Path of the Berserker

PRINCESS LUNALAH TAPPED rewind on the arena footage playing across her Qi tablet.

She zoomed in on the segment where the Iron Bull removed his helmet especially.

The screams from the crowd echoed her own sentiments.

A fine specimen indeed.

She watched the fight play out against the earth master, Fung Wang.

The Iron Bull’s style was haphazard and unrefined, yet somehow that matched his rugged exterior perfectly. Sometimes he didn’t even try to evade his opponent’s attacks, simply taking them head on and ploughing through with a dogged determination and confidence that defied the heavens themselves.

The hubris without vanity.

The demonstration of power without pretention or pride.

It was enough to stir her insides with desire.

As the recording came to his victory pose, Lunalah paused the image of the Iron Bull and marveled at his chiseled chest and rugged face. She nearly had the urge to slip a hand between her warming thighs, but quickly stopped herself when a knock came from her chamber doors.

“Who is it?” she called, quickly closing the image on her tablet.

“Ling Wei, your majesty,” the girl’s soft voice came from behind the door. “I have reports from the interior.”

Lunalah sighed with frustration.

The worst timing, but perhaps it was for the best.

She need not be distracting herself with fantasies in the middle of the day.

“Enter,” she said and then straightened herself behind her wide alabaster desk.

Her imperial chambers were a stone’s throw from the throne room where she held formal audience with her cabinet ministers, but unlike there, her chambers were far more intimate rather than being void and spacious. There was room enough for her desk and a small adjacent table to fit her five cabinet ministers, were she ever in need to call them to an impromptu meeting. Behind her, her six jade urns filled with artifacts hovered powerfully as they refined the Earth’s Qi, passively cultivating the ambient energy through her Dantian.

Ling Wei entered and Lunalah instructed her to sit at the table.

“Give your report,” she said.

Tapping on her tablet, Ling Wei transferred the information onto her own tablet as she summarized it for her. “First a private message from your mother.”

Lunalah opened the message and scanned it briefly.

As expected, it was another potential suitor.

One look at his average face and build she discarded it immediately.

“What else?”

“Perhaps of somewhat less importance,” Ling Wei said, sliding her finger across the tablet. “The Legionnaire Academy has sent its final plea for tributes for the coming year.”

Lunalah rolled her eyes.

It would be the 13th straight year that Planet Terra had nothing to offer the Empire in their battle against the scourge of the Cursed Stars. The expeditions were becoming more frequent, now every year instead of every three and the Academy’s push for fresh recruits was becoming more fervent.

“Out of curiosity, who is leading in the contributions this year?”

Not that it would matter for her, but the empire rewarded the top five contributing worlds with imperial funding packages along with a prestige that could not be measured in spirit stones.

“Planet Montros with 33 tributes,” Ling Wei said. “All Sullied of course.”

Lunalah shook her head loathingly. “Those ugly grey bastards have too much natural strength. They should be banned from even applying.”

Ling Wei chuckled politely. “I’m sure most only ever qualify as phalanx.”

“Perhaps,” she said.

Still, it irked her.

Only planetary natives could be offered as tributes. A return on investment for the Yee Dynasty expending its resources to conquer new worlds. Lunalah risked taking a peek at the Iron Bull again. A Gold Ranking was the minimum requirements for entry. Too close for this year, but perhaps next?

Not that she would want to see such a rarity go to waste, dying upon one of those far-flung worlds under the influences of those Cursed Stars. But graduating a legionnaire would certainly put him at a status much closer to being acceptable as a potential suitor in the lower courts. And, not to mention, if he were strong, or perhaps lucky enough to actually survive a tour or two.

Her heart sped a little at the idea.

An Imperial Marshall was certainly a title worthy to court a lower princess such as herself. It was the closest a commoner could get to possessing true royalty. But to accomplish that, he would need to face trials greater than most cultivators would ever dare to—

“Princess!”

Lunalah snapped to her senses to see Ling Wei staring at her intently, confusion on her brow.

“Yes, what is it?”

“A thousand apologies,” she said with a bow of her head. “This One perhaps spoke too softly the last three times she tried to gain your majesty’s attention.”

Lunalah blushed a little and was appreciative of Ling Wei’s discretion. “Indeed. Speak up, Ling Wei. What was it you had asked?”

Ling Wei bowed graciously again. “This One had asked if you had read the urgent report that had come from Warden Tu’loc Rhen of Xiang Xian province this morning.”

She hadn’t. Too busy watching that damn arena footage.

“Summarize it for me.”

