Sen had barely begun to walk away from the inn when his spiritual sense alerted him that there were spirit beasts near to the town. They were much too near to the town to be doing anything but preparing to attack. I guess this day was always coming, he thought. Now, we find out if I’ve been wasting my time or not. Sen activated his qinggong technique and flashed over to where the town had set up a gong. It was usually tucked away and only brought out for festivals, but Sen had made the argument that it could serve another purpose. It could be an alert for the town that danger was at hand. Sen flipped open the box that was there to offer the mallet some basic protection from the weather, seized the mallet, and struck the gong three times. By the time the third reverberating note was washing out over the town, Sen was crashing into the practice hall and hurriedly storing weapons in a storage ring.

This was bad planning, he realized. He never went anywhere without his weapons. In fact, he kept backup weapons on him at all times. Granted, the mortals couldn’t make use of storage rings, but they could keep spears close at hand. Needing to run to a building outside the city to arm themselves was a huge waste of time during which people could die. Of course, solving that problem meant getting more spears. Well, it’s not like I don’t have the money, thought Sen. Maybe I’ll call it a loan to the town, and they can pay me back a copper tael each year until the end of time. Having grabbed all the weapons, he shot back toward the town. He only paused long enough to toss Wang Bo over his shoulder. The young man was fast on his feet and lived the closest to the practice hall, so Sen wasn’t entirely surprised to find him racing for the weapons. Sen did have to suppress his laughter at the high-pitched yelp the young man made when he was seemingly seized by an all-but-invisible force and carried back to the town. Sen went over the wall and dropped down on the inside of the gate. He was gratified to see that about half of the people he’d been training were racing toward the gate. If all was going according to plan, the rest would be at the other gate. Sen put down Wang Bo, who looked a little nauseated and swayed on his feet. He turned and pointed to one of the people who was racing toward him.

“Go to the other gate. Fetch the rest. The threat is here.”

More poor planning, thought Sen. There should be a specific signal for which gate they should meet at. The realization that people would have needed to carry spears to the far side of town just so the townspeople could arm themselves drove home just how badly he’d thought all of it through. He consoled himself a little with the knowledge that no one else had thought of these things either. Plus, it wasn’t like Sen had ever gotten any practical training in defending a town or city. He wasn’t a general. He was just a wandering cultivator. He summoned an armful of spears and shoved them at Wang Bo. Then, he summoned an armful for himself. They started passing the weapons out. Sen could feel the rest of the people coming from the far side of the town. He handed out a few more armloads of weapons and tasked people with arming the new arrivals.

He strode back to the gate and turned to face the townspeople. He waited and did his best to look calm and project confidence. Once everyone was assembled and armed, he swept his gaze across the people. Some looked scared. Some looked excited. Some of the people who had fought the last spirit beasts to attack the town looked grim but determined. He saw Wu Meng Yao and Shen Mingxia drift toward the gathering. He’d have to stop them from interfering unless things went terribly, terribly wrong. Taking a deep breath, he clasped his hands behind him. I need to give them something to focus on, he thought.

“There are spirit beasts close by. They might just be passing by, but I’m not willing to sit back and simply hope that’s what happens. These are your homes, your livelihoods,” he locked eyes with Li Hua for a second, “and your families. The fight will be hard. I can’t promise that none of you will be hurt. I can’t promise that no one will die. But you are the line between those spirit beasts and everything and everyone you hold dear. You are their shield. You are their sword. Will you fail them?”

The townspeople stared at him as though transfixed. He waited. It was Dai Bao who broke the silence.

“No!” shouted the grizzled man.

“Is Dai Bao the only one? I ask you again. Will you fail them?”

That time, fifty voices shouted out at him as one. “No!”

Some of them shouted in fear. Some shouted in defiance of the threat bearing down on them. Yet, they were united. It was the most he could ask for.Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

“Good,” said Sen, giving them all a nod. “Through the gate and into your teams.”

He turned and pushed the gate open. The townspeople flooded past him, their eyes blazing with purpose. Wu Meng Yao and Shen Mingxia came up on either side of him. Shen Mingxia watched the mortals organizing themselves with a thoughtful look on her face. Sen felt Wu Meng Yao extend her spiritual sense. She gave Sen a perplexed look.

“I don’t understand. You could kill those spirit beasts without even trying. Mingxia and I could do it without any help.”

