NOVPUBSen watched with cold eyes as Jin Bohai made a hasty retreat over the palace walls on a qi platform. He took a calming breath, happy that he hadn’t given in to his anger. It had allowed him to turn what increasingly looked like a fruitless conversation into an advantage. Still, it had been harder to control that anger that he would have liked. Part of him knew that he didn’t need to defend Grandmother Lu’s honor that way. She might have been offended, but would have just disregarded the words since they came from a nascent soul cultivator. It was what almost anyone would do.
Yet, Jin Bohai’s words had stirred an old protectiveness in him. A protectiveness born in a time when Grandmother Lu had been the lone person in the world who had shown him a shred of kindness. That anger had been primal, not rational, and he’d nearly done something irrevocable. He reached up and pinched the bridge of his nose, the gesture as physically useless as always but offering some kind of mental balm. He was glad that his experiences in recent years hadn’t stripped him of those feelings, but he also recognized them for the weakness they were. He could be manipulated by those feelings. It was something he’d need to be mindful of in the future.
“Well, that was infuriating and entertaining,” said Lai Dongmei as she stepped closer to him. “Most things turn out to be one or the other, not both.”
Sen huffed out a little laugh and then offered a mock bow.
“One does aim to be amusing,” he said.
Lai Dongmei rolled her eyes before her face took on a serious cast.
“For a second there, I thought you were going to fight him.”
“For a second there, so did I,” said Sen. “It’s a good thing I didn’t. I doubt I could beat him.”
That drew a flat look from the Golden Phoenix Matriarch.
“You have to realize how ridiculous that sounds,” she said.
“It only sounds ridiculous because everyone watched me do some very large-scale techniques recently. Big, scary techniques that—” Sen glanced around to make sure no one was listening.
As a precaution, he erected a barrier of air around them. It would distort their words into gibberish to anyone outside. Then, he continued. 𝑛𝑜𝑣𝑝𝑢𝘣.𝘤𝑜𝘮
“Big, scary techniques that I am wholly incapable of replicating.”
Lai Dongmei frowned at him and said, “You said something like that before. I thought you were just being overly humble.”
Sen shook his head.
“I accomplished both of those huge attacks by borrowing strength. The first time, I borrowed lightning from the storm. The second time, I borrowed the truly absurd amount of divine qi that was in that storm. It was diffuse. I didn’t even notice it until I was physically inside the clouds, but it was there. I took it and used it. Before you ask, I only have guesses about why the heavens provided such a resource. If I had to fight Jin Bohai, I wouldn’t have those things sitting around to boost my strength,” he said with a gesture at the clear, starlit sky above. “I’d have to fight him with nothing but my own power.”
“I know for a fact that you’ve killed more powerful cultivators than yourself before,” objected Lai Dongmei.
“I have,” admitted Sen. “I do have some advantages. Body cultivation is a bigger advantage than most cultivators realize. It lets me take hits that would cripple a spirit cultivator. I’m also not confined to using just one kind of qi, which gives me a lot of flexibility. On balance, I’m probably more powerful than I have any right to be.”
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Lai Dongmei gave him another flat look and said, “You don’t say.”
Sen gave her a small smile and said, “But there is a fundamental difference between my qi and his or yours. There’s, what, ten sub-stages in the nascent soul stage?”
“You should know that,” chided Lai Dongmei.
“Probably,” said Sen. “Although, I also didn’t spend centuries or millennia obsessively thinking about getting to the nascent soul stage. I guess I’ll need to do it, but I haven’t memorized the details yet.”
“I suppose that’s fair. Yes, there are ten sub-stages, well, nine if we’re being very specific. The tenth stage is ascension.”
“Okay, so, nine stages. I can probably bridge the gap between myself and anyone up to the third or maybe even the fourth substage. That’s assuming that I can use my previous experience as a guide, which might be foolish given how poorly we understand the nascent soul stage. At least, I could probably bridge the gap if I went absolutely all out and held nothing back. Beyond that, though, even I’m going to start crashing into a wall. I can feel how much denser your qi is than mine. The same way that I’m sure you can feel how much denser Master Feng’s qi is than yours.”
Lai Dongmei shuddered at the mention of Fate’s Razor, but said, “That’s true, but you seem to overcome those kinds of hurdles pretty regularly.”
“Sure. It’s because I cheat. Whenever I can, I try to prepare the ground so it’ll be to my advantage. I lay traps. I make poisons. I set up formations. I grasp every advantage in the environment I can find. In that sense, I’m shameless. In a straight fight against Jin Bohai, his qi is substantially stronger. That puts me at an automatic disadvantage. Every one of his techniques would be like getting hit by a mountain. I can take that kind of abuse for a while, but attrition will work against me fast.
“On top of that, I’d be up against all of his experience. I’m very good with the jian and the spear. The same goes for most of my favorite qi techniques. I’ve had a lot of practice with all of those in recent years. But even if we count my training as practice, it’s still only twenty years give or take. How well do you imagine that’s going to stack up against his many centuries of experience? Or all of your experience for that matter?”
Lai Dongmei winced a little and said, “I think you may be underestimating the value of being a sword genius. Not everyone trained as diligently as you clearly did with your weapons. But I take your point. Experience does matter, and most nascent soul cultivators have a lot of it.”
“Exactly. The same goes for qi techniques. I’m nowhere even close to mastering using nascent soul qi. I can throw around power and have a pretty deep well of qi reserves, but fine control is something you only get through a lot of practice. Practice that I do not have. In short, if I were going to win in a fight with him, I would absolutely have to get in at least one vicious strike in the first few seconds.”
“I have noticed that you favor the overwhelming force from the beginning approach.”
“I know my weaknesses. It’s one way to overcome them. However, someone who’s survived as long as Jin Bohai will recognize my weaknesses unless he’s a complete fool. He’d work very hard to avoid that crippling early blow. In a long fight of attrition. I probably lose forty-nine times out of fifty.”
“Forty-nine?”
“I’ve learned not to discount luck. Sometimes, bad luck has more to do with your enemy’s death than you do.”
“True enough. I suppose I understand a little better now why you were so leery of Feng Bai.”
It was Sen’s turn to shudder.
“It’s not even his power that frightens me.”
“No?”
“It’s his commitment. I saw it in his eyes the night I killed Tong Guanting. Feng Bai wants me dead. He believes it’s the best thing. Someone like that will do things that a sane opponent never would.”
“Like killing themselves if they’re certain that it would kill you too?” asked Lai Dongmei.
“Yes. That’s exactly what I think he’d do,” said Sen before rolling his neck. “I understand why Master Feng didn’t kill him. Family is family. But part of me wishes that he had finished the job.”
“Well, this has turned into a rather dreary conversation,” observed Lai Dongmei.
“It has, hasn’t it?”
“Enough talk of death, Jin Bohai, and Feng Bai. You’ve been neglecting me, Judgment’s Gale. It’s time that you remedy that.”
“Is it?” asked Sen with a smirk.
“Oh yes. It is most definitely time.”
