Book 9: Chapter 54: Unkind Choice

While his killing intent was enough to suppress many of the remaining cultivators who had made up the core membership of the sect, it wasn’t enough to keep all of them suppressed indefinitely. He supposed it was to be expected. However little he thought of this sect and anyone who joined it, these were still core cultivators. They had no doubt been shepherded along with treasures and opportunities, but even powerful support couldn’t replace determination and certainty of purpose. Both were necessary to endure the trials that came hand-in-hand with advancement into the core formation stage. Sen knew that from personal experience. So, when he saw a few of them starting to move in his spiritual sense, it wasn’t much of a shock. It was just a minor annoyance in a night filled with emotional challenges.

He started making his way toward the nearest of the cultivators who had regained their senses. He passed by a few who were still shuddering, thrashing, and bleeding from the eyes and ears. He dispatched them swiftly. He did stop short for a moment when he found one who was foaming at the mouth. He’d seen a lot of reactions to his killing intent, but that was a first. He peered hard at that foam. His enhanced vision made things clearer at night to an extent. What it did nothing to improve was his ability to discern color. Everything tended to take on a grayish cast. Even so, he was pretty sure that foam was red. Shaking off the vague sense of discomfort that caused, Sen killed the man. He had suffered enough already.

He pressed forward, cutting through some trees until he stepped out onto one of the paths that wound between the nearby buildings. He saw a figure crouched over one of the beacons of life in his spiritual sense. They were shaking the prone body, no doubt hoping to shake them out of the terror trance that Sen’s killing intent had caused. It took longer than it probably should have, but the crouched figure slowly straightened and turned to look at Sen. The man looked ghastly. Dried blood streaked his face and there was a tension in them that suggested they were having to put a lot of effort into staving off the pressure of Sen’s killing intent. Despite that, he met Sen’s gaze with clear eyes.

“I take it that you’re responsible for this?” asked the man.

Sen inclined his head. He felt the other man try to extend his spiritual sense, but it was too much. The man staggered before he put his full attention back on pushing away the pressure that threatened to drive him back into unconsciousness. Shaking his head, the man fixed Sen with hard eyes.

“And the rest of the sect?” demanded the Twisted Blade cultivator.

“Dead or fleeing.”

The cultivator grimaced and asked, “How many are fleeing?”

“Not many,” admitted Sen. “I let the surviving qi-condensing cultivators flee.”

The other man blinked a few times before his expression went bleak. It seemed he had understood the implication. The man went to open his mouth but Sen cut him off.

“This is no worse than your sect has done a dozen times. You only think it’s different because it’s happening to you. And you’re no more worthy of survival than any of the people you killed in a sect war.”

The man’s face went rigid before anger cracked through.

“These cultivators are helpless. This is—” the man trailed off.

Sen wasn’t sure what the man had meant to say. It was probably something about it being unfair. He assumed the other man had realized the futility of complaining about fairness to a cultivator. There were few things in the world less fair than cultivation. Even taking the first steps into cultivation offered a dramatically lengthened life. That certainly had to look unfair to the mortals. Lucky encounters could catapult a cultivator forward from qi-condensing to foundation formation or from foundation formation to core formation. Those encounters were by definition unfair to everyone who had worked just as hard. Favored sons and daughters of sects enjoyed more resources and better resources than other and even more talented sect members.

Cultivation was a small universe of unfairnesses stacked one on top of the next for those who rose toward the peak. Sen’s own nigh-impossible rise to the very cusp of the nascent soul stage in less than twenty years was evidence of that. He had benefited from the almost insurmountable advantage of being the sole student of nascent soul demigods. He’d had lucky encounters that most cultivators would commit wholesale murder to get. He’d been the recipient of the best resources and been able to leverage his education to make his own incredibly high-grade resources, at least in terms of pills and elixirs. Then, there was whoever or whatever was out there in the shadows manipulating his life to ensure that his ascent continued at its meteoric pace.

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Of course, existence wasn’t as unbalanced as all of that might suggest. He’d endured more pain in his short life than most cultivators ten times his age. A normal cultivator might face one serious tribulation in a century. Sen knew he’d evaded more tribulations than he’d faced, but that didn’t make the handful he’d endured any less agonizing. That was without even considering the tortuous rigors of body cultivation. Most body cultivators spread that process out over decades or centuries, not a handful of years. Sen couldn’t count the number of times he’d come close to death. He doubted any other cultivator his age had been hunted by demonic cultivators or battled nascent soul cultivators to the death, let alone been forced to conduct a sect war for the very survival of his own sect. He’d had pain, misery, and responsibility heaped on his head.

