Sen couldn’t believe his eyes when the second set of Soaring Skies cultivators arrived. It seemed that whoever was in charge thought the first group had been incompetent, because they sent another group of six qi condensing cultivators, including the one he’d spared. There were no tricks or games with shadows that time. He simply dropped from the roof and positioned himself in front of the Silver Crane. He watched the six approach and spared a disappointed look at the woman he let go earlier. She lowered her gaze in obvious shame. The one they’d put in charge this time took a step forward.

“I am,” they started.

“It doesn’t matter,” said Sen in a tired voice. “Your seniors must dislike you, for they sent you here to die.”

Then, Sen pointed to the pile of bodies he’d made. The lead sect cultivator’s face darkened in obvious anger.

The man drew the jian at his side and pointed it at Sen. “I will strike you down for this affront myself! For the honor of the Soaring Skies!”

The man threw himself at Sen, who didn’t even bother drawing his own jian. The man’s thrusts and slashes were wild, obvious from a mile away, so Sen stepped out of the way or simply pushed the blade off course with a pair of fingers. This seemed to incense the sect cultivator even more.

“You will fight me with honor!” the man bellowed.

“Honor? You come to slaughter mortals in their sleep. What honor should I grant those who engage in such cowardice? No, there will be no honor here. Only the mercy of a swift death, which is more than you deserve.”

The sect cultivator’s rage was almost palpable as he charged Sen, who stood in a calm, nearly meditative state. Sen slipped beneath another wild slash and then struck the cultivator. Once. He turned his attention to the remaining cultivators. He was surprised to see that the woman he’d spoken to earlier was kneeling, her spear set to one side. The other sect cultivators glared at her.

“What are you doing, Shen Mingxia? Pick up your spear!” barked one of the others. “Help us fight!”

“I cannot,” she said. “He spared me. I owe him a life debt. I cannot raise my weapon or qi against him.”

Sen stared at the woman, almost as stunned as her fellow sect members. He thought she meant what she said, but he also knew what it would mean for her, what she would have to watch. Considering how ill she looked to Sen’s sharpened senses, it seemed that she knew it too. A small wave of compassion for her flowed through Sen. He met her gaze.

“You should look away,” he said, as gently as he could manage.

Almost as if he’d given her a kind of permission that she desperately wanted, she closed her eyes and lowered her head. Sen turned his gaze to the other four. One of them cursed the woman as a coward and tried to cut her down with a guandao. Sen sent a wind blade to intercept the guandao. He might have put a bit too much energy into it because the guandao cracked and the wielder was hurled against a nearby building. Sen drew his jian. He saw no point in dragging things out any more than he had to. This exercise in brutality had never really appealed to him, and he was already tired of it. The last three sect members charged him. The first two died beneath two clean cuts from his jian. The last, who looked young even to Sen, managed to hold his own against Sen in direct jian-to-jian combat for ten seconds. That one has the makings of a true sword genius, thought Sen. What a waste.

“Find me in your next life, and we’ll see if we can’t find you better teachers,” Sen told the young man.

Then, Sen moved faster than qi condensing eyes could register, and it was over. Sen looked around at the bodies, feeling disgusted with himself, with them, with the Soaring Skies sect. About the only thing he wasn’t feeling disgusted by was the woman kneeling nearby, tears slowly leaking from her closed eyes. Gritting his teeth, Sen added the new bodies to the pile. He took a long moment to wipe the blood from the jian. Finally, not able to find another excuse to put it off, he walked over to the kneeling woman.

“Your name is Shen Mingxia?”

“Yes,” said the woman in a hoarse whisper.

“Who sent you here tonight?” asked Sen.

“My senior, Han Jun.”

He was half-surprised to find out that it wasn’t Changpu, but he may have been letting his dislike cloud his judgment. He regarded Shen Mingxia for a long moment.

“You relayed my message to him?”

“I did.”

“And he sent you back here anyway?”

“Yes.”

Sen wavered for a moment before he spoke. “You should leave this city. Find another sect, or at least find teachers who value you more than the ones you have now. Your senior sent you here to die.”

“I know, but I cannot leave.”

“Your vow?”

She nodded. Sen felt a sudden, irrational urge to slap the back of the woman’s head, as though it might literally knock better sense into her. She was determined to hold true to a vow of loyalty to which her fellow sect members clearly paid only lip service. Sen found himself wishing that she’d fallen in with better company, but what better company was available for aspiring cultivators in the city? There was only one major sect in the place. It was the Soaring Skies sect or nothing.

“If you insist on staying, you should move other there,” said Sen, pointing to a spot near the entrance of the Silver Crane. “It won’t be safe, precisely, but you’ll be less likely to die from a random technique.”

The woman said nothing, simply grasped her spear and moved to the spot that Sen had indicated. While he’d been trying to hide his presence or be circumspect before, he’d abandoned any pretense by the time the next group arrived. It seemed that they were taking the matter more seriously because the new group consisted of four foundation formations stage cultivators. Sen was sitting on the steps of the brothel when they arrived. One of the cultivators was glaring at Shen Mingxia, so Sen tentatively labeled him as Han Jun. The other three were staring at the pile of bodies with a mix of expressions ranging from anger to horror to barely concealed panic. Sen waited until the one he thought was probably Han Jun went to say something to Shen Mingxia before speaking himself.

