Unintended Cultivator-Chapter 63Book 10: : Make An Entrance
Xie Moli walked down the hallway toward the room. She was careful to mimic the strong but measured steps of Lu Jia. She kept her expression stern, the same way the mistress of the manor always did. The collection of cultivators outside of Lu Sen’s room only glanced at her before turning their attention outward again, focused on the possibility of some more obvious threat. She had never expected such an opportunity to appear when she’d first presented herself here. Her intention had been to quietly, subtly undermine the House of Lu from within until it collapsed. Of course, events had outpaced her since then, and she’d had to be so very careful around Lo Meifeng. That woman was suspicion incarnate.
Still, who could have ever dreamed that the Blue Demon himself would be rendered helpless before anyone crafty enough to reach him? She didn’t need to get out into the city to know that someone would pay her a fortune beyond reason for ending his life. The man had many enemies, and it was always nice when life conspired to let you get paid while exacting a little personal vengeance. And if any man alive deserved to die, it was Lu Sen. So many of her family had been crushed beneath his heel. She’d genuinely despaired of ever getting close enough to the man to exact her profitable revenge, but then Lo Meifeng had left the manor. While Xie Moli could never have fooled her, it had been hard enough to keep her cultivation hidden, tricking that woman’s underlings was a different matter. They either weren’t talented enough or weren’t experienced enough to discern that she wore a false face crafted from qi.
She opened the door to the room and walked inside with none the wiser. She stared at the man in the bed. He looked like he might be dead already. He’d bled from his eyes, ears, and nose. It looked like he’d even coughed up some blood. It wouldn’t be the same as ending him with her own hand, but she’d still find it easy enough to rejoice at his death. She knew that the heavens were smiling on her when his chest rose and fell in a shallow breath. So, she thought, there’s a little life left in the bastard after all. I’ll solve that problem for him.
She quickly crossed the room and drew the dagger from inside her robes. She didn’t speak or spit on him the way she wanted to. She could do that after he was dead. She lifted the blade over his chest, the hand around the hilt only trembling slightly, and drove it straight down with every bit of her cultivator strength and speed. She didn’t even see him move. She just felt it when his hand locked around her arm and stopped it cold. He opened his eyes and turned his implacable gaze toward her. She felt a brief surge of qi. He nodded as though he’d gotten the answer to some question.
Again, she didn’t see it happen. One second, he was on the bed, and the next, he was looming over her like a mountain made of cold rage. She failed to jerk her arm free. Then, she tried to launch a qi technique at him. She barely even started to form the attack before something crushed it. The backlash hit her hard. She would have dropped straight to the floor if not for the hand wrapped around her arm like a manacle. The Blue Demon used that trapped arm to lift her up high enough that they were face-to-face. The backlash was still ravaging her, and she coughed blood all over the huge man. There was no sign on his impassive face that he’d even noticed the blood. He leaned in a little and spoke in a low, even tone.
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“You didn’t kill her, so I’ll spare your life,” he said. “But you did hurt her. So, you will be punished.”
Agony like nothing she’d ever felt before tore through her stomach and then radiated outward. It was blinding, like he’d reached into her very soul and was dragging red-hot pokers across it. She didn’t understand what was happening until her spiritual sense winked out, and she could no longer feel qi. She couldn’t feel it anywhere! As the horror of it finally started to settle over her, Lu Sen watched her with an emotionless face and ice in his eyes.
“I’ve burned out your dantian and qi channels. You will never cultivate again,” he said in the same tone one might use to relate that they’d bought fruit at the market.
Xie Moli didn’t understand the hysterical, animal screaming she heard at first. It took a few seconds for it to register that those terrible noises were coming from her own mouth. She barely registered it when the Blue Demon dragged her into the hall. She heard ecstatic cries of Lord Lu and you’re awake, but none of it meant anything to her. He’d taken everything. First from her family, and now from her personally. There was nothing left to do. She grabbed the dagger that he hadn’t taken from her and tried to plunge it into her own chest, only to have invisible bonds lock her entire body in place. The next words she heard, though, were even more terrifying than the rage of Lu Sen.
“I expect Lo Meifeng will want to talk to her.”
***
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Lai Dongmei used her qi to swat aside another ball of poison and acid and activated her qinggong technique to dance back. Even that heightened speed wasn’t quite enough. The lizard-woman’s claws still opened fresh gashes on her cheek. She’s so fast, thought Lai Dongmei. The only saving grace was that the spirit beast couldn’t launch those lightning-quick strikes continuously. She seemed to need at least a moment or two between them. Lai Dongmei used that moment to slash at the lizard-woman with her jian. A slender trickle of water that was as sharp as any blade whipped out from the tip of the sword in a deadly arc.
