Book 8: Chapter 5: Pyrrhic Victory

“What’s interesting?” asked Tuan Baihu.

The man chanced a look down at his injured leg but apparently decided that it was something he could fight through. Sen simply ignored the question.

“You know, there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask my betters for a long time now. Just what is it that makes you my betters? I mean, you all seem

so

confident about it. So, really, I’d like to know. What is it? Wait, I hope it’s not just that you belong to a sect. Please tell me it isn’t just that.”

Tuan Baihu glared at him.

“Nothing? Really?” asked Sen, wandering over and nudging one of Tuan Baihu’s juniors with his toe. “You were so eager to announce that you’re my better. I just assumed that you had a justification other than, someone told me this patch makes me special.”

“It’s because we have honor.”

“Ugh,” groaned Sen. “I take it back. This isn’t interesting. If that’s the best you have, then you’ve been lying to yourself for a long time. Being in a sect doesn’t give you honor. In my experience, being in a sect is one of the shortest paths to losing it.”

Tuan Baihu took a couple of angry steps forward, grimacing every time his injured leg came down.

“You dare to question my honor.”

“If you had any, you would have been the one standing in the road, not them,” said Sen, gesturing at the cultivators sprawled on the ground. “If I were any less of a soft touch, they’d have all been dead before you could have done a thing about it. You

used

them. I’ve seen literal assassins with more honor than you.”

Long Jia Wei visibly flinched at those words, although Tuan Baihu didn’t seem to notice.

“How dare you speak to me this way,” thundered Tuan Baihu.

“Why wouldn’t I? Because you’re

my better

? Better at what, exactly?”

Sen felt the qi surge around the other man and shook his head.

“You do not want to turn this into a qi technique fight,” said Sen. “Long Jia Wei. Tell him why.”

The ex-sect cultivator took a nervous step forward. He offered a hesitant bow to Tuan Baihu.

“Senior,” said Long Jia Wei. “If you pursue that path, the fight will be over in seconds. And you will die. I watched him destroy a late-stage core cultivator with a single technique.”

Tuan Baihu eyed Long Jia Wei and asked, “How close were you at the time?”

“Closer than we stand from each other now.”

That answer seemed to give The Golden Tiger real pause. Sen assumed the man thought that Long Jia Wei had witnessed the event from some significant distance. A distance that would allow for misinterpretation. Feeling that the statement might need some manner of corroboration, Sen did something he hadn’t done in a long time. He cycled for multiple types of qi at the same time, then used that qi that form halos of water, stone, fire, lightning, and shadow behind himself. That display made Tuan Baihu’s eyes go wide. Sen smiled at him.

“It’s your choice, of course. If you’d prefer that we include qi techniques, I’d be happy to accommodate you.”

Tuan Baihu considered that offer before he slowly shook his head.

“I believe that I would not prefer that.”

“Good. I’m glad we got that resolved. Now, you’ve had yourself a little rest. We should finish this up. I’ve got places to be.”

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As Sen closed the distance, he realized that he’d been playing with this man, and he didn’t even know why. Well, he knew why. That comment about betters had made him angry, but that would normally just have been a reason to finish him quickly. Sen had been dragging this out, even after he realized he could win the fight. Something about the man just rubbed him the wrong way. Maybe it was the arrogance. Maybe it was the way he’d left his juniors out to take the brunt of any first assault. Maybe it was just that Sen was having a bad day and wanted to take it out on someone. Whatever the reason, he decided that there had been enough of that. He dropped back to the style Master Feng had taught him, which brought an almost anguished look to Tuan Baihu’s face.

“How many styles have you mastered?” asked the man.

“Just the one,” said Sen, and his voice sounded cold to him.

It seemed that Tuan Baihu picked up on that as well because the man took an obviously defensive stance. Sen didn’t bother with more trickery or clever strategies. From that moment forward, it was relentless aggression and pure skill. Sen had to give the man credit. He held his own for a while, but the injury to his leg, to say nothing of his shaken confidence, let Sen wear him down. Tuan Baihu reached for his qi more than once but never tried to unleash it. Sen couldn’t decide if that was simply caution on the man’s part, or if he was trying to act honorably after being told in no uncertain terms that Sen considered him an honorless dog for the way he’d treated his juniors. Sen could tell that Tuan Baihu was, perhaps unfortunately for the man, a skilled enough swordsman to understand that he couldn’t win the fight on skill alone. Everything he was doing was a delaying action, a means of extending his life a few seconds at a time. Sen could even respect that, having employed the tactic himself once or twice. It was written on the man’s face. He was desperately looking for any opportunity to turn things around. Yet, Sen was not providing it to him.

It was a bad step that ultimately brought the fight to a close. Unable to divert any of his attention from Sen, the man had stepped back onto a pebble. The pebble rolled, which twisted Tuan Baihu’s already injured leg. The unexpected shock of fresh pain had distracted him. A swift and brutal slash from Sen sent the other man’s jian flying from his grip. Tuan Baihu stared down at his empty hand with a look of pure disbelief that slowly transformed into one of grim, resolute acceptance. The man looked at Sen with the dimmest flicker of hope in his eyes. A flicker that was snuffed out at what he saw in Sen’s face. There was no reprieve to be found there. The man looked over at his juniors, most of whom were still borderline unconscious. Perhaps it was the proximity of death that brought a shred of basic humanity to the surface, a brief inkling of empathy that so many cultivators seemed to discard. Then again, maybe it was curiosity that prompted his next question.

“What will you do with them?” asked Tuan Baihu.

“Whatever I see fit,” answered Sen.

With a motion faster than even most cultivator eyes could track, Sen plunged his blade into Tuan Baihu’s heart. He gave the blade a twist, pulled it free, and then swiped it across the man’s neck. Sen felt no sense of accomplishment. The fight could have gone the other way in the right circumstances, which made Sen feel like he should think that the victory was an accomplishment. He’d defeated someone who had built enough of a reputation that Long Jia Wei had recognized the man’s name. Almost mechanically, Sen stripped Tuan Baihu and the semi-conscious cultivators of their storage treasures and weapons. He stood there for a while, unintentionally looming over the bloodied cultivators, staring down at the storage rings in his hand. He didn’t even want them. He didn’t need their money or their weapons. He’d just taken them because that’s what you were supposed to do. He supposed it taught them or their sect masters to choose their targets with more care or lose such valuable treasures.

Glimmer of Night came over to him eventually and handed him Tuan Baihu’s jian. Sen took it, looked at it blankly for a moment, and then stored it in one of his rings. It joined an absurd pile of other weapons he’d collected recently. He’d have to go through them at some point. His first instinct was to sell them off to the first person who expressed even the slightest interest, but the academy could probably use some of them. Sen struggled to bring the place to mind. It seemed so distant now. Like a place that only existed in some pleasant dream he’d been forced to wake from. A place that he’d never be able to get back to and, even if he somehow did make it back, it would never feel the same to him. After a time, Shen Mingxia and Long Jia Wei came over and stood by him. It was Shen Mingxia who spoke to him.

“What should we do with them?” she asked, gesturing at the other cultivators who were slowly but surely recovering.

Sen glanced at them and spoke an unvarnished truth.

“I don’t care.”

Having said all he intended to on the subject, he started walking down the road. If Shen Mingxia or Glimmer of Night decided they all needed to die, that was on their consciences. If they decided to let them all go, that was something they could also carry. He didn’t have the mental energy left to decide if any more people should live or die that day. For once, the universe seemed to agree that he’d done enough because the rest of the day passed in a state of calm that Sen didn’t trust but was happy enough to accept.