Shi Ping was happy. He was so happy he could barely contain it. That damnable man had gone off into the wild with that beautiful, but deeply unsettling, young woman. He’d said if they weren’t back in a month, they wouldn’t be back. It was the last day, and there was no sign of them. He’d actually liked Lu Sen right at first, which made him an exception among the members of the Order of the Celestial Flame. Almost everyone else was terrified of, as one person had put it to Shi Ping, the multiple qi-wielding madman. Of course, it probably helped that Shi Ping had missed the demonstration of sky-searing power and impossible killing intent. He’d been injured and unconscious by the time all of that had happened. The young man had seemed alright and his swordsmanship was positively unnatural. Shi Ping had learned a lot in a very short time from the madman’s instruction.
Of course, that had all been before Shi Ping had been voluntold that he was going with the young man or else. He hadn’t been surprised, not really. He’d been expecting to get kicked out of the order for a while. He was an adequate fire cultivator and a better-than-average swordsman, but he didn’t like doing actual work. He never had. In an order that large, though, work was the way that you got by. It was how you paid your way. Of course, he’d thought that they’d just ask him to leave. That was something he’d dreaded. He’d had, all things considered, a cushy life in the quiet valley. Being thrown out would have meant returning to the regular world. He was a peak foundation formation cultivator, so there was always the possibility of getting into a sect, but that would have meant a likely repetition of the same process. The other possibility was becoming a wandering cultivator, but he’d seen those people. Most of them led violent and, usually, short lives, falling victim to sect members, other wandering cultivators, or even spirit beasts. It did not appeal to his laziness.
So, the order to accompany Lu Sen had come as an unwelcome surprise. Rather than deciding whether he’d become a wandering cultivator, it was decided for him. He didn’t understand why. There was nothing to gain from the arrangement. It wasn’t as though the madman was teaching him anything useful about fire cultivation, despite claims that he’d worked fire on a scale that dwarfed what nearly anyone else in the order could accomplish. No, instead, it had been endless days of walking through incredibly hostile environments with barely any breaks, endless insults, and even being stabbed. Shi Ping really wanted to hold that one against Lu Sen, but he’d been provoking the volatile young man. He counted himself lucky that he’d just been stabbed in the leg, instead of getting his head cut off.
He’d given serious consideration to leaving. He’d even planned how he’d just slip away one night. None of them really liked him, and he didn’t think they’d make any effort to find him. He didn’t know where he’d go, exactly. If he walked away from the order to travel with Lu Sen, he really couldn’t go back to the order. They’d very likely would kill him, as the frustratingly self-righteous young man had predicted they would. Still, he’d entertained that idea of leaving right up until he’d seen a little piece of what everyone on that battlefield must have seen. Watching that young man summon a giant fist of stone from the earth in mere seconds had been, even Shi Ping could admit it, it had been awe-inspiring. Watching him punch that spirit beast out of the middle of the air and send it flying, as though gravity was a mere suggestion, had shaken Shi Ping to the core.
He was aware of body cultivation, but it just wasn’t that common of a practice. Most people went through the initial steps because it was practical and universal. It was more of a body cleansing and perfecting process in the initial stage. After that, though, it got increasingly complex and personal with a high likelihood of failure. That meant that the people who did body cultivation typically did it exclusively, while the majority of cultivators focused on spirit cultivation techniques. Dual-cultivators like Lu Sen weren’t common. Ones operating at the core formation stage were even less common. Shi Ping had not appreciated, had never even imagined, the kind of raw force that a core-equivalent body cultivator could generate until that fateful moment.
Yet, even that hadn’t been the worst of it. The way that young man had casually declared a genocidal war against an entire species of spirit beasts had birthed a cold terror in Shi Ping. He’d abandoned any thoughts of just leaving in that moment because he was convinced that Lu Sen was actually, legitimately insane. While a normal person might just shrug off Shi Ping’s disappearance one night, there was no telling what a crazy person might do. Lu Sen might shrug it off, or he might take it personally and hunt Shi Ping down. The very idea of that man hunting him had cost Shi Ping a lot of lost sleep. Shi Ping had been making a concerted effort not to aggravate the man recently. While the insults had still flowed pretty freely, Shi Ping hadn’t again felt like he was under the immediate threat of violence. At least, he hadn’t felt that from Lu Sen.
