Unintended Cultivator

V13 Chapter 56 – Welcome, Your Imperial Majesty

“You don’t understand what you’ve done, do you?” asked Misty Peak.

Sen lifted an eyebrow at her and asked, “And just what is it that I’ve supposedly done this time?”

“Well, at the moment, about half of the fire cultivators who were there for your little demonstration now think that you’re some kind of god.”

“That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. And that’s saying something because I’ve heard some of the stories people tell about me. Besides, what I did wasn’t impressive. They could have done it themselves if they’d given it any thought.”

The nine-tail fox gave him a disappointed shake of the head.

“You still don’t understand how these sect cultivators think. Let me guess. You saw one of them use the technique and had a practical thought like, ‘I can make that work better.’ Something along those lines?”

“Well, yeah,” said Sen.

He felt a little put off at being so easy to read, but he supposed that this one hadn’t taken any great personal insight to figure out.

“For sect cultivators, they’re taught that the techniques they learn are impossibly valuable. They usually don’t say that they’re perfect the way that they are, but that’s the general attitude. In other words, it doesn’t occur to them to try to improve a technique passed down from their patriarch’s patriarch. However, a few sects consider their techniques sacred, so it’s considered actual heresy to try to improve them.”

“That’s almost as ridiculous as thinking I’m a god.”

“Agreed, but that’s why there’s also a small contingent of cultivators who now think you’re some kind of devil.”

“Oh, well, that’s just wonderful news. It’s always reassuring to find out that the people going into battle with me believe I’m a devil. I’m sure that won’t come back to haunt me in the future.”

“They are the minority, if that helps,” said Misty Peak.

“It really doesn’t, but there’s nothing to be done about it now.”

“Out of idle curiosity, what exactly did you do? I’ve heard a lot of garbled tales about it, but there isn’t any consensus.”

“I just took a badly constructed technique and fixed it. Took out the part that only served vanity, and layered in some qi compression to increase the effectiveness.”

Sen could tell from the fox-woman’s expression that she didn’t really understand.

“Why don’t I just show you?” he asked.

“That might be for the best.”

Sen looked around at the army from where he and the nine-tail stood on a qi platform. If his original demonstration had already created chaos among the cultivators, he didn’t need to add to that problem. He enclosed them in an opaque sphere using shadow qi. Then, he showed her both versions of the technique. After he released the improved fire fist technique, he allowed the shadow sphere to disperse.

“Like I said, I just fixed it to work better.”

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Misty Peak just looked at him with a flat expression for most of five seconds before she said, “You’re ridiculous. And now I understand why the fire cultivators are all having a crisis of faith.”

“It’s not that much better. Honestly, even my version isn’t that good. There are way better ways to employ fire qi. I just did that because the foundation formation cultivator already knew the original technique. It should be easier for him to modify it than to learn some entirely new technique.”

“For someone who is so good at cultivation, you have a shockingly uneven understanding of other cultivators.”

Sen didn’t have a chance to respond to that because something in his spiritual sense caught his attention. It was someone racing back toward them from farther ahead on the road. He’d taken to drastically restricting the reach and strength of his spiritual sense a while back. Master Feng told him that, even at low levels, it was taxing on the mortals and even some of the cultivators to be under it all the time. Sen had taken the advice seriously. Usually, he kept it to within a few hundred feet of him to help ensure he spotted any would-be assassins. The mortal was more than close enough now that Sen could hear the man shouting.

“Lord Lu! Lord Lu! I must speak to Lord Lu!”

Misty Peak disappeared behind one of her illusions as Sen lowered the qi platform to the ground. The mortal scout could barely speak when he finally ran up.

“Lord Lu,” gasped the man. “Ahead. On the road. You need to see!”

Sen had no idea what the problem could be, but the fear was evident in the scout’s eyes. Without a word, Sen activated his qinggong technique and raced down the road. It didn’t take him long to find what the scout had seen. There were three heads neatly spaced across the road. Almost on their own, his hands clenched into fists. He recognized what was left of the three cultivator scouts. They didn’t look to have died well or quickly. As fury threatened to overwhelm him, Sen’s mind was analyzing what he saw. There were no scavengers nearby. There weren’t even any insects on the severed heads. That meant that these had to have been placed recently. Very recently.

If Sen had been given this task, he would have fled as fast as he could. It was the only reasonable thing to do. But the spirit beasts didn’t always do what he found reasonable. Sen’s allowed his spiritual sense to expand outwards to its very limits, looking for anything that struck him as out of the ordinary. He found something near the outer edges of what he could perceive that felt wrong to him. Yet it was also the only thing within range that could have left those heads there. Deciding that he could deal with something that was off, Sen once more activated his qinggong technique. He took a straight path toward whatever it was that he had sensed. When trees got in his way, he simply knocked them aside.

A part of him understood that this was probably a trap. Just killing those cultivators would have been enough to prevent them from reporting back anything they had learned. Leaving the heads, though, was a message and a taunt. It was an act designed to infuriate, and it had worked. The fact that the thing he’d sensed had stopped moving away also suggested that he was doing what someone wanted. They had separated him from the army and his most powerful supporters. Granted, Master Feng and the other nascent soul cultivators could cover that distance very quickly. Very quickly was a world apart from immediately. In a life-or-death battle at Sen’s level, fractions of a second could decide the results. His people could very well arrive only to find his corpse.

Yet, he couldn’t bring himself to wait. He had sent those cultivators not just to their deaths, but to ugly, painful deaths. It didn’t even matter to him that they had volunteered. If he hadn’t given the order, they wouldn’t have gone. He couldn’t undo that decision or restore their lives. The only thing he could do was take revenge on their behalf. If that meant sacrificing some of his own safety, then so be it. He was sure that everyone would berate him later and say that these weren’t things that an emperor should do. An emperor sent people to enact their revenge. They didn’t go to get it on their own. Sen even recognized that there was some truth to that, but he just couldn’t let this go. He’d felt guilty since the moment he’d sent those cultivators ahead. This was one time when he needed to take vengeance himself, or it would haunt him forever.

When he crashed into a clearing where the thing was waiting, Sen was not prepared for what he saw waiting for him.

“Changpu?” he asked, not sure if the creature before him should or even could be called that anymore.

“Well, well, if it isn’t Emperor Lu,” said the twisted monster in a mocking tone. “I just knew that you’d come. Welcome, your imperial majesty, to your death.”