Sen was vaguely aware of Lai Dongi and Bey Peizhi’s approach, but it was just one tiny thing in an almost overwhelming sea of information. He’d thought that the reach and depth of his spiritual sense had been expansive before, but he understood now how wrong he’d been about so many things. His capacity to bridge the gap between core formation and the early stages of nascent soul had led him to the false conclusion that stepping into the nascent soul stage wouldn’t be that much of a change. Instead, it was like having blinders ripped away from all of his senses. It was the kind of thing that could drive an unprepared mind into madness. At the sa ti, he understood that his experience of that transition likely bore no resemblance to that of most others who made the leap into the final stage of cultivation.
After all, most cultivators didn’t do body cultivation beyond cleansings and body refinents in the qi-condensing stage, while he’d taken it to the end of the core formation. Even that had been sothing other than what he’d thought it was. Sen had enjoyed the expected boosts to speed, strength, and durability that ca with core formation-level body cultivation. Yet, the risks of the Five-Fold Body Transformation had always felt wildly out of proportion to the actual benefits. And they had been for a core cultivator because the entire purpose of that body cultivation technique wasn’t to provide benefits to a core cultivator. Those benefits were incidental. The entire goal was to prepare the body for the transition into the nascent soul stage.
For most cultivators, that transition ant that the nascent soul was freed from the containnt of the core. The nascent soul would then rge with the body. Qi that was once primarily contained in the core would flood the cultivator and suffuse their tissues. Sen supposed that the body itself beca sothing like a core after that, which allowed nascent soul cultivators an almost unparalleled speed with techniques. He realized that forming techniques beca more like wishing than forming, assuming there was enough qi in the body to pull it off. He knew that the body functioning as a core wasn’t quite the right way to think about it. It was, however, close enough to let him push that nagging thought to the back of his mind and free up so room in his mind.
Nor had he truly understood just how much more powerful nascent soul qi would be. There was a temptation to think that he could do anything now. Fortunately, he knew better than that and had been taught better than that. It turned out that one of the most common reasons that nascent soul cultivators died, aside from tribulation lightning killing aspirants to the stage, was overreaching. Auntie Caihong, Master Feng, and Uncle Kho had all taken him aside and warned him about the possibility. The surge of strength ca with a kind of euphoria that made cultivators think they were all-powerful. Sen had been very intentional about reminding himself that he was not all-powerful.
That rging of the nascent soul and physical form also reshaped the body in myriad ways and provided the cultivator with the kind of profound strength, speed, durability, and resilience people expected from the strongest cultivators alive. It also refined and expanded their minds. Sen could tell that trying to sort and understand the information flooding his consciousness would have been far beyond him in core formation. That was where things ended for most cultivators.
Sen had taken things another step. He’d endured the rigors and agonies of a particularly dangerous body cultivation path. He’d even accidentally altered it. Those sanity-testing physical transformations had pushed his body to the absolute limits of what it could endure at the core formation stage. He had entered the stage already possessing the kind of enhancents that most cultivators got after rging with the nascent soul. Just as importantly, he could see that his body had been prid for additional changes. Much as he had always possessed qi channels that simply needed the right stimulus to beco active, his body cultivation had left dormant channels waiting for the entry of a nascent soul.
Those channels had co to life and dragged the unspeakably potent qi of the nascent soul far deeper into him than other cultivators could dream of. That transformation wasn’t over yet. He knew because everything inside of him was shifting through physical sensations that corresponded with all of the qi types he was able to use. One mont, he felt like his bones were lting, and had to acknowledge the possibility that they were, in fact, lting. The next mont, it felt like they were being frozen solid. Then, it felt like lightning was coursing through them. In another ti, he would have been focusing every bit of his attention on that transformation and trying to grasp what it would an. In the very dangerous now, he couldn’t afford to give it more than a passing glance and just hope that the process would go smoothly. There were other, more imdiately lethal problems that required his attention.
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“Nice of you to join us,” wheezed Bey Peizhi as he and Lai Dongi floated up next to him.
