Sen stared at the eager face of the young man. While only a handful of years separated them, Sen couldn’t help the question that sprang to his mind. Was I ever that young? Whatever a calendar might say, Sen was quite certain that a massive canyon filled with experience stood between them. It was only the fact that he was acquainted with the Wang Bo that had kept him from simply ordering the young man to go away and leave him alone. Sen had barely set foot in town before people started accosting him. They were kind enough about it. Coming up and thanking him for helping them with the spirit beasts. But Sen was getting tired of smiling and nodding and assuring everyone that he didn’t need tea… Or food… Or a wife. He had been particularly gentle with that last refusal since he could see the young woman in question hovering nervously in the background behind her father. No need to make her feel bad. Still, it all grew very tiresome, very quickly. When Wang Bo had come sprinting up to him, though, Sen was starting to wonder if he’d ever actually get to the shops.

“Please, Master Cultivator,” said Wang Bo. “You must come and see.”

Taking a steadying breath, Sen gestured for the young man to lead the way. It would, no doubt, prove easier and faster to just go and look at whatever had the young man in such an excitable mood. Perhaps there was some other threat that required immediate action or an injured person beyond the aid of the local healers. Sen was feeling impatient with the situation, but he didn’t want to let his impatience make a bad choice for him. So, he followed and made a noise now and then while the young man filled the air with words. So. Many. Words. He retreated into a semi-meditative state to withstand the verbal deluge, already wishing that he had gone somewhere else or simply stayed home. Ai could be noisy. There was no denying it, but that was noise he didn’t mind. Wang Bo finally led them past the inn, where the grizzled Dai Bao caught sight of them. He shook his head and walked over to meet them.

“Quiet, boy,” barked the older man. “Can’t you see the man’s had enough?”

Wang Bo’s mouth snapped shut as he cast a furtive, cautious look at Sen. He quickly turned his face away, apparently mistaking the distant, abstracted expression on Sen’s face for some kind of anger. At least, he’s quiet now, thought Sen and focused on the older man.

“Wang Bo seemed very insistent that there was something I needed to see,” offered Sen.

“Oh,” said Dai Bao, burying his face in his hand. “By the thousand hells, boy, don’t you have any sense?”

Wang Bo turned bright red at the, in Sen’s opinion, light chastisement. The older man gave Sen an apologetic look.

“Well, he brought you this far. I guess there’s no reason not to finish what he started.”

Sen drifted in the wake of the other two, not making an effort to listen in while Dai Bao gave the much younger Wang Bo a stern lecture on not rushing things that didn’t need to be rushed for no good reason. Eventually, they passed out the other side of town and stopped at a building that didn’t look like it was attached to any particular property. Dai Bao picked up on Sen’s confusion and interpreted it correctly.

“It’s a community building,” said the gruff man. “We use it to store things when there isn’t a better place.”

Sen nodded in understanding but didn’t comment. There had been a few buildings like that back in Orchard’s Reach. He’d even sheltered in them on rare occasions, but it was risky. There were always a lot of people coming and going, and the town guards had checked in the buildings regularly. Dai Bao pushed open the door and the trio stepped inside. Unable or unwilling to restrain his excitement any longer, Wang Bo rushed over to a pair of long, deep crates. He grabbed the top of one of the crates and shoved it out of the way.

Dai Bao muttered something about damn children, while Sen stepped closer to the crate. Wang Bo was smiling like he’d just discovered that his well produced silver tael instead of water. Sen peered down into the crate and saw that it was filled with tightly packed spears. He blinked at them a few times, but before he could ask anything, Wang Bo exploded into speech again.

“We did what you said. We sold the cores. Well, we bartered the cores for these spears, and for these,” he said, rushing over and pushing the top off the second crate to reveal similarly packed halberds.

Wang Bo was staring at him expectantly, but Sen was still caught on the fact that they thought he told them to do this. Then, he remembered that he had made some offhand suggestion that they buy spears and halberds. They would certainly be more useful against spirit beasts. Sen nodded.

“That’s good,” he said.

Sen still felt a bit hazy about why he had needed to see it, but the young man was clearly excited. It wouldn’t hurt to indulge that excitement a little. Wang Bo was still giving him that expectant look like he was sure that Sen was about to say something very interesting or very important. Maybe I wasn’t enthusiastic enough, thought Sen. He tried again.

“That’s very good.”

Wang Bo was shifting back and forth on his feet, his eyes bright and hopeful. Sen knew that he was missing something here, but he just couldn’t put his finger on what was escaping his notice. He felt like it must be obvious. He turned to look at Dai Bao. The gruff man had barely opened his mouth to speak when impatience won out over Wang Bo’s painfully limited self-control.Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.

“When will you start?” asked the young man.

Sen frowned at him. “Start what?”

“Training us.”

“Training you to do what?” asked Sen.

“To use the spears and halberds!”

Now, Sen understood. This kid had taken that offhand statement Sen had made and exaggerated it in his mind into some kind of promise that Sen would become their teacher. He didn’t have time for that nonsense. He had his own training to deal with. He had little Ai to take care of and teach how to write. This was not a problem of his making, and he refused to be bound by a promise he never made.

