ericdontigney

Unintended Cultivator V3: Chapter 48 – Healers and Legends

Completely flummoxed by the outpouring of what Sen assumed was respect, he blurted the first thing that came to his mind.

“Why are you all kowtowing to me?”

The kneeling cultivators traded confused looks with each other before the slight healer that Sen had met before spoke up.

“We wished to honor the master alchemist.”

Sen snorted. “I’m no master alchemist.”

There were more startled looks and confused glances traded. The slight man spoke again.

Unintended Cultivator V3: Chapter 47 – The Universe of Alchemy

Having never participated in a large-scale battle before, Sen had no appreciation for just how much work or how much time it would take even for the basic task of gathering the wounded. With core formation cultivators on the field, he thought it might take an hour. Oh, how wrong he’d been. If it had just been gathering the wounded, things might have gone quicker. Except, it wasn’t just that. By basically proclaiming himself “in charge,” every problem had suddenly become his p...

Unintended Cultivator V3: Chapter 46 – Judgment’s Storm

Sen’s first instinct was to run away. Being the focal point of that much attention was like having one of his nightmares come to life. He could see the looks on their faces and wanted no part of it. He didn’t want their awe, or their fear, and especially not the reverence he saw on a few of their faces. Yet, there was nowhere to go without going through a bunch of those people. He might have stayed adrift in that sea of uncertainty if Chan Yu Ming hadn’t latched onto his arm with a grip...

Unintended Cultivator V3: Chapter 45 – Honor on the Battlefield

Sen consciously kept his pace to something that the foundation formation cultivators could maintain. They covered the first hundred feet or so without challenge. Then, a pack of four water cultivators spotted them. Sen unleashed his killing intent. The four staggered, two of them falling over entirely. Sen directed a lighting bolt at one, a fireball at another, and windblades at the last two. That drew some attention and a bigger group moved to block their path. Sen dropped the fire cycling a...

Unintended Cultivator V3: Chapter 44 – Inferno’s Vale, Part 3

Once Sen started paying attention to the conversation again, he learned that the fire cultivators had been out on patrol when the real fight started. They’d been trying to make their way back to the main compound but had been whittled down by attrition. Most of this information came from the, it turned out, man whose face had been so bloody. He was visibly older than the other three, two younger-looking men and a girl who looked like she was maybe sixteen. They all deferred to the older man...

Unintended Cultivator V3: Chapter 43 - Inferno’s Vale, Part 2

Sen knew that going into the valley was a bad idea. He also knew that Lo Meifeng was going to go down there and throw herself into the fight anyway. She had at least listened to his advice to approach quietly, suppressing her presence as much as she could. Sen was full-on hiding. His only consolation was that, since advancing his body and spirit cultivation, hiding no longer blinded his senses so badly. Granted, they only really functioned the way he was used to in a forty-foot radiu...

Unintended Cultivator V3: Chapter 42 – Inferno’s Vale, Part 1

Sen was crouched down, carefully removing the roots of a medical plant from the ground, when Lo Meifeng wandered over to him. He glanced up at her, but she looked to just be curious about what he was doing.

“I have to make elixirs from something,” he offered.

“I know. I just wondered what caught your attention.”

“It’s called a coiled serpent root,” said Sen.

He lifted it out of the ground and brushed the dirt away from it. It really did look like a coiled...

Unintended Cultivator V3: Chapter 41 – An Old Face

With the threat of the demonic cultivators if not entirely gone then largely neutralized, Sen and Lo Meifeng’s journey became a more relaxed affair. They still kept up a fast pace, but it wasn’t the kind of brutal pace that Sen would have demanded if they were still being actively hunted by a cabal of core formation cultivators. Of course, being able to use the roads most of the time hastened their journey a lot. There were a few times that they thought were being followed and they fell b...

Rinn's Run: Chapter 40 - Taking the Antiosh

Kalan was surprised to find his path utterly clear on the way to the bridge. He’d expected to meet resistance and traps. It seemed incomprehensible to him that the crew wouldn’t try to take advantage of their superior knowledge of the terrain. They knew where the choke points on the ship were. At the very least, they could have stalled him. It’s what he would have done in their position. Then, the truth dawned on him. He wasn’t dealing with people versed in ground combat. These were n...

Unintended Cultivator V3: Chapter 40 – Threats?

Sen and Lo Meifeng found a back way out of the building and took off for the western wall as fast as they reasonably could in the confines of the alley. After the second time they had to chastise some would be thugs, they transitioned to the rooftops. They were a bit more obvious, but also moved a lot faster. Sen was happy to note that they didn’t seem to be drawing any meaningful attention, let alone violent attacks. As they approached the western gate out of the city, they dropped back do...

