Unintended Cultivator

Sen brought his jian down in a casual swing and lopped off the stone boar’s head. His foot lashed out to connect with the body of another. The spirit beast seemed to cave in around his foot, bones snapping and cracking under the pressure, before it was launched toward Falling Leaf. She didn’t even look, choosing instead to take a short step to the side and lash out with those deadly shadow claws she wielded. The claws sheared through the stone hide of the beast and spilled its internal organs onto the ground. As they carved their way through the herd, Sen had the idle thought that any one of these spirit beasts could have killed him when he first left the mountain. Most of the adults were the equivalent of a core formation cultivator. Falling Leaf had been quite a bit stronger than him in those days, but he thought that fighting this many of them would have been precarious for her even with the natural advantages her panther form had provided.

Now, neither of them was even breathing hard. Or, they wouldn’t be if they needed to breathe like mortals anymore. While he didn’t think either of them could go without air indefinitely, he also thought that it would take them a long, long time to suffocate. However, after completing the Six-Fold Body Cultivation, he truly didn’t know his limits. He’d done some testing where and when he could, but it was to the point now that he worried about doing any of that testing close to any mortals. That had been half of the reason for this trip into the deeper wilds. He needed to get a clear sense of what his body could actually do.

The testing had been a bit of a disappointment to him so far. It wasn’t the results that bothered him. He’d been focused almost entirely on purely physical attacks and been thoroughly impressed. The problem was that the testing hadn’t really been pushing his limits. He couldn’t find anything heavy enough to strain his body. Short of trying to lift a mountain, he wasn’t sure what else to try. He’d let himself take blows that he would normally block on reflex. While some of the attacks had hurt, nothing so far had even managed to break his skin. Sen knew that he could injure himself.

He’d finally opened a shallow cut on his own arm just to try to get a sense of what it would take. The answer was that it took a lot. On top of that, the cut healed itself remarkably fast. While he expected some improvement, it was still startling. Enough so that he’d have to hide it from mortals if he could. With this new level of durability and healing, he’d give himself even odds with that devil that nearly killed him. At least, he’d give himself even odds in a one-on-one fight. He wasn’t in a hurry to go battle a horde of devilish beasts by himself. That brought him up short. With everything that’s coming, that might make for good training, thought Sen. He shook that idea off. Without the devil there to keep them on task, it was entirely possible that the horde had dispersed. Plus, it would take a while for anyone to go and check.

He did tuck the idea away as a possible training exercise. Depending on how long the war dragged on, they might need something like that to help break in lower-stage cultivators. They’d need supervision, but there would probably be people who needed a break from the fighting that could lead those expeditions. He would need to reach an agreement with the spiders there. He didn’t want to come into conflict with them if he could avoid it. Although, that did beg the question of which side of the war they would come down on. From his interactions with the cluster that Glimmer of Night had come from, they seemed to be neutral. Then again, that might have been more about their fear of him personally than a desire to stay out of the war. Sen would have to discuss the matter with the transformed spider the next time he saw him.

Of course, that would be happening soon. The other reason he’d come out into the wilds was to collect spirit beast cores. He wanted to get Glimmer of Night to do that same cracking trick he’d used before. Being able to turn a beast core into an elemental bomb with nothing more than a trickle of qi was an incredible advantage. While Sen hoped to bring off his destruction of the Twisted Blade Sect without a single moment of direct combat, he knew that was unlikely. There were too many variables, too many people in a sect, to be able to guarantee that he could kill them all without facing anyone directly. He’d just have to settle for killing most of them without any direct conflict and end the rest the hard way. Having a storage ring stuffed full of cracked cores would make that job much, much easier. Plus, since he couldn’t ever be certain of the exact results of setting off a cracked core, he doubted that anyone else would be able to predict them. It was hard to counter something you couldn’t predict.

Sen was still cutting down the stone boars when he heard a thunderous noise. It took him a moment to realize that it was something racing toward them through the forest. The ground shook beneath him and the sounds of trees snapping and crashing to the ground soon became audible. He glanced over at Falling Leaf who looked almost bored as she wove through the herd like a specter of death. He called out to her.

“Can you handle the herd?”

“I have it,” she said, grabbing one of the spirit beasts that tried to gore her and hurling it into the air. “Go deal with whatever’s coming.”

He only paused long enough to watch her split the falling boar in two as it fell back to earth. Yeah, she can handle it, thought Sen. That was a stupid question. Activating his qinggong technique, he raced toward whatever behemoth was closing with them. He only had to go about a quarter of a mile before he saw it. It was another stone boar with a few salient differences. This one towered at least twenty feet tall with legs that were thicker than most trees. Its tusks were massive, curving up around its snout like a pair of impossibly large stone scythes. Even with his improved perception and speed of thought, he only had a split-second to make his decision. The beast was moving toward him almost as fast as he was moving toward it.

