Unintended Cultivator

One of the truths that Master Feng had imparted to Sen through their countless hours of sparring was very simple to state. Seize the momentum. Of course, Master Feng hadn’t ever said those words to Sen. He had shown Sen, over and over again. The person who seizes the momentum of the battle stands a better chance of victory. It wasn’t an absolute edict. Momentum could be lost. It could be stolen. It could even be overwhelmed by sufficiently superior strength. In the world of cultivation, no advantage was absolute save pure strength. All else being equal though, if one could seize the momentum of a fight, one should seize it, because one more advantage is never a bad thing.

Sen had that lesson in mind when he made his first move as he crossed through that barrier. Before his senses adjusted or he even regained his equilibrium. Before he could even clearly see what was on the other side, he unleashed Heavens’ Shadow. Sen even allowed himself one tiny, brief smile at the thought of what it would likely do to all those devilish beasts and spirits. When his vision was restored, however, the results were beyond even his expectations. While he had warned himself that the majority of the horde might well be waiting for them, he hadn’t believed it would happen. Yet, he was able to watch as that terrible, beautiful technique wrapped once orderly rows of evil in utter madness.

It was like what had happened on the way in, except amplified by an order of magnitude. The devilish beast didn’t simply try to flee, they ripped into each other with tooth, claw, and qi as they looked for any path of escape. A part of Sen thought he should just sit back and enjoy the sight of so many awful creatures doing awful things to each other. He felt like there was some kind of karmic justice at work. But Master Feng hadn’t taught him to take things easy, so he got back to work. He took careful aim and waited for the right moment before he whipped the cracked core in his hand down the gullet of some kind of reptilian thing that had dared to take on the form of an ox. It couldn’t be suffered to live, and it wasn’t.

The beast froze in place, both figuratively and literally, as the cracked core discharged all of the qi inside of it. The reptile ox exploded as crystalline spears shot in every direction. Ice raced across the ground freezing devilish beasts in place. That was particularly unfortunate for any that happened to be moving at the time, as their lower limbs shattered under the force of their forward motion. Then, the beasts crashed to the ground and were consumed by frigid death. Of course, by then, Sen was hurling cracked cores at any concentration of devilish beasts or spirits he saw. Since those groups were everywhere, he was throwing cores in nearly every direction as fast as he could summon them from his rings. Anywhere he saw spirits, he sent a core of fire or lighting their way. Anything that looked like it had a particularly dense skin or carapace got earth and metal.

When the explosions of qi got so thick that Sen didn’t think that throwing any additional cores could make it worse, he started adding his own flavor of chaos to the mix. All-encompassing shadow descended on the horde as if the very pits of the void had opened up to swallow creation itself. What had seemed like a peak frenzy of killing and death was made even more violent with the loss of vision. Anything that moved in that darkness was attacked, and everything was moving. Not wanting to let up for even an instant, Sen thrust his jian skyward and lightning lanced into the sky like a signal to the gods.

Sen pulled hard on that liquid qi that usually sat around inside his dantian and fed it into the lightning. Lightning arced and danced above them, gathering whatever it was in the air that made lightning. It built and built until it was on the edge of his control. When it reached that critical moment, Sen whipped his arm down and dragged all of that lightning to earth by his will. It didn’t come down in bolts but in sheets so bright that, for a few moments, they challenged the sun. Sen felt something rising in him, something he didn’t recognize, something that was both him and not him. Without even knowing why he did it, Sen screamed. The words were a challenge and a promise.

“Judgment has come!”

***

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Misty Peak was so stunned by the abrupt action that she just stood there staring at the spot where Sen had been just a moment before. She tried to make sense of the words take cover. She wondered what Sen thought he was going to do that would make her grandfather need to take cover. Perhaps the man was just a little too confident in his abilities. Sure, he could handle himself, but it was a long walk from being able to handle yourself to being any kind of a threat to someone like Laughing River. She sighed. It was probably her fault. She had been picking at his ego a little harder than was strictly necessary. She should do something to stroke his ego. Misty Peak was considering the best way to do that when the spider casually walked by her and through the barrier. Oh, right, she thought, experiencing the same frustration that all foxes experienced. Nothing could get a fox off task faster than a puzzle. Any puzzle.

“I guess we really should see about escaping before I decide if I’ll seduce him or not,” murmured the fox woman before she stepped through the barrier.

The second she was on the other side of that barrier, Misty Peak was driven straight to her knees by the overwhelming pressure of whatever the hells was going on. She struggled to make sense of what her keen senses were feeding her. Death. It was just death. Everywhere. And at the heart of it all, jian pointed to the heavens, and blazing like a dark star of destruction was Sen. Her mind tried to refuse the evidence of her senses. It just wasn’t possible. Sen had only had a handful of seconds before she joined him on the other side of the barrier. There was no way he had done all of this in those few moments. A premonition of danger made her look up at what Sen was doing to the sky. He hadn’t set it on fire, not that it helped in the slightest. All of that lightning was even worse. She cringed as she felt that ocean of flickering, arcing death descend. He’ll kill us all, she screamed in her head. She’d tried to scream it out loud but her voice was locked away behind primal terror.

When the lightning crashed down on the horde, she closed her eyes as tightly as she could. It still felt like someone had rammed white hot needles into those sensitive visual organs. As always, thunder followed the lightning, except this thunder was a voice that reverberated with the authority of the Heavens and, she realized with dawning horror and awe, the mandate of Chaos. Her very soul trembled and quaked as Sen’s voice rolled over them all.

“Judgment has come!”

Misty Peak made herself look up at Sen’s back. He burned with celestial light, no longer concerned about keeping the divine qi in his skin repressed. She shrank back as his jian took on that hellish purple-black glow that screamed of utter annihilation to her senses. He stepped forward like a living god bent on the destruction of his enemies and the very world trembled at his passing. This, she thought. This is where the stories come from. This is what people have seen. This is Judgment’s Gale. Somehow, he had kept this truth buried from her sight and her intuitions, but she could see him now. This man was no core cultivator, except perhaps in the most technical sense. This was a nascent soul cultivator who was just taking his sweet time about wandering over that particular line of advancement.

And she had mocked him. She had challenged him. He could have snuffed the life out of her any time he wanted to. Then, as if to add insult to injury, she felt him unleash his killing intent on the field. It wasn’t even aimed in her direction and it turned her blood to ice. It felt like a living thing. A very angry, very hungry, living thing that meant to eat its fill today. Had her grandfather known? Had he known and just waited to see if Sen would end her out of hand? No, she thought. Sen wouldn’t have told me to warn him if Grandfather knew. That thought was like cold water being dumped over her head. The Sen she thought she knew couldn’t have done anything to her grandfather, but this merciless killing machine in front of her was another matter entirely. She hastily threw together an illusion construct and sent it as fast as it could go to her grandfather. She just hoped it got there in time.

***

Glimmer of Night had stepped around the strings of fear and death that made up the web of desolation that Sen had seemingly crafted on instinct. Perhaps there was more spider in the man than Glimmer of Night had given him credit for. He was glad he could avoid those strings since they had driven the ceaselessly talking one to the ground. He looked around at what was happening to the devilish beasts and spirits. This is good, he thought. I like my new friend. Not wishing to be left out, Glimmer of Night began pulling the cores out of his new storage ring and throwing them at the horde.

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