Unintended Cultivator V3: Chapter 39 – Contact

After weeks spent running around in the wilds, it wasn’t difficult for Sen and Lo Meifeng to pass themselves off as weary travelers looking for an inn at the gates of Lin Wen’s Redoubt. The guards waved them through without so much as a second glance. Old feelings of unease rose up in Sen on reflex as they entered the small city, but they struck him as more reflexive than real. He was hiding, and Lo Meifeng was doing something to keep her presence muted. Sen made a mental note to...

Rinn's Run: Chapter 39 - Breach

Kalan considered his next move as he dropped the thruster pack to the deck and stripped out of the EVA skin. It had taken Kala baby-stepping him through the process to deactivate the distress beacon built into that EVA skin. What a time to be short an engineer, thought Kalan. On the other hand, he reasoned the difficulty ought to make him happy since it meant there was a good chance those beacons would work if he ever had to abandon ship. Except, the robustness of that beacon had nea...

Rinn's Run: Chapter 38 - Distraction

“Open a comm channel,” said Temera, as she did her best to assume an air of casual indifference.

“Yes,” Em paused, “Ma’am. Channel open.”

Temera made up a name for herself on the spot. “Zeren cutter, this is Captain Emilenia Antenius of the Ankala Rising. You’ve illegally detained a member of my crew. I want them returned.”

There was dead silence on the other end of the line as Temera eyed a distance meter. After a protracted pause, a voice came over the ...

Unintended Cultivator V3: Chapter 38 – Autonomy

While Sen made sure that they stayed well clear of civilization, he also made sure that they kept moving away from the Temple of Eternity’s Edge. While it seemed less and less likely that Lan Zi Rui was going to chase them down, Sen didn’t feel like making it any easier than necessary if the old man changed his mind. One pleasant surprise during those few weeks was how few spirit beasts attacked them. He wondered if whatever edict that protected them before was still in effect, or if the ...

Unintended Cultivator V3: Chapter 37 – Shared Experiences

Once Sen and Lo Meifeng were out of sight of the temple, they abandoned their casual saunter in favor of qi techniques. With core qi finally available to him, the pair made incredibly fast time as they fled back the way they had come. Sen had a working theory that once they got beyond the range of the field of oppressive energy, they would also move beyond the range of Lan Zi Rui’s senses. Within a few hours, they had passed back into the more mundane, if still hideously potent, dangers of ...

Unintended Cultivator V3: Chapter 36 – The Choices of Others

The argument had lasted for nearly half an hour and Sen hadn’t gotten anywhere with Lifen. She’d dug in her heels about staying and the worst part was that Sen couldn’t refute most of what she was saying. Yet, he could also see tendrils of that same gray energy floating around her heart and her head. She might not have been completely brainwashed, but she had most certainly been influenced strongly by someone else. Sen wanted to be surprised, but he’d pieced together enough context cl...

Unintended Cultivator V3: Chapter 35 – Defiance and Compliance

After spending what felt like years in a place where his will and imagination made almost anything possible, waking up into the real world again was a bit of a disappointment for Sen. He immediately missed the godlike ability to alter his environment to suit his whims. Instead, he was still stuck in his cell, although it wasn’t exactly as he remembered it. Unlike when he’d let himself drop into that cultivation trance, there was now a fine layer of dust covering everything, including him....

Unintended Cultivator V3: Chapter 34 – The Burden of Time

As relentless as Sen had been during his years training on the mountain, there had been also quiet moments. Moments of reflection, on his part, and on the part of his teachers. Master Feng, Auntie Caihong, and Uncle Kho had all spoken to him at different points about what it meant to live as long as they had lived. They spoke of the benefits, but they also spoke about the costs. Master Feng had summed it up in one brief phrase. He called it the burden of time. Sen had listened attentively, re...

Unintended Cultivator V3: Chapter 33 – Fear Itself

Hong Fu had spent most of his long life in positions of relative power and safety. He’d spent his childhood protected by his noble status, which had partially carried over into the sect that he’d joined. His quiet conversion to a demonic cultivator had fueled rapid, if somewhat unstable, growth in his cultivation. That had allowed for swift advancement in the sect. He wasn’t the most powerful elder in his sect, but that was by design. Better by far to allow others to draw the light of a...

Unintended Cultivator V3: Chapter 32 – Dilemma

Sen kept up his kicking at the door until he eventually grew so bored with it that he was feeling tired. By then, it was late into the night, so he ignored the tray of food and settled onto the pallet. It wasn’t comfortable, but his body had been remade so often now that he doubted it would bother him to sleep outside in the middle of torrential downpour. He slept for two hours, which was apparently all that he required, then he resumed his assault on the door. Since he couldn’t use his q...

