This Venerable Demon Is Grossly Unqualified

Chapter 48 - Terminal

After I finally found the bowl, I considered checking in with the young mistress. But the more I worked over the various ways that conversation might play out in my mind, the less I liked it. Meng Daiyu just acted too familiarly with me compared to the other elders for me to want to risk any more conversations than I had to. She seemed to treat me like a very distant martial uncle, someone who'd acted as her dao protector before, but that she didn't particularly care to interact with.

S...

Chapter 47 - Dancing With The Dead

The revenant leaned back, dodging the sword I'd sent rocketing toward it by a hair. Empty eye sockets tracked me as I approached, sword held low.

The dozen feet between us disappeared in two heartbeats, as I ran as fast as I could without pushing myself airborne. That was all the time it took for the ghost clinging to it's back to fully materialize. It's eyes were the same red as the tainted light, but the rest of it was colorless. Arms of glass-like distortion held tenderly to the cult...

Chapter 46 - The Graves of Our Betters

As we emerged into the inner core of the dead sect, the first thing I noticed was the hatred. The ground beneath our feet hated our weight. The stagnant air hated us for having the temerity to disturb it's long slumber. A thousand formless eyes settled upon us, wishing us every malice under the sun.

I shivered. My hand shook, as I clutched at my sword.

"Such resentment." Meng Daiyu murmured. "I see why this place was sealed away. The very air lusts for our death."

I didn't a...

Chapter 45 - Mission Planning

NOTE: I added a few more lines to chapter 44, cleaning up the ending, and adding a plot point I missed (An explanation of how to contact the Ghost Immortal further, as opposed to only an exhortation not to do it this way again. That's the 'Terminal' that gets mentioned here.)

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"Are you going to share any further details about how you broke the trial formation?" El...

No TVDIGU Chapter Today... But...

I'm hoping to get two out next week though, one patreon exclusive at some time during the week, and one general release next sunday. We'll see if that happens, I'm definitely hitting that writing pace, it's just split across too many different works atm.

There are however 2 first chapters for other stories. They're currently here:

https://forums.spaceb...

Chapter 44 - Hu's Trial

I woke feeling pleasantly cool. I'd thrown the heavy blankets off in my sleep. I glanced at the clock. 7:49. A terrible time. Too late to get back to sleep, too early to do anything worthwhile before logging into work.

I rolled out of bed, if you could call a mattress without a box spring or frame a bed, and staggered over to my desk. I shoved the mess of notebooks, pens, and controllers over to the right. I should really get a second desk. I had the money. All the popular science blogs...

Chapter 43 - The Machinery Of Empire

When Wang Li awoke, it was in chains. This was in truth a novel experience for him. He'd been robbed and beaten, even lost a hand once. That latter experience had shaped the form of his bodily cultivation as he sought to forge himself anew.

Chains though, those were new. Few powers could restrain hostile cultivators indefinitely. Fewer still bothered to.

Still, he could have done worse than the Qin. The Shan or the demons would have been far less survivable.

"So, when's my e...

Chapter 42 - Debrief

I might have underestimated Elder Cai. Not her level of social acumen, I was pretty sure I was spot on about that.

I'd just spent hours watching her order disciples about, demanding they fetch things, or perform techniques for her to measure. She'd pulled aside over dozen disciples over the course of six hours. Three of them she'd addressed by the name of their cultivation method. Two had just been 'you there'. Five she'd called by name. Three of those names had been correct.

Thos...

Chapter 41 - Alone

In the moment when Su Li kicked the young master, there were perhaps forty five people in the common room of the Rosewood Alley. Five Qi Condensation cultivators. Fifteen mortal men, a roughly even split between Granny Lao's muscle, the few male members of the house's staff, and a few customers too brave or foolish to leave after the cultivators had shown up. Twenty women, all of whom worked for the establishment in some fashion.

It should have been simple. Eight of Granny Lao's against...

Chapter 40 - Memories of Light

The sun was already high when Su Li’s bleary eyes cracked open. No matter what twists and turns her life took, it seemed fate was certain that she would never be a morning person. Still, a smile crept to her lips unbidden. They’d had much to celebrate last night. Granny Lao had passed her eightieth winter in good health. The Narrow Street Gang had added three blocks to their territory in the last few weeks, after the Four Seas Union had run afoul of one of the beggar sects and gotten thei...

