Sen watched the woman as his patience slowly burned away. He supposed if he hadn’t been immunized to all loveliness by the unearthly beauty of Lai Dongmei, he might have been taken off-guard by this woman. Almond-shaped eyes that were wide with surprise and fear stared at him. She had high cheekbones and delicate features with full lips that had parted in shock, as if she meant to speak but had forgotten how words worked. He’d felt her lurking since back when he’d bought those vegetables from that hilarious farmer. Sen smirked a little in his head at the way the man had painted rural life as a series of misadventures that usually ended with someone falling into a pile of ox dung, getting chased around the village by an angry spouse, or a child apologizing to an elder while everyone glared sternly and tried to keep straight faces. He’d have to track that man down again someday, just to listen to some more of his stories.

Ever since then, though, this woman had been trailing him. What was so interesting about buying vegetables, anyway? She never interfered or got too close, but Sen had been chased enough by people who meant him harm to be thoroughly done with finding any novelty in being tracked by anyone, even a beautiful cultivator. No, he thought, especially a beautiful cultivator. He expected that she could get what she wanted out of most people with a smile and implied promises. As the silence dragged on and on, Sen found his annoyance growing. Sure, he’d startled her but this was growing silly.

“You do know how to speak, don’t you?” asked Sen when his patience was down to a dim, flickering candle flame inside of him.

His words seemed to be enough to bring her out of whatever fear trance she was in because she finally started talking.

“I am Li Yi Nuo of the Vermilion Blade Sect.”

Sen let a groan escape his lips as he lowered his jian and cast a hateful look at the sky.

“Another sect? Seriously? Well, no. Just no,” said Sen before he shook his head at the woman who seemed baffled by his words. “Look. I’m sure your sect is great or powerful or some other positive word, but I really don’t have the energy to deal with any more sects right now. So, please stop following me, and tell your elders not to make any more of these.”

Sen held up the compass and then crushed it into a tiny ball before he turned and threw it into the forest. He looked over at the woman who had cried out in horror as he destroyed the tracking treasure.

“What have you done?” she demanded. “That was a priceless sect treasure.”

“I’m not a fan of being hunted,” said Sen in a cold tone that seemed to bring Li Yi Nuo up short. “But I suppose I should give you something to make up for the loss. Here. I’m told these would be valuable to most sects.”

Sen conjured a canvas sack from a storage ring and dropped a couple of dozen healing elixirs into it. He tossed the bag to the sect woman he wanted to escape as soon as possible. Her eyes bulged when she scanned the bag.

“These are…” she started.

“Potent, wonderful, other nice words. I get it. Our business is done. Have a safe journey back to your sect.”

Sen managed to take a few steps before the woman shouted at him.

“Wait!”

Gritting his teeth, Sen turned and looked at her.

“I’m trying very hard to keep all of this civil and not start a war with your sect. That being said, I’m also very, very tired of strangers and sects intruding on my life. So, Li Yi Nuo of the Vermilion Blade Sect, please help me to accomplish that goal.”

Her face shifted through several expressions before it finally landed on resolve. Damn it, thought Sen.

“A few months ago, were you to the west of here, traveling south?” she asked.

The question caught Sen a little flat-footed. He had expected her to start making demands or spouting nonsense about the glory and the honor of her sect. He frowned at her.

“I was. Why?”

“Did you encounter members of my sect on that road?”

Sen frowned a little harder. Where is she going with this? He couldn’t help but wonder if she was going to declare some kind of duel on the spot depending on his answer. A big part of him thought he should just turn and walk away, but this situation was different from most of his encounters with sect members. Of course, he didn’t know what she wanted to know.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

“I have no idea. I usually stop listening to someone when the word sect comes out of their mouth. Once they’re out of sight, I never think about them again. It’s possible I crossed paths with them, but I doubt I’d remember unless they made me kill them.”

A look of genuine anger crossed Li Yi Nuo’s face at his words. He didn’t have any vivid memory of a life-or-death struggle during that trip south. Still, it was possible that it just hadn’t stuck with him.

“Is that what happened?” asked Sen “Did someone kill a member of your sect?”

“Kill? No. That would have at least been clean. Someone afflicted three of our outer disciples with a technique of torment.”

“Three?” murmured Sen, something stirring in his memories of that murky time after he’d left that doomed village.

“A technique that attacks the heart, the mind, and the soul. Then, they were left to die on the road. I found them and returned them to the sect. With the help of a specialist, the elders managed to make that treasure into something that could track the person who did it. It led me to you,” she said with a snarl.

