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Unintended Cultivator Vol 11: Chapter 48 – Backlash
🕑 Added 2025-03-07 08:34:20 +0000 UTCClosing like that with an enemy he couldn’t see yet through the very lightning he’d conjured almost cost Sen his life. It had seemed like a sound enough strategy. He’d seized the initiative, or so he’d thought, and wanted to capitalize on it with some good, old-fashioned, relentless aggression. It was an effective means to keep the initiative in most cases. He’d also assumed that the lightning would serve as both a pain-based distraction and a visual shield for his approach. An assumption that proved entirely false as threads of metal finer than hair punched through the lightning toward him. Not that he actually saw those threads. If he’d waited until he saw them, it would have already been too late.
Instinct alone saved him. He’d gotten that split-second sense of dread that warriors develop after they’ve survived enough battles and near-death experiences. Successful warriors learned to place implicit trust in that warning instinct, as he did when he activated a burst of his qinggong technique to launch him upwards. It was only when he felt the subtle metal qi passing underneath him that he understood what had happened. Sen was equally stunned to realized that the spirit beast had tried to turn his own attack against him, as he saw the lightning crackling along those nearly invisible threads. If they had struck him, there was a decent chance that they would have passed right through him and the lightning cause havoc inside his body.
Gritting his teeth in anger, Sen simultaneously dropped the lightning and sent a tightly compressed ball of fire at the now exposed spirit beast. Experience told him that metal and white hot flame did not end well for the metal. Almost the instant the fireball left his hand, he brute forced the fusing of wind and metal qi and sent three wind blades crashing down on the threads. It was only when he heard the grunt of pain from the spirit beast that Sen knew his own spur of the moment plan had worked. The fireball had distracted the spirit beast enough that it had lost focus on the threads, allowing Sen’s wind blades to sever them and break the metal qi technique. He finally gave himself a heartbeat to look at the creature he was fighting.
Like so many of the more advanced spirit beasts, it looked both bestial and vaguely human. In this case, though, he had no idea what beast it had been originally. He’d never seen anything like it. It possessed a heavy brow and had black exposed skin on its face that resembled leather. The rest of it was covered what Sen initially mistook for fur, but was actually fine, black hair. The most alarming feature was the spirit beast’s arms. They were longer and far heavier with muscle than any mortal or cultivator Sen had ever seen. Nor did he imagine for a second that the strength those arms implied was false. Knowing how physically powerful body cultivation had made him was more than enough for Sen to at least assume this spirit beast possessed similar strength.
Still, the results of his attacks were a little disappointing. Some of the hair seemed to have been scorched off by the lightning, and there was fresh, bright red blood around the unusual creature’s eyes and nose, no doubt from the backlash of having its technique broken. What hadn’t landed was the fireball. The spirit beast had managed to conjure a now warped and misshapen metal disk to serve as a makeshift shield. The shield fell into pieces and dropped to the ground as Sen watched, instantly lighting the underbrush on fire.
This is not good, thought Sen. His teachers and Lo Meifeng had all insisted that fire was the best counter to metal, and his own experiences backed that up. Unfortunately, most fights didn’t happen in places where he desperately wanted to preserve the area intact. Winning here by burning the whole sanctuary area down was no victory at all. It was the same reason he hadn’t instantly resorted to any of the longer-range versions of Heavens’ Rebuke. He hadn’t had a chance to really test them somewhere safe.
That was something he was absolutely certain he needed to do before he used them in active combat. The technique was already so destructive that he couldn’t even guess what to expect the next time he used it. For all he knew, it would simply destroy everything right down to the bedrock which, again, would turn any victory completely hollow. He knew he might have no choice in the end. Still, he wanted to at least try to beat this thing some other way before he turned to options that always came with mass destruction and forced relocation of the herd.
He could relocate the spirit oxen if it came down to it, but that would cost time he didn’t really have and a lot of effort. It also wasn’t something he’d feel comfortable handing off to cultivators from the capital. Not with all of that bad blood so freshly formed. No, the best solution was to kill this thing fast, here, and with a minimum of secondhand destruction. The only question was what to he could use. The windblades with metal qi were always a choice but a dangerous one. It was never wise to rely on the qi type your enemy specialized in, and those metal threads suggested that this spirit beast was very proficient with metal qi.
Sen wasn’t optimistic about using earth qi. Earth qi and metal qi were closely related. The spirit beast might not be able to simply stop an earth technique, but it might prove able to interfere with or blunt any earth technique to make it functionally useless. Lightning worked, but he’d already seen it was a dangerous tool to use against this particular foe. Using fire was out given any other option. Water and ice it is, thought Sen as a memory surfaced. He and Falling Leaf had fought some spirit beast tigers with stone teeth and claws when he’d encountered that other herd years ago. He’d used a technique then that might prove useful now, assuming he could keep the spirit distracted long enough.