VDIGU - Pausing Patreon/5 Week Hiatus

Ninja Edit: Sorry, I just got back on the 11th, I'm taking one more week. I definitely did not look carefully enough at the calendar when picking that first date. After that travel experience I wasn't even properly functional until the morning of the 13th. But I am back in my chair, getting my thousand words a day in, so progress is being made. Also I'm engaged now, so that's neat.

TL;DWR : We’re going on hiatus, next chapter will be July 21st.

Oof, 3 weeks without an upd...

Chapter 39 - All the World a Stage

Su Li felt like she was drifting through a dream. It wasn’t merely the fact that she’d spent more than a quarter of her life in the Pathless Night. The drastic change of scenery was sudden, but she hadn’t felt like this sitting on the deck of the Black Sun, the unfiltered light of its namesake shining down upon her face. No, there was something about this temple that affected her so.

That was what it was, she knew. The others hedged their words, called it a complex in one sentence...

VDGIU - Next Chapter Will Be Tomorrow 5/27

See title. I did something dumb and pulled a muscle in my neck. Poor sleep from that has put me even further behind schedule than usual, and I'm gonna take labor day to finish chapter 39 instead of rushing it out tonight.

But, there's also some good news. So, I’m leaving my full time software job in mid-june. It's been kicking my butt, and the amount of OT/prod support I've been working has made writing regularly quite difficult. I’ve been talking with my company, and we haven’t s...

Chapter 38 - The Warrior and the Scholar

Fang Xiao and I followed Elder Cai through a twisting warren of lifeless stone hallways. There were traces of the life that had once dwelled in these ancient halls, silk tapestries withered into thin yellowed vines, wall scrolls eaten away by moths and beetles until only the wooden rods that had framed them remained.

Curious, that insects had managed to get in here. The outer formation should have prevented that. Perhaps a population had survived in the closed ecosystem of the temple fo...

Chapter 37 - I’m From a Demonic Sect, and I’m Here to Help

The women surrounding the gate were as still as statues. From a distance, they might have looked poised. Disciplined. Up close, one could practically see the tension in their frames, as they stood frozen, like rabbits before the wolf.

Appropriate, if this complex really was a temple to some strange variation of Chang’e. I wasn’t sure what to make of the gods of this strange new world. It was commonly accepted that they existed. Not a single person I’d met, from the peasant Zhao Yu...

Chapter 36 - Gunboat Diplomacy

“Elder Hu, you’re wanted on the bridge.” A familiar voice said.

I looked down to see Fang Xiao staring up at me. I’d spent much of the three day journey sitting on the roof of the aft pagoda. It’d become my go-to spot when holing up in my cabin poring over Meng Xiao’s jade slip got tiring. My record thus far was forty minutes, before the slip began to suspect I was an imposter and I had to drop it. It was an incredible stroke of luck that setting the slip aside reset it’s...

Chapter Delayed + March Schedule Update

There’s no chapter today. I’m about 3/4s through chapter 36, so if all goes well I hope to post it tomorrow. But I dislike posting delay announcements, and since I've done two in a row, I’m going to go ahead and bite the bullet now and say that I can’t commit to weekly chapters through the first week of April. Possibly longer. I’m just gonna write as much as I can and post it as it gets done, up to once a week.

I put a lot of stock in professionalism as a virtue. The protestan...

Chapter 35 - Expedition

I stared down at the table full of supplies before me. Storage rings could allow their user to visualize their contents, but I still preferred seeing the items in person. The spread before me felt lacking, somehow. There were so many items that after consideration, I’d forgone. Rope just didn’t make much sense, when my vertical leap was nearly fifty feet and I could fly by standing on my sword. Almost everything climbing related met the same fate, as did the majority of mundane medical su...

Chapter 35 Delayed til Monday

Yeah, sorry, thems the breaks. I have plenty of excuses, bad trip made me question the nature of existence, saw shakespeare last thursday and I'm having trouble keeping the register from seeping into my writing, tried making korean bbq from scratch and discovered you can't just grill raw lotus roots, they're way too crispy (All true, by the way).

But the chapter is mostly done, and it will be up tomorrow.

Chapter 34 - The Moon Hangs Low

Su Li collapsed into a heap atop her bed. She stared up, peering into the shadowy abyss that was her ceiling. Was that a spider web? Should she do something about that? Her broom should reach it. She wondered if the sect had spirit-beast spiders that she needed to watch out for. Normal sized ones, not the great man-sized monsters she already knew roamed the outskirts of Beastblood Peak.

It would be a pathetic way for a cultivator to die.

Something hard was digging into her back. T...