Sen glanced over at her. “What about next time?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that I’m not always here. You won’t always be here. But they will,” he said, gesturing at the people beyond the gate. “They’ll be here every day. They’ll be here the next time spirit beasts come looking for easy food or easy prey. So, I’m trying to give them the skills they need to protect themselves. This will be the first test.”

“You don’t want us to interfere at all?” asked Shen Mingxia.

Sen almost agreed, but the look of deep concern on the woman’s face made him think better of it. He had two sect-trained cultivators just hanging around, at least one of them positively aching to be useful to him. Sen had fought with enough sect cultivators to recognize that, while he might not care for their attitudes on the whole, they were generally competent to above-average fighters. Simply telling these two to stay out of it completely was a poor use of available resources. Yes, he wanted the townspeople to get some valuable experience. Yes, he wanted them to be the ones to make the actual kills. No, he didn’t want either of those things to result in preventable deaths. And with three cultivators on hand, pretty much every certain death scenario for a mortal was preventable. Sen was new to this quasi-leadership role he’d adopted, but even he could see that allowing deaths for no reason other than “teaching” would undermine the townspeople’s trust in him at best, and seem like a basic betrayal of trust at worst.

“The whole point of this is to help them build up some experience and confidence, so leave the fighting and killing to them. With that said, you can intervene to save lives. Get people out of certain death. Push the beasts back to let the townspeople regroup. That kind of thing. If something too powerful shows up, I’ll deal with it. Or you two can.”

Shen Mingxia looked relieved, while Wu Meng Yao looked eager. Man, I should have sent her on that stupid fake quest immediately, thought Sen. Still, he’d be lying to himself if he didn’t feel the pressure of responsibility on him reduce just a little bit. He knew that spirit beasts killed mortals all the time, the same way that cultivators killed spirit beasts and each other all the time. It was the way of the world. But he was at a remove from all of those people, cultivators, and spirit beasts. He hadn’t tried to get the know the townspeople all the well, but he’d inevitably become a casual acquaintance to pretty much every student. He considered a small handful of them as actual friends. Dai Bao, Li Hua, and Li Zhi, Wang Bo and his parents, and a few others. Thankfully, only some of them were getting ready to fight, but Sen recognized that this was a test for himself as much as it was for them.

During that first fight with the spirit beasts, it had been easy to limit his intervention. He didn’t really know any of them. Now, he did, and he needed to find out if he could stay his hand when things got bloody. Intervening for anything short of certain death would tell the townspeople that he didn’t trust them, didn’t trust what he’d taught them, which would make them doubt what he’d taught them. It was going to be hard because Wu Meng Yao was right. He could end the approaching spirit beasts by himself from the exact spot he was standing. The townspeople would never know, but he would know. He needed to be a little cruel right now so that they would learn, and so that they would be better prepared later. Sen put on a mask of cool confidence as he stepped through the gate.

He watched as Dai Bao went from group to group, offering words of encouragement and making sure everyone’s weapon was in fighting condition. During the first battle, there had been so few people that Sen broke them up into three-person teams. With fifty people, that was impractical. After some discussion with Dai Bao, they’d settled on five-person teams. Three people carried spears while two wielded halberds. It was a cold calculation, but that meant that up to two people could theoretically die and leave a team still capable of fighting or, barring that, retreating with some possibility of survival. With ten teams, it also meant that they could hold some teams in reserve to rotate in if the battle raged on for more than a few minutes. Sen remembered how tired he had been during the earliest days of his training and how fatigue made him sloppy. He had quickly learned that those memories were accurate for mortals in general. Even healthy, fit adult mortals grew tired very fast compared with even a formation foundation cultivator like Shen Mingxia. He expected that would prove even more true in a situation like this where the combat would be far fiercer and demanding than even their most brutal practice sessions.

“They’re almost here,” said Wu Meng Yao.

Her comment wasn’t necessary. Sen could feel them even more clearly than she could. At least the woman had lost that eager expression. It seemed the reality of the situation was finally sinking in for her. Mortals were about to fight spirit beasts. Sen caught Dai Bao’s eyes and nodded.

“Here they come!” bellowed the man. “You don’t let them see so much as a wisp of fear in your eyes. They don’t know it, yet, but they came here to die!”