novelraw Book 12: Chapter 43: You’ll Have to Try Harder
Book 12: Chapter 43: You’ll Have to Try Harder
Book 12: Chapter 43: You’ll Have to Try HarderSen did feel the tiniest bit of pity for Magistrate Hu. The man had somehow found himself with the unenviable task of denying a powerful cultivator things they wanted. Then, that same cultivator had announced that he was, in fact, the king of the country they all stood in. It was an impossible position to be in for a mortal, especially one confronted not only with a cultivator but an army. The magistrate stood there, trembling in obvious terror, as he tried to think of anything he could possibly say.
It wasn’t lost on Sen that this confrontation had almost certainly been engineered by ambitious local families with some obvious goading by the Soaring Skies Sect. Sen was actually very curious to see what the magistrate decided to do. Not that he let his pity show. He simply watched the magistrate grow paler and sweatier as time passed. Sen also didn’t let it show that he could hear how fast the man’s heart was beating. It got fast enough that he wasn’t sure the old man could take the pressure. It’ll be inconvenient if he dies before I decide if he needs to die, thought Sen. I guess I can change directions for a moment.
“While you figure out how to answer that life-changing question, perhaps one of you can tell me who ordered the gates barred,” said Sen.
“I did,” said a hard-eyed woman that Sen didn’t remember.
“Really?”
“Yes.”
“Why was that?”
“We might have run out of food if we’d let all those filthy peasants into the city.”
Sen eyed the woman for a moment, a little shocked that she’d actually had the nerve to say that out loud.
“You felt it was appropriate to condemn the people who grew that very food for you? You thought brutal death at the teeth and claws of spirit beasts was an appropriate reward for their diligence?”A shadow of uncertainty crossed the woman’s face at those questions. Sen maintained a cool expression as he waited. His eyes shifted slightly to a spot directly behind the woman. If he didn’t know better, he’d have thought that Misty Peak had taken up position behind her. There was a familiar sensation that told him a nine-tail fox was there. He just wasn’t sure where the fox had come from, nor why they were standing there. The woman’s face hardened.
“I don’t owe you any explanations. We don’t answer to the kingdom anymore. Where were you when we were being attacked?”
“Killing spirit beasts,” said Sen. “I suppose you’re right that you don’t owe me an explanation. The dead don’t owe anyone anything.”
“What?” asked the woman before the hidden fox decapitated her without revealing themselves.
Blood splattered everyone nearby, causing some of them to shout and scream. Others went very still as the consequences of their actions became very clear. To any mortals watching, it would no doubt appear that Sen had used some kind of invisible technique to execute the woman. Cultivators would know he hadn’t, but he doubted most of them would know what had actually happened. He was comfortable with all of that.
“So, that’s your answer?” asked Sen, turning his attention back to Hu Ningkai.
The magistrate didn’t appear to have even heard Sen’s words. The man was staring at the body of the woman. More specifically, he was staring at the severed place where her head used to be as it leaked blood onto the ground.
“Magistrate!” Sen snapped.
The old man tore his gaze away from the dead woman to look at Sen.
“I think she provided your answer for you. I have to assume that all of the people here with you are of a similar mindset. Pity. I had hoped to retain some of the mortal leadership, but I rarely get everything I want. As the king, I find you all guilty of treason. No, wait,” said Sen, thinking.
A wave of relief passed through the mortals until he spoke again.
“It’s not treason. You didn’t actually wage war on us. I find you all guilty of insurrection. The sentence is death, to be carried out immediately. Unless, that is, the one holding your leash and hiding like a coward would like to show himself.”
Sen shifted his gaze to a spot about twenty feet over the city wall. He’d known that someone from the Soaring Skies Sect would be there to see how this meeting went. No one went through all the trouble of arranging something like this and then didn’t show up to see how it went. It had just taken a while for him to actually find where they were hiding. He’d never seen someone use wind qi to craft an illusion like that before. It wasn’t as good as the fox illusions, but it hadn’t needed to be this time. They should have tried to ambush him before he found them. That would have been the smart move.
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Now that he knew what he was looking for, though, he’d never be tricked the same way again. The technique itself wasn’t all that impressive. The water illusion that protected the spring back in the Clear Spring Sect had been much better. Of course, that illusion had likely taken a long time to make. He imagined that whoever the Soaring Skies Sect had floating up there had probably been forced to throw it together without the kind of preparation that made such things smooth.
“No?” asked Sen. “Well, maybe I’ll just join you.”