Sen had sensed the piles of the dead and the thousands of injured people who had been evacuated deeper into the city. He could understand the other man’s frustration on those grounds. They had been fighting and dying while he was nowhere to be found. On the other hand, Sen hadn’t exactly been free to join the battle. He was about to say sothing cutting to the other cultivator when his mind isolated a problem inside of the city.
“A mont, please,” said Sen.
“A mont!” snarled Bey Peizhi.
The other cultivator’s eyes went wide when Sen gestured. He’d sensed the spirit beasts inside of the city. Their proximity to the area protected by the fox illusions was not sothing he felt comfortable with, knowing that the foxes were not well-equipped to fight them off. He’d also sensed the mortals and cultivators on the ground trying to fend them off. He found his attention easily splitting dozens of ways. Plus of flas rose into the air from all over the city, including a particularly large and violent one near the center of the city. He’d had to use a more delicate touch with the spirit beasts that were close to any mortals or cultivators. Those he’d mostly burned from the inside out.
There were a handful of spirit beasts that couldn’t be killed so easily. He manifested small balls of Heavens’ Rebuke and sent those hurtling out into the city below. There were bone-chilling howls of agony and terror that rose up into the air before being abruptly cut off. Sen turned his attention back to Bey Peizhi and Lai Dongi. Lai Dongi was just studying him, but Bey Peizhi seed to have forgotten whatever he wanted to say. Sen found himself frowning at them both. They’d flown directly through his spiritual sense, so he understood the extent of their injuries. He didn’t have healing elixirs specifically made for nascent soul cultivators, but he did have elixirs he’d made for himself. Elixirs that he wouldn’t have given to anyone else in core formation for fear it would kill them.
He summoned two stone vials from a storage ring and handed them over. They might not heal all of the wounds, but he expected they would at least boost the healing process. Both of the other cultivators drank the elixirs without comnt or question, which suggested that they were both more hurt and tired than they were letting on. Sen wanted to ask questions about what had happened in the intervening days, but the questions wouldn’t co. His attention just kept getting drawn to the piles of the dead. There were so many of them. He’d known this was going to be a bloody battle, but he’d also expected to be on hand to help limit the number of casualties. He tried to tell himself that he was better-equipped to help now, but that was no consolation to the dead or their families.
Sen only let himself dwell in that swamp of self-recrimination for a few monts. He hadn’t been there to help, but it wasn’t by choice. He couldn’t change it. He could only do his best to help now. Maybe with a bit of help from the heavens, he thought as he glanced up. Since before all of this had started, those storm clouds had been hovering over the capital in defiance of everything Sen understood about nature. He’d borrowed a little of the strength in those clouds for that initial Heavens’ Rebuke attack on the spirit beasts’ formation. With his enhanced spiritual sense, he understood just how little of the storm’s strength he’d actually siphoned away. There was enough power left in that storm to end this battle ten tis over. At least, there would be if he could harness it and not kill everyone he was trying to save in the process.
“You look different,” said Lai Dongi, jarring Sen from his thoughts.
“Do I?” he asked.
He hadn’t bothered to look at himself in a mirror. He’d only taken a mont to wash the blood from his face and put on robes before joining the fight.
“You aren’t as pale as bone anymore,” she said.
Sen looked down at his hands. She was right. There was color in the skin again. He was certain that there was an explanation for it. Sadly, there just wasn’t ti to figure it out. He shrugged.
“I suppose I do,” he admitted.
“I like it,” she said.
Bey Peizhi, who had started to stand without support, glared at both of them.
“Does this have anything to do with winning the battle? Anything at all?” he demanded of them.
Sen imdiately shook his head and said, “No. I was figuring that part out earlier. This is just a bit of idle chat before the stupidly dangerous part.”
Lai Dongi shot him a look and asked, “Is stupidly dangerous a necessary component of this grand plan you haven’t even bothered to share?”
“I always tell myself it isn’t,” said Sen with a sigh, “but it never quite works out that way.”
“Well? What is this plan of yours?” asked Bey Peizhi.
“I think I’ll just kill them all at the sa ti,” said Sen.
“How?” asked Bey Peizhi in a tone that Sen charitably decided not to call a scream.
Instead of answering, Sen shot skyward and disappeared into the clouds overhead.
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