Unintended Cultivator

Sen’s first instinct was to run away. Being the focal point of that much attention was like having one of his nightmares come to life. He could see the looks on their faces and wanted no part of it. He didn’t want their awe, or their fear, and especially not the reverence he saw on a few of their faces. Yet, there was nowhere to go without going through a bunch of those people. He might have stayed adrift in that sea of uncertainty if Chan Yu Ming hadn’t latched onto his arm with a grip that hurt. He looked back down at her, wondering if he’d injured her more than he’d meant to. He had mostly missed her heart when he stabbed her, but not completely. He’d nicked it enough to make it feel real to her, but hearts weren’t all the same size. He might have misjudged, which was why he’d given her the pill in the first place. The look on her face wasn’t one of pain, though, but one of urgency.

“You can end this madness,” she said, before coughing up a mouth full of blood.

“Don’t talk. Save your energy for healing,” said Sen.

“Listen to me,” she demanded. “Right now, you control this field. No one out here wants to challenge you. If you tell them to stop, they’ll stop.”

“No one is going to listen to me. I’m no one. Nobody cares what Lu Sen has to say.”

“You’re wrong. Right now, everyone cares what you have to say. You just need to-,” she coughed up some more blood. “Make it memorable. Give everyone an excuse to stop.”

For a moment, Chan Yu Ming’s entire body tensed.

“Are you alright?”

“Where in the hells did you get that pill?” gasped Chan Yu Ming. “Feels like it’s healing every injury I’ve had in my past three lives.”

“Then, don’t be you. Be whoever Judgment’s Gale is. He sounds like someone who could be scary and important. But you have to do it now, while they’re still stunned.”

Sen was frozen in place for a moment. She wanted him to be whoever Judgment’s Gale was, except he didn’t know who that was. It wasn’t something he’d crafted for himself. It was just an idea, a story that people told in winehouses, or around campfires at night, or he didn’t even know where else. How could he be that? Of course, it was also his story or some weirdly distorted version of it. One with princesses and a hero out of legend that never existed, but his all the same. If that person was him, Sen could make Judgment’s Gale whoever he wanted or, more importantly, needed him to be.

“All right,” said Sen. “I’ll make it memorable.”

Sen tried to put himself into the shoes of all those people who had been fighting. He understood their fear all too well. That looming presence of death was very familiar to him. He imagined their fatigue, weighing them down, telling them to quit, and their will to live fighting against that voice telling them that it would be easier to just lay down, to quit, to let the end come. He imagined what the people in charge must be thinking as more and more people died. Desperately trying to come up with a strategy that would let them achieve victory or, barring that, simply let them survive the day. If I were them, Sen asked himself, what would I need to see and hear to make it feel acceptable to just stop? What kind of person would I accept that command from?

Gathering himself, Sen stood and glared around the battlefield. Then, he took a step up into the air on a cushion of qi. Then he took another, as though he were climbing a stairwell into the heavens. He began cycling for the things he thought he’d need, shadow, fire, wind, and lightning. He tapped his core qi for this to make sure that the statement he was about to make was grand enough. He climbed until he hovered above the field nearly twenty feet in the air. He could feel the collective attention on him, waiting to see what he would say and what he would do. He started weaving the qi into something new, something he’d never made before, and lifted his jian.

“I am Judgment’s Gale,” he projected across the field, using air qi to amplify his voice like it was the voice of creation itself.

Then, he shot that woven technique into the sky. A swirling mass of fire, shadow, and lightning began spinning overhead. As it swelled outward, the unnatural storm swiftly blotted out the sun and cast the vale into a darkness akin to night. Sen added the final touch to the technique. He let his killing intent bleed into that terrifying storm of death. He’d been hesitant to use any kind of broad blanket of killing intent directly on the field out of a very real concern that he’d end up killing lower-level cultivators. Using it this way, though, it was more like the entire field felt a reflection of that intent. When he’d let them soak in the blatant threat of the storm and his killing intent, he ignited a halo of white fire around his body, ever so briefly letting him replace the sun as the only source of light. Then, he spoke again.

“This is over,” he boomed across the field, “or I will end it for you. All of you.”

