Sen tried to work as quickly as he could to help the injured, but things only grew more chaotic as people poured out of the gates. Some came looking to find loved ones, while others simply wanted to see what had happened. There were wails of grief over the two men who had died, but Sen had to steel himself against them. There was nothing he could do for those people except offer empty words he was certain they wouldn’t want to hear. By the time he’d finished dispensing what immediate aid he could, nearly two full hours had passed since he’d left Liu Ai in the care of the seamstress. Despite the injuries and the grief, most of the townspeople were jubilant that the spirit beasts had been killed and so few had died. Sen waited until no one was paying him any particular attention to quite literally slip away in the shadows. He still wasn’t anywhere close to performing whatever technique it was the Fu Ruolan had demonstrated, but he’d become rapidly more proficient at manipulating shadows, both the ones he made and the ones around him.
He made a point to stop, wreathe himself in darkness, and change out of his bloodied robes. He even took a few minutes to wash his face, hands, and arms. Satisfied that he’d done what he could to not scare Ai, he started walking back. The was happy confusion in the town as everyone realized that the threat had passed, but the details hadn’t spread yet. Sen wanted to be well away before they did. Not that he expected that this incident would particularly add to the legend of Judgment’s Gale, but he didn’t want to announce to the world that he was in the area. Even if there weren’t ruthless, murderous cultivators actively searching for him, it didn’t mean that there weren’t cultivators and sects passively monitoring for news of his whereabouts. He didn’t want those cultivators descending on these people and throwing their weight around like the bunch of arrogant, entitled cultivators they would no doubt be. No, it was better if he slipped away in the confusion. Besides, he hadn’t done that much, except right at the very end.
Let the townspeople claim this victory as their own and leave him out of it. Just some wandering cultivator who helped out a little and then went on his way. No reason for anyone to pay special attention to this place or these people. As Sen approached his destination, he came up short when he saw Ai happily talking with another little girl as the pair of them drew on the ground with sticks of chalk under the watchful eye of the seamstress. His cultivation-enhanced eyes let him see crude drawings of flowers and birds. He released a gentle sigh of relief. She’d gotten a touch of normalcy after all. Sen just watched the girls for a few minutes before he walked over to the woman. She glanced at him, her eyes lingering on his robes.
“You changed,” she observed.
“The other robes weren’t really fit for the eyes of children anymore,” he said.
“Oh?”
“Too much blood.”
“Yours or the spirit beasts’?”
“Some of both. Who is that other girl Ai is playing with?”
“My daughter,” said the seamstress.
Sen gave the woman a longer look. There was love in her eyes as she watched her daughter. There was also pain there. There had been some kind of loss, not recently perhaps, but it still lingered. No wonder she’d been so desperate to get me to help, thought Sen. She noticed his scrutiny and drew herself up a little. It was a subtle thing like she was wrapping a cloak of dignity around herself.
“What?” she asked, her stern sharpness returning.
Sen very deliberately looked away and, rather than answer the question, he changed the subject.
“I don’t believe I ever asked your name,” he said.
He could feel the look she directed at him, but he kept his eyes on the girls.
“Li Hua,” she answered in an almost reluctant tone.
“Lu Sen.”
“Is that the name you use when you don’t want to use the name Judgment’s Gale?”
Sen closed his eyes and sighed. He hadn’t been doing a lot to hide that he was that increasingly well-known folk hero. He’d just hoped that no one in the town would figure it out quite this soon. It could make things inconvenient, or at least aggravating, if people started treating him like some kind of hero. The way most people already treated him as a cultivator was uncomfortable at best. Adding some kind of misplaced hero worship or heroic expectations on him would only lead to a lot of disappointment for them. As for the name, well, he had a simple enough answer to that.
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“No. It’s just my name. That other person doesn’t really exist.”
“You look real to me,” she said.
He couldn’t be sure, but Sen thought he caught the slightest trace of amusement in her tone.
“Don’t be fooled. I’m entirely made up. Turn your back, and I’ll vanish like smoke in a dream.”
“Can you—” Li Hua hesitated. “Can you really do that?”
Sen went to deny the silly idea and then thought a little harder about it. Could I?
“Maybe,” he said. “Probably not if anyone was paying close attention.”
“So, not all-powerful?”
“Not even remotely. Any cultivator who says otherwise is lying,” answered Sen. “I think it’s probably time for a quiet departure. Things are calming down at the gate.”
