Control. So much in cultivation depended on it. Without it, strikes would not find their mark, or be turned aside with ease. Without it, one could shred their qi channels to uselessness. Without control, techniques could run out of control. That was a lesson Sen had learned the hard way. Seeing the destruction he’d wrought in that abandoned town with his poorly controlled use of Heavens’ Rebuke had very nearly convinced him to swear it off altogether. Even as he directed the same technique at the thrashing, howling, impaled demonic cultivator, he focused on control. He would kill this man, Sen promised himself, not vaporize half a mile of forest. Yet, for all that cultivation called for control, for all that cultivators relied on it, there had to be room for the unknown, for the unpredictable, for the flower of strange fortune to bloom in their lives. Sen had been the recipient of that as well. Yet, in the moment, the blooming of that flower could look like a hideous, terrifying loss of control.
That was what Sen experienced as, in the barest sliver of time before Heavens’ Rebuke flew from the spearhead, something he didn’t plan for happened. To his horror, a tiny thread from that ribbon of strange qi flew free and lodged itself in the heart of his technique. There was no time to stop it, or even consider what it meant. There was only time for one brief upswell of uncertainty and fear as Sen felt the technique fundamentally change. Then, it was loosed on the demonic cultivator. While Sen expected the lance of purple-hued blackness with lightning crackling around it, what he got was a beam of iridescent light wreathed in that purple-hued black lightning. Sen was at a loss to even understand what happened next. While he hadn’t intentionally aimed it that way, that beam punched into the demonic cultivator dantian. Sen flinched when he heard the man’s core shatter.
That alone was enough to end the fight. That man would likely never cultivate again. Yet, it seemed the technique wasn’t through with him. That iridescent light seemed to suffuse the man from the inside out. That was when the man opened his mouth and started screaming. Foulness the likes of which Sen had never seen was pushed out of the man’s body only to be hungrily consumed by the purpled-hued black lightening that wreathed the man. The lightning left nothing behind, not even ash. When it seemed that the light had pushed every last trace of corruption out of the man, it faded away, only for the lightning to shoot into the man and take its terrible due. Without the benefits of an intact core to support his body, the lightning acted more like a pack of ravenous animals than anything else. It simply consumed the man from the outside in until nothing remained but a few charred and smoking bone fragments.
When it was over, Sen found himself staring at those bone fragments. He had done that. Somehow, someway, that technique had been born inside of him. He didn’t have words for what he felt. He wasn’t sorry that the man was dead. He wasn’t even sorry for how he’d killed him. Sen was absolutely certain that the man had gotten off easier than he deserved. Only countless acts of utter depravity, cultivation with components that no sane person would use, could possibly account for the corruption that had poured from that man’s skin. No, the problem was that Sen was all too certain that technique would have similar results on normal cultivators as well. What he’d just done hadn’t been killing. It hadn’t even been an execution. He had destroyed everything that man had ever been. And he’d done it in seconds.
The full weight of what he’d done descended on him. The danger of it bloomed fully formed in his mind. No one could know about that technique. Not that Sen planned to ever use it again. It seemed that every time he did, it got more wildly, insanely dangerous. Still, if word ever spread, if people ever found out that he could shatter their cultivation with one technique, he’d never be able to stop running. No threat of vengeance from terrifying nascent soul cultivators would be enough to shield him. Entire packs of core cultivators would hunt him down and destroy him. He’d never be safe again. Just as that realization struck home, a powerful hand seized his robes and spun him around. Lo Meifeng was staring at him, her eyes wild, afraid, and confused.
“What in all of the countless hells was that?” she screamed, jerking him back and forth by the robes. “You aren’t some random cultivator that Feng Ming picked as a hobby. You tell me who you are! You tell me now!”
Sen firmed his expression. “Stop.”
Lo Meifeng looked like she wanted to yell again, then seemed to realize what she’d been doing. Her face blanched, and she hurriedly took a step back. While she took a moment to visibly get ahold of herself, Sen looked over to Lifen. He struggled to pin down what her expression meant. It wasn’t fear, for which he was enormously grateful, but it was definitely something. It was a jumble of things. There were hints of awe in there, which he needed to put a stop to as soon as possible. There was also consideration in her eyes as if she’d thought she understood him and was reevaluating that. There were other things in there, too, and Sen didn’t have the experience or the mental resources to devote to sorting it all out. He did find it odd that, after her initial shock and horror at the bloodshed, she seemed calmer about all of it than the much more experienced Lo Meifeng. Maybe that’s the difference, thought Sen. Lo Meifeng has the experience to understand how bad this could all get.
“I apologize,” said Lo Meifeng, her face a calm mask. “I let my surprise get the better of me. Still, the questions stand. What did you just do?”
“It never happened,” said Sen.
“What?” asked both Lifen and Lo Meifeng at the same time.
“It never happened. We will talk about it here, now, once. Then, I will have an oath from both of you that you will never discuss it with anyone without my express permission.”
“Because, if knowledge about it spreads, his death becomes a certainty,” answered Lo Meifeng. “Every core stage cultivator on the continent would be baying for his blood.”
Given that clue, Lifen's face lit up with understanding, and then immediately went dark with a different kind of understanding. She considered all of it for a moment before she gave Sen a hard look.
“You don’t trust us to keep quiet.”
Sen shook his head. “I trust you to keep quiet in normal circumstances. I need that oath to ensure that no one can force the information from you.”
Lifen didn’t need any help connecting those dots. She grimaced, then nodded in understanding. “I can see why you’d think that was a possibility, given everything.”
“Yeah,” said Sen, more than a little bitter, before he looked at Lo Meifeng. “I’ll start with your second question since it’s easier. I’m no one.”
“Seriously, I’ll add it to my oath.”
“There’s nothing to add. I really am no one. I was living on the streets when Master Feng found me.”
“What about before that?”
“What about it? I’m not some lost prince or the scion of some great noble house if that’s what you’re thinking. Or, if I was, no one ever came looking for me.”
“That you know of,” offered Lifen.
Sen grudgingly conceded that point. “Yes, that I know of. But, really, even I know that’s just something that happens in stories. Can either of you think of a single time that something like that happened in the real world?”
Both women thought hard for a moment. Lifen shook her head.
“No, I guess I can’t,” said Lo Meifeng.
“Exactly. I’m confident that if someone managed to find out where I came from, they’d find out that my parents were just peasants who died young. Or they were peasants who abandoned me. Or some variation on that.”
“Fine,” said Lo Meifeng. “I’ll accept that, for the moment. Now, explain exactly what it is that you just did that man.”
So, Sen laid out the essentials, which didn’t really take that long. Of course, there were lots of questions, most of which elicited shrugs from Sen. He was short on useful facts about the technique. When he’d answered, or failed to have answers, for all of their questions, he extracted oaths from them both, sworn to the heavens and on their cultivation to never reveal any of what he’d just told them. After that, he looked out at the surrounding forest and sighed.
“What’s wrong?” asked Lifen.
“There’s a chance there’s still a few of them alive out there. I should go finish them off.”
“I can do it,” said Lo Meifeng.
Sen shot her a grateful look but declined. “If they’re alive, they’re probably half-mad or catatonic. I did that to them, so I should be the one to finish the job.”
With that, Sen walked into the trees to finish what he was trying very hard not to think of as a massacre at his hands.