Unintended Cultivator

Sen only got a few steps away from the inert pair before he stopped. He looked back at them. He’d mostly excluded the woman from his killing intent, only maintaining enough pressure on her to ensure she remained immobile. She’d been unconscious to begin with, so he didn’t expect that it would take much to keep her that way. He had been surprised to discover that he actually had enough control to do that, though. It was something he’d been working on where he could, but it generally wasn’t safe to practice with it at the levels he’d been employing in the Twisted Blade Sect. The kind of pressure he was exerting would have killed almost everyone at his own sect.

Even recognizing that was enough to make him shake his head. The strength of his killing intent might be something that a particularly talented cultivator at his level of advancement could plausibly achieve. Maybe. It was, however, something that no one his age should have available to them. He certainly didn’t trust himself with it. He didn’t imagine he would trust any other cultivator with it, either. So, maybe it was just as well that he was the one who had it and not them. He frowned as he looked at the pair he had decided to spare, mostly at the behest of the heavens. He considered the people he could still feel nearby. He turned his gaze skyward.

“Is there anyone else you want spared?” he asked.

He waited for some indication that the heavens had heard him. They weren’t usually subtle, so he was looking for colossal storm clouds and listening for earth-rattling thunder. No sign of heavenly intervention made itself known to him. He cocked an eyebrow.n/ô/vel/b//in dot c//om

“I’m serious. If you want me to not kill anyone else here, now is the time to let me know.”

Sen was putting on annoyed air, but there was a part of him that truly feared divine retribution if he executed someone that the heavens meant to live. The problem was that the heavens didn’t always bother to let him know about their intention beforehand. A fact that had brought much unwitting hardship down on him. When the heavens remained silent on the matter, he took it as at least tacit permission to finish what he had started. He didn’t make a spectacle of it. He didn’t rouse anyone from unconsciousness just so they could witness their incoming death. It was brutal work but that didn’t mean it had to be sloppy or more vindictive than necessary. Sen made his way from one insensate enemy to the next and sent them back into the cycle of reincarnation as swiftly as he could. He was a little relieved that most of the work was done. He knew that some people were sheltering in the handful of buildings he hadn’t loaded with poison. They would have to be dealt with, but that wasn’t his primary concern at the moment.

He turned to face toward the innermost part of the sect, where the elders had lived. It was nearly as lifeless as the rest of the sect had become, but it wasn’t devoid of life the way he had hoped it would be. I guess it would have been too easy if all of the elders had died, he thought. Those three remnant sparks of life were part of the reason he’d sent Glimmer of Night away. He’d genuinely expected them to move him when he started cutting down the last of the inner sect disciples and core members. It’s what elders who were worth a damn would have done, he fumed. I guess that’s part of why I’m here, though, isn’t it?

The kind of mindset that let this sect prey on other sects for invented reasons or no reason at all had to have been supported by the leadership. The people who would enable and enforce that mindset were not people who cared all that much about what happened to their juniors. They might have been angry enough to stay. They presumably did so with a mind to killing him in revenge, but it wouldn’t be in revenge for their juniors. It would be in revenge for destroying their power base. Revenge for costing them status. Since they hadn’t attacked him immediately, though, it made him wonder if they hadn’t escaped his trap unscathed.

Sen had been very liberal with the poisons and toxins he’d placed to destroy the elders. Even brief or indirect exposure would have been enough to give them problems. Of course, those same poisons and toxins would be equally, if not more, effective against him if he came into contact with them in an unmanaged space like the sect. While he had used safeguards that went well beyond paranoid when making them, he couldn’t exert anything remotely like that level of control here. That was why Sen had a long talk with Uncle Kho about the design of the sect-spanning formation he meant to use.

Delivering all of those deadly materials was good. Not getting killed by his own trap was better. He had needed some way to ensure his own safety. Uncle Kho had offered a suggestion that would serve two of the ends that Sen was looking to achieve. Sen checked his spiritual sense to make sure Falling Leaf and Glimmer of Night were where he thought they were. Then, he lifted a jian toward the sky. A bolt of lightning shot into the sky and split, sending smaller bolts into each cardinal direction. It was such a specific thing, and so unlikely to happen through any natural means, that he felt confident using it as a signal to them. It served to alert them that he meant to trigger the second function of the formation. He watched in his spiritual sense as they hurried to put distance between themselves and any nearby structures. When he was confident that they were far enough away, he summoned the same beast core he’d used before and activated the formation.

