Unintended Cultivator Vol 10: Chapter 66 – Root and Branch

Jing was slumped against the wall, staring down at the impaled spirit beasts with the one eye he had left. He assumed that to have been the work of a cultivator, but he couldn’t even summon the energy to care which one. He couldn’t even find the energy to stand up straight. He’d never been so tired in body and spirit. He lifted a trembling hand and stared at it. The fingers had been bandaged after he’d fired so many arrows the skin had started tearing away in bloody pieces. Far below, he could still see the mass of spirit beasts looking for an easy away to scale the walls. Even this won’t be anything but a brief reprieve, he thought. The realization that the city would fall had come slowly, but it had come. There were too many spirit beasts, and not nearly enough human beings to destroy them. Even so, he had kept fighting, determined to scratch and claw for every minute, every extra second of life.

He rested his forehead against the stone and let his mind go mercifully blank. He’d seen so much death, watched as soldiers and cultivators alike had sacrificed themselves to buy the city a little more time. He’d even seen flashes of sect matriarchs and patriarchs battling spirit beasts in the sky above or on the ground below. Those fights had been terrifying in their speed and the sheer brute power involved. If not for those nascent soul monsters, the city would have already fallen. However, even those godlike beings hadn’t been without casualties. The last, trembling fragments of hope inside of Jing shuddered and threatened to expire. Maybe it would be better to just let it end.

“My king,” said Kegong.

For a terrible moment, Jing couldn’t even find the strength to lift his eyes to look at the old general.

“My king!” said Kegong with more urgency.

Jing turned his head enough that he could see the man and rasped, “What is it, Uncle?”

Kegong lifted an arm and pointed up in the sky. Jing found himself staring at the dried blood on the general’s armor for several moments before he understood that the man wanted him to look at something. Pushing himself up to a standing position on trembling legs, Jing turned his eyes skyward. At first, all he saw was Lai Dongmei and Bey Peizhi floating over the city, having apparently succeeded in their latest battle. He frowned at them. There was something off about the way they were standing. It took an excruciatingly long time for him to realize that they were also staring up into the sky.

Jing let his head tilt back a little farther and everything held still for a moment. The storm clouds overhead were swirling like a great whirlpool. It was so vast that he had the irrational fear that it meant to swallow the world whole. He could see things flashing inside those clouds, like angry, caged animals looking for a way out.

“By the thousand hells,” he whispered. “What is that?”

***

Like everyone around him, Shi Ping was staring skyward. Unlike most of those poor, exhausted mortals, he could actually feel some of what was happening above. He envied them that ignorance. He’d been in Inferno’s Vale when a madman had brought the fighting to a close. It seemed that same madman was intending to end this battle as well. Shi Ping was also certain that this fight wouldn’t end with Judgment’s Gale making threats. As the power in those clouds built and built, he couldn’t suppress a shudder. He’d never felt anything like this in his life. He’d never even heard of something like what swirled overhead, except perhaps in stories from the elder days when mythic cultivators strode across the land like giants. Then, he scowled.

“If that bastard pulls this off, he’s going to be even more unlivable,” grumbled Shi Ping to no one.

***

Grandmother Lu stood in the courtyard of Lu Manor. She lowered her head, squeezed her eyes shut, and suppressed the fear that threatened to seize her heart. It wasn’t fear of the spirit beasts, or death, or even what she was seeing above. She had moved past those kinds of fear long ago when she had grown old in body and watched death draw ever nearer. No, her fear came from a very different place. She understood what this would mean for Sen. He would never be able to stand aside from this conflict now. They’d never let him. And when it was over…When it was over their fear of him would be a towering, terrible thing. That kind of power always provoked unreasoning fear. They would try to murder him. It wasn’t a notion. It was a certainty.

Nothing will ever the same, thought Lu Jia.

***

Boulder’s Shadow felt his blood run cold as he watched the sky transform from a storm to the expression of one man’s will to destroy. They should have killed him, he thought. They should have strangled the life from him whatever the cost. Now, they couldn’t. The boy had advanced again. It was the only possible explanation for what he was seeing, and what was to come. The spirit beasts that had been attacking the city were fleeing back toward the forests in pure panic. They didn’t know what was happening, but they had felt that overwhelming spiritual sense and the ever-growing killing intent. They would never escape. None but a few of the strongest spirit beasts would escape from whatever nightmare Judgment’s Gale was making in the sky. As if the thought of the boy had caused it, Boulder’s Shadow felt the attention of someone land on him.

The oppressive weight of the storm abruptly lifted from his shoulders. It took him a moment to understand what it meant. When he did understand, he wanted to scream his rage into the sky. The boy meant to spare him. To use him as the messenger. Worse still, he would have to stand to the side and then do what that damnable child wanted him to do. It was the exact role that the Beast King had assigned to him. Boulder’s Shadow couldn’t identify what had told him it was about to begin. Perhaps it a simple moment of prescience or maybe he’d intuitively felt that whatever Judgment’s Gale was doing in the sky was now complete.

The world turned white.

