This Venerable Demon Is Grossly Unqualified

BBnB - B2 Chapter 42

BBnB - B2 Chapter 41

B2 Chapter 40

B2 Chapter 39

B2 Chapter 38

B2 Chapter 37

B2 Chapter 36

Xiao Yongzheng's words hung heavy in the air, an ancestral death sentence delivered a world and age apart.

And then blood stained the calm.

It was formless-gleam that struck first. The figment of the fox that had spoken licked delicately at a paw as the Seventh Prince cried out in pain, blood spraying from his calf. Claw or fang, the others could not tell. The fox's mastery of illusions was far beyond them, even in the moment of striking, there was no indication of her form. Any b...

B2 Chapter 35

Orange-crest had no idea what he expected to find at the end of the tunnel. If he'd been pressed to guess, he would have said something surprisingly homey. A space cozy and warm, like Daoist Scouring Medicine's home, except perhaps larger and more gilded, as befitting a cultivator of Grand Elder Tian's stature. The beautiful glass lanterns, the metal double door wrought as beautifully as his master's cauldron, the way the rough stone of the mountain underfoot slowly gave way to a floor as pol...

BBnB - Next Chapter Delayed Until Tomorrow

Sorry, hate doing these, but needs must when you spend all day wrestling with your outline. It's getting late and I'm only 3/4th the way through Chapter 35 and I'm not quite satisfied with the current end point, so I'm gonna take tomorrow rather than drop something that I'm not happy with.

B2 Chapter 34

Death came for Wu Yingjie in silence, slicing through the darkness like a baleful wind.

His plan, if you could call such a hasty thing a plan, had gone perfectly. He'd dragged the tip of the River-Parting Fork along the floor for three paces. Heard a low growl, from a tiger facing away from Li Shuwen. He'd jerked to the side, changing heading in the same moment he silenced his weapon. He'd even placed one of the cages between him and the tiger, following half-remembered impressions from...

B2 Chapter 33

Wu Yingjie and Li Shuwen trudged slowly across an endless plain, a pair of ants slowly making their way across the graves of legends.

It was an interesting image. Li Shuwen felt it was a little heavyhanded for a poem, as a comparison to their progress across the realms of cultivation, but it was far from irredeemably direct. A part of him wished that he had remained behind to contest Xiao Shulan and Li Hou for the right to attempt Elder Shen's inheritance. It was not a large part of him...

B2 Chapter 32

When orange-crest returned to the glade where he'd forgotten himself and laid low two dozen hollow spirits, the qi was already beginning to grow thin. Closer in density to the Fathomless Well than Godsgrave Peak after a match. For a moment, fear flashed like lightning through the monkey's guts. Fear that what remained of the spirits would not be enough. That their leavings would slip through his fingers, yearning to reclaim the shapes they'd long known. He would be the weakest of the three cu...

B2 Chapter 31

Orange-crest grinned at the translucent disciples slowly stalking toward him from the edge of the tree line. Their faces were as still and slack as those of corpses, with flat cheeks, empty eyes, and mouths hanging just the slightest bit open. Eerie. Their bodies seemed to move just fine though.

Yet, their gait was odd. A consequence of their near weightlessness, perhaps? Their rhythm of their steps was not quite aligned with the distance they covered, every footfall carrying the pair j...

B2 Chapter 30

B2C30

Orange-crest took in a deep breath, alone in the hidden realm for the first time. This world smelled alive. The smoldering wheat was acrid and mouthwatering in equal measure, like roasting chestnuts buried in chalky wood-ash. But where the smells were lively, the world was silent. Empty.

Waiting, perhaps. His master had said it was in the process of changing, a place unfinished.

Orange-crest felt like he should have some kinship with that idea, as a monkey in the mid...

B2 Chapter 29

Orange-crest cycled his qi and activated the Drunken Phoenix's Breath. He'd long since graduated from candles to sucking in entire small fires. He told himself this was just more of the same. Keep his qi moving, fill his lungs with a barrier of qi that never remained in one place long enough for the heat to transfer and scorch his lungs.

He regretted it the moment the fire touched his lips. More of the same? He'd lied to himself. This was nothing like that. He kept sucking though, downi...

B2 Chapter 28

Orange-crest stared down at another world. A sky as blue as the heavens above, cut into the stone like a fishing-hole in a frozen lake. It seemed as if they'd descended so far that they'd found a hole that emptied out into the far side of the world.

The monkey crept closer to the edge of the hole. He got low, padding forward on all fours. He didn't expect to be pushed, but something about this space dried his mouth in a way that the waterfall had not. His eyes peeked out over the edge. ...

B2 Chapter 27

As soon as Xiao Shulan sat down to cultivate, orange-crest got up to explore. The monkey felt a little disappointed in Xiao Shulan, that she so easily bought the suggestion that he'd been laying around in indolence after being the first of their party to make it to safety.

Formless-gleam was probably well on her way to gone. Orange-crest did not know whether he hoped that she stayed near them, or fled far away. Whichever she chose, orange-crest had no doubt the fox would not be seen aga...

BBnB - B2 Chapter 26

Author's Note: If you have not already, you should read B2 Chapter ? and Chapter ?+1 before this one. I'm gonna figure out where they fit in the story next week, and update all the numbering to account for them. You can find the first of those here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/131548664/

Orange-crest didn't really remember what being in the womb felt like, though he was t...

