Sen had thought that they might actually take his offer to let them flee when none of them imdiately moved to violence. Yet, that fragile peace didn’t last long. One had stepped out of the forest to confront him. The spirit beast resembled a transford deer he had seen before, although this one was larger and male. It bothered Sen because he’d always thought of deer as gentle creatures. Then again, there hadn’t been any deer on Uncle Kho’s mountain for so reason. It was entirely possible that he’d see them differently if there had been. The transford deer fixed him with a glower.
“These are our places, not yours,” said the spirit beast.
“No longer,” answered Sen.
He’d considered explaining that a little more before deciding that there was no point. The spirit beasts knew the situation as well as he did. Yet, the one near to him at that mont appeared determined to make a foolish and pointless stand.
“Who do you imagine yourself to be, human?”
Sen lifted an eyebrow at that. He couldn’t tell if the deer was being intentionally obtuse or legitimately didn’t know. Not that it mattered.
“One you cannot defy,” said Sen. “If you persist in this foolishness, I will make good on my threat.”
“We are many, and you are alone.”
“Very well, then,” said Sen, deciding he was done trying to be rciful to those who didn’t want it. “Summon your companions.”
The transford deer stared at Sen with black, unblinking eyes before it finally managed a stunned, “What?”
“You should summon them. At least you’ll be able to die together, and I can proceed with my tasks without wasting more ti than necessary.”
They stood there in silence for a few seconds before Sen continued.
“No? I suppose we can do it the hard way. Well, it won’t be that hard, now that I think about it.”
Perhaps it was because he had the Matriarch of the Order of the Celestial Fla occupying his thoughts that he didn’t call down lightning or use wind blades. Instead, dozens of lances made of pure fla appeared in the sky overhead. They cast the entire area in a red glow that made the snow look soaked in blood. The transford deer looked up before it lurched toward Sen with a panicked shout.
“Wait!”
“No.”
As the fire lances drove downward, Sen activated his qinggong technique and closed the distance with the spirit beast. There was a strangled cry of distress from the spirit beast when Sen’s hand closed around his neck. Dumping more qi into the qinggong technique, Sen dragged the transford deer in his wake until he drove the spirit beast through the trunk of one tree, then another, and then a third. At the sa ti, he watched in his spirit sense as nearby spirit beasts were consud by his fire technique. There was no joy or sense of accomplishnt in this particular battle. Sen hadn’t wanted the fight, had actively tried to avoid the fight, in part because he'd known it would go this way. It just felt like wanton destruction.
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He knew it wasn’t as simple as that. Any spirit beast he ca across was either an enemy or likely to beco one. If left to their own devices, they would almost certainly harm or kill humans. That was assuming they hadn’t done so already. For all he knew, every spirit beast he’d just killed had shed innocent blood. I can’t treat them the way I’d treat human refugees, Sen told himself. I may not like it, but I have to treat them the sa way I treat bandits. Killing them is an unpleasant but necessary task. With that thought, he sent wind blades to finish off the spirit beasts that had survived the fire attack.
Then, the only one left even remotely nearby was the spirit beast he still held in his hand. Sen summoned one of his blue jian from a storage ring. He looked down at the transford deer with a mix of disgust and pity. Disgust for what was required, and pity because the spirit beast had so badly misjudged the situation. Being used as an impromptu tool for felling trees had not left the spirit beast in good condition. He was bleeding from his nose, and the wheezing noises that accompanied every breath suggested lung damage, broken ribs, or both. Even so, it reached up and grabbed Sen’s wrist.
“Spare ,” gasped the transford deer.
Sen shook his head and said, “I tried.”
An impossibly fast swipe of a jian removed the spirit beast’s head. Looking down on the corpse, Sen felt unaccountably tired for a mont. A part of him knew that much of the war would be like this. It wouldn’t be anything even remotely like a straightforward duel. It would be the strong slaughtering the weak, and it was hard to feel anything but tired in the face of that. The spirit beasts he’d killed couldn’t stand against him. Even if they had been able to surprise him and co at him in force, this would have still been the foregone conclusion. He didn’t even understand why they had confronted him in the first place. Sen had given them every opportunity to flee. He’d told them to go.
“So, why?” he asked the open air.
Why make that choice when there was no hope? It seed impossible that the spirit beasts believed they could win. Had they hoped he would relent? Was it a mistake to tell them to leave? Had it given them the impression that he was weak? Unwilling to do what had to be done? There was no one left to ask the question, which ant that he’d remain forever ignorant of the truth. But maybe there was a truth in that as well. He wasn’t sure what that truth might be, but it could exist. Sen let that idea sit in his mind for a ti as he gathered the cores from the spirit beasts he’d killed.
Once that task was done, though, he pushed the question about truth to the back of his mind. While he felt like there might be sothing of value to explore there, he also had the impression that it wasn’t sothing that he needed to understand imdiately. It wouldn’t be the first ti in his life that brushed up against sothing important that was too substantial for him to grasp. Nor did he expect that it would be the last ti. It often seed to him that the very nature of cultivation was to discover and rediscover that, no matter how much he learned, there would always be greater mysteries. So of them so vast they threatened sanity, and so of them so subtle that he doubted he’d ever unravel them while he remained in a world so steeped in conflict.
“I guess I’ll just have to hope that the world I ascend into doesn’t need anything from .”
Sen doubted that he would have it in him to be responsible for anything other than himself for a long ti after leaving this world behind. He felt a little spike of irritation at those somber thoughts. I just need to finish what I ca out here to do, thought Sen as he flew into the air and resud his search for natural treasures.
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