yrsillar

Threads Patron Preview Chapter 54 (Red+)

If she were to be honest with herself, Ling Qi was dreading attending the hunting party. Even if Luo Zhong had invited her in good faith, which she was not sure he had, she was still spending the afternoon with a bunch of people who would be contemptuous of her at best. Frankly, she got enough of that at Cai Renxiang’s regular gatherings.

<You’re going in with a bad attitude again,> Sixiang warned. <I know I didn’t exactly help with that last year, but I got better. Have ...

Threads Patron Preview Chapter 53 (Red+)

“Xiao Fen? Is that you up there?” a wary voice called out from the woods. “I don’t really have the hang of this art yet…”

“Your senses do not fool you, Liu Xin,” Xiao Fen said stiffly.

The boy that stepped out of the woods was an average looking sort. He wore the Sect’s silver robes, which had been made or modified into a talisman. He had short black hair tied into a topknot and a somewhat handsome face, but he was rather skinny and gangly in build. His grey eyes...

Threads Patron Preview Chapter 52 (Red+)

Ling Qi took one last look around the small music hall, eyeing the handful of other disciples occupying the seats within. Despite her best efforts, word of the matter had gotten out. Not many had bothered to show up, and most were no doubt here out of idle curiosity, but she recognized a few disciples in the orbit of more important Emerald Seas nobles. She smiled thinly as she caught the eyes of one such young man, doing her best to channel Meizhen’s imperious attitude. He looked away first...

Threads Patron Preview Chapter 51 (Red+)

Ling Qi peered into the distance at the smoking crater in the ground, the glassy glimmer of melted dirt and shattered stone surrounding it. Then she shook her head. “Sorry, little brother. You still missed.”

“Ugh, stupid Zhen,” Gui grumbled. The giant tortoise lowered his head and swallowed another massive mouthful of dirt, stones, and plant matter from the miniature mountain of “ammunition” they had prepared.

“Silence, foolish Gui!” Zhen hissed as the air around h...

Threads Patron Preview Chapter 50 (Red+)

Over the course of the next few days, things went peacefully enough as Ling Qi returned to the main force and joined the detachments dealing with the issues she had helped map out. Soon enough, they were on their way back to the Sect, and she had been commended for performing her duties well.

It irked her a little to just do ‘well,’ but standing out was hardly the point in an exercise like this. She would just have to be satisfied with that and her contribution points.

With th...

Threads Patron Preview Chapter 49 (Red+)

Li Suyin allowed herself a small smile of satisfaction as she placed the last of the seeds into the jar of preservative and tapped the lip, activating the sealing formation on the container. Humming to herself, she collected the discarded rind of the fruit and brushed it into the bin beside her work table where they would be stored until they could be ground up and converted to feed for higher quality livestock back at the Sect proper.

With that, she was done for the moment. With little...

Commission: The Strife of Twin Emperors

Type Worldbuilding. RR Friendly

Found in the Interlude-Spoilers channel on Discord

Threads Patron Preview Chapter 48 (Red+)

Once again, she took an overwatch position as they began to make their way south, painstakingly searching for unusual qi in the soil.

Below, her subordinates took on a triangle formation with Mo Lian at the head and the other two fanned out behind him. The search was rather dull to begin with. False leads led only to minor parasitic spirits or earth gasses tainting soil. She left the subdual of the former to Chun Yan, who was quick and competent about striking and cutting down spirits w...

Threads Patron Preview Chapter 47 (Red+)

<You’ve got this,> Sixiang encouraged.

Ling Qi appreciated the sentiment as she leaped lightly down from the cliff, floating like a leaf on the breeze. As her feet touched the damp grass on the river’s shore, she stopped restraining her qi, and her flute materialized in her hand. The moment she did, the lazy ripples of the slow flowing river churned and thrashed. She glimpsed a piscine silhouette forming beneath the surface before a jet of extremely dense pressurized water sho...

