Despite his intentions to leave after the third day, Sen couldn’t bring himself to do it. The prospect of leaving after the scant few hours he’d managed to carve out with Ai was simply more than he could bear. He also knew that his original plans were no longer viable. Before, he could have simply left. Now, he had to at least make arrangements to get the cultivators and mortals he planned to forcibly conscript back to the capital. Unlike Sua Xing Xing, he made a point to communicate those changes in his plans back to Jing and the generals, who were happy to be given extra time to train their soldiers.

After he’d spent two full days with Ai, including another flying adventure that was no less nerve-wracking than the first had been, he finally allowed Lai Dongmei to talk to him about the state of affairs in the kingdom.

“I know,” he said. “We need to leave.”

She gave him a sympathetic look before turning to look out over the landscape. They were standing on a small mountain that Sen had unintentionally had a hand in creating during one of his advancements. There had been a time not that long ago when most of the nearby landscape was covered by forests. Now, much of that forest had been cleared away in preparation for when the spring came. There were more farmers living in the small city than he had realized, many of them eager to ply their trades when the weather allowed for it. Not that he would be there to see any of that.

“I understand why you’re so reluctant to leave. Your daughter is absolutely charming.”

“You have to say that,” said Sen with a smirk. “It’d be impolite to suggest otherwise.”

“It would be impolite, but already you know she’s charming. She’s certainly charmed you.”

Sen laughed softly and said, “I won’t deny that. I’m always tempted to let her get her own way.”

“But you don’t.”

“I don’t. I can’t. I’ve seen the kind of people that makes.”

“People like cultivators?” asked Lai Dongmei.

“Some of them. Too many of them. Every cultivator is horribly selfish, but I was thinking about nobles. Or maybe I should say their children.”

She eyed him briefly.

“Are you still angry with those children who tormented you?”

Sen searched inside of himself. He felt the places where that old anger had been. He could sense the echoes of that anger, but it lacked substance.

“No. I’m not still angry with them. I took my revenge on them long ago. And having seen how the great houses operate in the capital, I can recognize that I hated them more than they deserved. I have plenty of reasons to be dissatisfied with nobles that have nothing to do with those poor, foolish children.”

“And do you hate nobles now?”

“I don’t have the room inside myself to hate them the way so many of them deserve to be hated. And it’s not as though I’ve lived a life that is beyond reproach. Mostly, I’m indifferent to them. As long as they don’t do things to actively obstruct me or blatantly mistreat the commoners, I’m content to ignore them.”

“Some would argue that indifference is even more damning than hate.”

Sen had never heard that before. He took a few minutes to contemplate that idea and decided that there was probably some truth buried in it. Uncle Kho always seemed interested in questions like those. Sen thought that in some other, gentler place, he might have been interested in them as well. He’d just been so focused on survival for most of his life that he hadn’t had the luxury to spend his time contemplating those kinds of abstractions. If he was going to devote that much mental energy to something, it would always have to be related to Ai, cultivation, or survival.

“I suppose it could be,” offered Sen. “Hating someone or something requires that you care about them in some way. Indifference means that they simply don’t matter. As far as you’re concerned, the world could go on without them and not suffer in the slightest. I’ve met plenty of nobles and cultivators who would rather murder someone than be dismissed that way.”

“And could you be content to be dismissed that way?”

Sen’s laughter at that was a bitter thing.

“I used to pray that I’d be ignored that way. It was literally my fondest wish,” he said, gesturing at the sky. “Sometimes, I feel that I’m living proof that the heavens are not kind.”

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“Sometimes?”

“The rest of the time, I remember that I have Ai. I don’t know that I have the heavens to thank for her, but she is a blessing in my world. She isn’t old enough to care about ascension, yet. She’s still too young to start cultivating.”

That drew a raised eyebrow from Lai Dongmei.

“She’s old enough for most sects.”

“Fine. Maybe she’s old enough for cultivation, but what madness could ever make me want to put her through that?”

“Power? Immortality? What better way for her to protect herself?”

“At what price? I know that my experience, the amount that I’ve suffered to advance, isn’t normal. I know she wouldn’t have to endure what I’ve endured. If we win this war, I’d even be able to set it up so she never wanted for resources. But suffering less than I have doesn’t mean that she wouldn’t suffer. Cultivation is dangerous. How many people reach a bottleneck and spend the rest of their lives in a futile, hopeless quest to advance? How many people die to tribulation lightning? How could I ever want that life for her?”

