[I hear you. I added some stars between the sections to make it clear where the break is. Thank you, key piece of formatting advice there. - Warby]
They were hard women, faces weathered by the sun and the cold air of the Iron Hills. No few of the faces wore bruises. Some from rushing through the old mines as they fled their homes, others from the hands of their husbands, brothers and fathers. The men of the Iron Gang Militia were required to cultivate. The women were fo...
2025-11-26 15:00:22 +0000 UTC
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Censor Hanshen pressed his head to the cold tile floor. Each tile was made of Gotsu clay, transported by wagons and boats five hundred miles to the tile makers of Pei. There they were fired in kilns so hot, they couldn’t be opened for a week afterward. The tiles were glazed with crushed semi-precious stones, powdered metals and colored sands and refired. The final result was layers of red, gold and lapis, shimmering gently in the light. How the colors shifted through the course of the day, ...
2025-11-25 15:00:20 +0000 UTC
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“What the dog fornicating hell just happened?”
“Language.”
“No, Sister Liren, I think I used exactly the correct words. I am keeping my composure, my dignity, and using the appropriate etiquette for both the company I am in, and the situation at hand. Strictly speaking, it’s not even profanity. However, if this isn’t a moment for profanity, I really don’t know what is. I am morally and logically correct in my choice of words.”
“Tsk tsk. The young dr...
2025-11-24 15:00:18 +0000 UTC
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“We describe the Earth Realm as divided into nine ascending levels, but this is merely colloquial convenience and an intellectual misstep. In truth, it’s nine cycles of destruction and creation, returning to one at the end. Upon that return to one, there is a greater transformation, and a new cycle begins.” The ancient diviner explained.
Tian and Hong listened patiently. They didn’t have any choice. Once they read the sign, they found themselves irresistibly guided onto the stoo...
2025-11-21 15:00:18 +0000 UTC
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Tian and Hong gathered on the road to the Monastery after breakfast.
“You look better. Less… I don’t know. Despairing. Moody.” Hong nodded approvingly.
“Since when am I moody? I’m a cheery, optimistic youth full of good feelings about people and the world.” Tian said righteously.
Hong just looked at him. The seconds dragged on. Tian eventually rubbed the back of his neck and looked away.
“The very best things about Ancient Crane Monast...
2025-11-20 15:00:15 +0000 UTC
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West Town was a small place, but a good one. The streets were as clean as he remembered. The buildings were well maintained. The gutters that would soon be guiding away the torrential rains were kept clean. The rain would come, battering roofs and gathering on the streets. Then it would, by dint of gravity and careful design, slide off the roads and into the channels that would lead it out of town and safely deposit it in the nearby streams. From there, it would wash into the irrigation syste...
2025-11-19 15:00:17 +0000 UTC
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The two young immortals ran home. Their feet flowed over the long miles more slowly now. Each struggling with the enormity of what they believed was the truth. How could they face their brothers and sisters, face their elders, face their families? How do you answer the courtesy questions about how you are and what you have been up to recently?
A random thought tickled Tian, and made him laugh. “Have you eaten rice today?”
“I’m not very well, no.” Hong grunted.
<...
2025-11-18 15:00:13 +0000 UTC
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Four volumes in, I think most of you know my habits. Yes, we are closing in on the end of Vol. 4, with work on Vol. 5 already well underway on my end.
TL:DR- my next scheduled break from Sky Pride will run from November 27- December 7, with Chap. 1 of Vol. 5 going up on Dec. 8. This isn't to say all posting will stop, as I have a couple of non-Sky Pride things I want to put up on the 27th & 28th, but that's the basic plan.
For those of you who are new, Hi! My general M.O. is...
2025-11-17 16:00:20 +0000 UTC
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Tian and Hong ran down the road while the crane drifted silently overhead. Tian’s mind twisted around and around, always returning to Heartmend and Cang Sen. The indifferent array master, and the suffering peasant. One was healthy, powerful, and free, the other anything but. Yet it was the supposedly enlightened immortal who preached that life was too horrible to endure with one’s whole heart. That the true way to experience the world was as a thoughtless, heartless animal.
Yes, Hea...
2025-11-17 15:00:16 +0000 UTC
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A mathematician would have wept at the elegance of the curve. Anyone who received an errant blow to a tender place would weep, or at least wince, at where the curve ended. Still, the aesthetic quality of the moment couldn’t be denied. A young, pretty looking madman displaying extraordinary muscular control and coordination, driving his dainty foot directly into an austere, older man’s crotch with the speeding fury of a charge of lancers.
Alas, the beauty of nature is often corrupted...