“When did I ever say I would do that?” asked Sen, with a bit too much steel in his words based on how the young man flinched.

“But you said to get spears and halberds,” said Wang Bo in a weak, confused voice.

“So you could defend yourselves against spirit beasts. Not so I could become your martial teacher.”

“We all warned you not to rush this, boy. We all told you not to assume things,” said Dai Bao.

He used a more sympathetic tone than Sen would have expected, all things considered. Even so, the young man looked like a puppy that had just been unexpectedly kicked. Sen added that to a list of things that were not his problem. Instead, he pointed at Dai Bao.

“If you want someone to teach you how to use a spear, ask him,” said Sen.

Fresh hope bloomed on Wang Bo’s face, while an expression of horror crossed Dai Bao’s face.

“What?” demanded the gruff man. “What are you talking about?”

Sen barely even knew the man, and the words still sounded fake.

“Wow,” said Sen. “You are a terrible liar.”

Dai Bao heaved an enormous sigh. “It’s not a lie. I might have known how to use a spear twenty-five years ago. You don’t forget everything, even after a couple of decades. But that was a long, long time ago, and I’ve forgotten most of what I knew. Plus, I was never a teacher. Anything I show that boy is as likely to get him killed as save him from a spirit beast.”

Sen shook his head. “I cannot be responsible for training your entire town to defend itself. I already have obligations. I helped out with those spirit beasts because I was here, and because I could. It was also because someone was willing to throw aside any notion of honor and begged me to do it. I gave you the basics. You have the tools now. That’s as far as I’m willing to go.”

Without another word, Sen turned away and left the barn. He pretended not to see the heartbroken look on Wang Bo’s face or the resigned look on Dai Bao’s face. He also pretended he couldn’t hear the two talking.

“I thought he’d teach us,” said a crestfallen Wang Bo.

“You don’t know cultivators, Bo. That man has a soft heart for a cultivator. He helped your father. He helped us fight those spirit beasts. And he didn’t ask for anything. Most cultivators would have laughed at you asking them to teach you anything if they didn’t kill you for being insolent.”

“Kill me?”

“Cultivators are prideful. Arrogant. You’re beneath their notice. You asking a cultivator to teach you something is like an ant asking you to teach them. He could have done anything he wanted to you, and no one could have stopped him. All he did was say no.”

Sen forced himself to stop listening before the conversation made him feel sick to his stomach. He didn’t feel kind. Maybe compared to other cultivators he’d been kind but that was a pretty low standard to reach in Sen’s experience. Dai Bao was right, too. Another cultivator might well have killed that young man for the sheer audacity of asking them to sully themselves by training some mortal to use a weapon. In the end, Sen just didn’t want to do it. He had other things, important things, that he needed to spend his time on. Things like finding a better brush for Liu Ai. So, that’s what he went to do. He went to the shops and spoke with the owners. It turned out that the children who did learn to write almost always used the brushes made for adults. It wasn’t what Sen wanted to hear, but he had to console himself with buying one that was thinner and lighter. While not a perfect solution, it should make things easier for little Ai.

While he did that, he pretended that he wasn’t paying attention to Dai Bao and Wang Bo with his spiritual sense. The two had gone a little way off from the town. Not in the true forest, but far enough away that no one would see them. Sen’s spiritual sense wasn’t quite precise enough for him to see what they were doing, but it gave him a clear enough picture that he kept wincing. Uncle Kho would be horrified. Stowing the brush in his storage ring, Sen found himself walking to where they were, grumbling under his breath, and cursing his own heart. He found them quickly enough and it was just as bad as he’d imagined it was. Dai Bao hadn’t been lying when he said he’d forgotten most of what he’d known about using a spear. Worse, he was passing on his incomplete knowledge and bad form to someone else. It was more than Sen could bear to watch people using spears so badly.

“Stop!” he shouted, storming up to the pair. “Stop! For the love of the gods, please stop. It hurts my soul just to see this display.”

Wang Bo looked torn between surprise and uncertainty.

“Um,” the young man said.

Dai Bao just looked startled. Sen glared around at the clearing they were in.

“Who owns this land?” he demanded.

Dai Bao and Wang Bo traded a look. Wang Bo shrugged. Dai Bao scratched his cheek and gave the spot a thoughtful frown.

“The king? Maybe,” offered the older man.

“So, it doesn’t belong to anyone in town?”

“No,” said Dai Bao.

“Good,” said Sen.

He cycled for earth qi and went to work. Soon, stone formed beneath their feet into something that resembled the courtyard at Uncle Kho’s home. The earth heaved and shook in every direction removing trees, undergrowth, and a few spirit beasts that thought they were being sneaky. Soon, a flat square of stone, one hundred and fifty feet on each side, stretched out around them. Sen decided that was big enough for now, and walls started rising out of the ground, largely closing in the area except for a single large opening that faced toward the road. Sen turned to look at the pair of inept, would-be spearmen. Wang Bo was gaping at him with his mouth hanging open. Dai Bao’s expression was more subdued, but his eyes were opened as wide as they would go. Sen held a hand out to one side and summoned a spear from his storage ring.

“If you’re going to use spears, you should at least get the basics right,” said Sen. “Rule one, you always, always keep two hands on the spear.”