Much to his surprise and Tseun Rong’s naked shock, Sen’s first attack was very nearly the last word in their fight. The nascent soul cultivator seemed mildly impressed by Sen’s speed, but not by the attack itself. That held right up until the moment Sen’s jian passed cleanly through Tseun Rong’s Dao without so much as a whisper of resistance. It was only the equally terrifying speed of the nascent soul cultivator that spared him from being sliced in two. The man activated his own qinggong technique and jerked himself away, but not before the tip of Sen’s jian cut a neat slice across the man’s chest. Tseun Rong didn’t go very far before he stumbled to a stop and stared down at the open wound in clear horror. Instead of closing immediately the way any other superficial wound would do for someone at that cultivation level, the cut started to darken and fester. The nascent soul cultivator’s hand shot to the wound, and he barely displaced a groan of pain with a snarl of rage.
The man’s eyes snapped up and his mouth opened, no doubt to inform Sen of how he was courting death, but the words never arrived. Sen was nearly on top of the man again, his void-colored blade and its devastating lighting on course to drive through the other man’s heart. Keep him on the back foot, Sen told himself. If I let him recover his wits, this is almost certainly over. Tseun Rong's eyes widened in panic, and he managed to dodge to one side. Even off-balance, though, the man was a nascent soul cultivator with all of the hard years of battle experience that normally went with that stage of advancement. He sent a spear of ice racing toward Sen. A memory of a battle at sea with a monstrous spirit beast flashed through Sen’s mind. The feeling that ice spear gave off felt alarmingly similar to a chunk of crystal that had punched in one side of Sen and out the other during that fight. He recalled all too well the ice qi that had lingered inside of him from that crystal and tried to rip him apart from the inside out.
Sen dodged to one side and lashed out with his jian. The raw destructive force of Heavens’ Rebuke disrupted the ice spear technique. It was a double-edged sword, though. The backlash from the broken technique cracked Tseun Rong’s concentration and prevented him from hurling another technique at Sen. Unfortunately, while the technique was broken, the ice was still real enough, and ice formed by a nascent soul cultivator was as hard as diamonds. The spear shattered under the force of Sen’s blow. Dozens of cuts opened across his body, including one that was perilously close to a major artery in his neck. Rapid blood loss wasn’t quite as catastrophic for someone with Sen’s body cultivation, but it damned sure wouldn’t do him any favors. He also felt the undirected ice qi trying to sink itself into him and turn flesh into ice. He ignored that distraction, trusting that his body would find a way to either suppress or convert that foreign qi into something he could use.
Taking a cue from the ice spear and eager to return damage for damage, Sen cycled for earth. He reached deep into the ground, reached for the very bones of the world, and seized what he found. Even as he dragged that ancient stone upward, he compressed it, hardened it in ways that only qi could manage. It only took a moment, but moments mattered in a fight. The wound on Tseun Rong’s chest was getting worse by the second, but Sen could tell that it wasn’t going to be enough to kill the man. At least, it wouldn’t kill him soon enough to matter. The dozen needle-thin slivers of ice hovering in the air around the nascent soul cultivator told him that. Sen had a deep yearning to never find out what would happen if one of those needles passed through his body. Tseun Rong launched the ice slivers at very nearly the same moment that razor-thin blades of hardened stone shot up out of the ground.