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Nothing appeared to be happening for several long seconds. All at once, pillars of fire shot into the air all over the sect. Enough poison to murder just about every living thing in the capital was consumed in one hellish flash. That would have been enough for Sen by itself, but the fires continued to roar with hungry intensity, swiftly consuming the buildings until they were little more than ash and slagged rock. Sen knew he had likely lost a dozen fortunes’ worth of resources with that single act, but that was only true in the most technical sense. To claim those fortunes, he would have had to kill his way through the sect with blade and technique. An approach that would have inevitably, inescapably failed.

He could fight a few elders even if they were nascent soul cultivators. That was particularly true if they had been injured in some way by his trap. Many of the poisons and toxins he’d used for their homes and other facilities were designed to destroy their cultivation. Combining those with ones that would damage the health of even nascent soul cultivators had proven particularly effective against Tong Guanting in the capital. If it worked on one nascent soul cultivator, he didn’t see a reason to substantially alter that approach, except for the fiery cleansing. That little addition spared him from needing to sink the entire sect compound into the depths of the world.

Still, Sen knew his strength. He also knew its limits. He couldn’t have fought all of the elders, along with every core formation cultivator in the sect. The simple weight of numbers would have brought him down. He was powerful, but he was by no means invincible. He could defend himself from every direction against dozens of core formation techniques, to say nothing of what a dozen or two dozen elders might have sent his way. So, in the end, he had traded the unreachable prospect of valuable resources for the far more important goal of victory. Besides, he had spared a few buildings, and those contained the resources he held most dear.

As much as he wanted to race off to the libraries and dig into the sect’s alchemy resources, he couldn’t do that yet. There were still those three living people in the smoking remains of the elder’s area of the sect to deal with. Sen had no doubt that all of them were likely spitting blood at that exact moment. They had probably been expecting to clean out the poisons and loot the homes of the other elders. Now, they not only wouldn’t get those resources but had been deprived of any resources in their own homes. Being denied all of that would send some people into an insane rage. He didn’t know if any of the remaining elders were quite that unstable, but he knew that angry people made stupid choices. After all, he’d watched himself do it often enough. He just needed to take advantage of their anger.

Sen started walking toward the elder’s part of the sect. He was reasonably confident that Falling Leaf and Glimmer of Night could either deal with or contain anyone that was left in the compound. That allowed him the freedom to step into a patch of darkness, wrap himself in shadow, and hide. Hiding always restricted the scope of his spiritual sense, but he was so close to the elders’ part of the sect that his spiritual sense still reached it. A part of him took a little grim amusement in the gnashing of teeth that had to be causing the remaining elders. The pressure of his spiritual sense would let them know he was out there in the darkness somewhere, but his hiding ability and cloak of shadows would make it very difficult for them to pin down his location.

Sen reasoned that it was time to switch tactics anyway. He’d been very direct in his assault on the sect thus far. It was a useful tactic against a bunch of shocked outer disciples and core cultivators who couldn’t match him. He’d taken the sect as much through momentum and implied strength as actual strength. That approach wouldn’t work on the elders. They might not underestimate his strength, but it wouldn’t awe them into submission. Nor could he simply end their lives with his killing intent and auric imposition. He might be able to stall or even injure them that way, but it wouldn’t be a decisive blow. He was going to have to deal with them in a much more traditional cultivator fashion. He’d ambush them with an overwhelmingly powerful technique if he could.

If he couldn’t, well, it wasn’t like he’d forgotten how to fight with his weapons. Sen took a moment to center himself. He hoped the fight would be over swiftly, but these were experienced elders. Even if they were injured, he had to expect them to have tricks. He had to be ready for a true life-and-death battle. He pushed away all of the misgivings and doubts that had plagued him since he’d decided on this course of action. The deed was all but done. Right or wrong, he’d carried it out. Now, he needed focus and calm. The people waiting for him meant to kill him. He needed to kill them. That was the only thing he could let have room inside of him. It was only when the turbulent storm in his heart and mind settled into a surface as smooth as glass that Sen let himself move toward the elders.