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Unintended Cultivator-Chapter 65Book 10: : You Get to Live
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The first thing that struck him after entering the clouds was the wetness of it all. While Sen had spent substantial time flying, first on qi platforms and later with his modified technique, it had mostly been done close to the ground. There just hadn’t ever been an urgent need to venture high enough to come into direct contact with them. It was only after being swallowed by a massive storm cloud that he realized that they were more like mist or fog than anything else. He also realized that he should have understood that much sooner, given that rain fell from the clouds. Not that he was particularly concerned with their composition at that moment.
Other things had become immediately clear to him at the same time. Being where he was at that moment was extremely dangerous. He could feel the lightning, or at least the potential for terrifying amounts of lightning. More than enough to end his life if he foolishly allowed himself to be struck repeatedly. It was a chillingly distinct possibility this close to the source. He also got confirmation of his assumption that this storm had not hovered in place or held its fury in abeyance through any natural process. It was subtle, diffuse, but he could feel the divine qi threaded into the clouds. It also wasn’t something that would be obvious to anyone who hadn’t done as he had and entered into the waiting storm.
Still, that confirmation raised other questions in his mind. The most prominent question was why. Why would the heavens direct this to the capital and keep it there? Why go through all that trouble? Even more frustrating was that he could only guess at the answers. It might have been to assist him. However, that seemed a little far-fetched. He knew others wouldn’t see it the same way, but pushing his advancement had never really been about helping him. It was clearly to serve some other agenda. So, providing what amounted to a giant cauldron of destruction if wielded by the right person had to be about something other than him.
If it wasn’t about him, though, that only really left one other possibility. It was about the spirit beasts. Were the heavens looking for a way to punish them? That felt more plausible to him. Sen wouldn’t pretend to understand the relationship between the heavens and human beings. In his life, the heavens’ attention had ranged from utter neglect to unwholesomely focused, but he’d accepted that his experience was atypical at best. Still, the relationship did exist. That suggested at least some vague interest in what happened to humanity in whole or in part. The spirit beasts' admitted goal of wiping out all of the mortals and human cultivators almost had to run counter to some plan.
The more Sen thought about it, the more that version of events made sense. Help him because it was good or kind? Not very likely. Set him up to be used as a tool of revenge by proxy? That felt much more authentic and consistent with his experiences. The worst part was that he was going to do what they wanted because not doing it would mean sacrificing everyone in the capital. As much as he loathed the interference in his life and being used, he wasn’t anywhere close to willing to let all those people die just so he could be obstinate and defiant with the heavens. Something they had to have known, he thought.
Of course, that plan hinged on him actually doing something with the storm. As it was now, it was only the potential for victory. He could still remember how frightening he'd found violent storms as a child. The raw, uncaring fury of nature unleashed on the world below. It would wash away fields, homes, and even the lives of the unwary. He remembered how sometimes the thunder would grow so loud that he’d feel it inside of him like some kind of invader. He recalled clapping his hands over his ears and having them still hurt as they were pummeled by that noise. Sometimes, he’d scream into those storms only to have his words crushed in the cacophony of howling wind and water crashing down onto whatever meager protection he could find.
He supposed that there had been an early lesson in all of that for him. Nature could be beneficent, but it could also be merciless. It can be more than one thing, he thought, and today it must be merciless. While he hadn’t used it often, Sen had storm qi inside of him. He’d always shied away from using it and snuffed out the ones he’d started as soon as possible. There was something wild and untamed in that qi. He’d intuited that he lacked both the power and control to make full use of it. The reality was that he probably still lacked the necessary power and control, but life rarely allowed cultivators to achieve true mastery.
Sen extended his storm qi into the clouds around him. He could feel the roiling mass of power contained in them. He began adding in other kinds of qi to help reinforce and direct his intentions. He strained against the constraints of the divine qi at first, only to fail. He glared around him at the mostly uniform grayness. When the truth struck him, he had to close his eyes for a moment and repress his anger. He knew what he needed to do. He just didn’t want to do it. Sighing to himself, he reached out into the storm and seized the divine qi.