Well, I did want a way to test my body, thought Sen. He dropped his jian into a storage ring, clenched his fist, and shot toward the beast. The boar noticed him and tried to react, but wasn’t quite fast enough. Sen drove his fist into the stony hide right between the boar’s eyes. For the first time that day, Sen felt his body pushing its limits. His hand felt like it wanted to shatter, and the bones in his arm creaked alarmingly. He wondered if he’d just made a terrible choice but his bones held. He and the boar slammed to a dead stop; their mutual momentums balanced. Of course, all of that force and pressure had to go somewhere.

The ground underneath them compressed into a crater that threw soil into the air. Everything within fifty feet of them either exploded or was shredded as a shockwave burst out. Beyond that, trees snapped off at the ground or tipped over, exposing massive root systems. Leaves and pine needles were stripped away and hurled outward at speeds that made them, ever so briefly, into deadly projectiles that buried themselves into anything and everything. While he wasn’t paying close attention to it, Sen noticed a lot of living things blink out of his spiritual sense. The tense moment of pause broke when the boar staggered back, stunned by the blow.

Sen could see a spiderweb of cracks in the beast’s hide where he’d struck it. He glanced down at his hand and could see that he’d split open the skin across his knuckles. There was even exposed bone, although the flesh was rapidly closing around it. He thought that the bones had an oddly metallic gleam to them, but couldn’t give that much attention. The bore shook its massive head and let out a squeal. At least, Sen thought it was a squeal. The sound was an attack all its own. He could feel the noise trying to invade his body and liquify everything inside of him. It was his turn to stagger back. He coughed up a mouthful of blood from the internal damage. He spat it out and met the boar’s eyes. There was a look of primitive surprise in those dark orbs like it couldn’t quite believe Sen was still standing there. Wiping a little blood off his lips, Sen smiled at the beast and threw himself at it.

It was a poor match for both of them. Sen had a decided speed and agility advantage. He could dance around the boar’s charges. It tried a few more of those squeals, but Sen quickly learned that the attack was directional. As long as he managed to get off to one side or the other, he usually avoided the attack or minimized the damage. Things weren’t all Sen’s way, though. The boar’s hide was so thick and durable that anything short of that first blow just couldn’t do any real damage. Even when Sen fell back on the trick he’d tried with Elder Bo, channeling elemental attacks through his own hands, the stone hide proved largely impervious to it. Sen had to wonder just how advanced the boar’s cultivation was to endure the level of punishment he was giving it. It had to be close to his own. Hovering somewhere between peak core cultivation and early nascent soul cultivation.

Sen also knew that balance was partially imaginary. If he used qi techniques or recalled his jian from the storage ring, he could end this fight. And if a fight was all it was, he would have done just that. He needed to test himself, though. That meant relying on his body alone until or unless the situation changed. Sen forced himself to focus on the fight again. Body blows were getting him nowhere, so he needed to focus on something that might prove a bit weaker. He started to focus his blows on the joints in the boar’s legs. Where it had simply endured his strikes before, it started letting out pained noises at that. The boar tried to back off and put some distance between them, but Sen had found the key to victory.

He increased his qinggong technique and shot back and forth between the legs, hammering those joints until one of them finally gave out. Sen rolled out of the way as the beast lurched, then launched himself at the other leg on that side of the boar’s body. He drew back his fist and hit the joint in that leg as hard as he could. The hide shattered, and Sen’s fist traveled straight through the flesh and bone beneath. The boar let out an animal scream of agony as it toppled over. With the fight effectively over, Sen lifted the restrictions he’d put on himself. He’d won. There was no reason to drag out the beast’s death. He summoned his jian, reinforced the blade with metal qi, and brought it down on the boar’s neck.

The increased sharpness and durability the metal qi gave the blade let it slice cleanly through, but Sen felt the strain in the metal all the same. He considered the sword and frowned. He’d known the day would come sooner or later, but his raw strength was legitimately more than the metal could endure for long. He’d have to replace it, somehow, before he made his attack on the Twisted Blade Sect. He did not want to be in the middle of a fight and have the sword break on him. He was still frowning at the jian when Falling Leaf appeared, gazing around at all the destruction. She shook her head at him.

“Will you clean up this mess?”

Sen blinked a few times. He supposed he should clean up the mess he’d made.

“I will,” he agreed.

Falling Leaf came over and peered down at the body of the enormous boar. She made a discontented noise.

“What’s wrong?” asked Sen.

Falling Leaf nudged the boar’s head with her foot and said, “They’re no good to eat. They taste like rocks.”