The lizard-woman had been avoiding those slashes for a while now, but even spirit beasts could grow tired or incautious. There was a small spray of blood and a shriek as the fingers flew into the air, neatly separated from the hand that opened Lai Dongmei’s cheek. The nascent soul cultivator slashed again, hoping that pain would prove a lethal distraction. Sadly, the lizard-woman spent another of those lightning-fast reactions to leap too far back for an easy strike. This fight is taking too long, seethed Lai Dongmei.
Bey Peizhi had understood the reality before her, but it required depressingly little imagination to understand what would happen if spirit beasts got inside the walls. It would take cultivators to deal with them, and the only cultivators left inside the city were manning those very walls. The mortals and cultivators tasked with keeping the spirit beasts out were barely holding them back as it was. If cultivators had to turn from that task, the walls would be overrun. If they didn’t turn away from it, the spirit beasts would inevitably find the people the foxes were hiding. There was only so much city. One of the damnable creatures would simply stumble into the illusion by accident eventually. Should the soldiers’ families start dying by the thousands, whatever fragile edifice of morale they had left would shatter to dust.
She risked a glance toward where Bey Peizhi was battling the tiger-man. It didn’t look like it was going well for either of those two. One of Bey Peizhi’s arms dangled limply at his side, and half his face was a mask of blood. The tiger-man had a massive open wound in his side from that initial attack. It looked like Bey Peizhi had managed to carve the muscle off of a substantial part of one of the spirit beast’s legs. There was no way to guess who would win, and she didn’t dare try to intervene. If she let her attention shift from the lizard-woman for more than a split-second, someone else would be leading the Golden Phoenix sect from now on. I need a distraction, she thought. Anything would do.
As if in answer to a prayer that she hadn’t known she was making, a frighteningly powerful spiritual sense washed over the entire area. It was immediately followed by a working of qi on the same scale of the technique Lu Sen had used what felt like several lifetimes ago, even if it had only been a handful of days. Lai Dongmei felt it when untold numbers of spirit beasts died at the wall. For that fraction of a second, the lizard-woman’s attention was fixed on the wall. She wore an incredulous expression like she was witnessing the impossible. Lai Dongmei, having spent centuries learning to focus past things like powerful cultivators expanding their spiritual sense, struck in that moment.
She knew that most people considered water cultivators weak when compared with other kinds of cultivators. She even encouraged that idea. It meant that no one expected it when she pulled out one of her more destructive techniques. Of course, the one she planned to use required that the other person not react for a crucial second. Her qi plunged into the lizard-woman. It was the kind of thing that most people would think was pointless because everyone forgot something important. Blood was mostly water. The lizard-woman felt the intrusion and hesitated, visibly uncertain about what was happening.
Lai Dongmei exerted her qi to stop the blood in the spirit beast’s body from moving, eliciting a strangled cry of horror and pain. She let another of those beatific smiles appear on her lips. Then, she ripped every last drop of blood out of the lizard-woman. Organs ruptured and flesh tore, even if it was all hidden behind a sudden red haze. Lai Dongmei wasn’t one to waste resources, so she fashioned the blood into a spear and waited for the right moment. As the tiger-man jerked to avoid an attack, she drove the blood spear straight through his chest. Bey Peizhi didn’t waste the opportunity and smoothly cut off the spirit beast’s head with one of those moonlight blades.
It was only now that the fight was done that she let herself process what had distracted the lizard-woman. That spiritual sense, to say nothing of that huge technique, had to have been the work of a nascent soul cultivator. Almost not daring to hope, she slowly turned to look back at the city. The first thing she saw was the impaled bodies of spirit beasts hanging from what looked like every inch of the city wall. She looked left and right along the wall. It was the same as far as her not inconsiderable vision could stretch. It looked like a sculptor had decided to work on a grand scale and made violent death their subject. She could feel her heart starting to beat a little faster as she looked up over the city.
Hanging there in the sky was a figure in blue robes. She resisted the urge to wave at him and settled for a smile. If he was looking her way, he would see it. He broke through to nascent soul, she thought with a bit of wonder. Of course, he would turn almost dying into an opportunity to advance his cultivation. Bey Peizhi limped up next to her and turned his head to follow the line of her gaze. The man grunted.
“Better late than never, I guess,” he said as he too looked up and down the wall. “He does know how to make an entrance.”
“He does,” agreed Lai Dongmei.
She had to catch the other cultivator as he lurched. The man had clearly taken more injuries than what she could see. Fortunately, she also knew just the alchemist to take him to. How convenient, she thought as her smile grew.
