She gets a little closer to making a proper ring this time, exhaling the blueish smoke into a vaguely-shaped cloud. It's all in the tongue action, and she's pretty talented in that department. It's just not quite there yet, but that just demands practice.

"I said halt!"

She leans against the closest cart, distributing her weight so it only creaks rather than breaking under her weight, and takes a fresh drag off her cigarette. "And I'm halted. What now?"

"Your kind aren't welcome here, outsider," the cultivator snarls, landing on the street and flaring his Qi. "Leave the lands of the grand Republic, and tell others of your ilk that the Watchful Fields sect has placed these lands under its protection!"

She looks the kid up and down, letting her eyes rove. He's young, that's for damn sure, and his cultivation rings as mid-Foundational realm. Nothing too impressive, though she notes that he shouldn' be able to fly as he did, tracking under the…

Is that a sword?

The kid, maybe eighteen, tops, is standing atop a naked blade, on the flat of the sword, its hilt distressingly ostentatious and over-decorated. It makes for a striking entrance, admittedly, long brown hair whipping in the wind, lip dramatically curled into a sneer, distressingly pale skin beneath light blue-purple robes, but it just can't be practical. The Empire stopped using flying swords… yeesh, millenia ago. Literally any flight artifact works better, and doesn't put you in danger of cutting yourself or falling off a slender platform.

He seems to take the wrong message from the way she tilts her head and stares at the sword, tilting his chin even higher and letting out an artsy little "hmph".

"I see you recognize a true cultivator when you see one! A true sect has resources that your lowly tribes could never match, and-"

"Firstly, rude."

He blinks, his script running into a hiccup.

"Seriously, you don't know I'm from the Tribes of the Many and All, say it properly next time, and even if I were… seriously? Junior, I've beaten to death things you can't comprehend, and just about any threat you could pose to me is lost from watching you parade around on a sword. Looks fancy, sure, but come on, is that-"

"I am not here to bandy about insults!" he roars, pushing his Qi out further, really pushing it out. He doesn't have a Domain, that much is clear from just how… shallow? Watered down? his cultivation smells, but he sure seems to be doing his best to act like it. "A proper flying sword allows one to embody the balance and grace inherent to cultivation, and you-"

She snorts. "Inherent? Pretty sheltered if you think that cultivation inherently makes you balanced, never mind graceful."

At this point, his cheeks are starting to redden, just a bit. She feels a bit bad, actually- he's just some kid, one that's assuming she's some mutant that he can intimidate with Foundational realm level energies, and it's clear he's not used to actual back-and-forths like this.

"Enough! Leave now, before I demand retribution for your disrespect, savage!"

Mmh. Ok. Not feeling bad anymore.

She inhales, letting the cigarette light up with a hint of bluish flame- and then keeps inhaling, alien lungs dragging air in, in, in, until the flame and ash cross her lips. She opens her mouth, rolling her tongue around the stub that remains, and makes eye contact with the kid as she swallows it, still lit.

Then she exhales, a cloud of grey-blue smoke flooding the area around her, covering her like a shroud, washing over the space like new colors.

"One chance."

The kid's eyes glint.

"For what, savage? Surrender? I'm afraid that-"

Her hand is around his throat.

There's clearly some sort of technique or Qi-based method to balance on the sword, she can feel a faint hum of it from his feet- but she doesn't need it. A trail of dust and smoke leads from the ground to the blade, where she now stands, towering over the cultivator on his own blade, her hand comfortably circling his neck and exerting just a touch of pressure.

"You're young. Stupid too, by the looks of it. It costs you nothing to be respectful to an opponent, and earns you plenty- but you're clearly an idiot, and talented at it too, so I'm not going to kill you. It would be a waste. What do you say about that?"

Mmh. There it is. Sweat flavored by fear, the animal panic of the unexpected and the terrifying's arrival.

Triggering and fun. Pretty accurate guess so far.

He gulps (she leaves him enough room for it), and, very carefully, lowers his hands from where he went to grab her wrist.

"Th- thank you. Senior."

She grins, her smile a thing of all fangs. "You're welcome, junior! I'm happy to assist in your learning. Now, next time you find someone strangely confident who's strength you can't gauge, you will…?"

"...bow and-"

She blinks. "What? No. Don't go bowing to everyone you meet, that's not-"

Deep breath.

"You gather information, so you can find out whether or not they're beyond you. And if they are?"

"I… I should…"

She waits, but… yeah, ok, she can hear his bladder trying to loosen.

"You should call for support. Reinforcements. Send out an alarm. Yes?"

He goes to nod frantically- and is blocked by her hand, still around his throat.

"So?"

"...so… I… senior, I'm not sure-"

"So call for help," she snarls.

Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

And… yeah, that did it, he pissed himself. Should she tone down on her appearance?

Hmm. No. She looks incredible, and it was hard earned. Besides, she's got enough dysphoria going on.

"Ah… senior, if I could just…"

She sighs, stepping off the blade and bringing him with her. A mild case of whiplash, maybe, but it gets him off the ridiculous looking sword and onto the ground, where she has a lot more control of how this could go.

Then, and only then, does she let go of his throat.

"Alright, kid. Go ahead. Call your superior. Ideally, call an elder of your sect, but if you can't manage that, I understand. Either way, I'd like to introduce myself to someone who is both not an idiot and strong enough to influence things, alright?"

He nods frantically, pulling some sort of bead from around his throat and pushing some Qi into it. A few seconds later, it happens again- the barrier pulses.

Except it's not a barrier, is it?

It's more pervasive. Like… like a general filter, spread throughout the entire landscape, but felt strongest at its border. The whole area seems to be under a semi-living formation of some kind.

Do they have a Heart here?

