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...
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, p...
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 porridg...
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 ...
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 num...
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 distractio...
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 plan...
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 ...
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 Mi...
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....
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. W...
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...
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...
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 m...
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 someth...
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 i...
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 t...
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 so...
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 dwind...
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 hi...
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 af...
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 a...
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 V...
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 rec...
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 de...
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 ...
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...
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 ...
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 worr...
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....
2023-09-20 06:49:09 +0000 UTC View Post