Li Yi Nuo had always thought of her sect as being rural. That was until she’d gone off to meet Sen’s nigh-mythological spear teacher. It had been a long journey. Longer than it needed to be. She found herself almost shaking with rage at the sheer number of times she’d been dragged into some problem that had absolutely nothing to do with her. It was like the cultivators in this part of the kingdom simply had no respect whatsoever for cultivators from other sects, even core cultivators. And that was to say nothing of local nobles finding out about her and insisting she attend one ridiculous function or another, only to find out that they were trying to use her to advance some equally ridiculous scheme of theirs. To make it all even worse, she couldn’t go a day without hearing a story about him. Judgment’s Gale. The great cultivator. The hero.

They had clearly never met the man. If they had, they would be a lot more afraid and a lot less worshipful. Li Yi Nuo sighed and chided herself for that unkind thought. If his experience in this part of the kingdom had been anything like her experience, it was no wonder the man was so deeply mistrustful of sects or anything that even smacked of official power. Such were her thoughts as she entered the town of Orchard’s Reach. Looking around, she was struck by just how small the place was. She struggled to imagine Lu Sen ever setting foot in such a tiny, dirty, unremarkable place. How it had ever contained his personality, to say nothing of his person, was a mystery she feared would never be solved. Although, she thought, I guess it didn’t contain him in the end.

Her impressions of the place did not improve much as she moved toward what could charitably be called the heart of the town. It got a little cleaner, but that was about the only positive change she noted. It was also clear that they didn’t get a lot of cultivators in core formation coming and going. Men and women alike stared at her. Some puffed-up local tried to saunter over to her and was stopped cold with a single, imperious look of disdain that made him go white in the face. She almost felt bad for the man. She’d been in a sect for a long time, which meant she’d already grown accustomed to the presence of ridiculously attractive people. On top of that, she’d stood within a foot of Lu Sen. After all of that, the bar for what counted as attractive was just so damned high that almost everyone seemed ugly. With a sense of relief, she spotted the shop she was looking for and went inside.

A young woman who seemed only mildly dazed by her presence directed Li Yi Nuo to the manager, a stern woman of middle years who greeted her politely.

“And how may Grandmother Lu’s Heavenly Wares serve the honored cultivator?” asked the manager.

“I am looking for a man named Kho,” said Li Yi Nuo. “I was told that I should be able to connect with him here by one Lu Sen.”

The manager brightened at Lu Sen’s name.

“The young master directed you here,” she said. “He must not have known.”

Li Yi Nuo felt a pit open up inside of her. “He must not have known what?”

“I’m sorry, honored cultivator, but the one called Kho has left the area for a time.”

Li Yi Nuo felt something trying to well up inside of her. I came all this way, she thought. I came here, and it was for nothing? It took her a moment to marshal her composure, but when she felt like she could speak calmly, she addressed the manager.

“Do you know where he went?” asked Li Yi Nuo.

The manager looked particularly sheepish when she answered. “I was told that he was going to go west. To see the young master.”

Li Yi Nuo ground her teeth together to trap the thing that was ever more urgently trying to escape from inside of her. Kho Jaw-Long was going west. To see Sen. He was going to the place where she had traveled from. She felt like the universe was mocking her.

“Thank you,” she said to the manager and left the shop.

Once outside, she activated her qinggong technique and escaped the wretched little cesspit of a town as fast as she could. When she was several miles away, she stopped in the middle of the road, threw back her head, and screamed in raw frustration.If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

***

Feng Ming lashed out with a kick that connected with the dragon’s chest. Said chest imploded under the force of that blow, snuffing out the ancient creature’s life in an instant. The massive corpse of the dragon rocketed away from the nascent soul cultivator and slammed into a mountain so deep in the wilds that no human name had ever graced the peak. After the dragon passed through the mountain and reduced it to a large pile of rubble, he realized that it wouldn’t ever get that name. I’ll just call it Dragon’s Folly, thought Ming with a snort of amusement. He hovered in the air for a minute or two, waiting. When no one came out to greet him, he finally lost patience. Enhancing his voice with qi until it rang out like thunder, Ming spoke.