BBnB - B2 Chapter 25

Orange-crest had never seen an angry mushroom before.

Or one with arms, for that matter.

The strange creature hardly seemed to care what he thought about it, no more than it cared about Wu Yingjie's sputtered protests, or Yang Wei's spear caught in its third hand. Orange-crest felt a little bad for Wu Yingjie, he really had no luck at all. If he'd waited just a few seconds longer, orange-crest would have been the one to stick his head inside the rat to inspect the details of it. H...

BBnB - Updates Moving to Wednesdays

Been mulling this for a while, decided to pull the trigger this week. My weekend trip gave me less writing time than expected, so it seems a good time to make the swap (Rather than staying up til 3). Hopefully moving the deadline to Wednesday will lead to fewer frenzied Sunday writing sessions. For y'all this just means a 3 day delay on the next chapter, then back to the ye weekly cadence.

As always, apologies for the delay. Gonna start trying to cut down my other projects for the short...

BBnB - B2 Chapter 24

Yang Wei and orange-crest tore through the sect, cutting across the least populous section of the mountain. Least populous for humans, at least. But what other populations really mattered, in a place like this?

They were a study in contrasts. Orange-crest moved with no regard for concepts such as 'walking paths', or 'dense undergrowth'. If two trees were close enough together, he scrambled up one, and leapt between them. If a branch could support his weight, he swung or sprung off it. I...

BBnB - B2 Chapter 23

Orange-crest stared at the array of herbs spread out before him. He lifted one paw, letting it slowly drift over to the shavings of Two-Shadowed Yew roots. His master's face was as inscrutable as an overcast sky, revealing nothing of the weather to come.

The paw returned to the table. Orange-crest already knew those were poisonous. They did have the correct sort of wood qi for the Jade Bone Elixirs, and they were the second least poisonous part of the tree, except for the wood itself. B...

B2 Chapter 22

"Fraught as it is with unknowns and dangers, that is yet not the most ill-conceived plan I've ever heard."

Orange-crest stared at his master. He'd had all these arguments ready. He still wasn't sure he wanted to descend into the dark, but he'd wanted to be the one to decide. Whether he told Yang Wei yes, or no, he'd wanted to at least be fearless in doing so. To make the choice move him toward what he wanted, rather than be driven by thoughtless flight from what he didn't. And that requ...

BBnB - B2 Chapter 21

Orange-crest did not have the words to help his master understand the exact nature of the gnawing terror that would not leave him alone. So many words, yet he never had enough of them. But Li Xun knew fear, and trusted his disciple. He did not need to understand the specifics, the unique terror of truly accepting that the things you had hung your very understanding of the world upon were not as solid as you once believed them.

The seeds had been there for a while. The facts and experien...

BBnB - B2 Chapter 20

Hu Weimin shivered beneath the combined gazes of almost two thousand daoists. The weight of their attention burned down on him like a legion of judging suns. He could feel them dissecting his every twitch, divining his future in every minute fluctuation of his qi. What his talent was worth, how far he might go. His future master might be in the stands even now, watching, waiting, for an initiate to show themselves worthy of his legacy. That was the true value of making it to the main stage. N...

BBnB - B2 Chapter 19

"Oh. So that's Lu. Doesn't look so bad. Nice robe. Very shiny."

Elder Lu cut a rather odd figure in his finery. He was old, older than any monkey orange-crest had ever seen. His hair was thin and wispy, his skin spotted with dark splotches that would surely be mange if he were a monkey. But his robes were beyond glorious. The many layers swallowed up his body, obscuring limbs no doubt thinned by long years. The innermost layers were brilliant white, each successive layer a deeper, more ...

BBnB - B2 Chapter 18

Orange-crest stared morosely at the bowl of congee in front of him. He lifted his spoon, and poked at one of the green and yellow clusters. It jiggled a little in the pool of thick white goop. Aww. The congee wasn't even hot. Barely warm.

The monkey's mouth salivated at the thought of hot juicy meat.

"What?" His master asked, finally realizing orange-crest wasn't really paying attention to his lecture about the next stage of the tournament.

"Is congee."

"Yes? And? No d...

BBnB - B2 Chapter 17

There was a shape to banquets, Li Xun mused. Or rather there was a shape to banquet halls, which the events themselves naturally followed. In the Empire of Xiao, this shape was an elongated horseshoe. Some clans with oddly designed compounds had other arrangements. A grid of tables before a central platform like a lecture hall, or small circular sections arranged like spokes around a central hub. But even in such a young empire, one that had yet to see the close of its first millennium, tradi...

BBnB - Next Chapter Delayed to Monday

Sorry. Hate doing these, but hate putting out chapters I'm not proud of more. It is starting to get late and chapter 17 needs at least a few more hours in the oven. I don't think I'll be happy with it if I push through tonight. I have a commitment early tomorrow morning and can't afford to stay up past midnight finishing it to my satisfaction. Hopefully it'll be worth the wait.

BBnB - B2 Chapter 16

Orange-crest sat quietly in the cave where he'd left formless-gleam to her self imposed solitude. A drop of water fell from the ceiling, dampening his eponymous crest. He liked the drippy-spot. Not for always, but for now. He was in a mood to be jolted out of his ruminations every few minutes. He'd heard some humans meditated under waterfalls. Maybe he should try that for his next breakthrough.

Plop.

Orange-crest hoped the angry fox was alright. He'd begun to suspect more firmly t...