“So, let me get this straight. He just went to the park, sat on a rock, and, since he wasn’t busy or anything, decided to advance his cultivation. Just like that. Oh, and, incidentally, he also fended off and then killed four other cultivators while advancing.”

“Yes,” said Lo Meifeng. “That’s about the size of it.”

Shi Ping was certain that, if he wasn’t a cultivator, he’d be getting a terrible, terrible headache. Every time he thought he was getting a bit of a handle on Sen, the guy went off and did something impossible, or stupid, or impossibly stupid. Advancements of any kind were a hideously dangerous time for any cultivator. They sapped a person of practically every bit of qi in their bodies and routinely left a person unconscious. So, of course, Sen decided to go off and do it in public, knowing full well that people were watching him. Then again, thought Shi Ping, no one expects other cultivators to try to interrupt an advancement. It was the casually killing those cultivators part that made Shi Ping’s blood run cold, though. Normal cultivators didn’t have the qi reserves or the mental agility to manage advancing and fighting at the same time.

“And then he cleaned everything up afterward?”

“He did. He was worried about the mortal children that might stumble onto the area. It was a little endearing, really.”

“Endearing? That’s your takeaway from all of that? Endearing?”

Lo Meifeng shrugged at Shi Ping. “What should I take away from it?”

“I don’t know. Maybe that we should all be very afraid of the guy who makes the impossible commonplace.”

Lo Meifeng rolled her eyes. “If you hadn’t figured that much out already, I don’t know why this would be the thing that made it clear.”

Shi Ping wanted to be frustrated with the annoyingly self-possessed, annoyingly gorgeous, annoyingly disinterested in him woman, but she had a point. It wasn’t like this was the most frightening thing that Sen had done. Yet, somehow, it had hit home in a way that other things hadn’t. A lot of the frightening things that Sen did were psychologically distant for Shi Ping because no one could do them. Watching the guy throw around four of five different types of qi gave the whole thing an air of unreality. It was like watching a miracle or seeing a character from a story come to life. You never quite felt certain about it after the fact. Advancing, though, was something every cultivator went through. Shi Ping knew exactly what it was like, exactly how hard it was, and exactly how dead he would be if someone interrupted him in an attempt at advancement. He would be very dead.

From Lo Meifeng’s description, Sen had seemed almost bored by the whole situation. He wasn’t even angry that someone had tried to kill him. It was like he’d just come to expect these kinds of things. Shi Ping couldn’t decide if that was an improvement from the rage-filled Sen or even worse. For all that angry Sen had scared Shi Ping, there had been a certain predictability to that guy. The calm Sen that they’d gotten after he’d wandered off into the wilds with the green-eyed girl was a whole new animal. The calm version might let something roll off his back, or he might slaughter half a dozen sect members and leave the pieces of their bodies lying around in the street.

“Aren’t you worried about what he’s going to do when he wakes up?” asked Shi Ping.

“I worry about what he’s going to do all of the time, awake or asleep.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“He once put himself into a cultivation trance for nearly six months. The person who came out of that trance was vastly more powerful than the person who went into it.”

Shi Ping realized he was just staring at Lo Meifeng with his mouth hanging open. “What? Nobody comes out of a cultivation trance after that long.”

“He did. I’ve just learned to accept that whatever we think of as the normal, fixed rules of cultivation are just very loose guidelines. I don’t know if that’s true for everyone, but it’s absolutely true for him. It also seems to be true for the people around him, on a limited basis.”

“How so?”

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“I’d bottlenecked. I hadn’t advanced for decades and didn’t see any sign that it was ever going to happen again. I’d come to terms with it or thought I had anyway. Bottlenecks have happened to people a lot more talented than me. You always know it’s a possibility. Hells, it’s actually pretty probable. I figured that I’d gotten lucky, all things considered. I was in the upper middle of core formation, which isn’t bad. I’d get a ridiculously long life, and I’d have enough power that most people were never going to bother me.”

“I’m sensing a but,” said Shi Ping.

“But Sen broke that bottleneck for me.”

“That’s impossible.”

Lo Meifeng just lifted an eyebrow at him. “Is it?”

