Unintended Cultivator

Sen watched as Falling Leaf left the de-limbed corpse of the core cultivator in the copse of trees and ventured back out into the sect. Once she was gone, he walked over the corpse and glared down at it. He’d arrived just after she had, somehow, reappeared in his spiritual sense. It had taken swift action to conceal himself before she noticed he was there. She had an uncanny way of knowing when he was nearby even when he was hiding. His world had almost stopped when her presence in his spiritual sense had gone out.

He had seen that she was fleeing, but he had made himself leave it be. She had seemed to be moving under her own power. He knew that she didn’t want him to interfere in her battles unless absolutely necessary. At that moment, though, he’d been sure that he’d made a terrible, irreversible mistake. Some doomed bastard had tried to take advantage of his moment of horror and despair. The cultivator had launched four of those twisted blade techniques at him one after the other, clearly unaware of what he was about to provoke.

Sen had felt the techniques coming his way and his almost blind grief and rage had been given somewhere to go. He didn’t even really remember the details of what he’d done. There was a vague impression of crushing those techniques to the ground with… Sen couldn’t remember what he’d used to do that. He’d just done something. The next thing he remembered, his hand was wrapped around the other cultivator’s heart. That hand was sticking out of the man’s back. The man had worn an oddly surprised look in his last moment. Then, Sen was hurtling to the last place he’d felt Falling Leaf’s presence. He’d almost crashed through a building in utter shock when she reappeared. He’d hidden and wrapped himself in shadow before approaching. He listened to her last words to the other man.

“You should be grateful my human boy didn’t come. I’m only killing you. He would have hurt you in ways that there are no words for.”

She ended the man’s torment with a swift slash of her shadow claws and walked away. He gave her a little time to clear the immediate area before he walked over to the dead cultivator. As he stared into the man’s empty, lifeless eyes, he was torn between relief and fury. That she lived had swept away a mountain of grief that threatened to crush his soul. However, he’d seen where she had been injured. It was healed over, but also looked to have been serious. He desperately wanted to punish someone for that, but she’d done the job herself.

“She was right, you know,” he said to the corpse. “If she had died, your suffering would have been endless. You should thank the gods you’re beyond my reach.”

With an almost spasmodic burst of fire qi and wrath, Sen reduced the corpse to ashes. The action did little to quell the molten pit that writhed inside of him. He knew that Falling Leaf getting hurt here was always a possibility. Somewhere in the deepest, darkest depths of his heart, he even knew that she could die here. He’d known it, but he did not care. Coming here, setting the trap, and culling the majority of the sect had been an onerous duty to him. It was personal because it had threatened Ai, but it had still been something he didn’t really want to do. Now, though? Now, he wanted every single person stupid enough to wear the emblem of the Twisted Blade Sect to die.

It took every bit of self-control he could scrape together not to take Falling Leaf and Glimmer of Night outside the walls and level the entire compound with Heavens’ Rebuke. He was certain he could do it, too. He might not be able to accomplish it with one or two applications of the technique, but he could get it done. He had to remind himself, over and over again, that there were still qi-condensing cultivators inside the sect. He had promised himself that if they simply ran, he would let them go. He clung to that promise even as his heart told him to kill everyone and leave nothing but charred rubble behind him. He knew how easy it would be to ignore that promise, but he also knew that nothing lay down that path but regret. Even if he might not feel that regret today, tomorrow would come.

He forced himself to stay there until he was certain that he wasn’t going to unleash absolute annihilation at the first provocation. He consoled himself with the knowledge that while he might have promised to let some of them go, he hadn’t promised himself to let them all go. There were still people in this sect he could expend those feelings on. People who might even deserve it. Taking a steadying breath, Sen walked out of those trees with something he hadn’t had when he’d entered the sect. He had a purpose. It wasn’t especially noble, but there had never been anything noble about his goals. For all intents and purposes, this was sect politics at its most brutal.

