Another week flew by without incident before Falling Leaf brought up the toddler at the village.
“How did you know what to do? When that little girl grabbed my leg, how did you know what to do?”
Sen gave her a surprised look. “I didn’t.”
Falling Leaf gave him an exasperated look. “You obviously did.”
Sen laughed and shook his head. “I didn’t. It worked,...
2023-10-16 16:39:25 +0000 UTC View PostMuch as he’d expected trouble coming down the mountain, Sen at least half-expected trouble when they were bypassing the town at the base of the mountain. They had killed a number of people who, presumably, had answered to someone. If nothing else, some of those people had to have had families. When no trouble manifested, it didn’t lighten Sen apprehension. If anything, it heightene...
2023-10-16 13:37:49 +0000 UTC View PostFalling Leaf came around the next morning once Sen started cooking food. He didn’t pester her with questions, just let her eat her fill. Only after plowing through bowl after bowl of rice porridge with pork in it, and drinking a truly impressive amount of water did she even begin to look like she might want to talk about anything.
“How do you feel?” asked Sen.
He could have ju...
2023-10-15 16:19:48 +0000 UTC View PostEven with the sun going down fast, Sen managed to put a goodly distance between himself and that little hollowed out place where he’d found the mushrooms. Yet, even moving fast with his qinggong technique, there wasn’t even a remote chance of getting to the bottom of the mountain before true dark set in. He just kept going until he figured he had enough time to put up a galehouse and set up...
2023-10-15 04:21:42 +0000 UTC View PostIt took the rest of the day and then most of another before Sen finally started seeing the kind of environment that the mushrooms would grow. The ascent also came with a few other benefits. The number of attacks by spirit beasts went down. Granted, that happened because the higher they went, the more powerful the spirit beasts became. That meant longer fights, but ultimately resulted in them ma...
2023-10-14 20:45:44 +0000 UTC View Post“He’s still following us,” said Falling Leaf.
“I know,” said Sen, stopping in place. “Stay here. I’m going to go deal with this. We don’t have time for this kind of distraction.”
Sen turned on his heel and started back the way they had come. He’d been putting up with the not at all stealthy stalker that had been dogging their heels for nearly half the day. He’d...
2023-10-13 21:41:24 +0000 UTC View PostOne of the lessons that Sen learned collecting plants and alchemical reagents on Uncle Kho’s mountain was that the finding all too often proved easier than actually harvesting. Many of those plants had powerful defenses that could prove downright lethal to the careful cultivator. Beyond that, humans weren’t the only ones who found those plants and reagents useful. While spirit beasts did no...
2023-10-13 16:05:24 +0000 UTC View PostDespite his many attempts to draw Falling Leaf into a conversation during the last week of their trip to Mt. Solace, Sen met with abject failure. She would answer questions with a lone syllable or a shrug. While he recognized the root cause of it, Sen didn’t believe for a moment that he understood it. She had rejected what might well be the only other one of her kind in the world in ...
2023-10-12 15:57:23 +0000 UTC View Post“Where is he?” demanded Feng Ming.
Fu Ruolan just lifted an eyebrow. It wasn’t nearly as nonchalant as she made it look. No one with a functional survival instinct took Feng Ming lightly, not even other nascent soul cultivators. But she also knew that she couldn’t simply acquiesce to his demands the moment he made them. If she did that, he wouldn’t respect her. That wou...
2023-10-11 09:47:13 +0000 UTC View PostThe closer that they got to Mt. Solace, the clearer it became to Sen that they had entered the true hinterlands of the kingdom. In fact, he wasn’t even sure they were still in the kingdom proper. The borders got hazy this far north. Yet, it was the growing distance between settlements that told the real story. True towns all but ceased to exist and the villages were small, even by Sen’s for...
2023-10-09 17:02:21 +0000 UTC View Post“Do you think they’ll leave us alone?” asked Falling Leaf after they’d traveled several miles down the road.
“Maybe,” said Sen. “I hope so. I really don’t want to kill them. We gain nothing from it.”
“And if they come looking for us? Will you just let them go again?”
“I might let them go. But I won’t let them go unscathed. All mercy has limits.”
... 2023-10-09 09:55:01 +0000 UTC View PostTraveling by road proved much faster for them as they headed north, since it let Sen and Falling Leaf more than double their traveling time. Some of it was a simple lack of obstructions. While they encountered people, wagons, and the occasional farm animal, they weren’t constantly having to navigate around, over, or through natural obstacles. While no single change in navigation cost that muc...
2023-10-08 17:06:48 +0000 UTC View PostWhile it had been a while since Sen was fleeing for his life, he couldn’t help be feel a little anxious when they finally stepped out of the wilds and onto a road. Yet, all that happened was that a passing farmer pulling a small cart behind him gave them a disbelieving look before hurrying away. Sen supposed he couldn’t blame the man for that. Nothing goodever came out of the wilds...
2023-10-06 18:25:14 +0000 UTC View PostFor all of the fighting they had to do against spirit beasts to find Fu Ruolan, there was virtually none as Sen and Falling Leaf began their journey toward Mt. Solace. This went a long way toward making Sen feel better about his absolute annihilation of that beast tide. He wished it hadn’t been necessary, but it seemed that the spirit beasts in the surrounding area had decided that he was a h...
2023-10-05 06:34:03 +0000 UTC View Post“What kind of task?” asked Sen.
While there had been no overt change in Fu Ruolan, Sen felt a subtle, gnawing apprehension go to work on him. It felt like his intuition had noticed something that had escaped his conscious understanding. He eyed the woman warily, expecting some kind of hideously impossible demand.
“I require three superior quality, air-attributed dusk mushrooms...