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Where it had resisted before, it now lanced toward him eagerly. It flowed into a body that was still reworking itself. He felt some of that qi siphoned away into those newly opened channels. He didn’t even bother with a reflexive moment of worry that the heavens might be angry with him stealing some of that qi. He was absolutely certain that was what they planned on having happen. While it might not push him to the next advancement in the nascent soul stage, he was certain that it was going to happen far sooner than he would wish.
There was also nothing he could do about it, so he turned his attention back to winning the battle. A battle that was making a desperate effort to reach him. He could feel flying spirit beasts of all kinds in his spiritual sense. They were racing toward him as fast as their wings or techniques could carry them. Of course, they’d need to enter the clouds to get at him, and that would turn the sky into a killing field. He started extending storm qi, lightning qi, and that stolen divine qi all around him. He imposed his will on this small area and prepared the ground. Then, he waited as the power around him built and built and built.
There was so much barely restrained fury that he worried he might not be able to contain it long enough. When he felt the spirit beasts drawing near the edge of the clouds, he unlocked some of his killing intent and infused it into the power gathered around him. Even the pale half-light that had been there before vanished into absolute darkness as he was surrounded by Heavens’ Rebuke. Except, it wasn’t like the versions he’d made before. Those had always been contained to a sword, or a single strike, or a ball. This version contained some of the wildness that was native to storms. He honestly had no idea what it would actually do.
He felt the spirit beasts rising toward him. Their killing intent was trying to fill the space around him, only to be consumed by Heavens’ Rebuke. A few of them seemed to recognize the threat and hesitated, but it was too late for that. He exerted what control he could and sent that mass of deadly forces crashing down on them. The part of the cloud that had been below him was obliterated by the passage of Heavens’ Rebuke. He never even got to see most of the spirit beasts who had been coming for his life. They were wiped from the face of creation. The one thing he did get to see was a massive wyvern. It was so big it could have been mistaken for a dragon.
It was trying to fend off the oblivion that had come to claim it, and it was losing. One of its wings was gone. Vast pieces of flesh had been stripped away to the bone. Sen was shocked to see a mass of darkness swirling around the wyvern and loosing bolts of black lightning with an iridescent sheen into it. It was almost like the technique was alive. He was transfixed as the great spirit was taken apart, piece by piece, until the technique surged forward like a pouncing predator. There was a roar of defiance or fear, Sen wasn’t sure which, and then the spirit beast was gone. Sen wanted to consider what he’d just seen, to understand what it meant, but he didn’t let himself. He’d bought himself a window of opportunity.
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He flew deeper into the clouds to where the energy felt densest. Qi flowed out of him as he went, planting the seeds of control. When he reached the center of the storm’s strength, he settled in place. He recalled what he had done back in Inferno’s Vale. It had been at the limits of his abilities, but he could see now how crude it had been. He still took his inspiration from it. Threads of a dozen kinds of qi flowed out of him. It started slow. The part of the cloud nearest him began to spin. As his qi spread and momentum built, more of the clouds were caught up in the vortex.
He leaned into what he had learned over years of practicing alchemy. He used fire and metal to reinforce the storm at a level below the visible. He smoothed out irregularities in the forces at play where they might threaten to unravel the massive working he was doing. Shadow bled into everything, and Sen was certain he could feel something trickling into the storm from the in-between place of the shadow realm. Something would breach defenses that most cultivators and spirit beasts would consider unassailable. He started making adjustments almost automatically as he built what had been a storm in a weapon. Then, the moment came when it felt right.
He could feel the spirit beasts below, around the city, and so many more in the forests. They had no doubt thought they would be safe from retaliation there, but the storm had stretched for dozens of miles in every direction. That meant his weapon stretched just as far. Sen turned his head and looked at a very specific spot. He couldn’t actually see anything with his eyes, but he felt a familiar presence there. He considered for a moment and then nodded to himself.
“You get to live. Someone needs to tell them what happened here,” said Sen.
He excluded that one area from his intentions, effectively shielding it, and then he triggered the weapon.
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