Unintended Cultivator: Volume Five by Eric Dontigney

Author:Eric Dontigney [Dontigney, Eric]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Shadow Alley Press
Published: 2025-03-04T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

FREEDOM’S CALL

Sen pushed open the door to the galehouse and looked around. He did that every time he came into the place. He knew that he was looking for changes, but it was a fruitless little bit of paranoia. The interior of the galehouse never changed. Still, it soothed some small part of his heart to find the place as he’d left it, even if he’d only left it for a few days. The tedious weeks of crafting failed variations on the healing pill had left Fu Ruolan stumped. Sen had pounced on that moment when the woman’s imagination failed her and suggested that he take a few days off to replenish what he could of his own plant and reagent stores. She had given him one of those narrow-eyed, lips-pursed expressions that Sen was sure that all women learned as babies. It was the look that said she knew exactly what he was doing. In the end, though, she had conceded that it was a practical use of his time since she wasn’t sure what they should do next.

It had been such a moment of relief for him that he hadn’t hidden the fact well enough in his expression. It had only been on her face for a blink, but Sen could see that he’d hurt Fu Ruolan’s feelings with his eagerness to be away for a few days. That had soured his mood because it wasn’t her, specifically, that he wanted to get away from. It was the constant failure. He’d wanted to go out and harvest plants because it was necessary, true, but also because it was something at which he could succeed. When he’d been endlessly testing different patterns to cycle qi, part of what made it endurable was that he’d done it alone. He’d been the only one to witness his failure. He’d thought it would be the same working with Fu Ruolan, but it wasn’t. Having a witness to all those botched attempts made them cut a little deeper. If it had only been a few or if there had been occasional glimmers of progress, he could have just shrugged it off. With the defeats at the hands of pill refining soaring up to the dozens and then more than a hundred with no progress at all, it had weighed on him. It had been a death of a thousand small cuts for his confidence in alchemy.

While confidence wasn’t a central element in success, it played a role. Second guessing a choice at a crucial moment could make the difference between crafting an adequate elixir or a superior elixir. In the worst-case scenario, it meant the difference between making something that worked and making useful plants and reagents into useless garbage. Sen didn’t think that anyone could rightly be blamed for wanting an escape from something that only ever ended in that garbage-producing option. Yet, it didn’t change the fact that the relief in his expression hadn’t come with that convenient explanation attached. All Fu Ruolan had seen was that she said he could go away from her, and he looked relieved.

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