Chapter 33: Memory Fragment 18/0887

  Lu Bu Age 18

  “He’s gone full ogre!” came the scream from amidst my sparring partners. The group of three sword cultivators, two heavenly disciples, a lord of the winds, and a body cultivator like myself. This group was the only one my adopted father had been able to find that were tough or desperate enough to keep taking the coin and sparring with me.

  Ding Yuan’s elite cavalry would have been my first choice, but as my lord father’s army was on the march to war they were needed elsewhere. It was a pity though, each one of them was easily worth more than this collection of ragtag cultivators.

  Especially since they clearly didn’t understand what they were up against. I did not ‘go ogre’ as they often put it when I ceased to hold back against them. I was the ogre every moment of my life. The man who politely obeyed his father, who sat through tea ceremonies and instruction on how to train horses or lead men. That man was the mask, the falsehood.

  I am Lu Bu, and my time with the grand army Ding Yuan had built was teaching me a lot. Most prominently that I was not like other men, I was something greater. None of them had my determination, my durability, my strength, my agility, nor my ability to see in advance what my foes would do in a fight.

  It had confused me for months. Why was it that pain or fear stopped them? It didn’t stop me, not ever. Why were soldiers and cultivators so weak that a mere few handspans of steel rammed into their bodies was enough to stop them fighting?

  Even men and women who had risen to the stage of a nascent soul or equivalent on their paths weren’t able to stop me when we fought. How was it possible that men who had taught me breathing and combat techniques that made me stronger, were still weaker than I was? What about their experience? Their knowledge of war, and their finely honed skills and mastery of Qi manipulation. None of it could stop me if I chose not to let it.

  At first I had thought body cultivation was simply the superior path, but I had quickly been disabused of that notion. Ding Yuan was a traditional cultivator and he easily outclassed the body cultivators that were supposed to be of similar power to him.

  Then I’d considered the idea that the pills and elixirs I had consumed in my younger days had perhaps been of a special quality. That was sort of true, they had improved my body and my Qi manipulation and had been of a different level to those I was provided now. That is to say the pills and elixirs of my youth had been complete trash compared to examples of power and purity Ding Yuan’s alchemists produced.

  So it hadn’t been that, and the consumables I had access to now were hardly unique to me. So it wasn’t that I was getting special treatment on that front. Even the speed at which my body was growing in power far outstripped those that had come before me. The greatest elites within the army of sixty thousand were still my superiors, but it had taken them decades to reach such heights. Unless I ran into something that drastically slowed my growth I would be counted among those great elites within a few months. Even Ding Yuan himself had declared I could be his equal by the end of the year.

  So why was I so much better than those around me? I had exhausted all reasoning I could think of leaving me with only a single possible answer. I wasn’t merely a man, I was something greater, something blessed, something closer to the world of gods than the humans around me.

  I didn’t know what to call myself if human no longer applied…had never applied? That uncertainty had passed the first day that Ding Yuan’s army had begun it’s march to the south. The marching and riding men had been swapping stories about the lands we would see on our way to the capitol. They spoke of wide rivers and towering mountains. They spoke of bawdy women and strange customs. They spoke of dragons and demons

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  It was while overhearing these tales that I began to note the similarities between myself and monsters of legend, and slowly I began to understand that I was an ogre and not a human man. It didn’t take long to realize that wasn’t quite right either. I had the hungers and goals of a man, even if my cultivated body was that of an ogre. Perhaps I had the heart of a man deep inside somewhere, though when I thought about what I’d done to Yuze it seemed a little on the unlikely side.

  So when Hàorán cried out that I had “gone ogre” as he put it, I knew it represented both a fundamental misunderstanding of what I was, and that he really just meant that I had stopped holding back. Which was true, I was expected to have a mid-morning luncheon with my adopted father and several important men from…I hadn’t cared to remember, one of the sects currently making war on The Yellow Scarf Rebels.

  Also I was feeling a little pent up this morning, so I planned to pay Lady Yan a visit before I had to sit down with Ding Yuan and the emissaries or whatever they were. That meant I couldn’t spend as long as I usually did playing with my sparring partners.

  Moving a force as large and well equipped as the Lord Inspector’s army from the northern edge of civilisation all the way to the capital of Luoyang was a slow and costly process, especially as we kept having to send smaller forces out to crush local rebels or otherwise provide order as we traversed the province.

  On the upside it provided opportunities to cultivate in the shadow of natural wonders, as well as practice frequently. I might be an ogre shaped like a human, but I still had a long way to go if I wished to attain the kind of power that I dreamed of.

  In the case of this morning I and the seven cultivators acting as my opposition had annexed a local temple belonging to the town that the army was passing through. There were a number of Daoist priests; themselves cultivators of reasonable ability waiting irritably outside for us to finish, but I knew none of them had the fortitude to actually say something about it.

  Not that it really mattered, they would get their multi-tiered stone house of worship back once I was done. Though they might not be entirely pleased with the state that I was going to leave it in. That didn’t really matter either, the only true morality was the dichotomy between the weak and the strong. In this case they were, and would always be, the weak.

  Hàorán and the other two sword cultivators formed up into a line behind which the other four fanned out. The heavenly disciples would try to scorch me with beams of starfire, whilst the windlord pelted me with thrown weapons and air-blades. During all of this Guo the body cultivator would be trying to find a good angle to flank me from.

  This formation and strategy wasn’t the only one they employed, but it was the best devised and the most common for them to employ. Normally I would play into the trap of the formation and allow them to force me onto the backfoot. The purpose of this was training afterall, but today I was in a hurry.

  I lengthened the grip on my tri-bladed halberd, much to my chagrin Ding Yuan had not yet handed custody of Skypiercer to me, so my weapon was one constructed with mundane earthly materials. It would still serve my purpose well enough, even if there was a good chance I was about to break the weapon.

  “Titan’s Pendulum!"

  Pouring Qi into my muscles and through the halberd itself I used the physical technique to slam my weapon, head and haft into the three guarding blades of the sword cultivators. Unable to withstand the force my tri-bladed halberd exploded into pieces as the three sword cultivators were sent flying across the first floor of the temple.

  Hàorán tried to use his Bladed Ward technique to block my strike, and while his golden glowing sword did protect him a little, even he. The most powerful of my sword cultivation opponents was launched into the pile where we had stacked the temple’s chairs, tables, and incense burners upon annexing the temple for our needs.

  While it was satisfying to see Hàorán shatter a bunch of the wood furniture, I was more interested in the flight of the lesser pair of sword cultivators as they were sent flying with far more force and into the paths of both Heavenly disciples. I expected both men to dodge the human shaped projectiles, but the flying men would provide cover from their heavenly beam attacks whilst I closed the distance.

  Some job's just aren't worth the money. I would count fighting Lu Bu every day as among these.