Unintended Cultivator

The two men guarding the gate never even had a chance to be startled. One moment they were half-watching the forest. The next moment, their heads were rolling away as their bodies slumped to the ground. The heavy wood of the gate was no more of an impediment to Sen than lace fabric. Wind blades reduced it to so many wood shavings in a matter of seconds. Sen was striding through that hail of wood chips before anyone inside really understood that death now walked among them. However, Sen had been forced to modify his original plan, which didn’t please him. His first plan had been simplicity itself. Kill absolutely everyone who wasn’t in a cage.

For all its simplicity, though, that plan had suffered from a mild absence of reason. While everyone in the encampment likely shared in some measure of guilt, the ones he truly wanted were the ones who had carried out the massacre. Fortunately, those were the same people who were most likely to attack him. He stopped to look around at the stunned faces of the people who had been near the gate. Sen very intentionally lifted his jian and frowned at the blood on the blade. He summoned a loose piece of fabric from his storage ring and wiped the weapon clean before he sheathed it. A hard-faced man with bitterness etched into his face decided that made Sen less dangerous. He rushed at Sen with an axe in hand and tried to bring it down in a crude overhand strike. Sen spun, snatching the axe out of the man’s hand, and bringing it back around to strike the man’s face with the handle.

There was a collective inhalation of breath as the blow snapped both the handle and the man’s neck. The body dropped to the ground and a little puff of dust rose around it. Sen regarded the broken handle before letting it side through his grip until his hand was right beneath the axe head. As the nearby men found their courage and charged at him, Sen noted the dark blur that flittered around them toward the cage. Good, thought Sen. Now, I can focus. Sen passed through that crowd like a fell wind. He sidestepped their clumsy blows and strikes. He saw their hands, the hands that had killed and burned without remorse.

Appropriate punishment was meted out as the axe head removed those offending hands from their owners. Horrified screams rose from men as they stared down at the stumps that poured their lifeblood out in spurts. As weakness swiftly overtook the men and they fell to the ground, many of them turned uncomprehending eyes on Sen. He met their desperate looks with an impassive expression and arctic eyes. Then, so they would understand his true contempt for them, Sen simply walked away. Denying them even the tiny mercy of a clean death. As he strode toward the center of the encampment, it seemed that the sight of the carnage he’d left near the gate had chilled the blood of the rest of the bandits or raiders. They shouted warnings or cursed him, but no one attacked. He thought he might have to take matters into his own hands to encourage them, but a massive brute of a man stormed out of one of the makeshift buildings.

“Attack him you cowards!” bellowed the man.

Sen let his eyes flicker over toward the cages and had to repress a smile of grim amusement. Glimmer of Night was casually beating three men with what looked like a leg with one hand while choking the life out of someone with the other. The village prisoners were in good hands. Turning his attention back to the rest of the group. It seemed their recently learned fear of him was weaker than their entrenched fear of the brute. They tried to charge him as a group. Maybe they think they’ll bring me down with sheer weight of numbers, reasoned Sen. Remembering what he’d learned when meeting with Elder Bo, Sen summoned lightning around one hand and fire around the other.

The mob finally reached him, it was only to be met with a new horror. Sen lashed out at one man, only for lightning to pass straight through that man and lance out into the bodies of a dozen others. He seized a man by the throat with his other hand. Charred bones dropped to the ground a moment later as everything made of flesh was incinerated. Sen backhanded another man, setting him alight, and hurling him into the crowd. Screams of agony and terror burst from the gathered men as that fire leapt from body to body under the guidance of Sen’s will. The will of the people at the back of the crowd broke then as they started shouting one word.

“Cultivator!”

They tried to turn and run. Sen couldn’t have that. He finally let his killing intent free. It washed over what was left of the mob of bandits. Everyone within range of that killing intent simply died, their mortal lives snuffed out as though Sen had snapped his fingers and wished for it. The brute stared at the bodies of the men he had commanded, his expression a mixture of anger and disbelief. Sen came to a stop in the middle of all those bodies. His spiritual sense swept through the encampment. There were a few people hiding. He’d have to deal with them eventually, but the real fight was over even if the brute didn’t know. Sen turned that same impassive expression he’d worn since the fight began on the brute.

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The brute opened his mouth to say something only for his eyes to go very wide when Sen appeared right in front of him. Nothing came out of that open mouth except choking gurgles and blood. The terrified brute of a man turned his wide eyes down to where Sen’s hand was buried inside his chest.

“I don’t actually care what you think,” said Sen.

