The stranger’s jaw worked back and forth like he was fighting not to express some very angry words. Sen watched this struggle with empty indifference. He’d been trying so hard to get the man to leave and avoid the necessity of violence. He was still willing to let the stranger just walk away. He’d hoped that he wouldn’t have to spill any blood on this journey, as far-fetched as that had felt to him. Now, it seemed like that was going to happen despite Sen’s best intentions. Sen wondered if he could have avoided this problem if he just listened to the man, but he knew that for the trap that it was. If he had listened to whatever story the man had to tell, it would have given the false impression that Sen was open to whatever proposal was going to follow it. And it was very clear that this man had been sent there to recruit Sen to someone’s purpose. That would have ended with them right where they were, except it would have taken longer. When Sen considered the man’s approach, he made an obvious connection.
“You were sent here by whoever dispatched that fool, Zixin, weren’t you?”
The stranger’s angry expression vanished beneath a very concerned one. “What did you do to him?”
“Me? I didn’t do anything to him,” said Sen.
“Thank the gods.”
“But he was beaten half to death, on fire, and running away the last time I saw him.”
“What? I thought you said you didn’t do anything to do him,” said the stranger, his eyes flashing with barely contained rage.
“I didn’t, but he also failed to recognize when to walk away and leave people alone.”
The crackling from the campfire was the only thing to break the silence in the campsite for several seconds, and then several things happened all at once. The stranger drew his jian in a move so swift that it told Sen the other man was also on a path of body cultivation. At the same time, narrow stone shafts shot out of the ground beneath the stranger, and Sen loosed an arc of lightning at the man. While Sen didn’t expect both attacks to work, he was shocked when neither attack managed to land. The stranger had used an air qi technique to launch himself into the air. It was barely enough to keep him ahead of the stone shafts, but it was enough. It was also enough to let the man avoid the arc of lightning.
Sen would have launched another lightning attack, but it was only intuition and his own superhuman reflexes that let him activate his qinggong technique and move out of the way of the wind blade that shot at him. While he usually found wind blades a simple matter to deal with, he rarely had to deal with them at such close range. By the time Sen recovered from the hasty move, the stranger was already closing on him. It seemed the man was determined to make this a fight that relied primarily on weapons. Sen almost felt bad for him. Almost. Yet, that initial arrogance was soon replaced with something that bordered on concern. Whoever the man was, he had been trained by someone who knew their business with the jian. Sen found himself having to really work to keep pace, but he had been trained by Uncle Kho. He used the superior length of the spear to keep the man at a distance. A fact that obviously frustrated the stranger. Sen could appreciate that frustration. The jian wasn’t the ideal weapon to fight someone with a spear. It was a close-range weapon that relied far more on finesse than brute strength.
Against the qi-infused durability of the spear, the match was largely even. The man was too fast and too strong for Sen to simply overpower him with the spear, but Sen was too fast and too strong for the other man to close the distance. As long as Sen could keep the pace up, the balance would eventually tip in his favor. Superior range wasn’t impossible to overcome, but it was a massive advantage. Sen only had to get the tiniest bit lucky to start inflicting injuries. Once that happened, the other man would start to slow down. Cultivator healing was impressive, but it was by no means immediate. Without time to consume some kind of healing pill or elixir, time that Sen would never give him, injuries would hamper the other cultivator in many of the same ways that they hampered mortals. Coming to the same conclusion, the stranger tried to fall back on qi attacks to break Sen’s concentration and pacing.
The look of astonishment on the man’s face when Sen blocked the wind blade attacks with wind blades of his own almost accomplished the task of breaking Sen’s concentration. It was all he could do not to burst into laughter at the comical expression. Unfortunately, it was enough of a distraction that he missed the window of opportunity to inflict an injury. Still, Sen realized that he had been too focused on the fight with the weapons and not focused enough on ending the fight. It had just been so long since he’d faced anyone who had the kind of skill that the other man displayed that it had narrowed Sen’s focus too much. Sen started sending fireballs at the man from strange directions. Sen had no idea if they would deal actual injuries to the man, but they were distractions that often forced the man to move in the direction that Sen wanted him to move.