“You made me kill your pet. Now, why don’t you come on out like a good little spirit beast and have a chat with old Grandfather Feng?”

There was another long pause before a figure rose into the air to face him. The figure looked like a human man, with long, oddly pale hair, and dark eyes, but the man felt all wrong. He couldn’t quite put a finger on why, but something told him that the figure before him had started out life as some kind of a serpent. The problem was that this was not the being Feng Ming had come looking for. The creature was strong, certainly, but not nearly strong enough. He sighed.

“Really? A lackey?” asked Ming. “Oh, I see. He sent out the dragon and left you as a backup so he’d have time to run away. That’s some king you have. Afraid to come out and face a lone, old wandering cultivator.”

“He’s well aware of who you are. Why should he face you? That benefits only you,” said the snake man.

“Well,” said Ming, thoughtfully, “it seems your coward, I mean, your king, has been stirring up the spirit beasts. Making them angry enough to do stupid things like invade human towns and kill everyone. I think it’s high time for that foolishness to stop. Otherwise, there’s going to be a war.”

“That war has always existed. Even if your kind doesn’t know it.”

“No. There has not always been a war,” said Ming, his voice growing cold and angry. “If there had been a war, none of you would still be walking this world.”

“Human cultivators,” sneered the snake man. “Your arrogance will be your downfall. Look at you. You came all this way, just to die in a trap.”

At those words, dozens, then hundreds, then thousands of spirit beasts rose into the sky to form a massive circle around him. Ming looked around curiously, then lifted an eyebrow at the sneering snake man.

“Is this all you brought?”

The snake man seemed taken aback at the question. “Your false bravado will not save you.”

Ming looked at the jian in his hand for a minute, gave it a fond smile, and then sheathed it.

“The funny thing about being me is that, whenever I’m within about a thousand miles of another human being or cultivator, I have to restrain myself. But here, with all of you, so far from the rest of humanity, I don’t have to worry that I’m going to accidentally scare some poor farmer to death or ignite a sect war just by acting. Here, I can actually stretch myself a little. Just a little, though.”

The snake man narrowed his eyes. “What are you babbling about?”

Ming smiled and unleashed his killing intent. Spirit beasts died by the hundreds. Some of them simply fell from the sky, their lives extinguished. Others exploded under the pressure, sending a red rain down onto the forests below. The ones that didn’t die immediately were rocked by the force of that intangible, terrible intent, and rendered all but insensate. Ming locked eyes with the snake man, who looked aghast at the carnage he was witnessing, and snapped his fingers. Thousands of wind blades appeared all around him. Except, these were not the the wind blades of lesser cultivators. They weren’t vague distortions in the air. They looked like solid sheets of crystal, their edges so fine and sharp that the very air screamed as it was torn asunder. It was a sea of solidified death.

The snake man understood what was about to happen and was rendered powerless to stop it as Ming seized him in bands of air stronger than any metal in the world. The snake man tried to scream a warning, but it meant nothing as the merciless will of Fate’s Razor unleashed his anger. As those wind blades raced toward the assembled army of spirit beats, a howl like something from the void itself rose around them. The rain of red turned into a flood that drenched the world below them. In mere moments, Ming and the snake man were only sapient beings within miles. Everything else with a mind to know had either died or was racing away like the jaws of death were closing around them. Ming floated over to the snake man.

“You tell your false king that the war he wants to start so badly is over. If he continues down this path, you will be hunted like prey. You will be killed like the base creatures of the land and sky. Your children will be caged and farmed like livestock. This is my promise to you,” said Feng Ming, his face a mask of conviction. “Now, go.”

With a trivial effort of will, he sent the snake man hurtling into the distance. Well, that should buy us a little time, at any rate, thought Ming. Looking around at what he’d been made to do, he shook his head.

“What a waste,” he whispered. “What a stupid, senseless waste.”