The cultivator ca running up to Sen with qinggong technique speeds. This was one of the handful of cultivators he’d personally, well, trained was too strong a word for it. He’d nudged them toward his better qinggong thod with a vague idea to use them as couriers. Then, when they’d shown poor aptitude for the new technique, he’d promptly forgotten about them. It was only later that Lo ifeng reminded him that people didn’t stop following a king’s orders just because he forgot that he’d given them. Much to his surprise, they had all managed to master the technique to varying degrees.
He'd kept this one, who was from Lai Dongi’s sect if he recalled correctly, with the army. She was good at the technique. In fact, she was probably the best at actually executing it. Her mastery over fine qi control was possibly better than Sen’s own. That skill helped her bridge so of the pitfalls of having shallower qi reserves than the others. It was, however, an insurmountable problem for anything that required true endurance. Those factors had made her the optimal choice for sending ssages quickly over shorter distances, though. A task she had seemingly accomplished. Now, if he could just rember her na.
“Lord Lu,” she said with a deep bow.
He nodded at her and said, “Did you deliver the ssage?”
“I did,” she said, her expression twisting with distaste.
“It went that well?” he asked.
Reaching up, he pointlessly pinched the bridge of his nose. He was years and several cultivation stages beyond the point where it actually provided physical relief. It did seem to offer him so kind of ntal balm, however, which was why he allowed the habit to continue.
“They were—” she hesitated. “They were not receptive to peacefully ceding control to you.”
“The fools,” muttered Falling Leaf. “Do they not realize that he already controls their kingdom?”
The courier gave the scowling ghost panther a wary look. Falling Leaf had developed sothing of a reputation with the army and the cultivators traveling with it. That reputation had started when she’d personally dispatched an assassin sent to try to kill Sen. She had not been gentle, fast, or quiet about it. Nor had she allowed anyone to take the corpse away from where she left it to rot a short way from his tent. What she had done was question him about who had sent him. In a surprisingly savvy move, she hadn’t damaged their face.
Sen had even recognized the man, vaguely, as belonging to the group of cultivators who had co with him from the capital. The executions he’d carried out after that had caused an uproar. Not because he’d done it, but because he’d done it to maximize the dishonor of the people involved. There were no duels to preserve the appearance of honor. He’d given them the sa treatnt as cultivators back in Gale’s Bastion who had destroyed buildings and foolishly threatened little Zhi. He’d broken their cultivation. Publicly. Then, he’d had them beaten to death by mortal soldiers from the army. Yet, what most people seed to rember was the way Falling Leaf had made that cultivator suffer before she finally let him die.
That, and a dozen other incidents over the last year and a half, had left a lot of people with the impression that she was Sen’s personal assassin. It was ridiculous, of course. Falling Leaf would never just kill soone because he’d told her to do it. At least, he didn’t think she would kill soone on grounds that flimsy. Anyone who ca looking to do him harm, on the other hand, she considered fair ga. The wary expression the courier was directing at the ghost panther was one of the kinder looks people gave her. That was sothing that made Sen angry, but it was also one of those things he had very little control over. What everyone knew was that directing insults at Falling Leaf was a swift way to end their lives. It had only taken one example before everyone learned to hold their tongues.
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“Lady Fa,” said the courier with, to Sen’s mind, excessive caution. “They seem to believe that holding their capital city makes them unassailable.”
“They’re wrong,” said Sen in a flat voice.
He knew from experience just how wrong they were about that. This wouldn’t be the first capital he conquered. The exact number eluded him. Five? Eight? Twelve? Between the spirit beasts and hostile royalty, the last eighteen months were little more than a bloody blur in his mory. Or, maybe, he just wanted it to be. It didn’t help that it was always the sa story. Despite proving over and over again that he could and would take these kingdoms by force, they all seed to think that they would be the exceptions. What they didn’t seem to comprehend was exactly how good Sen and his army had beco at war. There were always so problems integrating people from recently conquered lands. By and large, though, Sen’s people were probably the most experienced force on the continent when it ca to killing spirit beasts and conquest.
Yet, every single ti, they made him prove it. They forced him to kill mortals and cultivators who could have taken up the fight against the spirit beasts. He wanted to hate the royalty, the nobles, and the military leaders in all of these kingdoms for forcing his hand. A part of him did hate them for that. The karmic debt for all of that bloodshed was going to fall disproportionately on him. He was certain of that. He wasn’t in a hurry to deepen that debt at every turn. He also hated them because he knew they weren’t doing it to preserve their people. They were doing it to preserve their power. It was why so many noble houses and royal families no longer existed.
Sen knew that more and more people had taken to calling him the Warstorm. He supposed that there was so truth to it. Yet, his extrely keen senses let him hear one particularly bitter person give him a different na. The Father of Orphans. That had cut him deeper than any insult ever could, in large part because it was so very true. No one knew how many children his actions had left without one or both parents. The fact that his people had beco almost as adept at setting up orphanages and schools as they had beco at violence said enough.
“I suppose that they have cultivators waiting to challenge ?” asked Sen.
“I believe so, Lord Lu. I sensed several nascent soul cultivators near the palace.”
He shook his head. It was all so pointless. So wasteful. It was also, apparently, unavoidable. He, or Master Feng, would be left no option but to cut down their most valuable potential resources in this war. The people best suited to fighting it. A sense of all-consuming weariness threatened to overwhelm Sen, as it had been trying to do more and more of late. He shoved those feelings aside as best as he could. He had the distinct impression that if he let that weariness take hold of him, it would drive him into a state of utter inaction. He would probably co out of it if he truly needed to, but he couldn’t afford the distraction. There would be ti for that when he’d secured this side of the Mountains of Sorrow. Then, maybe, he could just rest for a short while. Like a century, he thought.
“What will we do?” asked Falling Leaf.
The question was mundane enough, sensible even, but she was giving him a look of quiet concern that had beco increasingly frequent in recent months. He took a long, deep breath as his eyes wandered across the city he was about to conquer. It was probably as large as his own capital city. There had to be countless mortals in that city. Most of them were peasants, tradesn, or rchants. People who had no hold on the chanisms of power that would decide their fates this day. He wondered how many of them would die needlessly for him to seize control here. Too many, he admitted to himself, but there is precious little I can do about that. The last year and a half had taught him that war was no respecter of innocence.
“We’ll do what we always do. What we must. Summon the generals and the leaders of the cultivators. I an to take this city by sunset.”
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