Unintended Cultivator

Sen observed the Twisted Blade Sect compound from a distance. Not that the distance meant much to him. For anything less precise than formation work, scanning the compound from a mile away was as good as looking at it up close. The compound had proven smaller than he’d expected, even if it was many times larger than his own. It was about the size of a moderately sized town. That had given him pause at first. Several days of studying the sect buildings and the movement of the sect members while hiding had let him draw a few conclusions about the general organization of the place.

The center area of the sect was the literal and figurative heart of the place. It had the least amount of foot traffic and seemed devoted primarily to housing the sect elders and, presumably, the patriarch. There were a few larger buildings there that Sen assumed were the sect library and possibly the sect armory, at least for the texts and weapons suited to the upper tier of the sect hierarchy. Outside of that was a ring that Sen had dubbed the next zone of authority. There was more traffic and utility buildings there, but it seemed primarily devoted to housing the core and inner sect members. Still, he could see a building that was clearly a forge, several distinct martial training areas, and buildings he assumed were a lesser library, alchemy building, or provided room for professions without strong representation in the sect.

The final and by far largest ring of authority inside the walls was obviously intended for the outer sect disciples. There were so many of them that it reminded Sen of a disturbed anthill. There were always people moving back and forth or engaging in some kind of training. He had been less than impressed with the weapon training he’d observed. The outer disciples here were sloppy and undisciplined. While he couldn’t assume that sloppiness and lack of discipline were representative of the sect as a whole, it was hard not to think that it was true. Still, it was hard to evaluate things when he was so thoroughly cut off from the outside world. While he could expand his spiritual a few hundred feet while hiding, a marked improvement from years past, he needed to be careful that he didn’t accidentally alert anyone to his presence.

That seemed particularly pressing when he considered the area he had dubbed the zone of no authority. While all of the combat training happened inside the theoretical safety of the walls, the sect gardens were firmly and he assumed intentionally outside of the walls. That included the areas that grew plants he knew were necessary for what he considered basic alchemy but probably passed as advanced alchemy in this particular sect. He had observed some formations around those fields. Well, he gave them the benefit of the doubt that they were supposed to be formations. He expected Uncle Kho would want to weep tears of blood at the sight of them.

While the formations wouldn’t pose any particular problem, cultivators tended those fields. Most of them did their work during the day, but he’d seen a few out there at night. He suspected they were trying to cultivate lunar grass or starlight roses. It was hopeless in this environment but that was their business. He would need to remain mindful that there could be cultivators in those fields at any time, though. Forgetting that could expose his presence long before he wanted anyone to realize he was there. Ideally, no one would ever know he was there until it was too late, but he wasn’t going to assume that the universe would treat him so kindly.

He'd also paid close attention to how they guarded the walls. While everything else the sect did seemed pretty second-rate to Sen’s eyes, they took their security seriously. They had fixed positions on the wall, as well as teams of guards who patrolled. In other words, there was never a time when any particular piece of the wall wasn’t potentially under observation. Sen suspected that would prove more of a challenge to overcome, but it wasn’t insurmountable if he didn’t rush things. Not that he ever meant to rush things, but the raw area the sect covered made it impossible to be hasty. There was too much ground to cover and too many people. He’d have to take it slow if he wanted to finish this fight with one lethal strike.

Of course, now that he was looking at the sect and all of the people there, he was having to push aside a lot of thoughts about the costs. With that many people, there were bound to be some who were worth saving. It just wasn’t possible that every single last one of them was beyond redemption. He confronted that realization with the fact that he had depressingly little hope of identifying or sparing them. It wasn’t like he could talk to all of them, and he couldn’t trust what any of them said even if he did talk to them. There were going to be innocents caught up in this. There was no avoiding it. And he was going to do it anyway because, misgivings aside, he could not allow this sect to attack his academy. The Twisted Blade Sect’s sheer numbers would overwhelm the comparatively tiny number of people in his own sect.

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In a few decades, he might be willing to pit his sect against a sect like this and trust that superior training and defenses would bridge the gap. Right now, though, allowing that attack to move forward would be no better than going back to the academy and killing everyone himself. No matter what he did in this situation, though, there was going to be a lot of terrible karma coming his way. He didn’t even look for a way to console himself because it’d just be a lie. He was going to kill a lot of people because they were a threat to what was his. It was as simple as that. Considerations about what was right or wrong didn’t, couldn’t, come into the decision. If he didn’t act, it would mean the death of everyone who put their trust in him.

Feeling that he’d learned everything useful that he was going to learn, Sen wrapped himself in shadow, stood, and activated his qinggong technique. He’d left the others far enough into the wilds that they weren’t likely to randomly encounter anyone from the Twisted Blade Sect. They’d been lucky on that front, aside from that one group they’d stumbled across. Sen didn’t let himself dwell on that. It had been a bloodbath, but he couldn’t risk that those sect members might have seen them. It would only take one report back and that human anthill he’d just been looking at would swarm into the wilds. Granted, that would have its own advantages as a battlefield but not enough of them to make it a better choice. In the end, Sen didn’t want a battlefield.

Anything could happen on a battlefield. They were too unpredictable, too prone to chance taking a hand. He didn’t have an army like they did. They only needed one lucky moment. He couldn’t have a single unlucky moment. That was a situation that he wanted to avoid if it were at all a possibility. He wanted more certainty. That was why he intended to make a graveyard. If anything managed to crawl its way out of that graveyard, he planned to be there waiting. Assuming things went according to his plan, anyone who did manage to survive that long was not going to be in any condition for a real fight.

His one concession to his conscience was that if some random qi-condensing outer disciples did manage to survive, he’d let them go. Uncle Kho admitted that even he didn’t aim for a complete purge of every living soul. Sen suspected that Master Feng’s advice would likely be to kill them all. That would eliminate any possibility of future retribution. It was a sound strategy, as far as it went, but Sen hadn’t honed his ruthlessness to quite that fine an edge yet. He didn’t like the way cultivators acted toward mortals, and relentlessly killing every outer disciple looked an awful lot like that behavior. Plus, he needed to be able to live with this after it was done. He just hoped that tiny sliver of mercy would be enough to let him do that.

The true targets were the sect leaders. That means Sen needed to kill the elders, the core members, and the inner sect disciples. If the patriarch was on hand, he’d ideally like that man to die as well. If it came to that, though, Sen would have to decide in the moment how to handle it. Depending on how strong they were, he might well need to call in Uncle Kho to deal with the patriarch. Still, it was that group that stood a chance to rebuild the sect. An eventuality that Sen needed to prevent. The outer disciples were only a threat in that there were so many of them. He needed to reduce those numbers enough to make sure that even if they went north seeking revenge, it wouldn’t do them any good. In terms of restoring the sect, though, their actual knowledge about the sect and its secrets should prove wholly insufficient.

When he returned to where he’d left the others, he found almost exactly what he’d expected. Uncle Kho was sitting in a comfortable chair that looked entirely out of place, a scroll opened in his hand. Glimmer of Night was studying a web so complex it actually hurt Sen’s mind to look at it for more than a few seconds at a time. Falling Leaf was sitting by a small campfire, poking the coals, and looking intensely bored. He dropped his hiding ability and all three of them immediately looked at him.

“So, let me tell you what I’ve learned,” said Sen.