“She may want that life,” said Lai Dongmei, lifting a hand to stymie Sen’s objections. “I won’t deny that it’s dangerous because it is dangerous. Most fail to climb the mountain. I can likely count on one hand the number of people I knew as a qi-condensing cultivator who are still alive. However, none of that may matter. It may not be the life you would pick for her, but you’re forgetting something very important.”

“Which is?”

“Her father, who she adores beyond words, is a cultivator. Some might even call you the cultivator.”

“I’m pretty confident that title belongs to Master Feng until he decides to ascend or he dies.”

“That’s probably fair,” said an amused Lai Dongmei, “but it misses my point. Rather intentionally, unless I miss my guess.”

“Yes, it was intentional. Please continue.”

“Thank you, Lord Lu. As I was saying, her much-adored father is a cultivator. A very famous cultivator. A cultivator who might well found an empire. He’s also a cultivator who will very likely ascend long before she dies. Has it never occurred to you even once that she might want to follow you, however long that might take her?”

Sen closed his eyes for a moment. The idea had occurred to him and more than once. He’d just always shoved it to the back of his mind, where he put all of those other inconvenient ideas he didn’t want to think too hard about. He never, ever wanted to picture Ai taking those terrible cleansing pills Master Feng had given him in the early days. He knew that they would be nothing to him now, but they had been pure agony at the time. It made his stomach churn imagining her in that kind of pain. The simple notion of the heavens trying to strike his little girl down with tribulation lightning was almost enough to send him into a blind rage.

“It has occurred to me. I just don’t know what to do with that thought,” admitted Sen.

“I never had children,” said Lai Dongmei. “When I was younger, I thought about it. But it always seemed like it would be a distraction. Something that would destroy my momentum. When I grew powerful enough that I had all the time I could ever need, I feared that they would become targets for my enemies. Then, I outlived almost all of my enemies, only to find myself a sect matriarch and weighed down with duties.”

It was Sen’s turn to lift a questioning eyebrow at her.

“I just mean to say that, ironically, I lack the life experience to offer you any advice about what you should or shouldn’t do with that thought. What I do have more than enough experience to tell you is something that you already know.”

“Which is?”

She turned to face him, and there was a melancholy around her when she spoke.

“Mortals also suffer. Shielding her from the world of cultivation will not spare her from that truth.”

That felt like a hard blow to Sen’s stomach. It was easy for him to imagine Ai being young and vital forever, held safely in the cradle of protection he was already erecting around her. Yet, time was the true enemy, and it would steal and steal from his daughter. It would steal her youth, her health, and eventually her life. It was also the one enemy he could not protect her from with formations, elixirs, armies, or any other tool at his disposal. Save one. He could open the way to cultivation for her. He could show her that narrowest of paths to immortality or the next best thing to it. At least, he could allow Auntie Caihong to do it. Assuming he could stomach the costs that would come with that choice.

“I honestly don’t know if letting her follow me into cultivation would make me a good father or the worst father who ever lived.”

“A quandary I suspect very few men have ever confronted. Most fathers would be ecstatic at the idea of a cultivator in their family.”

“Most fathers don’t understand what it actually means.”

“True enough.”

They fell into a comfortable silence for a time before Lai Dongmei spoke again.

“It’s peaceful here. Everything feels so distant. The capital. The war. It’s easy to forget that the world is burning somewhere.”

“I haven’t forgotten that,” said Sen.

“Yet, you keep finding reasons to delay.”

Sen reached up and rubbed the back of his neck. She wasn’t wrong. Even he knew that he was costing lives with every delay. He’d dressed it up dozens of ways in his mind, but there was a basic fact at the very root of all of it.

“I just wasn’t ready,” he admitted. “Or maybe I didn’t want to be ready. I’m not sure it makes a difference. Auntie Caihong warned me a while ago that people can enter a war as one person and leave it as someone else entirely. I don’t want to leave here as someone my daughter loves and come back as someone she can’t love.”

“Do you think you will?”

“I think I could, which terrifies me. I have a sense of the kinds of choices I’ll be forced to make and the kinds of things I’ll be called on to do. There will be death on such a scale that it will be—” Sen hesitated, unsure that any one word could encapsulate it. “I fear it will be enough to stain my soul beyond all cleansing.”

Lai Dongmei went to say something, but Sen continued.

“But it doesn’t matter anymore. I could keep coming up with excuses not to start, but I won’t. I’m not the only father in the world looking for a way to keep my child safe. I can’t keep delaying without the souls of all those dead children I failed to save haunting me forever. The guilt would eat me alive.”

“Then, where will you begin?”

“With a group of fools who came to my home and tried to wage war.”