If not for his many centuries of advancement and reinforcement, he wouldn’t have seen what happened. He wished that he had been struck blind. Iridescent bolts of lightning that felt like they had the touch of divine qi in them fell from the sky by the thousands. One wave. Another. A third. It was as though Lu Sen had conjured his own tribulations for every spirit beast on open ground. Some were burned away entirely. Others were left as charred masses on the ground. Tens of thousands of spirit beasts struck down in the blink of an eye.

A comparative few, perhaps a thousand, had survived the onslaught. None of them were unscathed. They stumbled, scrambled, or simply crawled toward what they foolishly imagined would be the safety of the trees. If they only knew that their brethren in those trees were running for their lives, futile though the effort would be. More lightning fell from the sky. Except, this time, it was black and held the shadow of oblivion. The last spirit beasts in the open were…The only word that Boulder’s Shadow could think of to describe that carnage was unmade. Some part of him wondered if that technique did more than simple kill the body. He couldn’t help but wonder, Is Lu Sen’s wrath so monstrous that he’s destroying their souls?

There was no way to be sure. He desperately hoped that he was imagining it because the aura of that black lightning was just so unsettling. The transformed ghost panther wasn’t one to pray. He had concluded long ago that attracting the attention of the heavens was something that only the deeply unwise would do. On that day, in the shadow of Lu Sen’s massacre, he prayed that it would be enough and that the vengeful boy would let the rest flee. He knew that prayer would go unanswered, but he made it anyway. Then, he felt the shift in the storm. Balls of that same oblivion technique started to fall from the sky like a black rain. At least, they did over the forests.

Boulder’s Shadow had to withdraw his spiritual sense to the area immediately around him. Otherwise, he might have gone mad as spirit beasts, the animals of the forests, the plants, everything was ripped out of existence. This exposure to the technique was no better than the earlier ones. It scraped at his soul. It was wrong. Contrary to the very laws that governed nature and possibly even reality. I suppose that was the end, he thought. There can’t be more than a handful of spirit beasts left. The thought was laced with emotional weariness but also threads of relief. Relief that proved short-lived.

The clouds above turned the color of hot coals. Boulder’s Shadow looked up at those clouds and felt gorge rise in his throat. He understood what the boy meant to do. Fire crashed down on the forests like a waterfall of death. The world burned in Lu Sen’s inferno. Most of what little had survived the oblivion technique was instantly converted to ash. The things that did survive blackened or exploded. The fires raged and shifted directions, as though determined to catch and destroy everything. The noise was unspeakable, drowning out anything and everything else. Then, as if it had only been part of a dream, the fire vanished. He forced himself to look around. The wilds had been driven back for miles in every direction. Nothing remained of those green places but a smoking wasteland of ash, and the tiny circle of life that Boulder’s Shadow stood in.

“You look distressed,” said a voice.

Boulder’s Shadow stiffened and then turned to look at Judgment’s Gale. The young cultivator was floating in the air and staring down at him with eyes so cold they threatened to freeze the ghost panther’s soul. He had no idea what the boy had been through since they last met, but it had clearly transformed him. He’d been brave and defiant before. Now, he looked like the kind of man who had burned away everything inside of himself except resolve and madness.

“You shouldn’t look so distressed,” said Lu Sen. “You were all so eager for violence and death. You should be exulting.”

Boulder’s Shadow entertained the idea of killing the boy then and there, but he was no longer sure he could actually do it. Not after that display.

“What do you want?” growled Boulder’s Shadow.

“I want you all to kill yourselves and spare me the trouble,” said Lu Sen.

The ghost panther almost snapped something in reply until he realized that the boy meant it. He wasn’t sure how to react to a statement like that. The cultivator waved a hand, as if dismissing the thought.

“You will carry a message back to your Beast King,” said Lu Sen.

“What message?” asked the ghost panther, unable to hide his anger.

Something hard passed over Lu Sen’s face, and then Boulder’s Shadow found himself on his knees. Blood flowed from his eyes, nose, and ears, and it pooled in his mouth. But that was nothing compared to the pain inside of him. The boy had clamped down on his soul and was squeezing it. It wasn’t like physical pain. That could be endured. This felt like having everything that he had ever been and ever could be brought the cusp of annihilation. If he could have thought past the agony, he would have wondered when and where Lu Sen could have even learned a soul technique like that. Instead, he bent his entire will on not losing consciousness. Words floated down to him.

“You have no right to anger,” said Judgment’s Gale in steely tones. “I didn’t seek this conflict. You brought this insanity down on us all.”

Boulder’s Shadow toppled over to one side as his conscious mind started to lose the battle. The pressure of him was released. He thought it ought to provide some relief, but the pain in his soul lingered. It was as if Lu Sen had branded him with pain and fear.

“This is my message. If he wants a war, then so be it. We will have a war. I suggest you look around you, spirit beast. Take a long, hard look. This is what war with me will be. The wilds will burn and burn until you have nowhere left to hide. I will drive you into the open and cut you out of this world, root and branch. Now, go!”