His hand closed around the brute’s heart and reduced it from a life-sustaining organ into a mangled and useless hunk of meat. Sen jerked his hand free and brought the remains of the man’s heart with it. The brute sank to his knees as the life started to fade from his eyes. Sen tossed the man’s heart into his lap before he turned his eyes toward the cages. Glimmer of Night was standing by them, seemingly having traded his leg club for an arm club somewhere along the way. The spider was splattered with blood which made Sen look down at himself. It took almost a minute of applying water, wind, and fire qi to himself before he didn’t look like the kind of monster who needed to be killed rather than the person who does that killing. He finally let himself go over to the cages.

“There’s a few people hiding,” said Sen. “Could you gather them up, please?”

“Alive?” asked the spider.

Sen thought it over. “Only if they aren’t too much trouble.”

The spider walked off methodically checking through tents and the handful of buildings. Sen turned his eyes to the cages. There were half a dozen people in them. A couple of them had expressions of deep satisfaction on their faces. The rest looked stunned to the point of insensibility. Then, there was the little girl. Sen didn’t even remember her name. He wasn’t sure he’d ever even heard it. She was staring at him like she thought he was something imaginary. Maybe I am, thought Sen. He frowned at the cages for a moment before he cut them apart with qi and hurled the pieces away. It took most of the people a few moments to realize they were free, but the second the cage was gone, the little girl hurled herself at Sen. She wrapped her arms around his leg and started sobbing. Not sure what else to do, he reached down and picked her up. She transferred the grip she’d had around his leg to his neck and sobbed into his shoulder.

An older man, maybe one of the village elders, stood up from where he’d been crouching the cage. He gave Sen a nervous look, as though he expected the same treatment as the bandits had gotten. Sen didn’t recognize any of the people from when he and Falling Leaf had visited the village, so maybe it was to be expected. It took the old man three tries to finally get a question out.

“Who are you?”

“I am Judgment’s Gale,” said Sen.

Under other, very different circumstances, the look of shock on the old man’s face might have been a little comical.

“Thank you, honored cultivator. Thank you for saving us,” said the man, recapturing something like a sense of propriety and bowing.

The other people who had just been watching the exchange shot to their feet, murmuring their thanks and bowing as well. Sen let them do it, knowing that it would be more trouble than it was worth to stop them. One of the other prisoners, a younger woman, peered at Sen and then at the little girl in his arms.

“Did you come for her?” asked the woman.

It was true enough that Sen just nodded. “I did.”

“Why? Who are you to her?”

Sen glanced down at the tiny form of the girl. “I suppose you could say that I’m her uncle. Uncle Lu.”

Sen was spared any more questions because Glimmer of Night returned at that moment, shepherding a small group of people who had survived Sen’s initial wrath. They all took one look at Sen’s face and dropped to their knees. Some pleaded for their lives. Others looked resigned. One even had a defiant sneer on his face. I’m probably going to do something about that one, thought Sen before one of the freed prisoners rushed by him. The sneering man’s expression evaporated into one of fear as the woman started screaming profanities and stabbing the man with a knife she’d found somewhere. The little girl jerked from the semi-doze she’d slipped into and started crying again. Sen stroked the back of her head.

“Don’t worry. It’s just a bad dream.”

Sen looked at the people he’d freed and then over at the people that Glimmer of Night had rounded up.

“Anyone else need to settle a score?” asked Sen.

There was an incredibly tense moment of silence before the people he freed started shaking their heads. Sen waited until he was sure that no one was going to speak up. He turned his gaze on the kneeling people, who all averted their eyes or visibly flinched.

Lifting a hand, he pointed toward the gate. “Go.”

The man he’d seen working as a blacksmith looked Sen in the eye. “We’ll never make it. This is no better than killing us yourself.”

“It’s more of a chance than their village got,” snarled Sen and let his hand drop to the hilt of his jian. “You might survive if you’re smart and careful. But we can go with the killing you myself plan.”

Sen drew his jian and let them all get a good look at it. One by one, the kneeling men got to their feet. Before they could move away, though, Sen let his spiritual sense wash over them. His eyes landed on a skinny man who had kept to the back and tried to go unnoticed. Sen only said two words.

“The ring.”

The man looked like he’d just as soon bite out Sen’s throat as give it up. In the end, though, he opened his hand and let the storage treasure fall to the ground. Clearly fearing that some reprisal would be forthcoming, the man turned and ran toward the gate. The others hesitantly followed the would-be looter. Shaking his head, Sen put away his jian and picked up the ring. A quick scan told him that it contained more or less what he’d expected it to. The skinny man had obviously looted whatever passed for a treasury and meant to make off with the money. There were a few other things in the ring that Sen didn’t care about. Sen tossed the ring to the older man, who gave him a quizzical look.

“You’ll need it when we get back.”

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