Sen wasn’t even seeing Li Yi Nuo anymore. He was seeing a washed-out mockery of a memory in which three fools refused to leave him be. He saw it as that fog of shadow, divine qi, sorrow, and something else invaded those three. He hadn’t fully understood what he was doing at the time. His mind and emotions had been so compromised. What had the other thing been? It hit him. Judgment. The last component had been judgment. He pulled away from the memory to see Li Yi Nuo glaring at him.

“What?” he asked.

“Was it you?”

“Yes,” he said.

Apparently, she hadn’t been expecting him to simply admit it because he was walking away by the time she collected her thoughts.

“Stop!” she commanded.

Sen didn’t even bother to look back at her. He just kept walking.

“Stop! You must return to the sect with me to undo this thing that you’ve done.”

Sen did stop that time. He gave her a long look, so she’d know that he thought about his answer.

“No.”

“No? No to what?”

“No to all of it. First of all, you’re assuming that I want to undo it. Second of all, you’re assuming that I can undo it. Neither of those things are true. Given that information, there’s no point in me going.”

Li Yi Nuo looked flabbergasted at Sen’s words. “You don’t want to undo it? Those men are suffering.”

“That was the point. I’ll admit, I wasn’t really in the right state of mind to understand that technique when I used it on them. I didn’t fully know or care what it would do. It was simply an alternative to slaughtering them. So, I took it.”

“What does it do?”

“It’s judgment. I threw in a small ocean of sorrow too, but that’s not really what it’s for.”

“Judgment? Whose judgment? Yours?”

“Mine?” asked Sen. “Do you really think any judgment of mine could persist for months? It’s divine judgment. Why do you think it’s lasted this long? Why do you think I can’t undo it? I’m not the one punishing them. I’m not the architect of their pain. They’re being punished by their own actions.”

“What are you talking about? What does that even mean?”

“I mean that the technique forces them to see and understand what their actions wrought from the perspective of the heavens and the perspective of people who were affected by those actions.”

“No. No, this technique came from you. You did it. You can undo it.”

“You aren’t hearing me. I’m not saying I can’t because I can’t be bothered with it. I’m saying that I cannot. I am incapable of doing it.”

“That’s a lie,” fumed Li Yi Nuo. “The cultivator can always stop their own techniques. Why would this technique be the exception.”

“Because there’s divine qi woven into that technique. I’ve learned the hard way that divine qi does what it wants to do and nothing else. I can’t make it stop doing what it’s doing any more than I can stop the heavens from sending tribulations. If those men are still suffering, it’s because the heavens think they haven’t learned what they need to, yet.”

“You must return to the sect with me and explain this to the elders.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m not stupid. Your elders already know. They’ve already tried to break that technique using every method they can think of and failed. The only thing left to try is killing me, which also won’t work, but they’d do it anyway. So, why would I ever surrender myself to people who intend to kill me?”

Li Yi Nuo seemed at a loss before she said, “To atone.”

“Atone?” asked Sen. “Atone for what?”

“What you did to those men is unspeakable. Honor demands you surrender yourself.”

Sen burst out laughing. “Honor? Oh, you simply must meet this guy I know. He’s a big fan of talking about honor. Me? Not so much.”

“Judgment’s Gale, the divine wind, isn’t interested in honor?”

Sen rolled his eyes. “Don’t believe every story you hear. Listen, you aren’t going to be able to convince me to come of my own volition. Since your sect sent you here alone, I’m going to assume that you aren’t weak. They probably loaded you down with a lot of other treasures and tools to either bring me to them or kill me outright. You might even be able to do it, but it won’t come cheap. The most likely scenarios are that we either kill each other or I kill you.”

“You really think you’re better than me?”

Sen sighed. “How have you spent most of your time over the last five years?”

“What?”

“In the last five years, what have you been doing?”

“Why does that matter?” asked Li Yi Nuo.

“Humor me.”

“I’ve spent most of that time cultivating and training with my master. Why?”

“Now ask me the same question.”

“I don’t see the point of this.”

“The answer is killing. I’ve spent most of the last five years running from one life-or-death situation to the next. The sad fact of the matter is that, despite my best efforts, I have become a very efficient killer. I don’t have a real conflict with you. I don’t want to kill you. Please don’t put me in a position where I have to prove to you how good I am at ending people’s lives.”