V13 Chapter 72 – Exploitable Flaw

“To be fair, I didn’t say he was a god. He said he was a god. I don’t know if it’s true,” cautioned Sen.

“You don’t seem very skeptical,” countered Master Feng.

“Well, he did drag me into his mind and prevented me from sensing anything at all about him. That’s suggestive. Also, there wasn’t a tribulation. Even I know that there should have been one after two advancements coming back-to-back like that.”

“True,” said the elder cultivator with a deep frown.

“For that matter, I can’t even be sure that he was a god and not a goddess, or even just an incredibly powerful cultivator that none of us know about.”

“I can tell you that last idea is very unlikely. Anyone that powerful would have been forced to ascend long before now.”

“Probably, but everything I know is based on what he told me. It’s hard to take that as reliable information without someone else to vouch for them.”

Master Feng rubbed a thumb across his chin several times before he nodded.

“That is also true. If he did intervene to prevent a tribulation, though, it’s hard to imagine that he was anything else but a god.”

“I agree,” said Sen. “I’m just trying to be cautious. It’s awfully easy to take assumptions as facts when they come from your own mind.”

“I would like to know what you talked about, if you don’t mind sharing,” prompted Master Feng.

Sen shrugged and related the conversation more or less word-for-word. While the encounter had felt like it took a long time, the retelling was brief. Recounting the event also made Sen realize that his mind may have been more influenced than he’d first imagined. He’d never even asked for a name. While Sen routinely neglected to learn people’s names, he wouldn’t overlook something like that when faced with someone who might well be a god. Assuming he did one day ascend, it would have been useful to have a god’s name as a bargaining chip or even for a bluff. Master Feng’s dour expression said that he also found the encounter suspect. It just wasn’t clear why.

“What do you think?” asked Sen.

“I think exactly nothing about that conversation makes sense.”

Sen blinked. The conversation had seemed straightforward enough to him. Sure, he’d overlooked some things, but nothing about the actual talking seemed suspicious to him.

Unable to discern why his teacher was out of sorts, he asked, “Why is that?”

“Because they didn’t learn anything new from you. All they did was chat about things that they could have easily learned some other way.”

“I don’t know if that’s true. It’s hard to judge motives.”

“Maybe for some, but your motives aren’t obscure or well-hidden. You’ve all but announced them and then followed through with your actions.”

Once he thought about it that way, Sen couldn’t find much fault with what Master Feng was saying. Yes, it was possible that the god was trying to learn something, but probably not what he said he was there to learn. Unfortunately, that didn’t leave a lot of other reasons for an intervention.

“So, you don’t think he was there to assess me as a dual cultivator?” asked Sen.

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“That part might be real. It happens so rarely that I wouldn’t be surprised if there was some extra hurdle involved. But all of that strikes me as more of an excuse than a reason.”

“You think someone sent him,” said Sen.

“Probably. It’s what I’d do if I’d been investing the kind of resources that they’ve seemingly poured into forcing your advancement along this way.”

“Why not come themselves?” asked Sen.

“Aside from your towering grudge about having all those tribulations coming at you every few years? To say nothing about your rightful anger over all the learning you haven’t been able to do. And then there are the sacrifices you know are coming. If you inflicted all of that on someone, would you be eager to reveal your face to them?”

Sen felt the sour expression on his face at all of those reminders. He did have a grudge. One he expected to grow a lot more before he finally faced his supposed benefactor.

“I suppose I wouldn’t be that eager. But then why send anyone at all?”

“To see how far you’ve come? To test your sanity? To gauge how pliable you might be after ascension? I honestly don’t know. There are many reasons why someone might want to check on your current state. Some of them benign, and some of them less benign.”

Sen weighed all of that for a few moments before he sighed and shrugged.

“Not the reaction I was expecting,” said Master Feng.

“Not much benefit in getting angry about it. I mean, I am angry about it, but throwing a tantrum won’t change anything. After I’m done, I’ll still only know what I know now. The only difference is that I’ll be surrounded by broken things. Plus, all of that is a distraction I don’t need right now.”

Master Feng gave Sen a serious look and said, “Self-control is a good thing, but be careful about how deep you push that anger down. Heart demons come from somewhere.”

“I’m not pretending I’m not angry. I’m not even ignoring it. It’s more that I’ve accepted that there is very little to be done about it. Better to just bank that anger and those frustrations until I can get at the right people, or gods, or whoever is doing this to me.”

“What if you find they’re too powerful for you?”

“They almost certainly will be, at first. If there’s one thing I learned from you, though, it’s that cultivators are patient.”

Master Feng snorted and said, “I think you probably learned that from Kho or Caihong. I’m not what most people consider a patient man.”

“You are when you’re hunting someone. Or, that’s the way I hear it. They say you’ve waited centuries to take your revenge.”

Sen’s teacher frowned before he gave a grudging nod and said, “That’s true, as far as it goes. But you’ve never seen me hunting someone.”

“You don’t need to see something directly to learn from it,” countered Sen. “I knew that I was going to have to wait to get my revenge for all of this. So, I’ve been trying to learn that very particular kind of patience.”

“Why not just learn regular patience?”

“We all have our flaws. That’s one of mine. I get angry. When the thing that’s making me angry is right in front of me, it’s incredibly hard for me to wait to do something about it.”

“You should work on that. Right now, you’re in a position where that’s a survivable flaw. But it’s an exploitable flaw. Depending on what you find after ascension, you may find yourself angered right into a trap. One that leads directly to an early grave. For that matter, it’s a flaw that the spirit beasts could use against you.”

“I know. That became really apparent after that business with Changpu and the devil. If it had been the spirit beasts who killed those scouts, I’d have run right into their trap. I got lucky.”

“You did get lucky. You get lucky more often than most. I think it may be the universe trying to balance the scales a bit for how you keep getting pushed to advance. But luck is not the kind of thing you should depend on too much. It can run out. It almost always does.”

Sen nodded and said, “I’ll try to do a better job of keeping that in mind.”

“Good. So, what comes next?”

“We go and set off the trap that the spirit beasts are obviously waiting to spring on us.”

“You’re that sure it’s a trap.”

“Yeah. Even if I hadn’t been giving them a reason for revenge by butchering tens of thousands of them, their goal hasn’t changed. They want humanity gone and control of the continent. They can’t accomplish that if I control everything this side of the Mountains of Sorrow. It’s not a matter of if they need to stop me. They have to stop me. Unfortunately, that also means that we have to stop whatever they’re planning.”

“I assume your strategy isn’t just to rush straight at them,” said Master Feng.

Sen gave his teacher a chilly smile and said, “I haven’t been running the talisman masters ragged for nothing. And, while I might not be on Uncle Kho’s level, I’m a fair hand at formations. I think the spirit beasts imagine we’ll be easy meat. When they go to take a bite, I intend for them to shatter their teeth.”