BOOK 12: CHAPTER 40: THIS IS THE PROBLEM

Sen jerked the man’s head up and continued.

“That mortal whelp, as you called her, is under my protection. I saved her life, and I take that responsibility very seriously. You should know, she calls me Uncle Sen. And by the time I’m done with you, you’re going to know why they call me Judgment’s Gale.”

The man’s eyes were wide, and they grew terrified when Sen crushed his techniques before they could form.

“Help me!” he screamed.

“Who? Me?” asked Elder Deng with a resigned look on his face. “It seems my mind is slipping. Who are you again?”

“You’re doing too much talking and not enough screaming,” said Sen. “Let’s fix that.”

Sen let some of his killing intent wash over the fool. That got the screaming started, along with the bleeding and convulsing. He withdrew the killing intent before it went too far. The point would be lost on the man if he turned catatonic.

“This is the problem with you sect cultivators,” said Sen. “You never really learn your place. You think because you managed to advance there that you’re special.”

Sen brought his fist down on one of the man’s elbows. That brought on another round of screaming.

“You,” continued Sen, “are not special. You were never special. You just got the right strokes of luck at the right time. Do you know who is special?”

Sen slammed the man’s face into the ground, making the crater a bit bigger. He jerked the man’s head up again.

“No thoughts? No guesses? Well, that jaw does look pretty broken. I suppose I should just tell you. That little girl is special. Not because she’s a cultivator. Not because she’s defying the heavens. She’s special because I say that she’s special. And you are nothing because I say that you’re nothing. Now, I know that a lot of sect leaders and kings leave discipling and punishing people to others. But I find that the lessons stick better when I do it myself.”

“Pla— Plahs— Don— Kll—” the man managed to force out of his mangled jaw.

“Kill you?” asked Sen. “Oh, no. I’m not going to kill you. I’m going to stand in judgment of you. And it’s my judgment that you should suffer. Not just today, but for the rest of your life.”

With that, Sen focused his killing intent and auric imposition on the man’s body. Sen’s extended exposure to Song Lan’s nascent soul body, as well as studying his own, had taught him a lot about how those bodies worked. He suspected that he might know more about them than almost anyone else. And something that he’d figured out a long time ago was that it’s far easier to break something than to fix it. The easiest way to break a nascent soul body, or so he had theorized, was to poison it with foreign qi. So, he started with that.

Sen had the advantage in that, since he could work with almost any kind of qi. He started flooding the other man’s body with fire qi. Many kinds of qi would have done the job. However, the wind qi the Soaring Skies Sect favored was really just a variant of air qi, and both of those would be especially vulnerable to fire qi. To make the work faster, he summoned fire-attributed cores from a storage ring. He bled them dry, condensed and refined the qi into something nascent soul quality, and forced it into the other man. That brought on more screaming and thrashing. The other cultivators in the room seemed to have guessed what he intended to do because they started shouting objections.

“Lord Lu! You cannot do this!” shouted Elder Deng.

“Stop this! You must stop this!” cried Elder Gao Ah Cy.

“I’ll keep my word,” said Sen. “I won’t kill him. But he’ll never be a cultivator again.”

Before anyone could stop him, or even think of a way to stop him, Sen plunged his own qi deep into the other man’s body. Where he’d repaired things inside of Song Lan, he did the opposite inside this man. He created blockages. He created snarls. He introduced flaws into the nascent soul flesh. And he did it by the hundreds. This man would never be able to cycle again. He’d never be able to so much as move qi again, which meant that he’d never be able to clear out the fire qi that was pure poison to him. All of the flaws Sen had introduced would also leave the man with little more functional strength than a mortal. When he was done creating the shell of a cultivator, he stood and looked at Elder Deng.

“You didn’t need to do that,” said Deng, who still looked aghast.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“Need? Did your sect need to harbor demonic cultivators? Did it need to target me and those close to me? Did it need to have Wu Meng Yao test me? Did it need to send this worthless piece of trash to confront me?” asked Sen, kicking the writhing figure on the floor. “Do not speak to me of unnecessary acts. Your sect no longer exists. I’ve clearly forgiven their transgressions too often. It’s given you all false confidence where I’m concerned. When we arrive in Emperor’s Bay, I will tear down the Soaring Skies sect. Your people will vow to serve me. They will fight in this army.”

“And if they refuse?” asked Deng.

“I won’t allow those who will not serve to waste valuable resources like food and cultivation materials. They will be executed on the spot.”

Elder Deng stared at Sen. It was clear that the man had expected to find someone much more tractable than Sen. Someone would simply put up with blatant disrespect because he had no other choice. It was clear that Deng had expected to find a weak core cultivator, not a freakishly powerful nascent core cultivator. Then again, given how the fool had been talking about Deng giving warnings, maybe the elder had arrived with suspicions. Whatever the case, it was obvious that any plans that had been in place were now in shambles. ℞𝒶Ꞑồ฿Èś

“Can you not let the grudge go?” asked Elder Deng.

