"Bao Qian!" the voice of flesh called, heard despite all impediments. "Release your defense, but only for a five count!"
The reply took a moment. Ling Qi could feel his consternation, and she also felt the moment he realized her plan.
It was dizzying, the rush of it. Heat and life and feeling flooded out, torn away by the hungry wind. Joyous silence, settling quiet, full and heavy and…
The fist of gold clenched then, and not a single wisp more escaped, only ...
2024-10-21 19:51:24 +0000 UTC
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Cai Renxiang leaned on the hilt of Cifeng, the scabbard’s cap planted in the hard mountain stone. Looking out over it all the sight of the summit seemed such a small thing, easily drowned in the mountain mist. In the grand politics of the Empire or even the province it was a small thing, the summit finished a month ago. She was praised, but there was still a great backhandedness to it, for all that none dared speak to her face as one would child.
It was not different here at the o...
2024-10-20 20:01:52 +0000 UTC
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"How well do you think you can hold under her pressure?" Ling Qi asked.
To her eyes, their camp, this little bubble reality in the endless expanse of white, was being maintained well. The crushing pressure did not pierce the walls, only frost the now fusing stones. Still, she would rather hear the words from the one performing the technique.
Bao Qian knelt by their fire, which had boiled over. Soft smoke poured out of the charcoal and formed a smoky cover over ...
2024-10-17 21:27:24 +0000 UTC
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After the last three months, Ling Qi did not think she could feel relief from sitting down. That she did now just proved how quickly little gripes could pass with cultivation.
The simple camp chair canvas stretched over a wooden frame barely even sank under her weight as she settled into it. She had kept her qi circulating carefully, but her calves were burning so much that she eased the flow. Too much climbing, something she'd gotten out of the habit of, even before her injur...
2024-10-14 23:36:06 +0000 UTC
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Ling Nuan felt like she could crawl out of her own skin.
“Are you certain you do not wish for your companion to dine with us too?” Ling Qingge asked politely.
“Yeah, this is a family dinner. That guy’s a good friend, but he’s not kin,” Ling Nuan said, a tight hold on the electric impulses traveling through her nerves stopped her foot from even beginning to tap under the table.
“I would not object to an exception if you would prefer.”
...
2024-10-13 19:24:40 +0000 UTC
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The scream of the grinding blade tearing across bone echoed shrilly in her ears. Bai Nuying’s head jerked black crimson pouring down her cheek as she reflexively squeezed her eye shut.
It was the most she needed for an opening. Her watery coils flexed, strength against strength, she was weaker than her cousin, but a momentary unsteadiness was enough to unbalance her, to take control of the coil and drag her down and out of position for the next block. She felt Bai Nuying’s nose ...
2024-10-10 21:02:14 +0000 UTC
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Starting soon! Come join us on discord at wednesday-author-qa
2024-10-09 20:01:14 +0000 UTC
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“Not so easy!”
Sand sprayed up from churning hooves. The sound of panicked drawn-in breath mingled with the startled scream of a horse as its head was yanked to the side by the bit in its mouth, forcing horse and rider into a sharp banking turn to avoid the blazing lances of sunfire that cut across the track in their path.
Gu Xiulan glanced down at her smoking, crimson fingernails and blew the ash from their glittering tips as Shan Qiao cursed aloud, urging her rear...
2024-10-08 18:34:42 +0000 UTC
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Journey and Serpents Eye are coming this week, though Journey will be out tomorrow!
2024-10-07 20:29:08 +0000 UTC
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Her nerves hummed with it, the jagged riot of currents stark in black and white. The path of the charge, mortality encapsulated in a spark. Countless ways all reaching toward the end, a hundred choices and all but one discarded, irreversible.
Lightning was certainty. The strike did not turn back on itself.
“Hey! Quit spacing out!”
Ling Nuan. Not Yu Nuan, not anymore, shot the brat tugging at her sleeve an unimpressed look. “I’m not spacing out, I’...
2024-10-06 19:21:10 +0000 UTC
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Winter became spring, and the snow became floodwaters.
But this was only the last verse of her song, and one she had fretted over too much. When focused on the oncoming summit, the peace she hoped for in the future, it was easy to do. But the future did not only include peace.
They were going to war next year. They were going to battle the ith.
It was going to be hideous.
Winter devoured. It consumed. It crushed. The falling snows, so beautiful in th...
2024-10-04 00:05:06 +0000 UTC
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Winter comes as the frost maiden's train. The clouds are the billow of silk in her stride. The snow falls upon the land and leaves the glittering beauty of white.
The maiden's voice rises, the soft song which tugs at and shakes loose the last crinkling leaves, beauty ephemeral passing as it may only once in each turning.
On comes the winter. On comes the snow. See its glitter, look in awe upon the hills laid to rest 'neath the blanket of w...
2024-10-01 00:24:37 +0000 UTC
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Where cold wind blows
On the traveler’s road
Where falling snows
All warmth erode
We sing of light, through winter long
'Till the floods ring spring's gong
The last verse of the amusing little folk song drifted out through the open slats in the workshop wagon, stirring the lightly falling snow outside into swirling flurries. It was a simple piece, the sort of song even a child co...
2024-09-26 20:36:40 +0000 UTC
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Come on down to discord and join us at wednesday-author-qa
2024-09-25 20:11:26 +0000 UTC
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The earth vibrated, a deep rumble rising up from the depths far beneath her feet, growing in intensity as it neared the surface. With it came a tide of flame and heat, flaring the pulse of veins that ran under the earth. Pebbles rattled. The pressure in the air grew. Then, flame-flecked water erupted, a pillar of frothing waters that rose many meters into the sky.
