Unintended Cultivator

Sen had meant to end it. When he saw Tseun Rong take to the sky, he could just sense the defeat in the man. It was a retreat. He considered just letting the coward go. Sen was injured and, no matter how detached he felt, he knew that simply surviving a direct battle with a nascent soul cultivator was practically a miracle in its own right. But that figure fleeing into the sky had threatened everything and everyone Sen loved. Sen knew it was a hollow threat, even if Tseun Rong apparently didn’t. If that idiot went looking for trouble, killing him wouldn’t even be a challenge for Uncle Kho. Sen literally couldn’t imagine what Auntie Caihong would do to him, but terms like unspeakable and cautionary tale sprang immediately to mind. That the threat was hollow didn’t change the fact that it had been made. Tseun Rong had threatened Sen’s daughter, his little girl. His own words rang in his ears. No survivors. And Wu Gang wasn’t the only person who knew how to keep his word. Sen used air qi to make his voice carry to Tseun Rong.

“No. You don’t get to leave.”

Maybe it was those words, that hint of warning, but when Sen unleashed Heavens’ Rebuke, Tseun Rong had changed course. Instead of lancing through the man’s chest the way Sen intended, it cleaved the man’s legs from his body. The severed limbs fell away even as momentum carried the nascent soul cultivator higher into the air. The trauma alone would have shattered the necessary concentration to keep a technique moving. To say nothing of how Heavens’ Rebuke would continue to ravage the man’s body. The loss of those limbs would have sundered qi channels. While what was left of his body would retain the resilience of a nascent soul cultivator, Tseun Rong would never cycle qi again. Not without the kind of intervention that generally only happened in stories. Sen could just let it play out now. The man would die. Except, he didn’t want to let it just happen. Some of his emotions were starting to bleed through again. The anger over those threats, the frustration over these escalating battles, colored his decision.

Sen launched himself into the air on a qi platform. He caught up to the nascent soul cultivator just as gravity was beginning to reassert itself. Sen seized Tseun Rong by the throat, cutting off the wails of torment. He pulled the man close and shook him until Tseun Rong managed to focus on Sen’s face.

“Does the sky make you feel safe?” asked Sen, releasing the control he maintained over the divine qi in his skin. “It shouldn’t. The sky is mine.”

Tseun Rong’s eyes went wide as Sen began to glow. Sen used every bit of strength he could dredge from his reinforced body and used it to hurl the maimed cultivator even higher into the air. Sen sped after the man, his fists crashing into Tseun Rong’s body, pushing them both higher and higher until the details of the landscape below started to blur together. A fist of hardened air captured Tseun Rong and held the man aloft, as Sen glowered from several feet away.

“You don’t—” mumbled Tseun Rong before coughing up a mouthful of blood. “You don’t have to do this.”

Sen felt his scorn rise. Now, now this bastard wanted to talk, to reason, to negotiate. Tseun Rong wasn’t the problem, just a symptom. Sen knew that, but he couldn’t help but feel like this man, who had mere minutes before threatened slavery and death for complete strangers, represented all that Sen hated. This man had embraced everything that made sects and cultivation a misery for mortals, for wandering cultivators, and even for their own juniors. Sen wanted to stand in judgment of this man. Instead, he looked down at the town far below. He was shocked by how soft his own voice was when he spoke.

“Do you understand just how insignificant you are? Do you grasp that this world,” said Sen, sweeping his arm in a wide arc, “has no more use for you? Do you realize that you will not be missed?”

“I was just going to kill you, but you ran to the sky. This is the domain of the heavens, at least symbolically. So, rather than kill you, I think a tribulation is in order.”

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“What are you talking about?”

