Unintended Cultivator

Sen had taken his time approaching the nascent soul cultivators. Some of that was basic caution. The easiest way for him to get caught was for him to get physically seen. The shadows that obscured him would do a good job of helping him avoid that, but he had no way of knowing how acute the elders’ vision was in the darkness. Moving slowly dramatically reduced the odds of them noticing a shadow behaving oddly. The rest was that he wanted them to group up. They had spread out a bit, no doubt hoping to spot his approach. That theoretically made them easier targets, but he had to assume they could move at least as fast as him. It would take mere seconds for them to converge on an attack location. If he didn’t effectively assassinate the one he picked and got stuck in a straight fight, it would be terribly easy for one of the others to get in a lethal strike on him.

Just as importantly, he wanted to get a good look at them. That would be far easier if they were together than him sneaking around in the darkness to get a look at them individually. He still ended up needing to wait for nearly twenty minutes before the three of them grouped up. He recognized one as Elder Mu. He wasn’t sure if he should be impressed by her survival, or if he should have expected it. She was the one the Patriarch had chosen to set that trap. That probably meant she was one of the more powerful and effective elders in the sect. He was still wary of that technique or whatever it had been that she’d used. It had been frighteningly subtle. He found himself constantly checking his motivations and planning to see if they felt authentic.

The other two he recognized from his time lurking around the sect, but he knew very little about them. He hadn’t seen them use their cultivation and had been mostly working to avoid them. He’d listened in on enough conversations that he’d probably recognize their names if he heard them, but he didn’t know them. One was a heavily muscled man who kept swinging a war hammer around like he wanted to beat the air itself to death. The other was an almost impossibly tall woman. Sen wasn’t sure, but he thought she might be taller than him. Her hair was pure white and something told Sen that it was from age, rather than from nature. She also made him much more nervous than the other two.

He was happy to see that none of the three looked to have come out unscathed from the poison baths he’d made for them. One of Elder Mu’s arms was hanging limply at her side. He could only see her hand, but it looked like it had been dipped in acid. She was also moving like every step caused her pain. Sen was willing to bet that if he just gave it another hour, she wouldn’t be able to do anything. The right half of the muscled man’s face looked badly mottled, almost as if the flesh beneath the skin were dying. From the way the man kept turning his head to look at things, Sen thought there was a good chance that side was mostly or entirely non-functional.

While the impossibly tall woman actually looked mostly fine, Sen had seen her stumble, lean against a tree, and vomit. The wind had carried the stench of rotten blood to his nose. It was a revolting smell, but he’d been happy for it. It meant that terrible, terrible things were happening inside of her. Not that any of that meant he could or should underestimate them. He had fought enough battles while badly injured to know that victory was still possible for any or all of them if he was careless. He did smirk a bit when Elder Mu spoke, though.

“That little bastard is out there somewhere. He’s probably watching us right now.”

“Obviously,” said the tall woman. “I can feel his spiritual sense as clearly as you can. And why wouldn’t he wait and watch? It’s the smart choice. It’s what I’d do.”

“That’s because you’re a coward,” barked the muscular man who was forced to turn his head and look up to see the woman’s face.

“Oh, spare me your idiocy. I can’t listen to you spout on about how charging into every battle like an enraged spirit beast is the only true way to do battle. If you can only speak like a child, be silent.”

The tall woman turned a look on the man that was devoid of almost anything that looked even remotely human to Sen. The only recognizable things in her eyes were contempt and icy calculation. It was clear that the woman was choosing if she was going to take this opportunity to murder the man. The big man took a hasty step back and lifted his war hammer in front of him like it would ward the woman away. For a brief moment, Sen thought that she was actually going to do his work for him.

“Like that matters anymore,” muttered Elder Mu.

Her words seemed to snap the tall woman out of her murderous decision-making. Sen felt a brief surge of disappointment.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” demanded the man.

“You’re invoking the patriarch now?” asked Elder Mu. “Where is he? He’s always been a greedy, selfish, useless oaf, but even he wouldn’t let the sect fall this way.”

“He’ll be here,” said the man defensively.

“He’s dead, you fool,” said the tall woman who kept peering into the darkness.

Sen felt her spiritual sense washing over the entire area over and over again. He guessed that she imagined he was using some kind of technique or talisman to stay hidden and that it would eventually fade away. It would probably be the case for most people, but hiding was as second nature to Sen as breathing. As long as he didn’t have to hide someone else, he could probably keep this up for days. He knew he could keep it going for longer than these three likely had left to live. Given their conditions, he was surprised that they hadn’t fled or at least gone looking for possible antidotes to what he’d exposed them all to. It seemed odd that they were just waiting around. Sen found himself wondering, do they want revenge that badly?

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After he gave it a little more thought, though, he thought he understood. If they separated, they didn’t like their odds of defeating him in a one-on-one fight. If they went looking for antidotes, inside or outside the sect, it would be a perfect opportunity for him to isolate and ambush one of them. Here, they knew the ground and could face him together. Assuming he didn’t simply outlast them. He was sorely tempted to just wait it out. He didn’t have a personal grudge with any of these people. He didn’t feel some overriding need to deliver the killing stroke or stand over them in a foolish attempt to assert dominance right before they died.