He knew that he’d brought some of that down on himself. He had chosen to start a sect, after all. He’d known there would be consequences to that. But he hadn’t chosen a near-suicidally lethal body cultivation path. He hadn’t chosen to enrage a cabal of demonic cultivators. Sen strongly suspected that the heavens were imposing some kind of balance on him. He had benefited in outsized ways from his situation, and he was forced to deal with outsized problems. When Sen considered it as a whole, he firmly felt that he was enduring unfair risks. The problem with that kind of thinking was that it didn’t get him anywhere. Even if it was unfair, that fact did nothing to change his circumstances. The problems were still before him. Just as he was the problem before this Twisted Blade cultivator. It wasn’t fair. It just was.

The man must have gone through a similar line of thought or guessed some of Sen’s thoughts from his expression. Still, Sen had to give the cultivator credit. Rather than give up, he tried a different kind of appeal. It was a hopeless, pointless appeal, but the man did try.

“We’re clearly no threat to you. If you can do this by yourself, we’d never have the strength to defy you. Is there no mercy in you?”

Sen did ponder that for a moment. This sect was all but dead now. Even if Sen walked away, it would probably take centuries for this sect to become anything like it was. Especially after he stripped it of every resource worth taking. Of course, saying they were no threat to him wasn’t the same thing as them being no threat. These cultivators would be a dire threat to almost everyone from Sen’s sect if they were caught away from the compound. That was the threat that Sen needed to eliminate.

“There is still mercy in me,” said Sen. “So, let me ask you this. Have you participated in a sect war?”

“Yes,” said the man with wariness and hope mingling on his face

“I see. During those sect wars, how many cultivators did you spare in the name of mercy?”

The other cultivator stared at Sen, looking slightly aghast. Sen supposed that what he’d done

was

cruel, but he hadn’t been the one to bring up mercy. Plus, his spiritual sense had already told him that man was trying to buy time. He could feel two other cultivators approaching. They probably imagined that if they all attacked him at the same time, it would give them a chance. Then again, from the man’s pale face, maybe he didn’t know the others were coming.

“None,” said the other cultivator. “I spared none.”

“At least, you’re honest,” observed Sen.

He glanced at the jian he held in each hand before he pressed lightning qi into them. He still couldn’t believe how smooth it was. If there was resistance, he hadn’t been able to find it. The qi turned the blades into sparking, crackling harbingers of death. The Twisted Blade cultivator’s face went from almost resigned to pure desperation.

“Wait!” the man almost screamed. “Is there

nothing

that will stay your hand?”

Sen’s first instinct was to say

no

. He had come here to end the Twisted Blade Sect and any chance of its resurrection. Leaving any of these people alive seemed innately counter to those ends. The only way he’d let them live was if they couldn’t achieve either of those goals. The only way that could happen was if they weren’t cultivators anymore. The only way to do that was to kill them. Sen hesitated. It wasn’t the

only

way. It was almost the only way.

“There is one way,” Sen finally said. “This goes for the two of you hiding out there in the shadows as well.”

Sen lifted a jian and pointed at one spot of anonymous darkness and then another. Hope bloomed in the eyes of the man Sen had been talking to.

“What? What must we do?”

“Destroy your cultivation.”

“What?” asked the man, looking like Sen had already run him through.

“You want to live? Fine. I’ll let you live, but you will not live as cultivators. You may live as mortals.”

It wasn’t a choice. Not really. Cultivators invested lifetimes in advancing. They consumed fortunes worth of resources, risked their lives, and braved the wrath of the heavens. After all of that, for them to willingly destroy their own cultivation was about as likely as asking the sun to rise in the west and having it happen. Still, one of them might be desperate enough not to die that they’d take him up on it. He didn’t think any of them would, but they might. He could give them a little time to decide about their fates. He focused his attention on the one who had been doing all of the bargaining. The man looked furious.

“What kind of mercy is that?”

“The only kind you’ll get. This sect is a cancer, and I intend to kill it. I will not let you walk away from here with the knowledge and power to start over again. So, choose. Die as cultivators or live as mortals.”