Sen didn’t answer. He just smiled as he let lightning qi pass through his skin, picking up just a touch of divine qi, before it started leaping and crackling around them. The intensity of that lightning storm built and built and built until the air itself seemed ready to ignite under the pressure. The light was so bright that Sen doubted anyone but him and nascent soul cultivators could see through it. He could see that it was casting the world below in an unearthly luminescence. Tseun Rong started to thrash in his bonds, desperate to escape from what was coming for him. It was a useless effort. Had the nascent soul cultivator still been able to cycle, still been able to turn all of that qi inside of him to practical use, he might have escaped. In his present condition, he was a fish, well and truly caught on the hook. Sen waited until the desperate, flickering hope in the man’s eyes faded and died.

Anger flared on Tseun Rong’s face as he said, “At least, tell me who you really are.”

A brief flash of amusement passed through Sen as he thought of something he hadn’t said in a while. He directed a small smile at the other cultivator.

“Oh, me,” said Sen. “I’m no one important.”

Sen imagined that those words were the last thing that Tseun Rong ever knew as counterfeit tribulation lightning bolts crashed into the nascent soul cultivator by the dozens. It didn’t take Sen long to realize that he’d overdone it. Tseun Rong was dead, long dead, and there was still a lot of lightning crackling around him. He frowned. He didn’t want to just waste all of that lightning or send it down into the wilds at some random location. If Fu Ruolan had taught him anything, it was that you really didn’t know who might be living there. The last thing he needed was another nascent soul cultivator looking to pick a fight with him. Then, Sen remembered that Tseun Rong hadn’t been the only threat. He’d just been the biggest one. Sen let himself plummet toward the ground, dragging both Tseun Rong’s corpse and the lightning in his wake. It was possible that a storage treasure had survived Sen’s tribulation, and anything a nascent soul cultivator had tucked away was probably worth having.

As the ground rushed up to meet him, Sen realized how it must look. A glowing figure descending from on high, a funnel of lightning trailing behind him. No wonder the mortals think that cultivators are gods, thought Sen ruefully as he unwillingly contributed to that falsehood. The damage was already done though. Sen let his spiritual sense expand before him, picking out where Glimmer of Night and the others were making a stand. It seemed the fighting had resumed once Sen took the battle into the sky. He adjusted his course and, because he was the student of Feng Ming and had a responsibility to his teacher’s reputation, he upped the glow in his skin as much as he could just before he came to a stop over the heads of his companions. The enemy cultivators stumbled back from the glow that Sen let recede back into his skin at just the right pace. He gave them just enough time to see what was left of Tseun Rong, to register the fact of his death, before the lightning caught up. Under Sen’s careful direction, it plunged down in a wave of crackling destruction. Where there had been enemies, all that remained were charred bodies and scorched bones.

Sen hovered in the air for another moment. Lightning was powerful, but wasn’t the most accurate thing ever, even when directed by an expert. It had a tendency to fork out and hit things that you didn’t want it to hit. With a moment of concentration, Sen extinguished dozens of small fires that had broken out in the surrounding forest. He didn’t want to burn down the trees or the town, for that matter. Sen released Tseun Rong’s body and let it flop down to the ground while he lowered himself much more gently. With the fight truly over, the utter focus on survival that Sen had been maintaining started to slip away. It was, of course, replaced with pain. The moment his feet touched the ground, his injured leg started howling with pain. As did the injury to his arm, the deep slice on his face, and the many, many cuts that he’d gotten when destroying that ice spear.

On top of that, everything ached, and Sen felt wrung out like he’d spent himself completely dry of qi. He looked around at everyone, almost mechanically noting their injuries. Shen Mingxia looked to be in pretty bad shape, and Wu Gang only looked marginally better. Long Jia Wei had what appeared to be mostly superficial injuries. Glimmer of Night, on the other hand, had an almost visible shine of health and vitality. Sen blinked a few times. Had the spider gotten stronger somehow? Sen shook that off and finally noticed the looks that Shen Mingxia, Wu Gang, and Long Jia Wei were giving him. Glimmer of Night, bless that spider’s heart, seemed as disinterested as ever. Before he could decide what to say, a fresh wave of pain made Sen stagger and lean against a tree for support.

“Wow,” said Sen. “This really hurts.”