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The stranger clearly saw what Sen was doing, but Sen was more than prepared to play the waiting game. It took several minutes, but when he sent a pair of fireballs at the man, one from the side and one from behind, it seemed that instincts took over. The man took a step in the wrong direction and couldn’t get his jian around in time to block the spear. The spearhead did double damage. The edge on the spearhead opened a wound across the top of the man’s thigh, while the lightning Sen had never stopped cycling dove into that open wound. The stranger didn’t scream, but he did clench his jaw hard. He tried to throw himself away from Sen with a burst of air qi but still caught a glancing blow to the head from the haft of the spear. Sen dashed after the man, intent on capitalizing on the moment of confusion that always happened after getting hit in the head. He swung the spear in a vicious arc that would split the other man in half if it connected.
It seemed that whoever had trained the stranger had imposed a similar philosophy of battle to the one that Sen learned. The stranger looked stunned and a little confused, but he reacted with the instincts that could only be honed through countless hours of practice under the harshest of conditions. The stranger stepped inside the arc of the spear and brought his jian down with what Sen assumed was his most powerful blow. It was Sen’s turn to be stunned and disoriented as the spear was sheared in half, shattering the qi techniques that he’d been using to infuse the weapon. The backlash felt a lot like taking a blow to the head, and Sen was vaguely aware of the blood that ran out of his nose. His senses or instincts warned him, and he activated his qinggong technique. It only carried him about ten steps away from the stranger, but he hadn’t escaped unscathed. He felt a hot burn across his back where the stranger had caught him with a slashing attack. Sen stumbled and, once again alerted by his intuition, dove into a sloppy roll. The wind blade he’d avoided tore up the dirt behind him. It was a short reprieve, but long enough for Sen’s mind to recover.
He stood and faced the other man, who was quickly limping in his direction. When the stranger saw that Sen had gathered his wits, he slowed and stopped. Sen glanced down at the severed half of the spear haft in his hand, frowned at it, and dropped the mostly useless piece of wood to the ground. He looked back at the stranger, who abruptly looked very uncertain. Sen wasn’t sure it had always been going to come down to this. Part of him considered summoning another spear to finish the fight, but he was ready for it to be over. He’d spent the entire fight studying the other man’s use of the jian. He knew how to end this quickly. Sen drew his own jian and walked toward the other man. As the stranger watched Sen approach with the jian, watched the way Sen moved with it, his uncertainty devolved into genuine concern. Sen approved of that reaction. As much as he liked the spear and as well-trained as he was with it, the jian was his true weapon.
There was no art to the exchange that followed. Maybe if they were both fresh and using the swords, it would have been different. As things stood, the stranger was injured and tired. Sen batted aside thrusts, dodged slashed, and Sen watched the fear grow in the other man’s eyes every time their blades met directly. It took less than thirty seconds before the stranger made a visible effort to disengage from the fight, and Sen let him. The other cultivator looked down at the badly damaged blade in his own hand. There were deep gouges in the edge where their blades had met. The stranger looked over at the pristine edge of Sen’s jian. Closing his eyes, the man dropped his jian to the ground. The stranger opened his eyes, and Sen saw the resignation in them. He also saw a kind of peace that he didn’t entirely understand.
“I cannot defeat you,” said the stranger. “I only ask that you make my death a clean one.”
Sen stared at the other man. What in all the hells is he doing? What he was seeing made no sense to Sen. Sen had been in hopeless fights before, but he’d never just stopped fighting. As long as there was a weapon in hand, qi in the body, or simply the will to survive, there was a chance. It would never even occur to Sen to just quit. Sure, everyone would be reborn, but that was no excuse to just give up on the life you were in. Sen couldn’t decide if he should kill the man or try to shake some sense into him. Who taught this man? Master Feng would be horrified by this display, thought Sen. It wasn’t cowardice. The man wasn’t begging for his life or trying to run away. But this kind of acceptance of death struck Sen as horribly unnatural. Death was part of the cultivator world. It was always a possibility. It was only wisdom to prepare oneself for that possibility of it, but that wasn’t what Sen was seeing. Damn it, thought Sen. However much he had been ready to kill the man in a fight, killing the stranger while he just stood there and passively accepted it would leave Sen feeling like an executioner. He had no interest in carrying around that kind of uncertainty or guilt.
“If it’s suicide you’re after, do it yourself,” said Sen. “Just make sure you do it somewhere else.”
Sen turned to walk back to what was left of the campsite, but the other man called out after him.
“I don’t understand.”
Sen turned back to the man. He weighed all of the possible answers he could give. Then, he shrugged.
“That sounds like a you problem.”