2025-11-14 15:00:20 +0000 UTC
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Daoist Heartmend stood straight, his eyes bright, his shoulders relaxed and his arms loose. His robes had once been decent enough, but now looked weathered and rough, a faded and mottled gray. His beard was wispy, reaching down to his chest, and his eyes were as deep as an old well. He carried no weapon, and wore no ornament other than a plain iron ring.
Tian and Hong knew damn well he was a heretic. He knew they knew. The only ones who didn’t were Diviner Bonecaster and the unf...
2025-11-13 15:00:13 +0000 UTC
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Tian closed his eyes. Brother Long… he remembered their games of Go fondly, but with increasingly complicated feelings. Brother Long wasn’t suited for cultivation. Not really. He would have been happier living as a scholar, joining the civil service and living as a gentleman should.
Brother Long was smart enough to find beauty in ugliness, wise enough to know what suited him and what did not, and wealthy enough that unpleasant things could be avoided. Until they couldn’t be ...
2025-11-12 15:00:19 +0000 UTC
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Tian and Hong shared a long look. Were any of the bandit’s revelations true? He didn’t sound like he was lying, but that just meant that he believed it, not that he was right.
“How do those spikes work? The one the kids are on?” Hong asked.
“No idea. An emissary from, heh, our friends down south set them up. Cold bastard. Colder than you. They were part of the deal. Start sacrificing kids by bleeding ‘em out slow into the troughs, and if any of their eyes went go...
2025-11-11 15:00:20 +0000 UTC
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“When the heart becomes serene, much as ice and snow melt without the knowledge or sensation that they are melting, a ray of numinous light will suddenly appear. Not only do others not know when this happens, one has no sense of it oneself. At this moment, all things become utterly clear, no thoughts are born and it seems as though there is nothing- from the heavens to the earth to the myriad things- that does not flow through one’s true self. This is what is called “nurturing vast qi....
2025-11-10 15:00:14 +0000 UTC
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Tian happened, suddenly and violently. He dove into the press of low-level bandits barehanded, ducking a little as though he were trying to evade the eyes of the bow carrying bandit chief. Which was true, to an extent. It made it easy to conceal his throw and the twisting path of the Imperial Heavenly Swallows.
The invisible darts slammed into the archer, two in the right eye, one in the left, leaving the man screaming and falling to his knees. Tian swore and ripped the darts back...
2025-11-07 15:00:17 +0000 UTC
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This close to the Green River, farms and tiny farming villages were everywhere. You could say a lot of unkind things about the Broadsky Kingdom’s civil service, but their commitment to having peasants dig water management systems was entirely sincere. More importantly, it was skillful. Farms got irrigated. Floods were, to the extent possible, diverted and mitigated. Cities did not run dry in summer months.
It was just a few weeks past the end of the rice harvest, and well before...
2025-11-06 15:00:12 +0000 UTC
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There was no room at the inn. Tian gave the innkeeper a pregnant look. He knew perfectly damn well there were open rooms.
“Best I can do for you is let you sleep in the old goat shed. Three silver a night, no arguing! You are lucky I’m letting you stay here at all, looking like that.”
Tian shrugged. “If a tall woman wearing a veil comes looking for me, tell her I’m staying at the abandoned shrine outside of town. She’ll tip you.”
The innkeeper sniffed. ...
2025-11-05 15:00:16 +0000 UTC
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Tian ceased all talking. All attention and energy was poured into a singular focus- healing. And getting taller. But definitely the healing part came first. Or at least at the same time.
The problem was too much thinking, and not enough not-thinking. It wasn’t that his senior brothers had scammed him. They told him the absolute truth- complicated thoughts get between you and the unfiltered dao, because you are breaking up the world into lots of little things and not seeing the unified...
2025-11-04 15:00:12 +0000 UTC
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Silence gathered in the darkness. The sun had shifted across the sky, sending the little puddle of light sliding across the cavern. Tian wasn’t fit to talk, and Hong wasn’t in much better shape. Tian felt Grandpa Jun sitting next to him, patting his shoulder, or just being a comforting, ghostly, presence.
“I… know who my family is. And they were killed by Liren’s family. I wasn’t thrown away. I was wanted. Fiercely protected, even. I was avenged when “I” died, ...
2025-11-03 15:00:15 +0000 UTC
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It turned out that necessity did require an apology, even with entirely valid excuses. At least if the necessity in question involved getting your sister naked and washing her down with a handcloth.
Tian tried to point at the gory hell-pit that was the residue filled stone trough they had healed in. The ruins of the clothes were still somewhat visible as discolored stalagmites congealed into rising peaks by the accumulated blood, flesh, fat and foulness that had been sloughed off ...
