Sen stood on the city wall and watched the army below. So people were drilling with spears, shields, and swords. He had to avert his gaze from that display of questionable skill. Otherwise, he feared he might be overwheld with an urge to go down and correct the countless errors he was seeing. There were great rows of tents stretching out away from the city. There was less happening around the tents since so many people were doing other things, but even there he saw people preparing food, repairing weapons, making armor, and even clearing away garbage. It was all substantially more organized than it had been a few weeks earlier when the camp first started to co into existence.
It wasn’t quite enough to lift his mood. Still, Sen was relieved to see things starting to co together. He had feared this exercise in preparation would descend into pure chaos. His massive disappointnt with the generals might have lowered his expectations. Just because the majority were self-serving bastards, it didn’t an that they couldn’t be halfway competent at leading soldiers. Sen was a little surprised to find that he was disappointed to discover that about them. Sowhere deep down inside of him, he’d been hoping they’d prove completely incompetent. That would have made it marginally easier to sacrifice them in battle. That thought made his soul cringe, so he pushed the thought away.
Yet, as had been happening more often than he’d like to admit, his mind jumped to what Jing had said to him. The admonition that he couldn’t simply walk away from things when the war with the spirit beasts was over, at least not without courting catastrophe, had hit him hard. Jing had ant well with those words. It was a sign that the man was doing the kind of thinking that Sen wasn't and had been considering the shape of the future. He’d been thinking about how to save lives, not just right now, but years in the future. It was admirable. Jing just didn’t understand the full complexity of the situation.
Sen didn’t dare guess how much ti he’d get when that war was over, but he suspected that ascension would co looking for him sooner rather than later. It wouldn’t matter if he wanted to stay. The heavens seed very intent on forcing him to walk away from everything. While it made an already complicated problem even more complicated, Jing’s warning about the consequences was helpful. Whatever else he did, Sen had to plan for the end of the conflict with the spirit beasts. He would need to do sothing to ensure that humanity didn’t imdiately descend into a bloody civil war to claim a throne he didn’t expect to sit in for very long.
He just wished he knew what the plan was going to be. He could appoint a successor, but even his limited understanding of politics told him that solution only sounded easy. It would be anything but easy in practice. The only reason that Sen might pull this off was because he enjoyed the undiluted support of Master Feng and Uncle Kho. He shook his head. That wasn’t the only reason. At this point, he had a lot of personal power to fall back on. It wasn’t unrivaled strength, but it was enough strength that he wasn’t going to be an easy target. The problem was that he’d have a hard ti finding a successor who could match that direct and indirect power. Without it, though, they’d likely have an impossible ti holding the throne of an emperor.
In theory, he’d be imposing one governnt on humanity. A naïve person would assu that could provide a base to build on. It would be imposed unity, but unity all the sa. Reading about history told him what a misguided notion that would be. People acted very differently during tis of war and tis of peace. Granted, history was full of betrayals during war, but most people tended to line up behind whoever was offering them so kind of protection when the enemy was at the walls. Whatever support he got while fighting the spirit beasts, he knew better than to assu he’d keep it after the war.
People would break down into factions the second the fighting was over, and probably even before that. If he wanted to keep the peace, he’d have to impose it with the threat of absolute force. It might be different if he could hang around for a few hundred years. That would give him a chance to soften his dictatorship into sothing a little less obviously oppressive. He could test different thods of governnt and figure out which ones offered the best outcos. Except, he’d never get that chance. He might get a couple of decades if he was very lucky.
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But he had to plan on getting forced into ascension the mont the war was over, if he even made it that far. There was a haunting fear inside of him that the heavens would force his ascension before the fight was done. All he could do was hope that wouldn’t happen. Still, it was hard not to think about what he might be able to accomplish if given unlimited ti. He didn’t want to be a tyrant for life. If Jing was right and he got stuck with the job, though, he could see ways to bend it to at least a little good.
In a perfect world, he’d destroy the old ways of the sects and the cultivators over the mountains. They operated as though possessing power sohow conferred moral authority. It made them cruel. Sen was honest enough to recognize that participating in the Jianghu and his own increasing power had made him crueler. He tried to avoid engaging in needless cruelty or abusing mortals. However, life as a cultivator had hardened him in ways both obvious and, he feared, invisible even to himself. He had carried out violence of kinds and on a scale that he never could have imagined as a child.
There had certainly been a lot of revenge fantasies concerning those noble brats back in Orchard’s Reach, but those had mostly involved shaming them in so terrible way. It often seed that nobles feared sha more than death. Yet, it was only after the worst beatings that his thoughts had turned to killing. However, he doubted that his younger self would have ever truly acted them out. He hadn’t killed most of them even when he’d had the power and the opportunity to do it. Of course, that was then.
Would such restraint be his choice now were he to co across similar circumstances? Sen doubted it. It seed far more likely that he’d kill the offenders. Sen grimaced at that because he realized that it probably wouldn’t even be him doing the killing. Soone else would jump at the chance to do it for him. The worst part was that they’d be happy for the chance to show their usefulness. Hells, thought Sen. Long Jia Wei might do it just for the practice. The fact that he didn’t even think badly about Long Jia Wei for that possibility was telling. He would have judged the man much more harshly in the past.
Now, he recognized that the man was different. It wasn’t just the difference between mortals and cultivators either. As far as Sen could tell, most cultivators learned their indifference to taking life. He had the impression that Long Jia Wei had always been that way. Then, he’d been taken in and trained by a sect that wanted to hone those tendencies. Sen felt like he should be alard that so people were like that, but his alarm wouldn’t change the fact that they existed. Unless he planned to purge them the mont they were identified, they needed to do sothing with their lives. Unless he could find so better alternative, focusing their energies on assassination probably was the best use for them.
What he didn’t see was a need for sects and entire countries that tried to turn everyone into soone like that. With their power, cultivators could be the protectors of all humanity. If they could learn to be terrible, they could learn to be good. Maybe not all of them, thought Sen. So people are just bastards. Even so, he didn’t think most people were like that. There just wasn’t anyone out there trying to turn cultivators into sothing better. It might not be possible, but Sen thought it could be done. It would just take soone powerful enough to impose those expectations.
“And ti,” muttered Sen. “It would take ti.”
Ti that he just wouldn’t have. It felt like so kind of terrible joke that the heavens were playing on him. If they won the war, he would be in a position to change things. He could make things better. He could make cultivators better. Instead, he would be forced out of this world and into whatever ca next. He looked up at the clear blue sky.
“You know, it isn’t just people down here who are bastards,” said Sen.
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