Not wanting to the give the spirit beast a chance to really regroup, he dropped his auric imposition and killing intent onto it. It had proven a reliable means of disabling and disorienting opponents in the past. The huge spirit beast took a staggering step which gave Sen a chance to create a four-foot spear of ice as big around as his wrist. Then, it was Sen who found himself lurching in the air as the backlash very nearly disrupted his qinggong technique. It took him a precious second to understand that the spirit beast had somehow managed to break the hold of both his auric imposition and killing intent. That was something that had happened so rarely that he could count the times on one hand.
Still, he had been trained by people who understood how crippling backlash could be. Even as he struggled to reclaim full control, that part of him that had learned how to react by having his techniques broken hundreds and hundreds of time hurled the ice spear at the beast. He registered another roar, although he couldn’t tell if it was one of pain or anger. He hadn’t even fully recovered when his spiritual sense warned him. The spirit beast had hurled itself into the air on a course that would send it crashing directly into him. Sen was more certain than ever that he did not want to grapple with this thing.
His head was still shaky enough that he didn’t trust himself to do anything with his qinggong technique. Instead, he opted for a much more direct method of moving himself. He seized his own body in a fist of air and simply jerked himself sideways. The motion itself was jarring and wholly unlike the smooth motions he’d grown accustomed to with his qinggong techniques. But it did accomplish the goal of getting him out of the way of the spirit beast’s incoming form. It also bought him the extra moment or two he needed to clear his mind. He cursed as he realized that he could have used that moment to set a trap if he’d been a little less disoriented.
Not that it mattered. The opportunity was lost, and Sen was still taken aback by how swiftly the spirit beast had managed to break free of his auric imposition and killing intent. He thought he understood a little better how it had happened when the spirit beast landed, turned, and hurled itself at Sen again with a bloodthirsty roar. It’s in a pure rage state, he realized. He wouldn’t have thought that would be enough. If this thing was in the spirit beast equivalent to the nascent soul stage, though, it might have made the difference.
With a clearer mind, he started to set a trap, only to have a monstrous killing intent clamp down on him. Sen was used to brushing aside or outright ignoring the killing intents of other cultivators. They usually felt anemic and underdeveloped to him. They were also intelligible. They always had a structure to them that made sense to him. This was something else entirely. Not only in its strength but in the utter alienness of it. There was a sense of blood and death, but also things that just made no sense to him. Still, he had trained for this as well and broke the killing intent the way the spirit beast had done to him. Something that, again, probably saved his life, but didn’t lead to a result that either he or the spirit beast would be likely to call good.
Sen’s vision cleared just in time to see blood pour out of the spirit beast’s mouth. Then, it collided with him. Given a moment or two to prepare, Sen could account for differences in things like weight. He could erect shields or anchor himself or reinforce his body with qi. There were many options for dealing with the problem. If he had time. In this case, it was just two, essentially limp bodies slamming into each other with the added problem that they were in the air. Sen had enough practice to know that, in those situations, the heavier thing usually won. And the spirit beast outweighed him by a lot.
There was a burst of pain and his vision went shades of white and red as he spun out of control. The combination was so disorienting that all he managed to do before hitting the frozen, snowy ground was to surround himself with a cushion of air. It was only afterward that he realized he hadn’t been that high to begin with. In fact, he was pretty certain that a fall from that height could not hurt him. It had just been the instinctual fear of falling. It was the impact with the spirit beast that had done damage. It had been traveling at whatever speed its nascent soul muscles could propel it. Given that it had likely been reinforced in many ways over what had to have been a long life, its body was nearly as durable as Sen’s. All of which had, in effect, turned it into a high-speed flesh boulder.
Sen’s only consolations were that the impact had likely wounded it as much as it had wounded him, and he had healing elixirs. Most fights didn’t play out in a way that would allow for something like taking an elixir, but he suspected he could spare the few seconds this time. He downed the liquid and dropped the stone vial before pushing himself to his feet. His chest felt…It felt wrong. Like it wasn’t the shape it was meant to be. Not that he could really take the time to physically look or do an in-depth examination with qi. The spirit beast was already climbing to its feet maybe fifty feet away.
I’ve been spoiled by too many easy fights, thought Sen. I forgot what it was like to face something or someone that wasn’t already afraid of me. He realized that he’d probably been underestimating just how much of an advantage that fear gave him in any encounter. It was something he’d need to examine when he wasn’t in a life-and-death battle. Sen started to take a step and stumbled as the bones in his chest started to resettle into the places they were meant to be. He shook it off and focused on the spirit beast.
“Let’s see if I can make you afraid before this is over,” he said.
Comments
Trevor Mergen
Thanks!
Eric Dontigney
If there isn’t another one today, I’ll probably post one tomorrow out of guilt.
Trevor
Hope to get another chapter today