“The grudge? I didn’t hold a grudge. If you people had left well enough alone, I would have forgotten about you. I’ve had far bigger concerns than hanging on to your failures. It seems to me that your sect was the one with a grudge they couldn’t forget. Why else would they send him?” asked Sen, pointing down.

“The sect will fight you,” said Deng in a defeated voice.

“That would be a choice of cataclysmic stupidity,” answered Sen. “But they’re free to try.”

“Let me go back,” pleaded the man. “Let me try to talk sense to them.”

“No. The three of you will remain here as my guests. I wouldn’t want anyone to spoil the surprise for the Soaring Skies Sect.”

“You mean to keep us prisoners?” asked Gao Ah Cy.

“If you choose to look at it that way,” said Sen. “It will be a very brief imprisonment.”

“And what of our sects?” asked the man from the Celestial Arch Sect. “Are we also to be conscripted into your war effort?”

“No. I don’t believe that’s necessary. Or, am I mistaken?”

The man traded a look with Gao Ah Cy before they both shook their heads.

“No, Lord Lu,” said the woman. “I don’t believe that’s necessary. I think we’re both content to remain as your guests here for a few days.”

“Wise,” said Sen, before turning back to Elder Deng. “And what about you?”

“I will remain. If I might ask, what will you do with him?”

“He’ll be dealt with in a manner befitting his failures,” said Sen.

“So, you do mean to kill him.”

“I won’t harm him again, but the world is an exceedingly dangerous place these days. I can’t be held responsible for what it does to him. Matriarch Song, would you please show our guests to where the cultivators are camped? I’m sure they’d be more comfortable there.

“Of course, Lord Lu. I’ll see to it that the necessities are provided for them.”

“I appreciate your efforts,” answered Sen, his baleful eyes locked on the man on the floor.

It didn’t take Sen very long to decide what to do with the fool. He supposed it was because his mind was so much on the past that the idea came to him so quickly. There had been another fool, a different kind of fool, who imagined that Luo Min was his to take as he pleased. Still, Sen didn’t want to break his word. He spent about fifteen minutes finding a pack and stocking it with food, a tent, and other critical supplies. Then, he was flying out of the camp on a qi platform, a twitching mess sprawled on the platform beside him. For this trip, Sen chose to hide. He didn’t want to frighten everything away.

The scorched landscape soon gave way to the untouched wilds. At the speeds that Sen could make even a qi platform go, they were soon far beyond what a mortal could walk in weeks. Sen picked a nice spot close to where he could feel some larger, more dangerous spirit beasts. At least, they’d be dangerous to anyone working with mortal strength. He landed and pulled the pack out of a storage ring. He slapped the crippled former member of the Soaring Skies Sect across the face a few times. It required an enormous amount of care and restraint not to kill the man by accident. When his eyes snapped open, it was only his broken jaw that prevented his scream from drawing the spirit beasts.

“You were so disdainful of mortals,” said Sen. “It got me to thinking that you must believe you’d do better in their position. So, behold your opportunity.”

Sen dropped the pack next to the man and continued.

“In that pack, you’ll find everything that a mortal would have to survive in the world. Food. A tent. I even included a knife. It’s not a very good knife. It’s also very dull. Mortals are poor, as I’m sure you’ve pointed out to them on countless occasions. But it is a weapon.”

The man made some garbled noises, but Sen could figure out what he wanted to know from the way his eyes darted back and forth.

“Oh, you’re wondering where you are? Well, this is the wilds. Don’t worry. I didn’t take you too deep. A mortal ought to be able to make it back to civilization in no time. I don’t think it would take them more than five or six weeks.”

The man tried to yell, but Sen put a finger to his lips.

“I wouldn’t make too much noise if I were you. There are spirit beasts nearby, and since I’ve ensured your cultivation is useless, I doubt you’ll be able to fight them.”

The man tried to do something with his qi and nearly drove himself into unconsciousness from the pain of it.

“I’ll tell you what, though,” said Sen. “In the spirit of fairness, if you do somehow make it back to Emperor’s Bay, I’ll be happy to let you challenge me to a duel. You know, to answer for all those crimes of mine. Well, I’ll be off now to spend some time with that mortal whelp.”

The crippled cultivator crawled toward Sen with a pleading look in his eyes. Sen rose from the ground until he was beyond the man’s outstretched hand.

“Oh, one last thing.”

Sen reached out, grabbed a limb on the nearest tree, and broke it off with a loud snap that was guaranteed to draw the spirit beasts. He dropped it on the ground next to the man.

“Everyone should have a walking stick.”