January Bonus Poll

Threads Patron Preview Chapter 46 (Red+)

Ling Qi stood at attention in line with the rest of her classmates in the scouting division as they waited for their respective tutors to return from conferring with the other officers for this Sect exercise. On the plateau below where they stood, the disciples of the other divisions milled and formed up. This exercise was a gigantic operation, a full-scale patrol passing through forts at the edge of the Sect’s control.

She was able to look over the other disciples, even standing stra...

Threads Patron Preview Chapter 45 (Red+)

Ling Qi looked to her right, following the line of Sixiang’s attention into the lane between rows of stalls. Briefly, her vision was blocked by some passersby, but she soon met a pair of dark amber eyes, and the young man they belonged to immediately stopped.

It took only a moment to place his face, even if she had only met him once. Luo Zhong, one of the clan scions she had met at Cai Renxiang’s parties, looked back at her with an air of mild interest. He stood at ease with his han...

Commission: Lady Ling

Characters Nie Ai, Hou Min

Not RR friendly. Found in interlude spoilers channel on discord

Threads Patron Preview Chapter 44(Red+)

It took four days to make it back to the Sect, and by the time they arrived, it was the fifth month.

For the first time, Ling Qi got a real sense of just how massive the province and the Empire were. Ling Qi had been a little surprised that they had not simply taken another transport formation, but when she had asked, Cai Renxiang had informed her that it would be an excessive expense.

Ling Qi kept herself busy by beginning to examine the flows of some of her arts and how she coul...

Threads Patron Preview Chapter 43 (Red+)

Ling Qi felt the familiar fluctuation in the radiant qi emanating from Cai Renxiang’s blazing sword, the unstoppable pulse that could tear up even the roots laid down by her Thousand Rings Unbreaking. So as the upward slash launched the Bai up and back, hurtling backward through the air with his guard broken, she was prepared. Almost without thought, she followed up on her liege’s attack.

She flickered through the sky, carrying with her the corona of winter cold and the echoes of th...

Threads Patron Preview Chapter 42 (Red+)

Ling Qi found her thoughts drifting back to the old story which she had read when looking into Bai Xiao Fen and the Bai clan in general.

“But the Red Python and the Green Asp scorned their ascended father’s will, and they rose in rebellion against the first White Serpent Queen. Only the Black Viper stood steadfast at her side.”

If this wasn’t a trick, it looked like she was going to have to talk to Meizhen about her extended family and their resistance to the new ...

Threads 41 Patron Preview (Red+)

For once, Ling Qi did not soar as she took off toward her destination. The expense to her qi, small as it was, was not one she was certain she could afford.

The map that she had memorized showed that the terrain was mostly flat, and while the marshy terrain would have been an obstacle for most, for Ling Qi, it meant little. She dashed through the trees, flickered from branch to branch, and sprung from one muddy islet to another.  Her feet left no impression in mud or grass, and eve...

Threads Patron Preview Chapter 40(Red+)

Ling Qi arrived at Cai Renxiang’s door only a quarter hour later, having flown straight there. As she stepped through the door, absently chewing a qi restoration pill, her eyes darted around.

There were no immediate threats that she could see, and she could feel the other girl sitting in her study under no external stress at all. The mountain had seemed peaceful during her flight as well. So what was this about? Her liege didn’t normally send notes as dramatic as that.

<It�...

New Commission: Recognition

Characters: Yan Renshu

Not RR Friendly. Found on Discord in Interlude Spoilers

Threads Patron Preview Chapter 39(Red+)

Ling Qi ascended the steps into the fiery archive, Sixiang at her side and Hanyi just behind her. The greyed-out, frozen world seemed to fade away behind them until at last they stood inside of the billowing flames. Ling Qi looked around at the flame-wrought shelves that seemed to stretch out beyond her sight in every direction but back. Reaching out, she brushed her fingers across a fiery shelf and found herself surprised when a charred scroll materialized in her hands.

“Alright,” ...