Shi Ping shook his head. Of course, that rule didn’t apply to Sen any more than all of the other rules seemed to apply to him. Of course, he’d just nonchalantly pushed someone else through a bottleneck because why not? It wasn’t like sects had been desperately searching for a way to do exactly that for tens of thousands of years and been met with universal failure.

“Well,” said Shi Ping, “I haven’t noticed any particular progress on my part.”

“Then you aren’t paying attention.”

“I don’t think I understand what you’re getting at.”

“That kid is a full-blown sword genius. I think maybe you haven’t understood the true depths of it because he treats it like it’s nothing. Well, no, he doesn’t see it at all because his frame of reference is one of the greatest swordsmen in history. But that’s not my point. He’s been working with you.”

“Yeah. So?”

“He’s been helping you with your style.”

Shi Ping nodded. “He has.”

“He didn’t train in your style.”

Shi Ping felt all of his thoughts grind to a halt at those words. He had known it, but only in a background way. Something vaguely acknowledged, but never directly considered. Once he did consider it, though, a lot of nagging feelings that had dogged him became instantly clear. The kind of corrections and insights that Sen had been offhandedly tossing out to him were the kinds of things that only someone who had trained in the style for years should have understood. It went well beyond the kind of corrections that anyone with good fundamentals could have offered. Shi Ping had known it, but he hadn’t seen it.

Lo Meifeng nodded. “There it is. He’s been doing the same thing with me and shrugging it off like it’s no big deal. Yet, I’ve seen how much you’ve improved. You probably haven’t seen it yet because I don’t think you’ve been in a serious fight in a while. The next time you are, I think you’ll be surprised. Frankly, I’m stunned that enlightenment and heavenly qi don’t rain down on him every time he deigns to pick up a blade.”

“If he’s really that talented, then why isn’t he getting enlightenment from learning and training with the jian?”

“That’s a question for the heavens, but I have my theory.”

“What’s your theory?” asked Shi Ping.

“He doesn’t want it.”

“What? He doesn’t want enlightenment?”

“Oh, he’s like every cultivator that way. He wants enlightenment and what it offers. He just doesn’t want enlightenment from using the sword. It’s not always obvious, but he hates violence. He hates killing.”

“He seems just fine with it to me.”

“He doesn’t shirk it. There is a difference between being willing to do something and wanting to do something. I think if he could go the rest of his life without ever doing violence again, he would. After all, how often have you seen him initiate violence?”

Shi Ping rubbed the spot on his leg that Sen had stabbed. He knew that event had colored his view of Sen. Thinking back, though, Sen generally waited until violence found him.

“Not that often.”

“Exactly. So, I think that he rejects the idea of getting enlightenment from things he associates strictly with violence. The heavens could force it on him, I suppose, but I suspect that’s counterproductive to their ends. So, he wanders around bestowing insights and training that are fundamentally better than either of us deserves. Once you grasp all the things he’s showing you, I think you’ll find that your cultivation is going to advance faster than you expect. Maybe even faster than you want.”

“Faster than I want? Is that even possible?”

“Yes. Just ask Lu Sen. He was weaker than you a year ago. Look at him now. Do you think he’s happy to be crashing through advancement after advancement? He barely has time to get acquainted with a cultivation level, let alone understand the nuances, before he’s starting over again. How long did it take you to really master your current level?”

“Years,” admitted Shi Ping.

“Now, imagine that you raced through three or four advancements in the same period of time. How confident would you feel about your mastery and control?”

“Not confident at all.”

“He’s getting by with a lot of raw talent and not nearly enough guidance. Mostly because there’s no one who can guide him. You or I could show him things with fire cultivation, tricks we know, insights we’ve had, but he’d need another seven or eight people like us or better than us to even start rounding out his education. And it still wouldn’t be enough.”

“Why not?”

“Because we can only show him what he can do with one type of qi. You’ve seen him throw together multiple qi types into one technique. Who can teach him about that? And that was before that dragon filled his head with the gods only know what kind of secret knowledge.”

“So, what are you saying?”

Lo Meifeng shrugged. “That we all better hope he’s a genius at more than just the sword. Because if he tries something that really is impossible with the kind of power he’s been throwing around, I don’t even want to imagine what it will look like when that fails.”

Shi Ping sat with that idea for a long moment before he shuddered.