There were no more attacks after the one led by Tseun Rong. It was a nice change as they covered the remaining distance to the capital, not that it did much to improve Sen’s mood. There hadn’t been much talking after the battle. Some of it had been injuries, and Glimmer of Night never talked that much. The other part had been Sen’s fault. He’d pilfered the few things from Tseun Rong’s body that were still intact before, after a moment or two of thought, he stored the dead cultivator in a storage ring. That had drawn looks of pure horror from Shen Mingxia and Wu Gang. Only Long Jia Wei seemed undisturbed by that particular act, his experience as an assassin no doubt leading him close to a correct conclusion about why Sen was keeping the body. Any talking that might have been left in the rest of them disappeared when he gestured and air qi rolled out of him and forcibly dragged back anything that felt like a weapon or potential treasure to Sen.
The pile was more substantial than he’d expected. The weapons he could store, but the artifacts, talismans, tokens, and storage treasures needed to be sorted through. Deciding that it could wait until later, he just summoned a blanket and used it as a makeshift sack. He led everyone away from the road far enough that their presence wouldn’t be immediately obvious and almost negligently raised an oversized galehouse. He did need to put a little extra thought and effort into it because it needed a few extra rooms. He ushered everyone inside and handed out some basic healing elixirs to get them started, pausing just long enough to take one himself before he went outside to deal with the grisly aftermath. It wasn’t so much that Sen wanted to do it, but that he didn’t think it was fair to ask anyone else to do it. He’d killed most of those people, after all. Although, it seemed that Glimmer of Night had done his level best to catch up.
Sen was grateful when the elixir started to take the worst edges off the pain. It wasn’t a fix. He’d have to spend some time with his alchemy pot before he’d be truly healed again. While Tseun Rong was dead, the nascent soul-level ice qi he’d used was still trying to wreak havoc in Sen’s body. However, some relief was better than no relief, and Sen knew to count his blessings where he found them. Aside from snagging a few sect emblems and patches from the cultivators that were still intact enough to do that, there was no ceremony to their disposal. Sen did not build them pyres. He did not offer them prayers. They didn’t deserve it. He simply opened a hole beneath the pile of bodies and bones and let the earth swallow them all.
Looking back, Sen could see that it had already started when he got back from dealing with the bodies. Except, he was too distracted to notice it then. He was busy helping to get everyone healed and then crafting elixirs for himself to deal with the lingering ice qi. The next day, he mostly slept and made food. It was only once they were back on the road that he really saw the change. Everyone was too respectful toward him. He couldn’t entirely blame Wu Gang, who didn’t know him, or Long Jia Wei, who had been terrified of him before Sen murdered a nascent soul cultivator right in front of him. And half the kingdom, thought Sen. You were pretty high up in the air. Lots of people probably saw it happen. It was ultimately Shen Mingxia’s reaction that drove the knife in deep. The casual air between them. The jokes. The teasing. It was all just gone. He’d been hurt enough by that change that he simply ignored it the first day. The second day, he’d pulled her aside.
“You know, I haven’t changed. I’m exactly the same person now that I was back at that academy.”
She hadn’t been willing to even meet his eyes when she answered.
“You might not have changed, but what I know about you has changed. If I’d known then that you could do—” she hesitated. “If I’d known then how powerful you really are, I never would have acted the way I did.”
“You say that like I hid something from you. I didn’t know I could win that fight.”
Shen Mingxia did look at him then with a searching expression.
“You suspected, though. Didn’t you?”
He almost lied. He wanted to lie. He wanted to say whatever it would take to get things back to how they’d been before. The words were on his lips when a conversation he’d had with Falling Leaf surfaced in his mind. They’d been talking about how his encouraging mortals to treat him casually was dangerous for them. Is this really any different? Sen knew that it wasn’t. He was too powerful for Shen Mingxia to just treat him as a friend. Perhaps, if they were alone, in private, it might be okay. The real sticking point was Sen himself. He didn’t want respect he felt he hadn’t earned, but that didn’t make it right for him to get Shen Mingxia into the habit of treating peak core cultivators like they were peers. He remembered all too clearly what she’d told him to do. Just live with it. He closed his eyes and took a breath. This is how it has to be, he told himself.