Having seen the illusion in use, it hadn’t been hard for Sen to work out how to do the same thing. If anything, Sen thought that his version was probably more efficient and more effective. The hidden cultivator didn’t seem to truly panic until Sen began hiding. He often neglected the ability because it put such severe limitations on his spiritual sense. The transition to being nascent soul had finally lifted those limitations enough that Sen felt far freer to use hiding during combat. It still inhibited his spiritual sense at any distance beyond five hundred feet away, but that was more than far enough for any one-on-one fight.
Once Sen hid, though, the other cultivator immediately tried to change positions. He let them before he casually flew over to hover directly behind them and spoke. 𝐑𝓪Ꞑǒ฿ĘS̩
“You’ll have to try harder.”
What followed for the next minute or so was a furious mid-air exchange of traditional wind blades from the still obscured Soaring Skies cultivator, and the red-tinged version favored by the Vermillion Blade Sect. The mortals below likely had no idea exactly what was happening, except perhaps to draw the obvious conclusion that cultivators were fighting. The one thing the other cultivator’s illusion had done was obscure their cultivation stage. Based on the strength of their techniques, Sen was willing to bet they were an elder in the sect and probably also in the nascent soul stage.
The fact that they hadn’t instantly attacked him with overwhelming force suggested they weren’t that far ahead of him in advancement. Then again, he thought, maybe this barrage of wind blades is supposed to be overwhelming force. It would have been very harrowing for Sen to face such a thing when he’d still been in core formation. Much like Song Lan and Xu Xiao Dan, he wasn’t in a hurry to kill a nascent soul cultivator. Not until they’d proven they were unwilling to fight. They were simply too valuable on the battlefield. Of course, that limited his options. If he just wanted to kill them, he had more than a few ways to get that done. Keeping them alive and more or less intact was a far more difficult challenge.
Keeping his own barrage of vermillion-edged wind blades going, Sen slowly began adjusting his position in the air. The other cultivator clearly didn’t know where he was, since they didn’t move. Sen added in the occasional lightning bolt out of a clear sky to keep them unbalanced and uncertain. He figured that there was no benefit in coming up from behind them again. So, instead, he came at them from below. He was cautious about it. If they could feel his position, somehow, being directly below them could prove hazardous. Then again, if they could feel his position, he doubted they’d be calculating enough to let him get that close without taking action.
Satisfied that they didn’t know he was there, Sen reached up and grabbed them around the ankle. It was a surprisingly delicate ankle. The shock of being grabbed seemed to be one distraction too many. The illusion around them shattered. Sen had just long enough to see the woman’s flabbergasted expression before he twisted in the air and hurled her into the ground. There was an explosion of dirt that flew in every direction. An explosion he flew directly through. The other cultivator had already managed to get up to one knee, proving how resilient nascent soul cultivators could be. She didn’t have the awareness to block or avoid the crushing punch he delivered to her head.
Nascent soul or not, that last blow overwhelmed whatever reserves had let her start to recover. Her eyes rolled up into the back of her head, and she went limp. Sen was dragging her out of the moderately-sized crater by one leg when Song Lan, Xu Xiao Dan, and Elder Deng all arrived. The first two just looked exasperated, while Elder Deng appeared mortified at what he was witnessing.
“What have you done?” he cried.
“What? I feel like I was particularly gentle with her, all things considered.”
“Gentle?” asked Deng.
“Well, she’s still breathing. There aren’t bits and pieces of her scattered everywhere. I didn’t hit her with seventy-five lightning bolts or plunge her into a lake of lava I summoned from the depths of the earth. Given that she was here to watch those poor, stupid mortals admit to an insurrection on the orders of your sect, I feel like I was quite restrained.”
“Elder Deng,” said a voice that made Sen want to groan.
Turning a disgruntled look on Laughing River, Sen asked, “What are you doing here?”
The eldest of the nine-tail foxes gave Sen a beaming smile.
“Come now. Is that any way to treat your future great, great, great, great—” Laughing River appeared to be counting on his fingers before he shrugged in defeat. “Grandfather-in-law.”
Sen felt a world of headaches he’d known nothing about abruptly set themselves to collide with his skull in the very near future. Before he could address that ludicrous comment or the many odd looks he was getting, Laughing River continued.
“Elder Deng, having seen this young man put up a real fight, I assure you, this was him being the very soul of gentleness.”
“And who are you?” asked Elder Deng.
Sen slammed a wind barrier in place around the small group before any more of their conversation could carry. The elder fox sent him another grin.
“Me? I suppose I neglected to introduce myself. I am Laughing River, King of the Nine-Tail Foxes.”
Elder Deng and Xu Xiao Dan both stared at the fox-man in disbelief. Song Lan turned a profoundly disapproving look on Sen.
“What?” he asked, taking a step back from the woman.
“Grandfather-in-law? Are you engaged to that fox-woman you’ve been keeping?”
“First of all, no. Second of all, that was your takeaway?”