Unintended cultivator vo.., p.45
Unintended Cultivator : Volume Four, page 45
“Because Shi Ping was complaining about them earlier. Honestly, I’d be a little disappointed if it wasn’t a giant snake. It’d feel like the universe wasn’t really trying.”
“Fine, I’ll watch the kids.”
“Thanks,” said Sen.
He took off back the way they had come earlier, moving as fast as his qinggong technique would carry him. It didn’t take him long to find Chan Yu Ming. She wasn’t being subtle. Sen was so certain that he’d find a giant snake when he arrived that it caught him off guard when he found her in a big clearing fending off half a dozen spiders that were as big as horses. He just stared at the big, creepy things for a long moment before Chan Yu Ming noticed him.
“Are you going to help or just stand there?”
“But where’s the snake?”
Chan Yu Ming lopped off part of a spider leg that got too close before gesturing with her jian. “It’s over there.”
“Yes!” shouted Sen before he charged at the ridiculously huge snake.
Then, he thought of Master Feng. There were questions that Sen had always meant to ask the old man, about why he’d picked Sen, about why he’d never tried to ascend, but it had always seemed like there was more than enough time. Most of all, though, he asked himself what Master Feng would do in a situation like this. Sen smiled then. He felt bloody spittle drip from his bottom lip. He knew exactly what Master Feng would do. He’d make a statement. He would burn this moment into the dragon’s memory forever. So, that’s what Sen would do. He started cycling for everything. It hurt, splitting his attention that many ways, but what was pain in the face of death but a minor, very temporary, inconvenience? It wasn’t like he needed to worry about healing from it. He pushed his qi channels to their limits, feeding each cycling pattern as much qi from his core as they could handle.
Then, he started layering it all together. Weaving it all together like a rope. Forcing the strands to merge, to fuse, to become something else, something more, something terrible. He wrapped that hideous, monstrous energy around his fist. Then, he fed it his pain, his anguish, and his regrets. So many regrets. How could anyone my age have so many, he wondered. He fed it his killing intent, every last scrap of it, because why hold back in the last moments? Then, he fed it his rage. He pulled on that anger that had haunted him and hounded him. He drew on that inferno of fury until it was nothing but embers inside him, and then he drew on those. Hold nothing back, he thought. Nothing at all. While all of that had felt like it had taken forever to his battered mind, he dimly realized that he’d been in the middle of that odd, almost accelerated state of mind he fell into sometimes when fighting. He lifted his eyes and saw the dragon bearing down on him, moving almost impossibly fast even to Sen’s enhanced eyes and thoughts. Then he let his gaze drop down to the hand where he’d summed up everything he had to fight with, everything he’d had left to give, or borrow, or spend.
He couldn’t even see his hand anymore. He didn’t even think that there was a human word for the color of it. It didn’t look like a technique. It wasn’t a thing of beauty or balance. If hate could look like something, if it could take color, form, and shape, that was what was in his hand. Personified hate. Sitting in his palm was a kitten…if one that only the hells could spawn. It looked at him, fury and malicious intent in its eyes. Sen looked at that hate-kitten for the briefest of moments, and then he threw it at the dragon. The kitten yowled in rage as it hurtled toward the ancient spirit beast.
“Oh crap,” said the dragon, his eyes going wide at the sight of a technique he hadn’t seen since before the age of mankind.
The name of the technique filled Sen’s mind. Ruination Kitten.
“I don’t want you to mistake this for mercy. You’re going to take a message back to your masters for me. Pack up and leave. The Slovenly Chicken Foot Gang is done in this city, one way or the other. If they make me do it, I’m adopting a scorched earth policy. As for you, if you think what you just went through was bad, I have things lying around that would make that seem like a restful nap. If I ever see you again, I’ll make you eat one of those things. Then, I’ll hang your blackened, rotting corpse from a wall as a warning to everyone you know and love. Do you understand me?”
The woman was shaking, and Sen didn’t think that it had anything to do with the residual poison. He gave her a smile that would offer no comfort.
“You can just nod,” he said.
The woman’s head started bobbing up and down so fast that it looked almost comical. Sen stood up and walked over to the edge of the roof. As he was getting ready to make the leap back to ground level, the woman worked up the nerve to speak.
“Who are you? Who are you really?”
Sen paused. He’d been resisting it for a while, but the world had a way of making you do things you didn’t want to do, become things you didn’t want to become. Sen decided this was just one more of those things. However much he tried to resist it, he kept finding himself drawn into situations that called for him to be something, if not precisely better, than more than Lu Sen could be on his own. He kept needing to be the kind of larger-than-life person that only existed in a story. He supposed that it was convenient that he had just such a story right at hand. It wasn’t really relevant that he was learning to hate that persona as much as he hated killing. It was the need of the moment.