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The women, though, were another story. Lo Meifeng put him into a cold sweat any time she focused her attention on him. He didn’t know how she and the Lu Sen had connected, or why they stayed together, but Shi Ping could see what she was after five minutes in her presence. She was an assassin. Even in a world where killing was common, she was far too calm about it and far too comfortable with it. Given her late core formation advancement, he assumed she was very, very good at being an assassin. He’d gotten the impression more than once that the only reason she hadn’t simply disposed of him in the woods somewhere was because Lu Sen had told her not to. Given how erratic that man was, that wasn’t safety so much as standing on the edge of a crumbling cliff and praying that it didn’t collapse beneath you.
The girl wasn’t much better. His only consolation with her was that she didn’t seem to care about him at all. Granted, that meant that she wasn’t going to go out of her way to help him if trouble arose, but it also gave Shi Ping the tiny comfort of knowing that she probably wasn’t thinking up a range of deadly “accidents” that he could have on the road. Of course, he could see on her face that she was absolutely devoted to Lu Sen. If he ever asked her to kill him, Shi Ping doubted he’d last long enough to be surprised. He’d gotten a similar impression from the man. Maybe even a bit more from Lu Sen. May the heavens help the fool that thought to do her harm. Shi Ping believed right to his core that Lu Sen would make the death of that person a thing of dark legend.
Yet, despite the intensity of their bond, that relationship was deeply odd. He would have expected there to be something romantic or sexual there, and there just wasn’t. It was as if the two of them were simply oblivious to even the existence of such possibilities. Then again, when Lu Sen had women like Chan Yu Ming following him around, maybe he didn’t need to think about those things. The attraction between those two burned so hot it was a miracle they didn’t set fire to the forest every time they got within five feet of each other. Of course, some damn thing or another had made that situation all tense and complicated. At least that one didn’t seem like she’d kill him at the drop of a hat.
He’d thought that she would leave after the madman went on his mad quest into the wilds to purge his anger. Yet, she’d stayed, and that had become uncomfortable very quickly. It seemed that she and Lo Meifeng didn’t get on all that well. He hadn’t been able to pin down any specific reason for it. He wasn’t even sure that there was one. Some people just didn’t like each other, and Lo Meifeng didn’t seem to like anyone. Shi Ping sighed a contented sigh, though. One more night and none of these things would be his problem anymore. He was almost free. He could return to the Order of the Celestial Flame with neither shame nor dishonor. He couldn’t be blamed for Lu Sen running off to die somewhere. Shi Ping estimated that they’d probably let him stay for another year or two since he’d willingly followed the madman as instructed. That wasn’t a lot of time, but it ought to be enough to firm up some kind of plan for what to do after they kicked him out.
Shi Ping felt his heart leap into his throat when the door to the weird stone house opened. Then, his heart sank into the floor as the tall figure of Lu Sen stepped inside, followed immediately by the girl. They both looked different. Lu Sen looked a touch leaner and maybe a bit older. Yet, that wasn’t what gave Shi Ping pause. He’d seen a lot of expressions on that young man’s face, but there had always been a tension beneath them, as though the young man was locked in a constant struggle against pain or some inner conflict. All of that tension was gone, and so was all the anger. Lu Sen looked like a man in perfect, absolute control of himself. While Shi Ping would have thought that would be a relief, it wasn’t. Lu Sen had been dangerous before, but this new, calm, controlled version of him looked lethal.
The girl with her strange green eyes was different too. She’d always been strange, and more than a little protective of Lu Sen, but now it was as if she didn’t dare go more than a few seconds without looking at him. It was as though she needed reassurance that he was still there and still alive. Shi Ping had no idea what the two had gone through out in the wilds, but it had clearly been bad and affected both of them deeply. Lo Meifeng and Chan Yu Ming had risen from the table where they had been pretending their game of Xiangqi was a friendly one. Shi Ping had never cared for the strategy game, but they had all gotten a little desperate for distraction as the days bled away. Sen eyed them each in turn, but Shi Ping could read nothing from the look.
“The holiday is over,” said Sen. “We leave for the capital tomorrow.”