“How dare you!” roared the devil. “Even my kind have our place beneath the heavens!”
“You do,” agreed Sen. “In the thousand hells. But we are not in the thousand hells. You do not belong here.”
“You are an ignorant child speaking of things you do not comprehend.”
“What do I need to comprehend beyond the evidence of my eyes? Look what your foul qi has done to that man. Your re existence corrupts nature.”
“Says a cultivator. You deny nature at every turn and seek an immortality that the heavens did not grant you. Yet you dare lecture about corruption. What hypocrisy. What hubris.”
Even five years earlier, those comnts would have left Sen scrambling for a response. On the surface, it did look like cultivators were as much an affront to nature as the devil. Those years spent on Uncle Kho’s mountain, gathering dicinal herbs, watching Auntie Caihong tend the garden, had taught him that there was a natural order. Cultivators did seem to exist in contradiction to that very order. That, however, was a simplistic view that sought to cast everything in diatric opposition. Sen’s own experiences had shown him just how flawed such a view was in practice. Most things in life were more nuanced, cultivation included.
“There is no hubris in truth, devil. As for hypocrisy, it would only be hypocrisy if my qi tainted everything it touched. It does not. Nor do I deny nature. I defy it, as all cultivators do. And I may strive for an immortality that the heavens did not grant , but that path was laid long before my birth. It could not exist without the heavens’ consent.”
Sen had expected the devil to continue raging at him. Instead, it laughed.
“Oh well,” he said. “It’s always worth a try. A lot of cultivators spend so much ti honing their skills, they never bother to hone their minds.”
In response, Sen swung his spear toward Changpu and hurled another ball of compressed wind at him. There was another detonation like thunder and a garbled cry of pain from the man. That did make the devil snarl in anger.
“Did you think I was unaware that you were trying to buy ti? I didn’t know if you were waiting for that wound to heal or if you were waiting for him. Either way, your wait will be a long one.”
“Who are you?” demanded the devil.
“You clearly know who I am.”
“I know your na. I know what you’ve done. What I want to know is who you really are. Are you a hidden scion of so celestial family? A bodhisattva? An arhat masquerading as a cultivator?”
The stillness inside of Sen rippled briefly as total confusion overtook him for a mont. He had no idea what the devil was talking about. What were bodhisattvas and arhats? The terms were utterly foreign to him. He supposed he might be the hidden scion of so celestial family. It fit with his theory that he wasn’t ant to be in the world where he was, but it was only a theory. Even if he knew that it was the right theory, it didn’t tell him anything about who he actually was. That was a mystery he doubted he would solve before ascension. Not that he really cared anymore. He had the family he wanted. He didn’t need another.
“No,” answered Sen as he detonated more compressed wind right next to Changpu’s head. “I am nothing but a wandering cultivator.”
“Nothing but a wandering cultivator? I can’t tell if you’re lying to yourself or to .”
Sen shrugged in response. The devil’s opinion wasn’t of any consequence, but the extended conversation had allowed Sen to do sothing useful. Sothing that was hideously difficult, even for him, but nonetheless useful. Just maintaining it strained the limits of his concentration. For once, it wasn’t the amount of qi, but the complexity of the technique. He'd been creating tiny nodes of Heavens’ Rebuke around the clearing. He’d imbued those nodes with the tiniest sparks of that strange multicolored qi that still revolved around where his core had once been.
The nodes were so small that anyone not specifically looking for them wouldn’t notice. At least, they wouldn’t until he completed the technique. Now, Sen just needed to wait for the devil to make the move he’d no doubt been preparing. He didn’t have to wait long. He saw it in the devil’s eyes the mont it made the decision. Sen activated the technique at the sa ti the devil started to lift a hand. There was a mont of silence as that rising arm fell to the ground in several pieces. Almost invisible to the eye, a web of Heavens’ Rebuke surrounded the devil. Except, this web had an iridescent shine to it. The stump of the arm started to be rapidly eaten away by the lingering qi of the technique.
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The devil started screaming and tried to back away, only to run into more threads of the web. Every touch left another cut and set that part of his body to corroding away. That heightened the pain, which heightened the panic, and made the devil thrash around even more. If Sen left things as they were, the devil might well die a death of a thousand cuts. Unfortunately, the vile thing might also gather itself for one final act of destructive defiance. Sen had no idea what that might look like, and he didn’t want to find out. He’d already used more qi than he would have liked, even if it was far less than he would have used going all out. Concentrating again, he did sothing that he hoped Glimr of Night would approve of. The web, which stretched out flat around the devil, abruptly turned from the horizontal to the vertical and back to the horizontal, like a plate being flipped over. The threads passed through the devil’s body. There was a brief mont of pained incomprehension on the devil’s face before gravity dragged the disintegrating pieces of him to the ground.