“How do you know that?”
“I can hear them,” said Sen as he walked over to collect Liu Ai.
She noticed him and ran over, her eyes wide.
“Did you chase the monsters away?” she asked.
“I did, with some help,” said Sen, not feeling the tiniest bit guilty about the half-lie. “But it is about time for us to head home. Otherwise, we’ll never get there before dark.”
The girl got a pouty look on her face. Ai wasn’t generally a willful girl, but Sen had learned that she could get tired or cranky like anyone else. He wanted to cut that off before it turned into something ugly.
“Why don’t you show me what you were drawing?”
Distracted by the task, she reached out, seized one of Sen’s fingers in her hand, and pulled him over. She proudly pointed to a misshapen, vaguely flower-shaped creation and proclaimed it a beautiful orchid. Sen nodded gravely while the other girl awkwardly stared up at him, seemingly unsure what to do. He crouched down and spoke to Ai in a very loud whisper.
“Who is your friend?”
“Zhi,” said Ai. “She drew birds.”
Sen smiled at the other girl and made impressed noises at her bird drawings. They did at least have wings. That was close enough. Taking the opportunity, Sen scooped Ai up into his arms, making her giggle.
“Okay, we really do need to go now. Say goodbye to Zhi.”
“Bye!” shouted Ai as she waved furiously at the other girl.
The other girl gave Sen a shy look before she waved back and said, “Bye!”
“It was very nice to meet you, Zhi,” said Sen and glanced over at the seamstress. “And you, Li Hua.”
She lifted an eyebrow at him but offered a shallow bow. “It was nice to meet you, honored cultivator.”
Sen again thought that he caught the edges of amusement in the woman’s voice, but it was just subtle enough that he couldn’t be sure. He gave the woman a casual wave before he set out for the gate that didn’t have half the town crowding around it. Once they cleared the town, Sen activated his qinggong technique and wrapped Ai up in protective layers of air. He’d done it instinctively the other times he’d carried her, and he assumed that Glimmer of Night must have done the same. Traveling at those speeds would normally be dangerous in the extreme for any mortal. Once he realized he was doing it, though, he’d decided to take a more active hand in the process. Ai remained blissfully unaware of the situation, talking excitedly about her new friend and how much fun drawing was for the better part of an hour. After the excitement wore off, though, she grew quiet. Sen felt her head settle onto his shoulder and quiet snoring soon filled his ear.
He let his mind drift back to that spirit beast attack. Something about it didn’t sit well with him. After sorting through the experiences, he settled on the simple answer that the last spirit beast had been too powerful. The town was quite rural, but not so rural that spirit beasts powerful enough to injure him should be attacking. Sen was starting to think that Master Feng’s ongoing interest in the odd spirit beast behavior over the last few years was worth investigating. Not that Sen himself shared a yearning to investigate the issue. He had more than enough to shoulder for the moment, and it had been a long time since he wasn’t surrounded by deadly threats. A bit of time focusing was just what he needed. Not that Fu Ruolan would let him slack off. She might have told him to go and play around with shadow qi, but he had also sensed her lurking on occasion. Since he was relatively certain she could hide from him completely if she wished to, letting him sense her was a quiet reminder that he was there with a purpose.
Of course, that didn’t prevent him from contacting his master. I should write to him about the spirit beasts, thought Sen. In fact, I should write to all of them. He tried to remember how long it had been since he last spoke or wrote to Grandmother Lu and couldn’t come up with an answer. That made the answer all too clear. It’s been too long, he decided. He had acceptable reasons for the long silences, but he knew that particular missive was long, long overdue. Given all of his advancements and experiences since they last saw each other, he wondered if she’d even recognize the person he’d become. Then again, she’d probably heard the stories. She’d have some sense, however distorted, of what he had gone through. She was also a practical woman. She’d probably had a far better idea of what he’d face and what it would mean for him than he had the day he left Orchard’s Reach. While a small part of him feared that she’d be disappointed in him, the sensible part of him knew that wasn’t likely. She’d just be happy he was alive and not obviously evil. It was a low bar, perhaps, but not one he felt it wise to complain about.
He nodded to himself. He’d prepare letters and send them out the next time he had a reason to visit the town. It would start to get cold in a few months, so Ai would need warmer clothes before too long if nothing else. That would be the perfect opportunity.