along the town wall. That wall seemed terribly high to Sen, towering at three times his own height. He’d stared at that wall from the inside a thousand times and couldn’t imagine anything breaching it. Now that he was outside, though, he could see trees not too far away that were easily higher than that wall. Trees with trunks thicker than he was. Trees that could hide anything.

All too soon, the wall was left behind and they were among those trees. Much to Sen’s horror, but not his surprise, there was no road. The cultivator simply walked. It was during that march that Sen started to grasp the difference between a cultivator and a normal man. While Feng was normally content to walk around most obstacles, he would occasionally push boulders out of his way with a casual motion or leap dozens of feet into the air and latch onto a tree to get a view of what was ahead. Even when he walked, it was with a speed that Sen couldn’t match. He spent most of the day alternating between a jog and a full run.

As the sun rose into the sky and began to fall again, the hunger began to gnaw at Sen. It was a mild annoyance at first. He had lots of practice at ignoring hunger. Yet, the later it got, the worse that hunger became. It became a persistent ache in his middle. Then, the ache gave way to actual pain. His head started pounding. He struggled to keep his balance. It became an all-consuming act to just keep jogging behind the cultivator. Yet, every time Sen looked up, Feng was farther away. Sen would try to close the gap, only to have his vision go blurry or dark around the edges. Finally, inevitably, Sen tripped over a root and crashed to the ground. He tried to rise. There was a desperate fear in him of being left behind in this wild place he didn’t know. Yet, his will faltered and darkness closed over him.