Unintended Cultivator-Chapter 67Book 10: : Uncertain Condition

Sen stayed to observe until Boulder’s Shadow disappeared back into the forest, miles away at the edge of the destruction. He didn’t believe the ghost panther would actually try to do anything. The spirit beast would have tried to intervene or attack him if he meant to do something. However, it would have been foolish to just walk away from a potent threat like that. Sen slumped a little once Boulder’s Shadow passed beyond the range of his spiritual sense. Manipulating the clouds on such a large scale had been taxing, even with the heavens providing all of that divine qi. Using his auric imposition at the end there had been enough to make him feel a little lightheaded. It might have been different if his body wasn’t still going through some kind of transformation. He thought it was slowing down, but it was hard to be sure.

All he wanted to do was return to Lu Manor and sleep, but even a brief glance around told him that would prove nothing but a vain hope. There was still too much to do. He had wreaked havoc on the land and couldn’t leave it as it was. That was to say nothing of all the people in the city who were injured. Then, there would have to be discussions about funeral arrangements for the dead and rebuilding. The thought of those discussions almost convinced him to head north then and there. Given the choice, he’d much rather listen to Ai talk about her birds than do any of that. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a choice.

He was supposed to be some kind of leader. Auntie Caihong would almost certainly tell him that leaders needed to be seen after the battle, if for no other reason than to reassure the people that they were safe. Not that he thought they were safe. Sen might have dealt the spirit beasts a blow that would slow them down in this kingdom, but he hadn’t crippled them. At best, the people in the capital might be safe for now, but this war was just getting started. That thought made him even more tired. To truly win the war would mean battles across the length and breadth of the continent. It would take years.

He shook off those thoughts. He wasn’t responsible for the continent. Not yet. He’d secure this kingdom first. Only then would he consider looking beyond those borders. Everyone else would simply have to fend for themselves. Not that securing even this part of the continent would be easy. He suspected he really would have to burn the wilds to the ground to root out the spirit beast threat. Most of the wilds, he corrected himself. Falling Leaf would never forgive him if he burned all of the forests. And I need to leave the spirit oxen somewhere to live, he realized. He hadn’t been looking all that closely at the composition of the spirit beast army, but he couldn’t recall seeing a single ox.

“I’m going to have to give very strict orders about those oxen,” he muttered to himself as he slowly ascended into the sky again.

He considered what was left of the storm clouds. His fire technique had obliterated a lot of them, and he could see patches of blue sky through the holes. Even so, enough remained to serve his purposes. Sen let himself work more slowly as he smoothed the clouds into an even layer that covered the city and the ring of destruction he’d left in his wake. Water and wood qi threaded into the clouds in response to his will. He figured water qi would encourage rain. The wood qi wasn’t a replacement for healing pills and elixirs, but it would encourage some recovery in both people and the damaged land.

They were going to need that land to be viable very soon if the reports he’d heard about the food situation were truly as dire as they seemed. When death seemed to be nothing but hours away, nobody was really worrying about it. The removal of the spirit beasts meant that surviving the coming winter was going to become everyone’s main concern. There was no way to know for sure, but Sen doubted that there was enough surplus food in the rest of the kingdom to import sufficient stores. He just had to hope that Sua Xing Xing’s experiments were going to prove as useful as they sounded, or a great many people would starve. When the clouds finally started releasing some rain, he descended toward the city.

Up until then, it had been necessary to focus on the large-scale problems. Now, at least for a little while, he could afford the luxury of focusing on his personal concerns. He let his spiritual sense wash over the city, but took care to apply it very gently. There were many mortals down there who could be killed if he was careless with it. For that matter, there were probably injured cultivators who might not have the strength to endure it. He was looking for specific people. That was something that would have been beyond him before his advancement into the nascent soul realm. His spiritual sense had been potent, but it had also been a blunt instrument with little value in identifying individuals. Now, it provided him with enough information to pick out individuals and even get a feel for the condition.

Stolen novel; please report.

He found Shi Ping first, slouched on the top of the wall. The man seemed mostly unharmed. He found Grandmother Lu next. She was alive and well back in Lu Manor. He hadn’t been too concerned about her, but there had also been spirit beasts inside the walls. He didn’t think they could have gotten through the defenses and into the manor. Yet, battles were fickle, unkind things that could turn in an instant. It wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility that they might have targeted her specifically. He found Jing and Lo Meifeng at almost the same time and froze. They were both alive, which was a relief, but neither of them was in good condition. He wasn’t sure who to go to first.