“I am Bat—” Sen cut himself off and looked around with a deeply suspicious expression before continuing. “I am a generic and wholly uncopyrighted cowled vigilante.”
Sen immediately started looking around again.
“What are you looking for?” asked the completely baffled woman.
“The most dangerous enemy of all. Intellectual property lawyers.”
“I didn’t bring you here to talk to me. I brought you here to listen,” said Sen. “Your honorable king is going to explain to you why I’m here. Why he was going to trade Chan Yu Ming to the Choi family. He’s going to tell you everything. Isn’t that right, your majesty?”
When the king didn’t say anything, Sen unleashed a little more of his killing intent. The king flinched and then cried out.
“Yes! I’ll tell them.”
“Excellent. Face them. Look them in the eyes while you tell them what you traded away your honor for. Tell them the secret that made you willing to sell off your daughter’s future.”
The king slowly pushed himself up off the floor. He stared up at Sen with a naked plea for mercy in his eyes. Sen looked back at the man with nothing but cold resolve on his face. Not finding what he wanted in Sen, the king turned to face his family. He opened his mouth and froze, feeling the point of a blade on the back of his neck.
“If you lie,” said Sen, “I will make you suffer in ways you cannot imagine.”
Sen heard the king swallow. Then, the king started speaking in a halting burst.
“I…I served red wine with fish.”
Looks of abject horror crossed the faces of the royal family. The queen’s face remained stoic, but she paled at this revelation.
“Go on,” said Sen.
“I play games on my phone instead of paying attention during meetings.”
“Father!” cried Chan Yu Ming.
“Tell them the worst thing,” ordered Sen. “Be specific.”
A look of pure and well-deserved shame crossed the king’s face. “I cut in line at the amusement park.”
Sen just shook his head. “Despicable.”
Unable to restrain his fury at the king’s deplorable behaviors, Prince Jing summoned forth the greatest punishment of all. Storming over to his father, the prince dropped the links of the chain around his father’s neck.
“Guards!” shouted the prince.
Guards marched into the room. Jing pointed at that former king.
“Take that thing away and cast it out of the palace.”
Sen didn’t quite know what to make of the happenings, so he turned to the prince. “I don’t get it. What’s a big red letter U mean?”
“Unworthy.”
Discover even more from Eric Dontigney, get this FREE short story!
THE ADVENTURE CONTINUES…
in Unintended Cultivator Volume 5
BOOKS AND REVIEWS
If you loved Unintended Cultivator Volume 4 and would like to stay in the loop about the latest book releases, deals, and giveaways, be sure to subscribe to the Shadow Alley Press Mailing List. Sign up now and get a free copy of our bestselling anthology, Viridian Gate Online: Side Quests! Your email address will never be shared and you can unsubscribe at any time.
Word-of-mouth and book reviews are beyond helpful for the success of any writer, so please consider leaving a rating or a short, honest review HERE—just a couple of lines about your overall reading experience. Thank you in advance!
You can also connect with us on our Facebook Page where we do even more giveaways: Shadow Alley Press on Facebook
BOOKS BY SHADOW ALLEY PRESS
ENTER THE SHADOW ALLEY LIBRARY to take a peek at all of our amazing Gamelit, Fantasy, and Science Fiction books! Viridian Gate Online, Rogue Dungeon, Snake’s Life, Dungeon Heart, Path of the Thunderbird, School of Swords and Serpents, the FiveFold Universe, and so many more... Your next favorite book is waiting for you inside!
LITRPG ON FACEBOOK
You can find even more books and awesome recommendations by checking out LitRPG Books on Facebook!
GAMELIT AND CULTIVATION ON FACEBOOK
And, if you love Gamelit and Cultivation and want to find more awesome books, check out the GameLit Society on Facebook! Or if you’re a wuxia diehard, you’ll want to stop by the Western Cultivation Stories Group!
EVEN MORE CULTIVATION ON FACEBOOK
Want even more Cultivation? Then be sure to check out Cultivation Novels on Facebook!
Unintended Cultivator Volume 4 is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2024 by Eric Dontigney and Shadow Alley Press, Inc.
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, email the publisher, subject line “Attention: Permissions Coordinator,” at the email address below.
JStrode@ShadowAlleyPress.com
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Raised in Western New York, Eric Dontigney has lived in New Mexico, Florida, Wisconsin, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee. He currently resides near Dayton, OH. He is a fan of photo-realism and impressionist paintings, coffee, and well-made food.
Not wishing to tarnish the good names of writers who have come before him, he refuses to name influences. He will admit to reading Neil Gaiman, Harlan Ellison, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ayn Rand, Stephen J. Cannell, Jim Butcher, Kate Chopin, Edgar Allen Poe, Shakespeare, Camus, James Baldwin, Tim O'Brien, Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov, and Stephen King.
Eric Dontigney, Unintended Cultivator : Volume Four
