Sen had been so angry with Falling Leaf that he’d stormed inside. He pretended he didn’t feel her eyes on him as he went. He’d argued with her in his head all the way to his room. She didn’t know what she was talking about. She was just a big cat. What could she possibly know about it?

“Bears and wolves,” he muttered. “What does that have to do with anything?”

Yet, as he lay there, not sleeping, what she said kept circling around in his mind, refusing to let him rest, refusing to let him put away his troubles and have the sweet release of sleep. A little nagging part of him said that he was acting like a child. It told him that he was trying to ignore her because she didn’t just tell him what he wanted to hear. He rolled onto his side and tried to ignore that little voice, too. Except, she had talked to him. She hadn’t gestured or given him a serious look. She’d actually talked to him. He knew it was hard for her. She’d told him so. They’d only traded a handful of words that one time. For her, that brief speech in the courtyard was a monumental number of words. Why did it have to be those words, he thought.

He tossed and turned for most of an hour before he gave up and just stared at the wall, thinking it over. It was her last words that truly haunted him. It is the only path forward. She hadn’t said it was the only path. He didn’t know exactly how it worked, but he knew that cultivation could be broken somehow. He could go back to being a regular person if he wanted it badly enough. As Sen tried to think his way around it, he knew that was the heart of the problem. He didn’t want to go back, not really. He didn’t want to forget what being a regular person was like. He didn’t want to treat regular people like they were beneath him. How could they be? The only reason he even had a family name was because Grandmother Lu had decided to give him one for her own reasons.

Going back, though, he couldn’t see himself doing that. He’d learned too much. He’d suffered too much to just throw that all away. No, going back wasn’t the solution to the problem. He’d held that idea in the back of his head from very nearly the first day with Master Feng, but it was long past time that he accepted that wasn’t some kind of escape hatch from cultivation. If going back wasn’t a real path…

“It’s the only way forward,” Sen said. “Forward.”

Sen closed his eyes and took a few deep breaths. If he was going to go forward, and that’s the only real way he could move, it didn’t come for free. He accepted that’s what he’d really wanted. He wanted the strength and power that came with being a cultivator, but he hadn’t wanted to pay the price. Like it or not, and Sen most certainly didn’t like it, the cultivators had their own way of doing things. He wanted to go out and see the world. In fact, it was something he was increasingly sure he’d have to do to keep advancing. Doing that meant he would, inevitably, come across other cultivators. They would expect him to know their rules. Our rules, he corrected himself. He was one of them. He might have trained differently than they did, but that wouldn’t matter to them.

The world of cultivators was a world of violence. Master Feng, Uncle Kho, and Auntie Caihong assured him that it was usually restrained violence, but violence was a fact of their existence. Fighting was the price he’d have to pay to accomplish his own goals. He thought over his training. He had learned a lot, but had he really learned about fighting? His sparring matches with the older cultivators hadn’t felt like the fights he’d had with noble brats in Orchard’s Reach. Those long-ago fights had been hectic and frightening, with his heart pounding in his ears, and pain screaming for his limited attention. The sparring was all control and softened by the certainty that the other person would pull back before they’d risk a serious injury. That wasn’t to say that Sen thought what he’d learned was useless. In a controlled situation, he expected that he would fare fine.

Yet, how often would he fight in a controlled situation? From their descriptions of the Jianghu, he’d be fighting in forests, on the streets, and even inside of noodle shops. He’d have to worry about everything from spilled food to strewn bodies on the ground. His training had not prepared him for that. For that matter, he couldn’t even expect to only have to fight one person at a time. He’d learned that lesson often enough as a child. Cowards were cowards, and they ran in packs. He expected that was as true of cultivators as it was of regular people. He had not trained, not really, to fight multiple people at once. He knew that much of what he’d learned could be used that way. Yet, knowing it and knowing how to do it was the difference between the moon’s reflection on the water and the moon itself.

Sen thought about that for a long time, trying to understand the difference between what he’d trained for and actual fighting. Dueling, he finally realized. They trained me for dueling with other cultivators. That would all be helpful enough when he actually dueled someone, but those painful memories of getting beaten by a group were seared deep inside Sen’s soul. He absolutely believed that cultivators would come for him as a group, at least if they thought no one could see. That meant that he needed to stop training to duel. He needed to train in how to fight. He might hate every minute of that fighting. He knew that he’d avoid it whenever he could. At the end of the day, though, he wanted to be a cultivator. For whatever reason, fighting was the price on offer to keep participating.

“Fine,” he said to the empty room. “Then, I’ll learn to fight.”

With the matter finally settled in his head, Sen was asleep in seconds.

***

Sen took the next morning to see if things looked different in the literal light of day. He knew that, sometimes, sleep provided perspective. Yet, the morning offered him no new revelations. If anything, he felt more confident that he had the right of things. So, that afternoon, Sen presented his thoughts to Uncle Kho. The cultivator was quiet for a long, long time before he finally spoke. Sen was surprised by the first thing the old cultivator said.

“Sen, I know that Ming and I don’t present cultivators out in the world in the best light, but they aren’t all honorless dogs.”

“They’re people, aren’t they?”

“Well, yes, I suppose they are.”

“I’ve seen firsthand how honorable people treat those they see as weaker, as lesser, than themselves. As far as I’m concerned, they are all honorless dogs until they give me a very good reason to trust them. I’d be insane not to prepare for the possibility that they’ll attack me in groups when they think they can get away with it. Can you tell me they won’t? Can you tell me it never happened to you?”

Uncle Kho frowned and then shook his head. “No, I can’t tell you that.”

“Then, I need to learn how to fight, not duel. I need there to be a real risk of injury, just so I learn what to expect from my body. I probably can’t control all of those reactions, but I can learn to work around them. I need there to be more than one person to worry about. I’ve spent all my time learning how to focus on what’s in front of me, but that’s not how fights usually work in my experience. It’s the person you don’t see that gets you the first time. I have to get ready for that.”

“Very well. I suppose we all have been working from a prettier picture than is realistic. I know better. Ming certainly knows better. The heavens know we’ve both done enough fighting. Let me talk with Ming and Caihong. We’ll sort out the right kind of training. Don’t think this gets you out of spear training with me. I still have a lot to teach you before I unleash you on the world.”

“Unleash?”

Uncle Kho grinned. “Did I say unleash? I'm sure I meant send you. Yes, I have a lot left to teach before I send you out into the world.”