As if the storm was responding to him directly, a series of bone-rattling booms issued forth from that mass like a celestial death threat. Then, this time at Sen’s direction, columns of flame, lightning, and shadow struck down from on high in a ring around the valley. To Sen’s way of thinking, if anyone on that field was looking for an excuse to stop, they had it now. For the next minute, no one took any action. Then, Sen felt a surge of qi as someone lifted off the ground and flew toward him from the rear of the water cultivator’s forces. A moment later, he felt something similar from near the entrance of the fire cultivator’s compound. Two figures floated toward him on platforms of qi. When they got close enough, the fire around Sen let him get a look at them. The representative from the water cultivators was a willowy woman with high cheekbones and the stern gaze of someone far older than they looked. The fire cultivator was a thickset man with a shaved head. The pair eyed each other warily but spared most of their attention for eyeing Sen warily.

Once more, Sen tried to imagine what he’d need to see from him if he was in their shoes. Cold conviction, he thought. I’d need to see that they were utterly committed to the course. So, he set his face into a hard mask of determination. He regarded the two of them as they floated there. He’d already issued his ultimatum. It was on them to act. The fire cultivator looked like he working himself up to say something stupid, but the idea died when Sen looked at him and the storm issued another series of those world-rattling booms. Without any more hesitation, the fire cultivator pulled a dao from its scabbard and set it on the qi platform in front of his own feet. Sen turned his gaze to the water cultivator. While she was more collected than the fire cultivator, she withdrew a jian from a storage ring and put it down in front of her feet. Sheathing his own jian, Sen used air qi to retrieve the weapons.

“Collect your wounded,” said Sen to both of them, before turning his gaze to the water cultivator. “Where is your sect compound?”

“It’s to the north.”

“Then, once you have your wounded gathered, you will remove your forces from this valley.”

The water cultivator elder, who Sen was certain had to be near peak core formation, offered him a bow. The fire cultivator who wasn’t quite as powerful as the water cultivator did the same. The two started to move away.

“Stop,” commanded Sen.

They did, exchanging a brief look with each other.

“Yes?” asked the water cultivator.

“I’ll have your oaths to the heavens now. I didn’t go through all this trouble so you could repeat this exercise in getting your people killed in six months. You will bind your sects to never attack each other again,” said Sen, holding up a hand to stop them before the whining could start. “I do not care what your grievances are. As far as I’m concerned, by indulging your grievances, you both murdered your juniors today.”

Both the water cultivator and fire cultivator flinched at that last. Then, so reluctantly that one would have thought Sen demanded they cut off a hand, both of the cultivators made their oaths to the heavens. Sen actually felt the oath take effect, like a thrum in the air that touched very nearly every cultivator on the field. Sen knew that it wouldn’t stop individual conflicts, and it wasn’t meant to do that. What it would do is prevent the same kind of wholesale slaughter between the two groups from happening again. After a few more brief instructions, the fire cultivator returned to his compound. When the water cultivator remained in place, he lifted an eyebrow at her.

“Why do they call you Judgment’s Gale?” she asked, looking up at the sky. “Judgment’s Storm seems more fitting.”

“I didn’t pick the name,” said Sen. “Was that all?”

The cultivator shook her head. “Chan Yu Ming’s body. I wish to retrieve it.”

Sen eyed the woman for a moment. “Maybe someday. She’s not done with it yet.”

The woman went perfectly still for a moment before she said, “She lives? But you pierced her heart.”

“A moment,” said Sen.

It took more than a moment for Sen to dismantle the hellscape he’d crafted above them all, but he didn’t want to give it any time to develop a life or momentum of its own. As the sun pierced through the swiftly disappearing shadows, Sen looked at the woman again.

“Almost.”

“What?”

“I almost pierced her heart.”

The woman seemed like she was on the verge of asking a lot more questions, but Sen thought that the memory of that storm overhead was a little too fresh. While they both objectively knew that she could take him in a fight, he’d plunged the hook of fear deep into her heart. With a mental sigh, he realized that the same thing probably applied to everyone on the battlefield. Well, he thought, it’s done now, and I can’t take it back.

“Then, she’ll be returned to us?”

Sen frowned at the woman. “I expect that Chan Yu Ming decides for herself where she will or won’t go. I won’t stop her from returning to you if that’s what you’re asking.”

“It was,” she said, offering another quick bow. “It seems I have much work ahead of me today. I will attend to it.”

The woman floated back toward the water cultivators. Sen let his eyes trail over the people on the battlefield. Some of them looked shocked, while most looked relieved. Sen pretended he didn’t notice any of the people giving him positively creepy looks of adoration. Sen let his platform of qi drift down to the ground where Chan Yu Ming was sitting up and looking much healthier.

“So,” he asked, “was that memorable enough, do you think?”

“Memorable enough?” she asked with more than a hint of incredulity in her voice. “I thought you’d give a speech, not put the end of the world in the sky. Yes, it was memorable enough.”

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