Sen didn’t see what the other man did because he was too busy flinging himself back, erecting a wall of fire, and hardening a dome of air in front of him. He did hear an agonized scream, though, so for a tiny little fraction of a single second, he let himself feel smug. Then, all his attention was back on survival. The ice slivers shot through the wall of white-hot flame, which reduced their strength, but they still punched into the dome of air so hard that Sen’s feet plowed furrows in the ground. He could feel that ice driving against the hardened air. The dome pressed closer and closer to his body. He dipped into his core and poured that qi into the dome, but the ice slowly, inexorably pushed through the defense. Sen watched as the glistening, impossibly sharp tips of those needles drew closer and closer to his body. He felt it as one of them pierced into the muscle of an arm, and another started to part the flesh in his leg. He didn’t dare move for fear that it would break the concentration necessary to fend off the attack of a true nascent soul cultivator. He forced himself to ignore it as one of those slivers pressed ever closer to his right eye. Just when he was certain that ice was going to slip through the dome of hardened air, plunge through his eye, and tear into his brain, the force behind the technique faltered. It was only a moment, but it was enough. Sen shifted the dome away from him, opening a deep gouge in his cheek that immediately started to burn with cold. Sen’s injured arm and leg felt like they belonged to someone else. No more close combat for me in this fight, thought Sen grimly.
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Sen looked to where he’d last seen Tseun Rong. The nascent soul cultivator was still there, or most of him was at least. The man had shattered the stone blades with what looked to have been brute strength, but they’d done their work. It looked like one of the blades had sheared off most of the man’s right hand. Another had done severe damage to one of the man’s legs, although Sen couldn’t tell the extent of it through all of the blood. They were the kinds of wounds that would have ended a fight with most core cultivators. A foundation formation cultivator likely wouldn’t have survived at all. The nascent soul cultivator simply looked enraged.
Sen could hear the sounds of fighting nearby. There was the clash of weapons, bursts of qi, screams of pain, and everything in him wanted to look. His spiritual sense could give him a general picture of what was happening, at least in the sense of where people were located. It didn’t take much imagination to figure out that the small group that moved together was comprised of Glimmer of Night, Shen Mingxia, Wu Gang, and Long Jia Wei. But that scant information wasn’t the same as seeing what was happening, or visually confirming that the people he’d brought into this fight were at least still on their feet if not entirely well. It took every ounce of discipline he had to keep his eyes fixed on Tseun Rong, but Sen made himself do it. The nascent soul cultivator was the single biggest threat in the fight. Diverting his attention from that threat was like begging for death.
“You impudent child!” the man roared. “I will shatter your core and make you watch while I peel the skin from your followers.”
Sen felt a kind of deadness take root inside of him at those words. It was as if every single emotion suddenly lost the ability to communicate with him. He simply stared blankly as the nascent soul cultivator continued to rave.
“Are there people you love? Friends? Family? I will break them in body and soul while you watch, impotent to stop it. That ridiculous school of yours. I’ll raze it to the ground for this mutilation. That pathetic sty of a town you call home. Gone. The people there. I will sell them into the worst kind of slavery you can imagine. I will make your name a curse on the lips of this kingdom, Judgment’s Gale!”
Tseun Rong glared across the expanse of scorched and battered soil between them. There was madness in those eyes. Sen didn’t know if it was a madness born of time, or pain, or pride. Perhaps, it was a sickness that had always been in the man. There was no way to be sure, and Sen had moved into a place beyond caring about things like why. All he cared about at that moment was what. What the man had likely done. If he was issuing threats like that while mad with pain, it was probable that he had actually done such things in the past. What the man was threatening to do. Sen didn’t have much use for honor, but he did believe that he had a duty to protect the people who wouldn’t be in danger if not for him. This man was threatening all of them. He was threatening Ai. Sen felt a rumbling in his soul at that, as if the entire world had been seized by the fist of a god and shaken. Threats to her simply could not be tolerated. That only left a simple question. What should be done about Tseun Rong? Sen watched as the madness in the man’s eyes retreated at what he saw, or perhaps at what he didn’t see on Sen's face and in Sen’s eyes. It was replaced with wariness. Everything else fell away as Sen focused the totality of his attention on Tseun Rong. As that focus sharpened, there was a trembling in the air, a shudder in the earth, and thunder erupted from a clear sky.
Sen's voice sounded calm to him when he spoke two words, even if they made the nascent soul cultivator take a lurching step back.
“I see.”