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Sen checked on Falling Leaf and Glimmer of Night. Falling Leaf seemed to be ushering or possibly chasing qi-condensing cultivators toward the gate. Glimmer of Night, on the other hand, was moving around in the area where the core members of the sect lived. There weren’t a lot of people moving around there, and it seemed the spider was reducing their numbers quickly. If Sen was going to find people he could kill, that seemed like the best place to start. He activated his qinggong technique and started racing through the sect. A few times, he wove through groups of panicking sect members, cutting down the foundation formation cultivators but making himself leave the qi-condensing cultivators alone.

He came to a stop near where Glimmer of Night was quite probably living up to every nightmare that every human being had ever had about spiders. There were qi webs everywhere and, caught in those webs, were at least eight core cultivators. Sen watched as Glimmer of Night used a technique he had seen before. All of the power and life in those cultivators started draining away. With that many potent cultivators in the web, Sen could feel their power being siphoned and absorbed by the spider, who stared at the cultivators with his liquid black eyes. He was the very image of nature’s cold indifference to individual life. Sen could see the cultivators’ mouths opened wide, but it seemed that Glimmer of Night had done something to silence their screams. Sen considered the scene before him for a moment before he looked at the spider.

“I take it that you don’t need any help.”

The spider tilted his head a little to one side and said, “I do not, but some of them ran away.”

Sen wasn’t surprised. He likely would have run away in their positions if he’d walked in on something this unnerving. Still, he couldn’t have those cultivators realizing that their sect was doomed and trying to escape.

“Don’t worry. They won’t get far.”

“I let most of the qi-condensing cultivators go. A few attacked me. I ended them quickly.”

Sen nodded. He was still livid and didn’t particularly care about that at the moment, but he knew that would fade. The last of the cultivators in the web died. Glimmer of Night dispersed the web and the empty husks that had been people collapsed to the ground.

“Falling Leaf was injured,” said Sen. “I’d appreciate it if you watched over her for a little while. At least until she’d had a chance to heal a little more. I also don’t want you to get caught in anything I might do here.”

Glimmer of Night turned and looked at Sen. The spider’s expression was as blankly unreadable as ever, but he nodded.

“I see. They have roused your true anger.”

Sen’s jaw worked a few times before he could make himself answer.

“They have.”

The spider seemed to consider that for a few seconds before he shrugged and said, “It seems their journey on the Great Web ends today.”

Glimmer of Night swiftly retreated to the outer sect. With nothing but enemies nearby, Sen unleashed his killing intent. He made sure it only fell on the people in this part of the sect. He didn’t think it would be enough to kill most of them, which suited his purpose just fine. He glanced at his empty left hand and summoned the second jian that Master Feng had made for him. He pushed lightning qi into the blades. They exploded with elemental fury and lit the way as he stalked forward. As he passed buildings he knew were the homes of the sect elite, pillars of fire crashed down on the structures. Wood turned to ash almost instantly. Stone melted into slag. Even if someone managed to elude him, there would be no return to these homes for shelter or resources.

He watched in his spiritual sense as one of the cultivators managed to find their sanity and start staggering away. He was a little impressed with their strength of will. More than one core cultivator had been rendered senseless unless the weight of his killing intent. Not that it would save them. He changed directions to intersect with them. He had to pass by another core cultivator on the way. He found them on their knees, blood streaming from their eyes, ears, and mouth. Lightning leapt from one of his jian. Little more than smoking bones remained as he kept closing in on the cultivator who was fleeing. He was a little surprised when they came to an abrupt stop.

He found her standing in the middle of a wide path. She was leaning heavily on a spear, which appeared to be the only thing holding her upright. Her gaze rose to meet his. It looked like she’d been weeping tears of blood. She studied him with eyes that only looked half-sane, but they still widened in a look of recognition.

“You,” she gasped. “You’re… You’re Judgement’s Gale.”

“I am,” he said.

“Why do this?” she asked in a tone that bordered on pleading.n/ô/vel/b//jn dot c//om

“Because your sect meant to burn everything I’ve built to the ground,” said Sen as he walked toward her.

The woman took several stumbling steps back as Sen continued.

“Because your sect declares war for the flimsiest excuses.”

He could see on her face that she wanted to protest, to make excuses, to say anything that would save her life. He flashed forward and drove a jian through the woman. Between the injury and the lightning, she was dead before she hit the ground.

“Because I was never going to let your sect have a chance to harm what is mine.”