Ling Qi leaned back into the wicker chair which had been built and bound to Zhengui's shell, watching the boiling drople...
2024-09-23 23:34:36 +0000 UTC
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The upper palace wasn’t a quiet place, but compared to the unending roaring noise of the lower palace, it was almost serene. The whipping wind that howled through the naturally formed entry arches of the cavernous hall and the trickle of falling waters down the sculpture-like limestone formations, which tumbled like tapestries of stone down the walls, were there own unending melody. It was much closer to the halls of the Patriarch.
Master of the South wind, ruler of the heavenly c...
2024-09-22 21:39:59 +0000 UTC
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Good news this time! I will be moving on the 30th of September going into the 1st of October. So there will be no Fan Q&A on the second while I settle in.
2024-09-20 19:35:40 +0000 UTC
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The air was cool, crisp, and dry out away from the lakeside, brisk with the promise of oncoming winter snows. There were many small paths now snaking out into the farmlands and pastures. Closer to the center of the settlement, there was gravel, but most were simply packed earth, cut and leveled, the barest beginnings of drainage paths planned at their edge. The pastures were not a grand sight, merely a series of small outbuildings dotting the hills to hold equipment and supplies within a simp...
2024-09-19 22:32:05 +0000 UTC
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Starting shortly! Come on down to join us on discord at wednesday-author-qa.
2024-09-18 20:07:41 +0000 UTC
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AN: And now 409 has been fixed and edited too, should be the last hiccup.
The journey south was much longer than she had grown used to. When she soared in the air, she forgot things like the twists and turns roads followed to pass between the mountains. She forgot that when traveling with mortals and low cultivators, she could not feel the wind scream past her. There was a plodding pace to travel on the road that Ling Qi found herself fretting over as the snow ca...
2024-09-17 00:17:20 +0000 UTC
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Hey there everyone, thank you very much for your patience and a special thanks to everyone who had a kind word. The day I called hiatus a close family member who had been struggling with alcohol had a major relapse. I won't trouble with the details, but they are now set to get off to long term rehab. Still not feeling good, but the situation is resolved for better or worse.
I will get back to updating for everyone come Monday! Look forward to the resumption of Threads of Destiny...
2024-09-12 15:52:48 +0000 UTC
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There's been a severe personal emergency in my family, and I will need a few at least a few days to resolve it. Updates will be on hold likely for the remainder of the week.
2024-09-10 01:52:31 +0000 UTC
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AN: There was an error in the last post before that unpleasant business, the rest of the chapter has been added here where it was missing.
Cai Renxiang considered her for a long moment. Ling Qi heard distant snarling again, wordless and incoherent. Her liege set her cup down.
"Very well. An insight for an insight, that we might put this disagreement to rest."
Cai Renxiang laced her fingers together in front of her face, eyes focused s...
2024-09-09 20:39:48 +0000 UTC
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The hallowed halls dedicated to martial cultivation dated all the way back to the first White Serpent Queen, who constructed them in the wake of her victory, it was said, so that no member of the white serpent would ever be without venerable Yao’s teachings. So that no member of the White Serpent would ever be unable to personally crush the seeds of rebellion, should they ever spark again.
They were among the sturdiest structures in the Empire, along from the actual walls of Zhenj...
2024-09-05 18:58:22 +0000 UTC
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Starting soon! Patrons come on down to discord and join us at wednesday-author-qa
2024-09-04 20:05:52 +0000 UTC
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“So, what words do you have for me, to risk such rudeness?” Gu Xiulan asked, a harsh note in her voice. She had captured a cup of spiced wine from a passing server. It was a good vintage, tingling hotly all the way down. They had reached the west side of the hall, past the columns and nearer to the heavy wall hangings, enough to be out of the general scrum of the party.
She spoke without turning to face her companion, swirling the cup in her hand with casual ease. But she was wa...
2024-09-02 17:58:07 +0000 UTC
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Ling Nuan drew in a sharp, copper scented breath, the metallic taste of her own blood sharp on her tongue, Her heel slid back a hair, foot pivoting for a better stance as he lunged forward, right fist lashing out from her tight front guard.
Her opponent's ham sized fist was still overextended, trailing blood from the cut it’s passage had left under her eye. Her nerves and muscles snapped and sparked with the raw lightning filtering through every fiber. Thunder boomed as her knuckl...
2024-09-01 20:31:43 +0000 UTC
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"Liming has been restless. It was quiescent during the summit, but as months have gone by, its temperament has only grown worse," Cai Renxiang said. "I suspect I will not be able to advance beyond the sixth stage of the green realm without finding a solution."
The crimson and yellow fabric splayed across her chest, the beastly eyes of Liming, rippled visibly, silk straining.
"I have the matter in hand," Cai Renxiang said sharply, meeting her concerned eyes. "This doe...
2024-08-29 22:52:19 +0000 UTC
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There was quite a bit of fanfare in White Cloud Town for Cai Renxiang’s visit, something that had happened regularly for the better part of two years. She knew that Cai Renxiang had been in and out more than once without a peep from the town’s government. The most reaction they had received had been when they had needed to use the governor's emergency transport formation to chase after some bandits.
This time, the streets had been swept, the gates thrown wide, and traffic cleare...
2024-08-26 19:44:04 +0000 UTC
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It was such a heady time to be alive!
Astronomer Wu, strode the through halls of the observatory, with a nearly untoward amount of pep in his step, as he had since the Summit had come to a close and restored his optimism that all of that traitor awfulness was behind them and a new era of astronomical research was at hand.
Here Imperial scholars and foreign ones walked and learned side by side, trading ideas and spreading knowledge. Excellent indeed!
He was ver...
2024-08-25 20:59:26 +0000 UTC
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