Unintended Cultivator V3: Chapter 31 – Prisoners

Lo Meifeng turned to Sen and said, “We can’t let him take us in there. Better by far to die out here.”

Lifen looked appalled by Lo Meifeng’s words. The old man looked sad and a little disappointed. Sen just evaluated what he saw in Lo Meifeng’s eyes. She meant it. She believed with absolute certainty that death was preferable to stepping foot inside that temple. Lo Meifeng obviously knew things about the temple that Sen didn’t. After all, he didn’t think he would have just...

Unintended Cultivator V3: Chapter 30 – The Temple of Eternity’s Edge

While their brief moment of playfulness had helped lift everyone’s spirits, they all grew warier and warier as they traveled even deeper into the wilds. Every noise caught Sen’s attention. He refused to even entertain thoughts about his cultivation method after the ambush attack by the cat-bear. Of course, it wasn’t the attack that bothered him. He wasn’t above being ambushed or caught off-guard. No one could be perfectly attentive at every moment. Human minds weren’t meant for that...

Unintended Cultivator V3: Chapter 29 – Injuries and Close Encounters

Even with all of their advantages, traveling through the wilds was slow going. They had moved beyond the semi-tame portions into the true wilds. By Sen’s estimation, they were spending the same amount of time to move half the distance or less each day. Despite Sen’s deep and abiding worry that they’d be attacked at every turn on their journey, though, the next three weeks passed by largely without incident save for two exceptions. The first incident happened four days out from the battl...

Unintended Cultivator V3: Chapter 28 – Questions and Answers

There was very little talking as the three of them left the site of the battle behind and for the rest of the day. While Sen’s elixir had done a lot to restore Lifen’s and Lo Meifeng’s energy, letting them stay awake, it wasn’t a substitute for genuine rest. So, while Sen had a number of pressing questions on his mind, he kept them to himself and focused on keeping watch both ahead and behind them. For all that getting away from the location of all that fighting felt like a boost in s...

Unintended Cultivator V3: Chapter 27 – Elixirs and Cores

Sen and a weary Lo Meifeng made their way back toward Lifen. Most of the spirit beasts seemed to have decided that the fighting and destruction wasn’t worth whatever had brought them there in the first place. For the few that stuck around looking for trouble, judicious use of his killing intent sent most of them scurrying away. The rest were dealt with using jian, spear, and the occasional qi technique. When they finally reached the spot where Sen had left Lifen, he found not one, but a gro...

Unintended Cultivator V3: Chapter 26 – Creative Solutions

Sen wasn’t given very much time to think about what he was going to do about the flying demonic cultivator before he was forced to worry about his own survival. While there were fewer spirit beasts floating around, that didn’t mean that were none. And while some of them had seemed to make common cause against the demonic cultivators, because everyone hated demonic cultivators, that didn’t make them all friendly to Sen. It was a lesson that he very nearly paid with his ...

Unintended Cultivator V3: Chapter 25 – Rude Awakening

Under normal conditions, waking up was something Sen let himself do slowly. It was a gentle rise from the wild fantasies of dreaming into the less fantastical demands of reality. He found that gentle rise to be a fine way to start his day, because it was often the last restful moment he would have until the next time he slept. It was with fond feelings that Sen remembered those moments after he was yanked out of sleep by some kind of body landing on him. Even that might not have been so bad, ...

Unintended Cultivator V3: Chapter 24 – Core

While Sen hadn’t expected to reach core formation as fast as he did, he had done a little preparation. He’d quizzed Lo Meifeng about her experience with it. While she had added a ton of disclaimers about how everyone’s core advancement was different, there were some features that held true. While the process would start on its own, Sen couldn’t expect it to finish on its own. Much like forming liquid qi, he needed to do his part to condense the liquid qi until it solidified. Of course...

Unintended Cultivator V3: Chapter 23 – Fighting the Inevitable

Sen briefly wondered, is the universe trying to get me killed? Then, he had other things to worry about. That amount of any kind of qi, let alone heavenly qi, was enough to obliterate the obscuring formation if Sen didn’t contain it. Unfortunately, there was really only way to contain it in a hurry. Bracing himself, Sen started drawing the heavenly qi into himself. He let it fill what little space there was left in his dantian. When the pressure there built to first uncomfortable a...

Unintended Cultivator V3: Chapter 22 – Restraint

With the decision made, they didn’t waste any time. Sen spent longer than he probably should have picking the spot where they would leave the road. Then, he used every trick he’d picked up since leaving the mountain, every bit of woodcraft he’d learned from Falling Leaf, to obscure their trail. Then, when he’d done everything he could think of, they started off into the wilds. Sen had decided that, for that night, they wouldn’t go too deep, just deep enough that no one would dare to...