Unintended Cultivator

As he neared the capital, the weather turned from gloomy to downright threatening. There were heavy clouds above so dark they were almost black and that cast the world in a premature twilight. Sen wondered if those storm clouds were getting some assistance, but, for once, his instincts and cultivator senses told him that this was just a storm getting ready to unleash its fury. That elemental might resonated with the storm qi that rested in his core. It wasn’t something he called on very often because storms were almost impossible to control, but it was there. The proximity of the looming storm was making it restless. Not that he could spare much attention for that.

He’d fully expected to meet resistance from powerful spirit beasts in the last leg of this journey. He was traveling alone with none of the formations or other defenses he’d normally have in place. He’d have to pit his strength directly against theirs, even if he just wanted to escape. They’d likely never get a better opportunity to attack him. More to the point, he could feel them out there. He’d understood there would be many, but even his imagination hadn’t been sufficient to truly understand what the capital faced. There were thousands and thousands of them, just within the range of his spiritual sense. If he assumed that they were more or less evenly spaced around the city, he struggled to calculate the number. Tens of thousands? Hundreds of thousands?

If they were all sapient spirit beasts, Sen would have written off the city immediately. No human force could hope to stand against that even with the aid of nascent soul cultivators. Fortunately, he knew that true sapience was comparatively rare. For every Falling Leaf, there were countless spirit beasts who had not and might never reach self-awareness as Sen understood it. He was betting that the overwhelming majority of the forces he was sensing below him fell into that category. It wouldn’t make the coming fight easy. A horde of mindless, bloodthirsty spirit beasts was still unspeakably dangerous. They just wouldn’t make the kind of smart choices that their sapient brethren would.

They were a war hammer that would pound against the city’s defenses. The defenders couldn’t ignore them, which meant spending resources to deal with them. Killing them off would wear down the cultivators in the city. If the mortals had any weapons that would be of use against such a tide, he had to expect that they’d be limited in number, number of uses, or both. He had a few thoughts about how to bridge some of those gaps and let the mortal contribute more, but so much depended on what had been done to prepare. He wouldn’t know that until he got there. He shook off those thoughts and tried to get a clearer sense of how many spirit beasts there were and what their relative power levels were.

That proved a mostly hopeless task. Sen’s spiritual sense was very good, but the sheer numbers worked against him getting a clear sense of what was actually below. He could get a feel for how many there were, but singling out any individual’s strength was just beyond his capabilities. He honestly wasn’t sure if nascent soul cultivators would do any better. In theory, their spiritual sense should be more powerful and refined than his, but experience had taught him that not all nascent soul cultivators were created equal. He’d killed a few now, and that should not have been possible if all the stories and legends about that stage of advancement were true. He suspected that Master Feng had probably lived up to most of those legends, and likely Unckle Kho and Auntie Caihong as well. As for the rest, he thought that there was likely a qualitative difference between many of them.

He’d seen the same things among foundation formation and core formation cultivators. He’d fought what felt like an almost endless stream of cultivators who were, in theory anyway, his cultivation superiors. Yet, he often found that they were weaker, sloppier, or slower than he was. It stood to reason that similar idiosyncrasies would hold for the nascent soul stage. Some people were just better at some things. Then again, he’d probably fought and killed dozens of spirit beasts for every one cultivator. Could it be that he’d just gotten used to dealing with technically stronger opponents by fighting them? He wasn’t sure but it seemed at least plausible enough to think about more when he found the time. If he ever found the time.

This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

Something about the lack of attacks on him bothered Sen. He appreciated not being harried, but he just couldn’t figure out why they weren’t impeding him. He damned sure would have tried to kill him if he were a spirit beast in a command position. If they weren’t doing that, they had to have a reason for it. No

, he thought, it can’t be just a reason. It has to be a deeply compelling reason. The most obvious reason was the same reason the mortals and cultivators in the capital hadn’t launched any attacks yet. They didn’t want to start the battle before they were as ready as they could be. He considered that idea and found it plausible if not compelling. Then, he considered what he would do in their place that might prevent him from starting a fight with a powerful opponent.

He didn’t need to think for long. He’d been in a similar position with that strange temple city he’d entered with Glimmer of Night and Misty Peak. If Sen were leading the spirit beasts, he’d be doing exactly the same thing he did there. He’d be setting up a formation. A huge formation. A formation powerful enough to shatter city walls and leave everyone inside easy prey for the beast tide. While he couldn’t pick out specific details about a mass of spirit beasts that were in almost constant motion, formations were another matter. They were fixed in place out of necessity. They needed to access qi sources to function, but they also had to impose a certain kind of order on the space. Sen didn’t need to know exactly what kind of formation they intended to make. He just needed to look for evidence of order in places where the energy shouldn’t behave that way.

It was almost a letdown when he found it. He’d been expecting to see it. It had only been a dim hope that spirit beast commanders weren’t smart enough to use something like that to their advantage. It also did a much better job of explaining why they weren’t engaging him in battle. It wouldn’t take much to disrupt that formation, and he had a reputation for big, destructive techniques. He was tempted to launch one immediately but that came with its own problems. If he did that, he would set them back. He would also destroy their one main incentive to not attack him. He just didn’t have enough information to know what level of retaliation he might unleash if he damaged that formation. Neither choice was good, but he didn’t want to send the spirit beasts toward the city howling for blood before he ever even got there.

Gritting his teeth, he shot toward the city. He forced himself to slow down when he reached the city walls. Otherwise, the wind stirred in his wake might accidentally carry some poor doomed soul right off the wall. He did not, however, stop to identify himself. Those days were done. He had intended to fly straight to Lu Manor, but a strange sensation dragged his attention toward the center of the city. It was almost a hum that had the all-too-familiar feel of divine qi. He was tempted to ignore it. He wasn’t actually responsible for anything quite yet. Still, there was only one place he could think of where divine qi might be active at the moment. He shifted his course and flew in that direction.

Sen’s superior vision soon picked out the palace and, yes, something very odd was happening there. The spikes he’d put on the walls were glowing and not the way he’d set them up to glow if someone was interfering with the walls.

“Did someone tamper with my work?” he asked the air.

As he drew closer to the palace, the spikes glowed brighter and brighter. Sen’s frown deepened. He didn’t like this at all. This all stank of interference from the heavens, which he almost never appreciated. By the time he reached the palace, the glow would have been almost painful for any mortal eyes. Sen bit back the curse that threatened to escape his lips. He didn’t usually worry about the symbolic meanings of things, so it took him longer than it should have to piece together what this was all about. Before, he had come to the palace as a friend or a guest. Now, he was arriving as the master of this place, and it was greeting him as such. Lord Lu had returned.