Unintended Cultivator

Sen could hear shouting and screaming throughout the sect, but he wasn’t sure how much if any of it was because of Falling Leaf and Glimmer of Night. He was vaguely aware of their positions but he was doing his best not to focus too hard on where they were or how many of the sect cultivators were around them. They knew what they were doing. They didn’t need him watching over their shoulders. It was entirely for his own equilibrium. He wanted to pay enough attention so that he could go to them if it looked like they were in real trouble. Not that he was sure he would recognize it if they did get into real trouble. He’d watched Falling Leaf scythe through enemies before. For that matter, he’d watched Glimmer of Night do the same. I’ll just have to trust my intuition, thought Sen.

For his part, Sen was doing his best to make himself into an obvious target. Walking in the open, on the biggest paths. It was a little disorienting for him, given how hard he’d worked to avoid these paths during his time inside the sect. He was seeing everything from angles that looked a little wrong. Not that he was paying much attention to the buildings. He was watching for people, and he wanted people watching him. If any core cultivators or elders had survived his little surprise, he wanted to make it easy for them to find him. In this outer area of the sect, though, he mostly expected to find qi-condensing cultivators and that’s what he got.

Most of the people he saw at first were dead or dying. They were the ones who had been closest to the doors of the buildings. He steeled his heart at the sight. They hadn’t died particularly good deaths. What he had tried to do was ensure that they got quick deaths. There had been no way to ensure immediate deaths. At least, there had been no way to ensure it with the method he’d picked. If he’d been willing to go room to room and cut people’s heads off, he supposed that would have done it. He just hadn’t had the kind of time or, if he was being honest with himself, the stomach for something like that. So, he’d settled on quick deaths.

There were two main variables with poison. It took poison a little while to get into people’s systems, and everyone’s constitutions were a little different. Following exposure, the poison generally needed to get into the bloodstream. The amount of time that took could change depending on whether someone was asleep or awake, as well as their state of mind. Someone meditating or asleep would generally have a slower heart rate, which slowed down how fast the poison spread. Beyond that, while the same poison might be equally lethal to two individuals, the time between exposure and death also depended a great deal on how robust their health was and even on their cultivation path.

He’d once fought someone who he thought was an acid cultivator. Such a cultivation path was exceedingly rare, but it also meant he had to acknowledge the remote possibility that there could be a poison cultivator somewhere in the sect. Someone like that might have survived the poisons he used in the part of the sect assigned to the outer disciples. They had been potent but were nothing compared to the poisons and toxins he’d used deeper inside the sect. Of course, as he’d known would be the case, the trap hadn’t gotten everyone. As he strode down the path, four cultivators carrying spears and looking like any bad fright might kill outright charged into view. They all stumbled to a stop when they saw him. He gave them all a flat look that made them take a collective step back.

“Who are you?” demanded a petite cultivator with wide eyes and a quavering voice.

“I am Judgment’s Gale,” he answered in a bored tone.

There was a collective inhalation of breath from the four cultivators. He casually evaluated them. They were all outer disciples. The petite cultivator was right on the cusp of breaking through to foundation formation, but she hadn’t. Not yet. He drew his jian, and they all took another step back. He spoke again.

“I haven’t come to kill qi-condensing children. This sect is dead. I have ensured it. If you leave now, I will not stop you.”