Threads Patron Preview Chapter 38(Red+)

Ling Qi smiled despite herself as Hanyi let out a last excited woop from her perch on Ling Qi’s back. She landed, her legs bending to absorb the impact as she came to a stop on the roof of one of the little mansions that lined the quiet avenues of the inner city. With how busy she had been, Ling Qi had forgotten some of the simple joy that could come from just moving. Her muscles and qi channels burned as she dashed at full speed, trying her best just to keep the flitting silk-shrouded figu...

Threads Patron Preview Chapter 37(Red+)

Ling Qi yelped, clutching Zhengui to her chest as she tumbled head over heels into the open sky. Hanyi laughed as she tumbled through the air beside her.

It was nothing like the controlled flight she was used to. Ling Qi spun, bobbed, and drifted on the breeze like a leaf caught in a windstorm as the province rushed by beneath them. Yet for all their speed, the rush of wind never became the howling gale that it should have been. Their wild flight took some getting used to, but as Ling Q...

Threads Patron Preview Chapter 36 (Red+)

Cultivation always made time fly by.

It was frustrating, Ling Qi could admit. Days could pass by without her noticing while she spent time whirling and dancing among the faded stones of a long dead city to the music of dreams and the cheers of her spirits, advancing toward and achieving the fourth revel of the Phantasmagoria of Lunar Revelry. Only Hanyi’s declaration of boredom and Sixiang’s sheepish agreement that they had lost track of time allowed her to pull herself free from th...

E-book and Audiobook Release

That's right as of today, the first third of Forge of Destiny is available in e-book and audiobook format, available through the link above.

Threads Patron Preview Chapter 35 (Red+)

If she ignored the uncomfortable feeling that Bian Ya’s flirtations gave her, Ling Qi would say that the chatting that followed was actually a little fun. With the subject changed from politics, their conversation drifted to music and poetry, which was much easier fare.

Still, she left the conversation with somewhat mixed feelings. She was glad that she had secured a friendly relationship with two of her seniors, but…

Ling Qi shook her head as she approached the stage for her ...

Threads Patron Preview Chapter 34 (Red+)

Ling Qi found her liege surrounded by a small gaggle of disciples.

Among them was Bian Ya, her one-time tutor. She wore a clinging, two-layered gown of shimmering green and white, and her hair was put up in a complex arrangement, woven through combs and flowers. Bian Ya still felt like a light spring breeze blowing through a field of fragrant flowers to Ling Qi’s senses.

There was another boy who caught her eye with his cultivation. Leanly built with rough features and darker sk...

Commission: Fire and Water

Characters: Gu Xiulan, Shen Hu

Not RR Friendly. Found on Discord in the Interlude Spoilers Channel.

Threads Patron Preview Chapter 33 (Red+)

“So, I think I would call my outing with Xuan Shi a success,” Ling Qi finished, drumming her fingers on the arms of her chair. She’d left the exact details out of her report, but she had parted with the Xuan scion on good, if awkward, terms.

“Very good. He is an important contact,” Cai Renxiang said crisply, capping the scroll case in her hands with a snap. It soon joined its brothers on a pyramidal stack. “We should be on our way.”

Ling Qi eyed it and the stack of u...

Threads patron Preview Chapter 32 (Red+)

Ling Qi looked up through narrowed eyes, studying the looming shape of the guardian. “I will identify its weakness,” she said. She breathed out, giving Zhengui and Hanyi a nudge. “You won’t be alone in your part though.”

Behind her, a great shadow formed as Zhengui emerged into the world. Zhengui stomped his feet as he grew solid, hunkering down in preparation for combat, even as his serpentine half reared up and hissed, sparks and embers dancing in the heat-warped air around ...

Threads Patron Preview Chapter 31 (Red+)

“Incredible,” Xuan Shi breathed, stepping across the threshold from cloud to stone.

Ling Qi was not sure she would go that far, but it was pretty impressive. Inside the doors was a long pillared hall like a grand temple with a thick red carpet leading up its center. The only light in the room came from the pale glow of shimmering walls of elemental qi that blocked access to the rear of the room. There were eight of the things, and though each one was partially translucent, together,...