The City whose Offenses were Rank

There was a certain city in the valley whose offenses against Heaven were rank.  Three Immortals met to vow that they would end the city’s crimes.

The first immortal went to the city to lead them away from their evil ways by the purity of his example.  They mocked him in the marketplace and though his example was great and his soul was strong, for a long time he did not even grimace when they did their abominations in front of him, his spirit weakened from their horrid displays.  Spirit weakened, he succumbed to a poison and died.

The second immortal preferred more direct means.  He was a master of the sword, and from his first step into the city he slew and slew without pause or remorse in a dance of the fury of justice, the streets were red with wrath and the wicked fled shrieking as he cut them down, but even his sword spirit flagged.  The remnants of the city, their fiercest and most abominable warriors, dyed deepest with their sins, overcame him at the gates of their inner Citadel.

The Third Immortal walked past the city carrying  a seed.  Up further into the valley up the slope to a ridge.  There on the ridge he planted his seed. On the one side he looked down along the valley to the city, behind him a lake and some woods and some highlands.

But there on the windy ridge he stayed.

Every morning he stood up and looked out over the city in  the valley, and cursed them, but then did nothing else.

Once a few of the survivors from the city came to kill him and he killed them instead.  Nothing else he did.  The seed became a sapling till one day the sapling was a tall elm and its roots buried into the ridge and cracked it and the water from the lake seeped through and in a thundering storm the floods came down, the ridge groaned and the immortal ran to the side and the rocks gave way and the lake gushed forth through the gap and in one mortal hour the city and its citadel and all its inhabitants were washed away.  Nothing remained.