She looks down at the kid, who is, at this point, getting back to his feet- and retreating a few steps back.

She lets him. He's not a threat, and he's (hopefully) already learned his lesson.

She's keeping the sword, though. It looks stupid and ridiculous and she kind of wants to study it later to see why they're using it to fly instead of, like, a thin metal disk. Way more practical and easier to make.

The cultivator stares at her, wide eyes and close to hyperventilating, as she opens a vent in the side of her ribcage and stabs the sword into it, swallowing the whole thing deeper into the Body.

"I'm not paying you back for the sword. Consider it an idiot tax."

"Senior, I would never dare-"

Aaaand more of that.

It takes almost fifteen awkward, painful, slow minutes for reinforcements to arrive.

On the horizon, from further north towards the peaks proper, she sees four more cultivators incoming, flying on swords of their own.

…It looks a little cool. The swords themselves look stupid though. The whole thing feels pretty pretentious. But it's a little cool.

They arrive, and just like the kid, blast a wave of pressure at her with their Qi, boosting an aura around themselves as a show of force.

Which washes over her with absolutely no effect. Even without a Qi-resistant surface layer, not one of them has the force necessary to actually cause her discomfort. Frankly, she walked through denser areas of Qi on the way here.

Three of them are in the Foundational realm, but seemingly near its edge, their Qi denser and richer than the first one's, and the one in the lead is in Core Formation. His cultivation reeks of heavy ink, draped over pages of writing, left out in the sun to dry and grow brittle.

It's… huh. Definitely one of the weirder cultivations she's sensed. Sort of… self-defeating? Like it's… almost like it's designed badly. Weird.

""Unhand my junior from your foul enchantments, bestial temptress!" Roars the woman in front, her cultivation whirling as she cycles and prepares some kind of technique. "You savages dare-"

Alright, enough of that.

She exhales, just once, and activates her Killing Intent.

It's sort of awkward to use, even now. She… doesn't really want to kill them, so it simply isn't something she can proclaim in the inhuman honesty of Intent. She compensates for it with experience, drawing on different context to give nuance to it.

The memory of a bullet, caving in the back of her head, echoing through the tunnel. The sensation of being chewed, consumed, torn open as she was tossed into the underbelly of the city. The memory of seeing, instead of people, obstacles, things of meat and flavor and disrespect, of treating every potential threat to the ending it deserved. Institutional violence, cogs in a grander machine, made meaningless and then made nothing through violence in turn.

The world begins to die.

The jars of pickled goods shatter, the Qi infused into the pickling process fermenting and then rotting. The grass to either side of the path is cut, falls apart, melts into muck, and the fields of "zimate" begin to fall apart, the vitality of the plants simply failing to cope with the Intent she radiates, the context she places her existence into.

Three of the four cultivators fall off their swords, the techniques holding them aloft collapsing as animal fear and collapsing biology combine to incapacitate them. Their auras wither, their Qi falling to nothing and dissipating into the air, their cultivation, built around the idea that they're not at the very moment of experiencing murder, deviating and falling into chaotic cycling.

Only the Core Formation cultivator remains on her feet, and it is a close thing. She's bleeding from her nose and eyes, trembling, her legs locked, her cultivation fighting to remain intact… even as its inbuilt flaws begin to spread.

Hmm.

Might have overdone it. Just a bit.

Her Intent vanishes, just as quickly as it appeared.

She's used to using Intent around Divine Beasts and the Overgrowth. Killing Intent is new to her, but…

Hmm.

That it can act on the world like that, physically, her Intent reflected through the world itself… well, that's what Intent is. Conscious will shaping the context of things that, in theory, don't need to have anything to do with the chosen context at all. But it's another to see it here.

It's…

It's not Dao. Not at all, actually, completely distinct. One is comprehension and weaving of the patterns in reality, the other is…

Imposing one's chosen context on reality.

Like a Domain is imposing one's… chosen reality on reality.

Like cultivation is imposing one's chosen ontology on reality.

There's… something there. A through-line, an important one.

Ok. She'll focus on that later- for now, the Core Formation cultivator has managed to get her breathing under control, though she had to fall to a knee to do so.

"I'm going to repeat to you what my other junior over here has already learned," she says, waving off-handedly at the Foundational realm who came to the farmer's alarm. "It is rude to insult someone you just met, and potentially life threatening if you can't tell how strong they are. Apparently, I wouldn't even need to hit you to kill you, so maybe, just maybe, you should apologize."

The woman is just panting, heaving breaths, blood running freely down her face. She looks behind her at the other members of the sect she's brought, still collapsed (but alive. Raika checked.), then back up to Raika, her eyes hazy.

Hmm. Definitely overdid it a bit.

She sighs, walking over to the woman and crouching before her, pulling a fresh batch of moss and rolling paper from her inner storage and beginning to make a new cigarette.

"Be a dear, call up your closest elder, hmm? I need to talk to someone with actual authority, and I'm getting tired of bullying a bunch of bigoted little infants. My name is Raika, the Broken, the Bloody, the Burnt. Tell them I'm here. Tell them where they can find me. Tell them just how far above you I am. And then tell them to bring wine. I haven't had a drink in ages, and if I'm going to have to deal with more of this, I would rather do so with something I enjoy. Do you understand?"

It seems to take everything she has, but the cultivator does manage to make eye contact. She even nods, comprehension flickering through the pain and animal panic that she's valiantly holding down.

It'll do.

With a sigh, Raika gets up, lighting the cigarette and getting to walking, following the path. Once they recover, be it in minutes or hours, it'll probably still take a while for their elder to show up, if the timing of the "reinforcements" is anything to go by.

She should have enough time to properly set the stage.

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