Ling Wei cleared her throat as she looked up the information on her table. “Warden Tu’loc reports that despite the outcome of the sanctioned duel last month between the Holy Mountain and Orange Blossom sects, there is a small pocket of cultivators who continue to battle in open conflict over the farmlands in the Xiang Xian region.”

Her eyes shot open. “What? They openly defy a ruling of imperial law?”

“So it seems, your majesty…”

“What has Tu’loc Rhen done about it?”

Ling Wei searched her tablet. “It does not say. The report alone is all he has sent. Shall I summon him to you, your majesty.”

“No,” she said standing. “I will go to him.”

Ling Wei bowed. “I shall ready your Imperial Skiff right away.”

“No, this cannot wait.” Lunalah closed her eyes and summoned her Qi. “It is time the people of Xiang Xian province are reminded at whose privilege they are allowed to exist on this planet.”

Turning her thoughts inward, Lunalah peered into the core of her Dantian to awaken her second soul. It was an odd experience the first time she had ever seen her inner self—a splitting image of her in flesh, but where her robes were made of fine silks in the physical world, here they were of now made of celestial finery that sparkled with brilliance. Her urns too had taken on a celestial form, becoming solid jade crystals that pulsated with a light of their own.

Within the confines of her inner self—the inner world of her Sacred Soul—Lunalah could see beyond the physical realm and glimpse the spiritual. Searching through her mind’s eye, she sought out the soul of Tu’loc Rhen and found him on the edge of Xiang Xian province.

From her vantage she could see him overlooking a valley divided by a meandering river and on either side of it were the constructs of a small town. Buildings and homes marked an epicenter that spread outward from the riverbanks to become less dense as they transitioned from town to farmland.

The area Tu’loc Rhen was currently overlooking was engulfed in flames.

What looked to be over fifty cultivators were engaged in combat, techniques of both the Orange Blossom and the Holy Mountain clans tearing the ground apart with earthquakes and falling petals. As she stretched her spirit to encompass the town itself, she saw the violence present there as well, as cultivators attacked one another indiscriminately in the streets.

Indignation filled her soul as her eyes became shimmering pools of light.

“Tu’loc Rhen!” she shouted.

The cultivator all but fainted as he fell to his knees, searching the sky for where the voice had come from. “Princess?”

He answered with uncertainty, his eyes wide with fear and doubt.

Tu’loc Rhen was not a warrior.

His clan represented the farming sect responsible for most of the food production in the southern region of the continent. His aptness to deal with the logistics of mass production was what had earned him his place as Warden, but now his weaknesses were on display for all to see.

Which included the handful of Imperial Guards and enforcers surrounding him. Not one of them seemed to be intervening in the conflict roiling around them at all. All of them were instead looking about with the same fear as their master.

Weakness breeds weakness, she thought.

It would seem she would need more than just her voice to deal with this situation.

Were she able to finally achieve her breakthrough to the next realm, she could have teleported her physical self to the location in an instant, warping the very fabric of space and time. But as a 9th-Tier Sacred Soul Realm cultivator, she would have to settle for the next best thing.

Tapping into the vast well of Qi within her Dantian, Lunalah projected her Sacred Soul across the distance to Tu’loc Rhen, manifesting her spiritual self before his eyes. Instantly the man fell to his knees in reverence, as did the Imperial Guards and Enforcers with him.

She felt little different than she did before however, still unable to feel the heat of the day as the sun’s rays passed through the translucent body of her spiritual projection. But now her subjects could not only see her presence but feel it as well.

“Oh, great imperial majesty,” Tu’loc Rhen said as he pressed his bald head towards the ground in a kowtow. “This Lowly One welcomes your grand presence to this humble province.”

Tu’loc Rhen was a Core Realm cultivator, but one who had gained his extended life though non-martial means. He was portly and well fed, a beard trimmed with the elegance of one with the means to visit a barber daily. Were it not for his competence in matters of farming she would find no worth in him at all.

Her image floated several dozen feet above them all, huge in a way that made them all small to her eyes. Her inner self far surpassed that of her mortal being now. She was close to fifty feet tall in her spiritual form, and when she finally ascended to true godhood past the Lesser Deity Realm, this would indeed become her true body. A body capable of transcending space and time in an instant and able to visit even her father in the upper courts of the holy empire’s realm.

But such musings were perhaps still yet decades away.

Today, however, she had imperial insubordination to deal with.

“Twelfth Warden Tu’loc Rhen!” she bellowed with a powerful shout that shook the sky. “Why am I witnessing the breaking of imperial law within your province?”

She could sense his Qi grow even more unsteady with fear.