In a flash of insight, he realized that most cultivators would want to do exactly that. The ones from this sect would want that, at the very least. Simple victory wouldn’t be enough for them. They’d want to gloat. Sen would have bet money that they were waiting for him to just walk out of the darkness to posture at them. Once he did that, they could execute their plan. He wasn’t sure what the plan was, but he’d be a moron to think they didn’t have one. Yet, their plan almost certainly hinged on him doing something stupid and vain. All he needed to do to win was nothing. Plus, he was pretty sure that the poisons were doing their work. The mottling on the man’s face was expanding. Elder Mu was moving around less and less. There was a spreading web of darkening veins and arteries in the tall woman’s face. Then again, the spreading darkness on the man’s face might just have been rage turning his face a shade of purple.

“What do you mean he’s dead? And if you call me a fool again, I’ll beat the precious nobility you’re so proud of right out of your body. Or is it only half your body? That’s right, your mother was nothing but some cheap whore, wasn’t she? So, stop acting like you’re better than me.”

The tall woman said nothing for most of five seconds. Sen was honestly stunned by the exchange. He could not understand how these people had survived as a sect with this level of hatred at play between their leaders. It’s because they’re dying, realized Sen. He expected that they had all found it easier to suppress those hatreds when they thought they had centuries, or millennia, or even the possibility of ascension ahead of them. He was certain that any of them and probably all of them would set aside their differences to fight him. Their hatred of him was fresh, but their hatred of each other was deep. With death looming and no sign of him, why hold back? When the tall woman did speak, Sen knew he was about to get his earlier wish.

“I know he’s dead because I know where he went. If he was coming back, he would have been here long before now. That means that someone intercepted him. Someone who could dispose of him. As for my mother—”

Even Sen barely saw it. He’d thought he was fast, and he was compared to most cultivators, but she was faster. One moment, she was standing there and staring out into the darkness. The next moment, she had produced a long slender blade and driven it into the muscular cultivator’s good eye until the cross-guard slammed into the bones of his face. There was a fey look in the woman’s eyes as she pulled the blade free. Sen watched in morbid fascination as the big man seemed to lose control of parts of his body. He would have thought such a strike would kill the man, but maybe that slender blade had done less damage than he’d expected. Or maybe the tall woman had done it that way on purpose.

“Aihan! No! What have you done?” cried Elder Mu.

The tall woman ignored Elder Mu entirely as she watched the now-blinded cultivator stumble around and scream almost coherent words. There was a malignant glee on the woman’s face as she swept in over and over again, slashing and stabbing the other elder until his blood had painted her face in a red mask. When the mutilated cultivator stumbled and fell to the ground, the tall woman ripped the war hammer out of his hands. Then, drawing herself up with a dignity fit for any royal court, she spat in the man’s face.

“That’s the last time you call my mother a whore,” she announced.

She heaved the hammer into the air and brought it down so hard that the man’s head exploded like an overripe melon. Elder Mu stared at the scene with raw disbelief and stunned horror. The tall woman stood there, bloodied war hammer hanging limply from one hand, her eyes fixed on some far distant place. The war hammer slipped from her fingers. She closed her eyes and turned her face skyward. Sen could see it as something fled from her. It looked as though some impossible burden had slipped from her shoulders and fallen away. There was no way to be sure, but he was willing to bet that the tall woman had just been freed from a heart demon.

“Finally,” the tall woman whispered before she clenched her fists and screamed. “Finally!”

The tall woman, Aihan, opened her mouth again, maybe to speak or scream, but all that came out was a small geyser of that rotten blood. All the strength seemed to leave her, and she collapsed to the ground. Whatever strength she’d had left had seemingly been spent in that final act of vengeance. Elder Mu hurried over to the other woman and sank to her knees.

“Aihan. Why did you do that? That wretched boy will win now.”

Aihan looked up at the other woman, an expression of utter peace on her face, and said, “I don’t care about that boy. In fact, I think I’m grateful to him.”

“What? What are you talking about?”

“He may have killed me, but someone was always going to do that. If not some other cultivator, time would have gotten me,” said Aihan, her voice getting weaker. “I was never going to ascend, Mu. Not in this life. What he did let me kill that bastard. I don’t think… I don’t think I could have done it if… if Lin hadn’t been half dead already, but I got it done. My mother wasn’t a whore.”

“I know she wasn’t,” murmured Elder Mu.

Aihan stared sightlessly into the sky and continued as if she couldn’t hear the other woman.Nôv(el)B\\jnn

“Loved each other. She just wasn’t a noble. Couldn’t marry. Father… Father took care… He took care of her.”

Sen watched as the last of the life fled the woman. He had been doing his best to not view the Twisted Blade Sect members as people, but he felt a little twinge of empathy for that sad woman who had, more than anything else in the world, wanted one man dead. Not knowing anything else about her but what he’d heard in her dying moments, he found it in himself to hope that her next life was kinder. That moment passed when Elder Mu stirred and looked out into the darkness. While Aihan might be going to Diyu and soon to be free of her memories, Sen was still dealing with this life. He stepped out of the darkness.

“I’ll be honest,” he said. “That isn’t how I thought that was going to go.”