Unintended Cultivator

V13 Chapter 47 – “Secret” Technique

Wu Yong tried to anticipate what Lu Sen would do. It was proving far more challenging than he’d expected. In part, that was because it was so difficult to gather any real information about the newly self-crowned emperor. The stories…No, the legends about the man’s power were rampant but inconsistent. No one seemed to know what kind of qi Lu Sen specialized in. There were many stories that suggested he favored lightning, but that might have just been the influence of Kho Jaw-Long. However, the stories suggested that he was equally at home using everything from fire and earth qi to metal qi.

There were even unbelievable tales that he could use shadow qi, something that Wu Yong had considered little more than a myth. While cultivators who could use more than one kind of qi were rare, they did exist. There were limits to that ability, though. In most cases, they could use two kinds of qi. A feat that Wu Yong found almost impossible to imagine. It had been the work of a lifetime to master his own wood qi. A cultivator who could freely switch between five or six kinds of qi? The word monster didn’t do that justice. If it were true. Only a fool accepted all the stories they heard at face value, but it would take an equal fool to ignore such tales when they were so widespread. He was no fool, and so he wouldn’t underestimate this man’s capabilities.

None of which got him any closer to anticipating Lu Sen’s attacks. Of course, the lack of reliable information was only part of the problem. The other part of the problem was Lu Sen himself. Wu Yong had been a cultivator for a very long time. He’d faced countless other cultivators in battle. Through that long, hard experience, he had mastered himself. Or so he thought. When facing others, he’d become accustomed to reading them. Movements so subtle that mortal eyes couldn’t perceive them. Infinitesimal changes in breathing. Even a faint shift in his opponents’ pupils could warn him of an impending attack. After all, no matter how experienced you became, battle was ultimately a threat to your life. It affected you.

Just as he read others, he assumed that they read him. It became a struggle of perception as much as physical might and qi techniques. Whoever read their opponent more effectively won. It was how he had overcome so many other, stronger cultivators on his slow rise to becoming patriarch of the Divine Blade Sect. That and no small amount of skill with the jian. They were called the Divine Blade Sect for a reason. Yet, all of the things Wu Yong was used to seeing in his opponents, all those telltale signs, were absent. Lu Sen looked calm, unnaturally calm, as if his mind were on something else entirely. It was unnerving.

Nor could Wu Yong rely on pure skill. Lu Sen had been trained by Feng Ming, and the stories suggested that the student had learned his lessons well. There was a temptation to use his “secret” technique immediately. It was what most half-step nascent soul cultivators would do in this situation. Not that his technique was all that secret. It was beyond the realm of hope that Lu Sen wouldn’t know about half-step techniques, but there was a chance that he wouldn’t have learned the details. Still, thought Wu Yong, better to reserve that for a moment of desperation. I’ll test the emperor’s skill with the bladefirst. I may discover that it has been exaggerated in the stories.

As he moved forward, Wu Yong saw the first recognizable change in Lu Sen’s demeanor. There was the faintest flicker of surprise. There and gone again, to be sure, but it had been there. It also confirmed that the emperor knew about half-step techniques and how powerful they could be. He’d been expecting it. That meant that he’d either fought someone like Wu Yong before or been explicitly warned about the danger. Not that the source of the knowledge mattered, only that Lu Sen possessed it. Then, the time for analysis was done. Wu Yong opened with his favorite style, the Serpent’s Fang. It focused on deception, confusion, and speed.

He moved his swords in a distracting pattern meant to draw the eye and confuse the senses of even hardened cultivators. A feint with the right was immediately followed by a rising slash from the left. He was stunned when both the feint and the slash were turned aside. He’d felt the force of those parries all the way up his arms. It had happened so fast that he couldn’t be sure, but he thought that Lu Sen had used a variation of the Falcon Claw style. It was a direct counter to the Serpent’s Fang, meeting deception and speed with equal speed and implacable force. He immediately shifted to the Tumbling Cliff. It was less a style than a tactic that focused on raining down crushing blows at close range. Its only goal was to drive an opponent back.