2023-10-04 08:21:08 +0000 UTC View PostIt took around four months, but Sen eventually reached a plateau in his recuperation. While his muscles had filled out and his flexibility had returned, he was not what he had been. He could feel it. His strength and speed, while formidable again, had been reduced by as much as twenty percent. He struggled to pin it down to an exact amount, but it was enough that he noticed. He could use qi to ...
2023-10-03 21:25:11 +0000 UTC View PostFor all her talk of finding out what made other nascent soul cultivators find him so interesting, Fu Ruolan took very little notice of Sen during his first few months there. Her only instructions to him were to heal and cultivate. A very small part of him felt annoyed with the woman for a couple of reasons. Some of it was simple ego. He didn’t like that she was functionally ignoring him while...
2023-10-02 18:51:29 +0000 UTC View PostSen’s eyes fluttered open. An act which, on balance, he found absurdly unlikely. The last thing he remembered was the beast tide. He’d been in so much pain that the memories were blurry, but something had happened. No, he had done…something. Then, it flooded back. Falling Leaf being injured and, then, his mind wanted to shy away from that last part. What have I done, Sen wondered...
2023-10-02 07:45:17 +0000 UTC View PostSen had been ignoring his symptoms for the better part of two months. He masked the symptoms with an ever-increasing number of healing elixirs, core qi spread through his body, and one of his dwindling supply of Auntie Caihong’s healing pills in moments of true desperation. The knowledge that he was fighting a losing battle was something he pushed to the back of his mind in the same place he ...
2023-10-01 17:39:48 +0000 UTC View PostAs the weeks bled into each other and last remnants of winter faded away, Sen found himself having to work harder and harder to keep up the pace of their search. At first, he simply supplemented his body with some of that liquid qi that was constantly forming in his dantian. It worked, for a while. Yet, he could feel it growing a little less effective each day. Finally, he started making excuse...
2023-10-01 02:21:26 +0000 UTC View PostSen’s eyes cracked open. He sat up on the bed and sighed. The sleep had helped, sort of. While he’d felt fine during the fight with the wyvern, the cost of that fight had hit him hard in the aftermath. Everything was hitting him hard lately. No, it wasn’t just hitting him hard. It was hitting him and sticking with him. He could feel it even now. There were things going wrong deep inside o...
2023-09-29 19:26:34 +0000 UTC View PostFalling Leaf dove through the narrow space between two intertwined trees. Her palm pressed down on the cold snow. She felt the strength in her arm as she used it to drive herself back up into the air. She twisted, spun, and landed on her feet just in time to knock aside the blast of fire that chased her through the tree. She exulted in the feeling of danger, the perilous game of hunter and prey...
2023-09-29 05:06:24 +0000 UTC View PostI had this one half-written before the food poisoning incident derailed everything. So, I decided to finish and post it to help get my brain back into the writing place before I start writing Vol 5 and new Rinn's Run chapters. . ~Eric
***
Voss stopped near the gate of the town and stretched. He’d been saving this town as the last stop on his tour of the empire. While he h...
2023-09-29 00:04:11 +0000 UTC View Post“Crudely put,” said Liang Daiyu, drawing Sen’s attention again, “but she has the crux of the matter surrounded. You say that you’ve experienced moments of enlightenment before. Do you recall how many?”
Sen thought back about it. “I don’t know the exact number offhand. Maybe two dozen.”
Silence fell all around the table, which made Sen glance around at the dumbstruc...
2023-09-28 20:36:24 +0000 UTC View PostSo, I had an unfortunate encounter with some bad takeout Monday night. It had...well, the predictable gastrointestinal effects. Unfortunately, despite my best efforts, that also came with enough dehydration to trigger migraines. So, that's how I spent my time yesterday and most of today. Needless to say, that was not how I planned on wrapping up my break between volumes.
I do seem t...
2023-09-28 02:16:09 +0000 UTC View PostI wasn't going to do anything more with this just yet, but since everyone seemed so enthusiastic about it, I went ahead and wrote another chapter. ~Eric
***
The sunlight filtering down through the leaves overhead was enough to wake Voss. He took his time opening his eyes, just because he could. It had been a month since he “lost” his throne, and he’d stayed on the move since t...
2023-09-26 03:02:08 +0000 UTC View PostSo, I've had this idea floating around in the back of my head for a while. I kept wondering, what would happen if the Dark Lord actually won...then got tired of the job down the road? I figured since I was taking a couple days off, I'd write a chapter and see if it worked on paper. What do you guys think? The working title for this is The Chronicles of Forde Voss (Former) Dark Lord. ~Eric 2023-09-24 08:58:17 +0000 UTC View Post
“Just the one night?” asked Lai Dongmei.
Sen gave her an amused smile as he adjusted his robes. “Oh, come on. It’s not like you’re suffering for options. The only reason you picked me was because you knew I was safely temporary. A wandering cultivator with a reputation for moving on to the next disaster. No real strings attached. I suspect that made me just about the ideal distr...
2023-09-21 18:12:38 +0000 UTC View PostAbsolutely no one tried to stop Sen as he stormed through the palace halls looking for an exit. Servants fled at the mere sight of him. Guards pretended that they didn’t see him. Briefly, he worried that he’d somehow reignited that heart demon, but there was a difference between getting angry at something and being angry at everything for no reason. He wasn’t angry at everything. He’d g...
2023-09-21 06:14:17 +0000 UTC View PostFeeling more than a little conflicted about what had happened, Sen managed to escape the throne room without any more encounters with people he really didn’t want to talk to, for so many reasons. Yet, it seemed that fate or karma or luck was feeling particularly unkind toward Sen that day, because he’d barely made it two dozen steps before there was an enormous crash and the sound of water ...
2023-09-20 06:49:09 +0000 UTC View Post