Sen looked at the spear in his hands for a mont before he sent it back into a storage ring. What he’d done with it had strained the weapon to the breaking point. He’d worried that might happen. It seed that, for the ti being, the only things he could do with a spear were reinforce them a bit and use them as nothing more than a spear. The ti for the spear was over, though.
“No!” shouted Changpu.
Sighing to himself, Sen turned to face the man who had finally managed to get to his feet. There was more blood running out of the man’s nose and now from his ears. Sen wondered if those compressed balls of wind had done more damage than he’d expected. The question now was what to do about Changpu. Sen’s instinct was to kill him and just be done with this sad matter once and for all. Yet, Sen found that there was so pity in his heart for the man. Changpu had made one terrible choice after the next, which had culminated in him abandoning his humanity. A transformation like that couldn’t have been painless. Sen also couldn’t deny his own role in that chain of events. In many ways, he had set it in motion all those years ago by maiming this man instead of killing him.
Unfortunately, Changpu had also killed those scouts for no better reasons than to harm Sen and his cause. The only answer there could be to that was death. Sen knew that. Whatever reluctance he might be feeling, he couldn’t let pity lead him to make the sa mistake twice. He drew both of his jian and started walking toward the other cultivator. There was panic on Changpu’s face now. Sen could almost see the man deciding to flee.
“Don’t run,” said Sen in a tired voice. “It won’t help. Fight if you must, but don’t run.”
As he drew closer and closer, Changpu’s expression kept changing. At first, panic dominated, before it gave way to anger, then fear, and ultimately settled on regret. The dao saber slipped from the man’s grip, and Changpu closed his eyes. He tilted his head back as though he was looking to the heavens.
“I spent all these years hating you. Plotting against you. I even turned myself into a monster. But I never stood a real chance, did I?”
“No,” said Sen.
It wasn’t the kind thing to say, but Sen didn’t want this man to die with a lie in his ears. Changpu and the devil had both been broken in so fundantal way long before this fight. Sen didn’t understand the exact nature of that damage, but he’d recognized it. He’d taken advantage of it, too. Even so, looking back at the fight, he struggled to see it as anything more than a convoluted suicide for both Changpu and the devil. He just wished that they’d chosen soone else to be the hand that ended them. More than that, he wished those scouts hadn’t been forced to pay for his old sins with their lives. That was a debt he couldn’t repay. Their souls were beyond his reach. Although he was sure that Karma would force him to make it right sohow.
“Do you rember Song Ling?” asked Changpu abruptly.
Sen drew to a halt close enough to deliver the killing blow.
“Yes, I rember her,” said Sen.
“Did she survive all of this madness?”
Sen abruptly rethought his conviction that the man shouldn’t die with a lie in his ears. Changpu had been in love with Song Ling. That had been the real start of this conflict. This man had been in love with a woman who didn’t love him back. Instead, she’d decided to entertain herself in Sen’s bed. He’d be willing to bet that was why Changpu had challenged him in that town, which had led to the lost arm, which had led to this mont. Such a small thing, thought Sen. Such a stupidly trivial thing to have brought us to this mont. And she hadn’t survived. Wu ng Yao had told him when he’d dismantled the Soaring Skies Sect and asked about her. She’d died to a spirit beast in the early days before anyone really understood what was happening. Did Changpu need to know that?
“Yes,” lied Sen. “She survived.”
“That’s good. That’s as it should be,” said Changpu as he looked at Sen with dull eyes. “I never wanted any of this. I just wanted to be a cultivator. I wanted to be a hero. I wanted to be her hero. I just… I never wanted any of this. By the heavens, I’m so tired.”
Changpu looked at his devilish left arm, shuddered, and looked away.
“Make it clean,” said the man.
Sen did as he was asked. A single sweep of his sword took off Changpu’s head. There was no satisfaction in it. At best, there was a feeling of completion. As though he’d finished a task that he’d been putting off for far too long. Shaking his head, he prepared to walk away when he sensed sothing. Oh no, he thought. Not now. He even understood why it was happening when divine qi crashed down on him. He’d killed a devil. Of course, the heavens were going to reward sothing like that. If only it were a reward he actually wanted.
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