Lo ifeng was frustrated. Orders had co down from the top, the very top, that so kid was supposed to be kept under quiet observation, assisted if absolutely necessary, and efforts made to spread the silly na that a bunch of rural fools had given to him. Honestly, thought Lo ifeng, why would anyone want to be called sothing like Judgnt’s Gale? Then again, her entire organization took orders from a man called Fate’s Razor, so maybe she didn’t really have room to judge. What she didn’t understand was why they were bothering with so kid that nobody knew existed until a few months before. It had seed like a fool’s errand and beneath the finely honed skills that Lo ifeng had spent centuries perfecting on her way to core formation. Yet, orders were orders, and only the very foolish ignored orders from n like Feng Ming. If it was her job to babysit so kid, she’d take it as an easy assignnt ant to give her so ti to rest and recuperate. Or so she had imagined when first handed the orders.
Thinking back on it after the fact, she wondered if her superiors knew what an unbelievable pain this assignnt would turn out to be. Following the kid had been simple enough, at first. He’d gotten himself attached to a caravan and those moved slow at the best of tis. Then, things had gotten strange. The damn kid had run off into the forest and thrown down with so spirit beast that was stronger than he was by at least two or three in-stage cultivation levels. She’d almost intervened then, but the kid pulled out a victory with so damn technique that she’d never seen before. She might have been more impressed if he hadn’t nearly killed himself in the process.
Then, things had gone back to normal. At least until they got to Tide’s Rest, where the kid had stood on the beach and stared at the ocean for hours. There’d been that odd confrontation with the sect girls, where she still wasn’t sure entirely what had happened. If she didn’t know better, she’d think he suppressed them with killing intent, but it just wasn’t possible for a foundation formation stage to be wandering around with a killing intent that strong. Then, things had gotten really weird. He’d had a standoff with so other sect flunky while throwing around multiple kinds of qi. Sothing else she thought she knew was all but impossible. Then, he’d vaporized that poor sect bastard before he just disappeared into the night like so kind of damn spirit.
Ever since then, she’d been desperately trying to find him. She’d wasted a lot of ti in the north looking for him before finally heading south. She started catching hints of his presence there, but every ti she thought she was close, she arrived to discover that he’d co and gone. He’d apparently saved so wagon driver on the road and earned himself a worshipper for life. The story struck her as patently bizarre. The wagon driver and his entire family were mortals. She couldn’t understand why the kid had bothered. After that, he’d spent so ti in a small village. It seed that he’d amused himself by dispensing alchemical miracles for a pittance, killing rapists, and anointing a local farm family into so kind of village royalty with the threat of his unending wrath for any who dared to harm them. The villagers there seed to think he was so kind of saint. Still, orders were orders, so she made a point to drop the title of the man who had so dramatically altered their lives.
Now, there was this literal smoking ruin before her. She didn’t even need to wonder who had caused it. This had the kid’s fingerprints all over it. Lo ifeng didn’t know how he was connected, but an empty town filled with burned-out buildings and what looked like an absurd number of dead spirit beasts, how could he not be connected? She wandered through the town, piecing together so of what had happened and feeling the blood in her veins run colder and colder. If things had been half as bad as it looked like they had been, this was exactly the kind of thing that she was supposed to intervene in. After a while, she found a group of sect kids pillaging spirit beast parts. Well, two of them were pillaging. One of them was sleeping off to one side with fresh bandages on the stump of an arm. Had they fought here as well, she wondered. It might help explain the sheer scope of the damage. She announced her presence with a pulse of her qi.
All three of them stumbled over to her as fast as their legs would carry them. She might not be in their sect, but they weren’t nearly far enough along in their cultivation to ignore anyone in the core cultivation stage. So pointed questions got a very disjointed story out of the three. They had t her wayward charge. They didn’t spell it out, but there had been so interpersonal issues of so kind centered on the pretty girl who was very clearly not saying a lot. When it ca to what had happened in the town, they didn’t really have a complete story. All that they did know was that her charge had co here, found the place empty of human life, filled with spirit beasts, and that he had fought them. Lo ifeng took another long look at the destruction around her. He did all of this by himself?
He’d also apparently taken the big sect cultivator’s arm as an object lesson about stealing. Lo ifeng didn’t know what to make of that. It seed out of character for him. He had killed that rapist, but even that had co after the man had assaulted the farm girl. Or after the man tried to assault her at least. Lo ifeng personally thought that the kid was a bit too forgiving and compassionate. Taking the arm was icy cold and calculated. The kind of thing designed to give people pause. Maybe he’s just growing up, thought Lo ifeng. She’d have to ask him when she finally found him. It was clear that trailing him wasn’t going to work. She’d have to be more proactive.
“You’d have to talk to Wu ng Yao to get the rest of the story. She talked to him last,” said the pretty girl.
“Where is she?” asked Lo ifeng.
“She went ahead to report to the sect about the spirit beasts.”
And about the kid, thought Lo ifeng with a grimace she didn’t let reach her features.
While she wasn’t satisfied that she had anything even close to the whole story, she was satisfied that she had enough of a picture to move on. She rembered her days as a foundation formation stage cultivator, and they had not looked anything like what this kid was going through. She couldn’t even begin to calculate the odds of any cultivator just wandering into a town where the entire population had been inexplicably massacred by spirit beasts. Then for him to single-handedly rain down enough destruction to send them packing, it defied explanation. Whatever details she was missing, she couldn’t waste any more ti in the empty town. She needed to catch up with the kid or at least catch up with the other sect girl before she made her report. When it beca obvious that she ant to leave, the big sect kid with the missing arm piped up.
“Who is he? What’s his na?”
Wishing that literally anyone else had been given this shit assignnt, she faced the three sect cultivators. All of them had expressions that were equal parts wary and desperate to know. Lo ifeng thought about just saying that she didn’t know. The sect kids wouldn’t know any differently. No one would know, a traitorous voice in her heart whispered. As much as she wanted to listen to that voice, she ignored it.
“They call him Judgnt’s Gale,” said Lo ifeng through mostly unclenched teeth.
As she all but flew out of the town using her qinggong technique, she desperately wondered how she was going to report all of this in a way that wouldn’t get her killed.
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