Book 12: Chapter 6: Final Blow

Book 12: Chapter 6: Final Blow

The death of an elder had a noticeably chilling effect on the rest of the sect, which had been Sen’s intent from the start. He loathed the waste involved with killing powerful cultivators who could be put to far better use in battle. However, by killing that one elder with an almost casual disdain, he hoped it would let him avoid killing too many more of the sect members. Many of the Lunar Tiger Sect disciples had lost the defiant looks they had been leveling at him before. There were still a handful, though. Ones he was almost sure were either core members or elders. He steeled his heart.

“Bey Peizhi has explained the situation to you,” said Sen. “Come forward, one at a time, and take a vow to the heavens to serve my family faithfully.”

He knew very well that if any of these cultivators survived and humanity won the war, their lives would extend well beyond his departure from this world. He didn’t intend to leave them here unbound and free to take out their anger on his family. Not that any of these cultivators seemed to have realized that his ascension would come so soon. Well, he thought, won’t it be a terrible surprise for them when they figure out that they can’t attack Ai or anyone else I claim as family after I’m gone. When no one moved to step forward, he frowned at them.

“Then, shall we proceed with the executions immediately?” he asked.

That did it. The qi-condensing and foundation formation, the ones with flimsier ties to the fallen sect, came up first. Sen could almost see the core members and elders gnashing their teeth as the future strength of the sect was bled away, one vow at a time. He was relieved when very nearly every single one of them was able to make the vow. Slaying the two that couldn’t bring themselves to give him their allegiance troubled his heart far more than slaying the elder. She had been openly, aggressively hostile to him. The two who couldn’t manage the vows weren’t threats to him. In the end, they just weren’t trustworthy, and he’d already set the consequences. He tried to take some solace in the fact that it was quick, not that it made it any easier to watch the life go out of their eyes.

Sen wanted to take a few moments, but that wouldn’t fit with the persona he needed to maintain now. He had to appear completely unaffected by what he was doing. So, he turned his attention to the much smaller group of Lunar Tiger core members and elders. It looked like they were trying to present a united front, but the effort failed almost as soon as it began. He could see the fear on some of their faces. Others just looked distraught. Bey Peizhi was standing with them. The look of frustration he wore made it evident that he had been against taking this stand or whatever they were attempting to do. It seemed that only some lingering loyalty to the sect held him in place.

Sen considered any number of things he could do at this point, but he ultimately chose to start counting down in his head from sixty. As the silence dragged out and began to take on a kind of dreadful weight in the air, the resolve of the remaining Lunar Tiger Sect members began to fray. One woman took a step only to have her arm grabbed by a man who wore his fury openly. He shook his head in the negative, and Sen thought violence might erupt. Not that he’d let them kill each other. He counted down the last few seconds. Five. Four. Three. Two. One. Everyone flinched when he rose from the chair.

“I believe that the time for mercy has come to an end,” announced Sen, summoning the two, blue-bladed jian that Master Feng had made for him.

Sen saw eyes widening. Bey Peizhi looked downright stunned, while the woman who had tried to come over to take the vow panicked. She jerked her arm free.

The man went to grab her again, only to let out a shriek of fear when a bolt of lightning landed between his feet. The Lunar Tiger elder stumbled back before he fixed Sen with a look of such absolute loathing that Sen knew he was going to have to kill him.

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“You do not decide anything here,” he told the man.

The woman shot a triumphant look at the glaring man before she rushed toward Sen, words tumbling from her lips.

“I vow to the heavens to faithfully and loyally serve the house of Lu!”

Sen saw the glow surround the woman, but he was watching the man who had tried to stop her.

“You traitorous bitch,” he snarled.

Sen felt the man’s qi start to move. He would have acted, but it seemed that Falling Leaf had grown unwilling to simply watch the events unfold. Before anyone realized she was there, claws made of shadow opened the furious man’s throat. She had done such a thorough job of it that Sen could see bone at the back of where the man’s throat used to be. If she had left it at that, there was a chance that the elder could have survived with the right pills or elixirs. It seemed that she understood that, because she wasn’t even close to finished with the man. If the two had dueled, Sen doubted that Falling Leaf could have won. But she had struck first.

No matter how disciplined, anyone could be caught off guard, and she had given the man a lot of problems to worry about. He could probably do without air for a while, but he was bleeding furiously. It was very, very hard for people to ignore it when the ground was being painted red with the blood that spilled from their bodies. Falling Leaf took full advantage of the man’s distraction and hamstrung him. The Lunar Tiger elder collapsed to the ground. Falling Leaf didn’t hesitate before kicking him in the head repeatedly, which ensured he’d never form a useful technique. Then, she was on him with those shadow claws again.

Sen forced himself to look away from the gory spectacle to watch the rest of the Lunar Tiger elders and core members. He wasn’t remotely comfortable with Falling Leaf being that close to all of them. She was strong and fast, but there were more than enough of them to bring her down. Not that any of the sect cultivators seemed prepared to act. They simply stared with expressions of horror as Falling Leaf reduced a once-powerful cultivator to a pile of shredded meat and bones. Sen wasn’t sure if she’d meant to make a point, but she most certainly had made one.

When she rose from the remains, everyone took a step back from her. It seemed that they were all very eager to assure her that they didn’t intend to attack her. Blood soaked her clothes and covered her hands. Some had even sprayed her face. It made her look precisely as savage and terrible as any ghost panther after a hunt. Sen didn’t think he would have tempted her wrath in their place.

“I grow weary of your false bravery,” she told them. “Either make your vows or choose your deaths. I don’t care which. But you will stop wasting my time.”

That took the last of the resistance out of the remaining cultivators. It was a subdued group that started to walk toward Sen, slowly forming a line. They gave their vows in voices that sounded flat, lifeless, and hopeless. Yet, it wasn’t them or their vows that occupied Sen’s thoughts. He was considering what this would all mean for Falling Leaf. In the end, she had delivered the final blow to the Lunar Tiger Sect. As someone who had a great many stories with very few facts told about him, Sen cringed to imagine what kinds of stories people would tell about her. He also knew it was too late to stop those stories from spreading. Nothing would stop them.

Setting aside a problem he knew he couldn’t fix, he faced the cultivators. Most of them appeared lost, as if the end of their sect had stripped away some fundamental part of their identities. Considering that many of them had likely spent more time living in the sect than they ever did outside of it, perhaps they really were feeling lost. If so, he’d deal with it another day. Or, more likely, he’d have someone else deal with it another day.

“You will all leave any sect treasures and storage treasures here. They do not belong to you. They belong to me. If I see fit, and if you serve well, I might see fit to return them someday,” he told the group before, in a moment of pity he hoped he wouldn’t regret, he added something. “You may remove any personal items from the storage treasures.”

While the former Lunar Tiger Sect members grudgingly did what he told them under the weight of his very conspicuous spiritual sense, Sen walked over to Falling Leaf. He gave her a steady look.

“You didn’t need to do that.”

She blinked at him a few times and shrugged.

“He needed to die.”

It was that simple to her. While he had grappled with the morality of things as he always did, Falling Leaf saw the world in much starker terms. In the world of spirit beasts, there might be loyalty to the pack, but most things weren’t about right and wrong. They were about survival or death.

“You can be truly frightening sometimes,” he said.

She beamed at him like he’d given her the best compliment in the world. Given that her face was still covered in blood, it was a sight to make even a man like Judgment’s Gale shiver a little.