Unintended Cultivator

Feeling more than a little conflicted about what had happened, Sen managed to escape the throne room without any more encounters with people he really didn’t want to talk to for so many reasons. Yet, it seemed that fate or Karma or luck was feeling particularly unkind toward Sen that day because he’d barely made it two dozen steps before there was an enormous crash and the sound of water splashing behind him. Sen took two deep breaths to steady himself, certain that he was going to regret his choice to walk instead of run or even fly away from that room. That certainty was validated when a woman yelled at him in cold fury.

“Hey! You don’t get to just walk away from me after that.”

Sen turned around to see Chan Yu Ming storming toward him, almost glowing with all the qi she was cycling. He considered his options, then drew his jian and leveled it at her. Regardless of how angry she might be, he wasn’t simply going to let her kill him. She almost stumbled to a stop at the sight of the unsheathed blade before directing an incredulous look at him.

“What?” she demanded. “Did you think I was going to attack you?”

“Yes,” said Sen, pushing lighting qi into the jian.

His answer and the sight of lightning crackling around the sword appeared to give the woman pause. She didn’t stop glaring at him, but she did stop cycling qi like she intended to drown him in it. Sen released his own qi cycling and, almost against his better judgment, sheathed his jian. He didn’t let go of his hyper-alertness, though.

“You look like you still think I’m going to attack you,” she accused.

“You still look like you’re going to attack me.”

“And why wouldn’t I? You killed,” she started.

“Stop!” Sen ordered in a voice that could shatter stone. “Stop right there. This is why I was leaving. You’re angry. You’re hurting. You want a fight. And if we fight in here, we’ll leave this place in ruins.”

“Or you think I’ll kill you, you coward.”

Sen shook his head. “That isn’t going to get you what you want.”

“No?”

“No. Because even if I was stupid enough to let you goad me into a real fight, at the end of it, we’d still be right here. And you’d still be angry.”

“You think you know me that well?”

“I know anger that well,” said Sen, walking toward her. “Or have you forgotten why it was I went and found that dragon in the first place?”

As he narrowed the distance between himself and her, something clicked in his head. He tapped into the part of him that created the auric imposition. Instead of directing it at her, he let the auric imposition swell around him. While he no longer felt driven by the anger that had fueled the heart demon, he remembered how it had felt inside of him to be that angry. He let that feeling suffuse the auric imposition. As he moved toward her, tiles shattered beneath his feet. Stones in the walls around them broke or burst into dust. Small pieces of furniture simply exploded. He started speaking, although it struck Sen more like something or someone else was using him to convey those words.

“I know what it is to feel rage inside of you. To feel like you can never break enough things or hurt enough people to ever make it go away. To look around and want to see everything burning. To want to leave nothing in your wake.”

He stopped when Chan Yu Ming was at the very edge of that field of auric pressure and anger. Then, he let it fall away.

He took a breath and then continued. “Even if we fought. Even if I let you kill me, it still wouldn’t make that anger go away.”

“You killed my father! My brother! It’s your fault!”

“Is it?”

“Yes.”

“I made your father sell people to demonic cultivators? I made him murder children? I made your brother keep quiet about it?”

“You’re twisting it all around! You decided that you just had to do something about it when you found out. You couldn’t just leave it alone! Not you. Not the great and wise Judgment’s Gale. Except, it wasn’t your place!”

The hold on reasonableness that Sen had been desperately clinging to slipped from his grasp at the words it wasn’t your place. Abruptly, Chan Yu Ming was transformed from being someone that Sen was trying to not hurt into another noble looking down on him. Something very cold was born in the center of Sen’s chest and it shot through every part of him.

“Not my place,” said Sen in a tone that reflected the ice inside of him. “I am, after all, just a peasant.”

Chan Yu Ming stepped back from him, her belligerence displaced by sudden fear. “That isn’t what I said.”

“Of course, you didn’t say it. Nobles never say anything directly. It’s just what you meant. Well, let me ask you this, your most honorable and noble princess. Where do you think those children came from? The homes of your noble friends? The well-to-do merchants?”

“Don’t talk to me like that,” shouted Chan Yu Ming.

“Or what? You’ll look down on me? Oh, we did that already. I guess that means we’ll move on to the threats to let me know my place. Then again, maybe you’ll just try to put me in my place by force. After all, I am just a peasant. How hard could it be? Well, go ahead, princess. Try to put me in my place. See how well it works out for you. I’ll tell you this much, though. I won’t miss this time.”

A voice in the back of Sen’s head was screaming at him to stop talking, to stop hurting her, to stop trying to make her into one of those nobles he’d hated as a child. He could see the tears in the corners of her eyes. He could see that she was shaking. He might not have stabbed her, but he knew he was drawing blood. He was piling emotional injuries on top of fresh wounds. He knew he should stop. Yet, despite that voice trying to warn him that he was making things worse, again, the words kept coming.

“Since you apparently don’t care where the children that your father was raping and murdering came from, let me clue you in, your highness,” he said with scorn dripping from the last two words. “I’ll bet you a thousand gold tael that they were taken from the streets. Where I grew up. I could have been one of those children. So, don’t you dare talk to me about my place! As far as I’m concerned, those walking piles of shit you called a father and brother got off easy!”

Sen opened his mouth to say one more thing, but the words caught in his throat. As angry as she’d made him, if he said what he was going to say next, he really would be a monster. He’d be giving voice to what was probably her worst fear. It might even be enough to break her. And the cruelest irony of all was that every word of it would be true. All I have to say, he thought, is that none of this would have happened if she’d just left me alone. Sen felt like time slowed and stretched. He could see two roads in front of him. Down one of those roads, he said the words. Down the other road, he didn’t. If he picked the road where he said the words, he had the sense that life would become easier for him in some ways. The catch was that it would get easier largely because he would stop caring about anyone.

The other road would definitely be harder because it meant giving a damn. And, as much as he wanted things to be easier, he did give a damn. He lost sight of that sometimes when he got angry, but he didn’t want to hurt Chan Yu Ming that profoundly. So, Sen swallowed the words. They felt like a burning coal in his throat, but he swallowed them anyway. That suspended moment popped like a bubble and everything started moving again. He was still filled with that icy anger, but it wasn’t quite as uncontrolled as it had been. Chan Yu Ming was staring at him with wide eyes, her face utterly devoid of blood, and tears streaming freely down her cheeks.

“Get out,” she whispered.

Sen didn’t do anything for a moment before he turned and started walking away. He tried to ignore all of the damage he’d done to the hallway. He consoled himself with the idea that it wasn’t quite a ruin. He was about to round a corner when Chan Yu Ming tossed off a parting shot at him.

“I never want to see you again. Do you hear me, Judgement’s Gale? Never again!”

He knew that he should just keep walking. It wouldn’t cost him anything to let her get a last dig in to salve her wounded pride if nothing else. It was the smart thing to do. It was the right thing to do. It was the kind thing to do. And if Sen had been less angry, it was the thing he would have done. Instead, he turned and gave her a mocking bow.

“As you command, your highness.”

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