“You should all return to your sect and send me an elder before this escalates any more than it has.”

“You may have succeeded against those outer disciples,” said the one that Sen had dubbed Han Jun, “or most of them. But you will not succeed against us, you murderous dog.”

“And you are?” Sen asked.

“I am Han Jun,” sneered the man.

Sen let the full weight of his killing intent settle onto Han Jun. While Han Jun dropped to the ground, screaming, bleeding from his eyes, nose, and ears, and clawing at his own face, Sen turned his attention to the other three.

“Perhaps the three of you are wiser,” mused Sen aloud. “Will you follow the example of Han Jun, or will you do as I ask?”

There was a long pause as the three foundation formation cultivators carried on a silent conversation with their eyes. For a moment, Sen held out hope that they might take the wiser path. The keening noises that Han Jun was making certainly seemed to have the panicked-looking one ready to flee. The other two ultimately prevailed and all three of them summoned weapons from storage rings of their own. Sen regarded them with a flat stare before he rose from the steps, cycled for lightning, and summoned his spear. He’d spent a lot of time thinking about the technique that Uncle Kho had used to vaporize those sect members who showed up on the mountain. He thought he had an idea of how to do it, or at least how to do something similar.

Pushing lightning qi into the spearhead, Sen thrust the spear skyward. Lightning lanced from the spearhead up into the clouds overhead, where it seemed to bounce around, lighting up the clouds from within. Sen knew that it was gathering strength, harnessing the power held in those clouds, waiting for a direction to unleash that force. The sect cultivators were staring upwards, no doubt sensing the doom that gathered there. With a sad look, Sen lowered the spearhead and pointed it at them. Sen didn’t have the kind of raw power that Uncle Kho did, so he didn’t expect to vaporize the cultivators. Of course, he didn’t need to vaporize them. He only needed to kill them. Lightning fell from the sky onto the sect cultivators like divine judgment. The one he was pointing at died instantly.

The other two received only indirect strikes, but it was enough to scorch them raw and hurl them away. Sen marched wearily toward one of the cultivators who had been sent flying. She was still stunned or in so much agony from the burns that she didn’t even register Sen’s presence. He drove his spear through her heart and paused long enough to make sure the life faded from her eyes. He turned to where the other one had been thrown. He wasn’t sure if they’d taken a lesser hit or were simply made of sterner stuff, but that man was on his feet, staggering toward Sen with dao in hand. He could feel the man gathering up power for some kind of qi technique, but he wasn’t sure exactly what it was. He’d never felt anything quite like it before. The man gave Sen a manic grin that bordered on madness, then thrust the dao in Sen’s direction.

A large ball of something shot toward Sen. Unwilling to find out firsthand what the ball was actually made of, Sen rolled to the side. When the ball struck the street, it popped, and a bitter, caustic smell filled the air. Sen could hear the stone of the street hissing and popping beneath the liquid. The cultivator was already generating another of the balls of acid. Sen narrowed his eyes and waited for the right moment. When he judged that the other cultivator was almost ready to launch, Sen crafted a wind blade. Rather than send it toward the other cultivator, he sent it at the ball. The other man seemed to realize what Sen planned to do, but not fast enough to get clear. The wind blade shattered the integrity of the ball. While the acid or poison was hard on the stones that made up the street, it was catastrophic for flesh. There was a brief, horrific scream, and then what was left of that acid-wielding cultivator collapsed to the ground.

Sen eyed the remains for a moment, not sure if he should feel bad or not. He eventually settled on not feeling bad. He hadn’t summoned the acid. Sen trudged over to Han Jun, who was no longer screaming or clawing at himself. The man’s eyes had rolled up and he was convulsing. Sen separated the man’s head from his body and released his killing intent. He just stood there, staring down at the decapitated Han Jun, and trying to find a way to justify all this death to himself. It had sounded simple enough when he was explaining it. He supposed it was still simple. It just wasn’t easy. He’d meant to avoid exactly this kind of mindless, purposeless killing when he’d set out from the mountain.

He wondered if he could have avoided the fight. It was possible, but only if he’d been willing to put himself into the hands of the sect. Based on how these cultivators behaved, that would have been a terrible mistake. He didn’t know that he’d be a prisoner of one kind or another, but it seemed all too probable. He’d also have had to let the insult to Sun Lifen pass, and that wasn’t in him. Lifen had been right. It might not be every sect, but the Soaring Skies sect expected blind obedience, even from those not in their sect. Sen only owed that to one person in the world. No, the fight had always been coming, if not here, then somewhere else. The pile of bodies grew a little larger, and Sen returned to his spot on the steps. If he’d been paying a little more attention, Sen would have heard Shen Mingxia quietly imploring the heavens to intervene.