“I… I have given your decree, your majesty,” he answered with his head still to the ground. “All but this one village within the region has complied. It is the source of the dispute, I believe. It has become a personal vendetta between two families in particular now. That being the O’ruji clan of the Orange Blossom Sec—”

“I care not for such trivialities!” Lunalah barked. “I want to know what you are doing about it! That is the question!”

Again, another pause of incompetence.

Her anger flared.

“It seems I must now reconsider whether the Golden Harvest Sect is fit to rule Xiang Xian province. If you cannot enforce an imperial decree decided rightfully by the laws of combat, then what good are you to the empire?”

She let her words hang over him like a guillotine above his neck. She grew even more disgusted when all he did was shrink back into himself. A coward. She wanted nothing more than to vent her anger and slay him on the spot.

But only a young and brash ruler would do such.

Tu’loc Rhen’s incompetence needed to be broadcasted throughout her domain to reinforce the rule of law across the entire planet.

“You there!” Lunalah said to the Imperial Guard with the highest ranking. “Place Twelfth Warden Tu’loc Rhen under arrest under allegations of gross incompetence.”

Tu’loc Rhen’s head immediately shot up from the ground. “But your majesty, I—!”

“Silence!” she said. “Or you may find yourself facing even further counts of misconduct.”

Both the enforcers and guards seemed unsure what to do for a moment, but a simple pulsing of her Qi sent them scrambling. Tu’loc Rhen begged and pleaded with them like the coward he was, but once restrained she turned her attention from him to the cultivators still running amuck on the battlefield.

Her anger stirred once more.

She could not unleash it upon Tu’loc Rhen, but she would do the next best thing.

“It seems my government has still not yet matured enough to accept the rule of imperial law by proxy. Take heed and bear witness now, Tu’loc Rhen, to what you should have done.”

Princess Lunalah took to the sky, her celestial form leaving a wake of turbulence as the six massive crystals spiraled behind her in a vortex. She hovered above the conflict, the cultivators stopping their trivial battles to gaze up upon her. Some fell to their knees in submission, while others were too stunned to move at all.

It mattered little.

They were all to die just the same.

“[Third Law, Hammer of Divine Justice]…”

As she annunciated her technique, her voice echoed across the valley, reaching even the town center miles away. The sky crackled and shook with energy as the crystals aligned themselves in a hexagonal formation, streams of brilliant white Qi etching towards her from each one. They flew outwards, the distance between them growing to cover the entire area of the valley—town, cultivators and all.

With a pressing of her palm towards the earth, a wave of energy crashed down upon the valley, crushing every structure, tree, and living soul in an instant. The devastation shook the ground like an earthquake, sending a shockwave that rumbled across the ground like a massive clap of thunder.

Ka-thoom!

A thousand screams were cut short and as the thunder of the technique dissipated, a deathly silence remained. Where the town once stood were only splinters, as if a hundred typhoons had passed through. She counted the dying souls of perhaps two hundred cultivators in all, their Qi flickering as they died. For a town this size the number of mortals she had just killed was perhaps twenty times that, but they were likely Terran commoners.

Of little value if anything.

Still, she would count their numbers and add them to Tu’loc Rhen’s charge.

She hovered back to the former warden and the Imperial Guards.

They were speechless, their mouths hanging open.

“Feel honored,” she said to them. “It is but a few who ever witness the full extent of a Royal Yee Princess’s power and live to tell about it.”

“Gratitude, your majesty,” the head guard said, falling upon his face and his subordinates quickly followed suit, doing the same.

“Deliver the accused to the capital,” she commanded. “Orders for who will be acting Vice Warden will be sent shortly.”

With that Lunalah withdrew from her sacred soul and reopened her eyes, back in her chambers. She immediately sat and began scribing on her tablet.

“Is everything well, your majesty?” Ling Wei asked, looking perplexed.

“Arrange a competition match for Xiang Xian province,” she said. “The position of Warden and ruling clan has just become open.”

Ling Wei’s eyes went wide, but she merely nodded. “At once your majesty.”

“And ensure the martial sects are extended an invitation as well. It has become clear that farmers are incapable of being managed by one of their own.”

“Understood, your majesty.”

“Also, arrange a public execution for Warden Tu’loc Rhen in two days’ time,” she said, but then thought again. “Actually, make it in three days. We will hold a trial for him the day before.”

“A trial, your Majesty? But if he is to be execu—”

“Yes,” she said. “The trial is not for his benefit. It is important the details of his failure are widely known before he is executed. Ensure it is broadcasted to each city.”

“Yes, your majesty.”

Lunalah nodded. “Good. This planet needs reminding just who it is, that is in control.”

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