2025-10-31 14:00:16 +0000 UTC
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Tian woke up in darkness and pain. This, he reckoned, was a good thing. It meant he was still alive. The last thing he remembered was pulling off the tourniquets, then whiting out from the pain. He craned his neck down. Grandpa had very carefully directed him in how to splice an artery so that the blood was pumped into Liren, did a full circuit through her, and entered his body again on the other side of the cut.
Grandpa had been muttering something about “Severe oxygen deprivat...
2025-10-30 14:00:12 +0000 UTC
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The middle dantian, also known as the heart dantian or the Crimson Palace- associated with fire and yang, sometimes referred to as one of the three elixir fields, and also, important point, more or less in the literal heart. Or right next to it. It can vary. Oh boy do I love Daoist internal alchemy. It’s the way it’s not really consistent, and that’s okay to its practitioners.
Not normally considered a healthy place to find a spear, the heart, but here we all ar...
2025-10-29 14:00:17 +0000 UTC
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Tian wasn’t a doctor. He was studying medicine and working alongside doctors, but he was always very clear in his own mind that he was an orderly. He was there to assist, not provide treatment for anything but the most basic of injuries. His work as a field medic was to keep people alive long enough for a real doctor to work on them, not cure what ails them. Get it confused, and people would die.
Hong was very nearly dead as it was. There was no one else who could help, and at the spe...
2025-10-28 14:00:14 +0000 UTC
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Tian was pretty sure he was only unconscious for a moment. It felt like he had died. Everything around him was dark, his body was broken in… more places than he could easily count, and there was a reek of corruption. But high above was a ragged hole and a small trickle of water falling in, so it seemed he had landed in one of the dragon caves that dotted the land around here.
He really couldn’t understand how he was still alive. His muddled brain poked at that thought for a se...
2025-10-27 14:00:15 +0000 UTC
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A little daoist stood in the yard behind an ordinary inn, in the ordinary town of Three Streams. It was called Three Streams because three streams met above the town before forming into a short river that fed into the Green River. Lots of soft rock in the area meant the Green River flowed through a deep valley, and twisting limestone caves pierced the land. The caves were so long and twisty, the locals called them Dragon Caves, and dreamed about what ancient wonders, or horrors, might have ma...
2025-10-24 14:00:12 +0000 UTC
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Tian stepped between Little Treasure and the inn’s window, his passing leaving the grass and dirt twisting behind him. He sent out his mind, calling for the crane to come quickly, to hurry over now. Danger! Terrible danger!
The window, and the wall around it, exploded outwards. Tian sensed more than saw knives flying towards him. They curved, flew straight, seemed to be reaching for every part of him. But if he dodged, they would shred Little Treasure. Tian didn’t try to ge...
2025-10-23 14:00:08 +0000 UTC
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It was Brother Fu who sat Tian down after his first spar with Hong and told him to go make friends, or at least a friendly rival. It was Brother Fu who taught him how to serve tea, and with bloody hands on a cold battlefield, showed him the heart of it.
Compassion. Generosity. Connection. Peace. That was the Tea Dao handed down from father to son. In an awful world, you could make a kind place. It wasn’t an illusion. The bad things didn’t magically stop existing. It existed in...
2025-10-22 14:00:11 +0000 UTC
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Dear Brother Zihao,
The soft breezes of late summer ruffle the tall grass and the Dustless Lotuses bloom in the cool waters of quiet ponds. The bees drinking the nectar have no idea that autumn’s chill is already in the air. I wish I didn’t, but since we got Senior Sister Lan’s emergency message, the whole of the Bamboo Medicine Hut is feeling the cold press of a blade at our back.
On behalf of all of us, thank you so much for everything you did for Sis...
2025-10-21 14:00:13 +0000 UTC
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“I must confess, I am a little disappointed. Particularly because it does so many things well. The presentation boxes are quite lovely, and the flavor from the oranges is really wonderful. The aroma is excellent, fresh and lively, and as promised, you really can steep it over and over again without it losing its qi. It comes down to the choice of tea. White tea isn’t a bad choice, but it’s not the right choice.”
Tian spoke with more sorrow than anger. Everyone els...
2025-10-20 14:00:30 +0000 UTC
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[Author Note: If I had Brother Fu's new master down as Heavensieve before, I apologize. It was corrected in my running copy of the text, but sometimes discrepencies arise between chapters depending on where and when they are posted. As you will immediately see below, it should be Starsieve. The reason I changed it is rather dull- there are a million goddamn things named heaven this and heaven that, and while there are almost as many things that start with Star, I like the image better. Sorry ...
2025-10-17 14:00:16 +0000 UTC
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