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Opening his eyes, he said, “Yes. I suspected.”
Shen Mingxia shook her head a little.
“Even if you were just a regular core cultivator, you’d be beyond me. But you aren’t a regular core cultivator. You’re some kind of world-shaking talent. You’re a core cultivator who didn’t just survive a fight with a nascent soul cultivator. You destroyed him. You have impossibly powerful teachers who love you like you’re their flesh and blood. You—” she took a breath in what looked like an effort to steady herself. “You transcend me. I might, might get to where you are someday. If I’m incredibly lucky, I may even ascend one day. But, by the time I do, you’ll have already been there for so long that I doubt you’ll remember that you ever even knew a woman named Shen Mingxia.”
As the words washed over him, he wanted to rip them from the air. He wanted to deny every bit of what she was saying. It just wouldn’t do any good. Even if there was a detail wrong here or there, the point she was trying to get at was true. Sen could be her friend if he decided to be, but she couldn’t ever be his friend. I think they call that being someone’s benefactor, thought Sen, and it left a bitter taste in his mouth. Bitter or not, though, this was something he simply had to accept. Power comes at a cost. He’d been avoiding this one for a long while, but it seemed that he was finally going to have to pay it.
“I understand,” said Sen, trying to keep his tone calm and gentle.
“Do you, really?” she asked.
Sen sighed and nodded.
“I do. I don’t like it, but that’s mostly because it was nice to just be your friend. Even if it was only for a little while.”
Shen Mingxia gave him a bittersweet smile before she walked back over to stand with Wu Gang. It had hit him then that, with the exception of Glimmer of Night, none of the people with him at that moment could be his friend. At best, they could be… He wasn’t even sure he knew the right term. Since that moment, he’d felt the presence of the wall that had gone up between him and everyone else. It loomed over him, and he hated it. Not that his hate did anything to the wall. It didn’t reduce its height or make it any thinner. When he’d killed Tseun Rong, Sen had passed beyond a threshold that most people never saw, let alone reached. He might still be able to find a few friends and peers among the late-stage and peak core cultivators. Once the news spread, though, he suspected that he would be treated as a nascent soul cultivator by very nearly everyone, probably including other nascent soul cultivators. While it might spare him some headaches, it would also create them.
It was with those thoughts clouding his steps that Sen approached the gates of the capital proper. He knew that cultivators would often barge to the front of the line and demand entry. It was almost expected. So, Sen took a kind of perverse satisfaction in just taking his place at the rear of the line. He glanced back at his… His mind finally produced the right word, and it dripped with disdain even when he said it in his head. He glanced back at his entourage. Shen Mingxia, Wu Gang, and Long Jia Wei all straightened up when they saw him looking and smoothed their faces into the appropriate expressions of humble respect. Glimmer of Night was, once again, eating something that Sen was certain that human beings wouldn’t consider proper food. I’m going to have to talk to him about that, thought Sen.
It took less than an hour before the exact thing that Sen had been desperately hoping would not happen came to pass. Two lines of royal guards in what had to be their finest uniforms marched out the gate, down the line of gawking citizens, and to him. They formed up in two neat lines with someone Sen didn’t recognize standing out in front. The man saw Sen eyeing him curiously and hastily lowered his eyes.
“Judgment’s Gale?” the man asked.
“Yes,” Sen sighed.
The palace guards all bowed to him in unison. It was so perfectly timed that Sen thought that they must have practiced it.
“My Lord,” said the guard that Sen took for some manner of officer, “we have been sent by his royal majesty to escort you and your juniors into the city.”
Sen had hoped to get at least one or two days of relative anonymity in the city, but it looked like that possibility was well and truly dead. Hundreds of mortals had just watched these royal guards approach him, and then identify him as a folk hero that many, if not all, of them had heard of. Instead of yelling at the man the way he wanted to, Sen strove to play politics and project what he hoped with the right level of disinterested acceptance.
“Thank you, captain, is it?” asked Sen.
“Yes, my lord.”
“Very well. Lead on, captain.”