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Lu Sen met that with what looked like a variation of the Smoke and Wind style. Wu Yong found himself confronted by parries that moved in a way that looked like drifting smoke, but pushed aside strikes like wind pushing aside leaves. He tried style after style, only to find himself countered at every turn. And, throughout it all, Lu Sen wore that same, unnaturally calm expression. It was only after nearly two minutes of this exercise in futility that Wu Yong realized something very important. Lu Sen wasn’t attacking. He was merely defending himself, apparently willing to wait and see what would happen next.

It should have been infuriating. A part of Wu Yong wanted to be angry about it, but he was struggling to find the prideful anger that came so naturally to all cultivators. Perhaps, if Lu Sen had been openly taunting him, it would have come. Any other cultivator would have taunted him if they had turned aside every strike. They would have boasted about their strength and skill, while doing everything they could to diminish his own. A little piece of him was angry that the other man wasn’t striking back, but Wu Yong had the sense that the fight would have been over long since if that had happened.

He also knew that most such fights would have descended into an exchange of qi techniques by now. Unfortunately, wood qi wasn’t particularly useful in that regard. It had many uses. He could reinforce his body in ways that other cultivators couldn’t. He could even heal himself with it to some extent. Yet, for direct offense, he was mostly limited to setting traps. Those traps could be absolutely devastating, but they required two commodities he wasn’t going to be afforded. Time and secrecy. Any trap he tried to create now would be obvious and easy to avoid. Not that he imagined he would be given the minutes of uninterrupted concentration necessary to set them. Lu Sen might be patient, but no opponent was that patient or foolish.

Wu Yong very obviously backed off. He expected an attack then. It was the sensible course of action. No one retreated in a situation like this unless they were on the back foot. That made it the ideal time to press one’s advantage. The attack never came. Lu Sen simply studied him with those calm eyes. He doesn’t fight like someone as young as he’s supposed to be, thought Wu Yong. He’s too controlled. Too patient. Then again, it seems he can afford to be patient. If there was a path to victory here, Wu Yong realized that it wasn’t going to come through any normal exchange of blows or techniques. His opponent was too strong, too fast, and too prepared for that. He was going to have to do what everyone had expected him to do from the start. It seemed that the emperor sensed the change in him.

“Is it time, then?” asked Lu Sen.

Wu Yong gave him a hollow smile and said, “It appears that way.”

There was nothing subtle about this technique, which was why it wasn’t much of a secret. He knew his enlightenment had been incomplete. It was why he was a half-step nascent soul. Wu Yong suspected that, if his enlightenment had been more complete, the technique would show more flexibility. Unfortunately, that was a dream for a future that might never arrive. He focused his attention in the particular way that the enlightenment had guided him. Something that wasn’t quite fire and wasn’t quite divine qi erupted over his swords.

He’d never seen anything that could withstand a blow when his swords were like this. They had cleanly pierced through every technique and cleaved through every weapon. Yet, as he peered across the short distance between himself and Lu Sen, he didn’t see fear. All that he saw was interest on the other man’s face. There was nothing left to do but see if fate or Karma favored him this day. Wu Yong surged forward. There was no art to his strikes. No finesse. He simply aimed to cleave the head from Lu Sen’s shoulders. Mere heartbeats before the strikes would have landed, fear seized his mind as something beyond words erupted into existence. It was death. It was the void. It was the end of all things.

Then, Wu Yong’s swords were stopped as though he hadn’t poured all of his power and strength into them. He stared in mute horror at the swords that crackled with black, purple-hued lightning. The swords that had intercepted his own. There was a wrongness about those blades that made everything inside of him want to crawl away and hide. He barely even noticed as that dark power slowly ate through the power in his own swords. When the swords themselves crumbled away, he could barely muster any shock. All Wu Yong could see was Lu Sen, looking at him with eyes that had never doubted the outcome. This was never a fight, thought Wu Yong. Any man who can conjure a power like that and not be sent screaming into madness by it…I’m not sure they can be called a man at all.

One thing was certain, though. Whatever kind of creature Lu Sen was, he was the kind of creature that would collect on his debts. Wu Yong slowly sank to his knees and began to give his vow to the heavens.