Chapter 31 - Elder Hu’s Sword Manual - 2

Two disciples walked through the shadowed woods, side by side. Every so often a hand would reach down and brush against the hilt of the swords they each carried at their sides. And yet, though the night around them rustled and trilled with unseen life, their stances were relaxed. It was not fear nor wrath that drew their hands to their weapons like lodestones.

“Is Elder Hu always like that?” Fang Xiao asked, breaking the silence.

“Always like what?” Su Li replied, already ...

Chapter 30 - Elder Hu’s Sword Manual - 1

It’s always funny, just how fast life moves on after a tragedy. It’s different if it’s your tragedy of course. Then the light goes out, and you feel like nothing will ever be right again. But for the rest of us, who never really knew the victim, the weight of their death fades like a dream in the morning light.

To me, Chang De was a name. A face that I only remembered frozen in its death mask on the operating table. To most of the other elders, he was a statistic. A trendline to w...

Sorry, no chapter this week.

See above. My day job has been pretty wild these last three weeks, and I'm kinda running on fumes atm. The long hours have been putting me in a place where I've basically been writing the chapter over the course of the weekend, and I need to take a breather. I'm about halfway through chapter 30 atm, but after thinking about it, I'm gonna take the time to do it properly instead of pushing forward and trying to get it out tonight. I might post it earlier when it finishes, but I think it's more ...

Chapter 29 - To Stare Into the Dark

It was a dark and dreary night. I had a strange relationship with that word these days, night. It was the time of business and teaching. Darkness might cast shadows over every face, but our inhuman eyes saw well enough by the light of the stars alone. It lent everything a strange, liminal sort of flavor. The soft darkness made every interaction feel intimate, as if your small group were the only humans in the world. The sheer size of the sect added to the effect. When a cultivator could cross...

Chapter 28 - Interrogations and Autopsies

Su Li hadn’t known what to expect, when she was awoken by a knock at her door. It was barred, of course. As were the windows. No disciple too poor to afford protective formations slept with their windows open. Not that her shutters were sturdy enough to keep out a determined mortal, let alone her fellow disciples, their slats ill-fit and half rotted.

She rolled out of bed, grabbing her father’s sword. She drew it silently, positioning it behind the cover of the door, ready to thrust...

Chapter 33 - To Challenge The Heavens - Part 2

Wang Li stood alone in a field of broken blades. Shards of metal littered the scorched remnants of what had once been a field of tall grass. His muscular chest was bare and bloody, mundane silk and once reformed skin both unequal to the challenge of Heaven’s lightning. He lifted a hand to his face, taking advantage of a rare moment of respite to wipe the blood from his eyes. He smelled the acrid stench of burnt skin. His storage rings had survived the force of the lightning, but they’d gr...

Chapter 32 - To Challenge The Heavens - Part 1

Patreon Note: So, this is not the chapter I originally intended to post this week. You’ll notice it’s tentatively numbered as Chapter 31, and it’s a two parter. Unfortunately, I didn’t quite finish 28 this week, but this guy just came pouring out of me instead. I’m pretty sure that in the final order of the story, it will come a little later than y'all are getting it. As recompense, I hope to deliver both the actual Hu POV chapter 29 and the second part of this guy next week. Patreo...

Chapter 27 - A Body

I was sleeping, when the knock came. I was up in a moment. It was easy, when you could eschew the comforts of blankets and sleepwear. The cold of the season didn’t bother me. If I’d opted for a sheet, I would have been liable to simply rip it in two if it caught on something when I rolled over in my sleep.

Instead, I simply rose from the thin futon in the center of my room, pulled at my robe to straighten it, and stepped into my slippers.

I found Fang Xiao at the door, his hai...

Chapter 26 - How to Rotate Your Disciple

It was interesting, watching Su Li cultivate. When I’d inspected Qin Wenyuan’s ineffective attempts, there hadn’t been much to look at. The internal motions of his qi had been relatively opaque to me. I didn’t think I could inspect those, not without doing something very invasive with my own aura. But I had been able to feel a sort of trembling in the qi of the environment, and felt a very light pull on my own qi.

I suspected the latter was because the old Elder Hu’s cultivati...

Chapter 25 - Two Small Favors

Fang Xiao enjoyed teaching the outer sect. It was far from the most efficient way to amass contribution points, especially for a disciple with his skill in battle. Hunting spirit beasts, or more intelligent prey, carried substantial risks of course, and such missions were rather variable income besides. A single fruitful hunt could pay more than entire months of poor takings. But even blacksmithing work and tutoring advanced students paid better than teaching introductory martial classes, to ...