CHAPTER
156
KILL AND BLOOD
Jieyuan
—∞—
Well, Jieyuan thought, his gaze lingering on Jiahao’s corpse, if we weren’t in a hurry to leave before, we sure are now.
The nearest Shifting Feather—the one that had nearly split the Orangesoul in half—was still within range of his soulforce; he lowered its weight and then pulled it back to him using his soulforce. The half-amp...
2026-01-21 03:16:09 +0000 UTC View PostCHAPTER
155
TO BISECT
Jieyuan
—∞—
Stepping out into Radiant Street, Jieyuan set a brisk pace, leaving the hulking black form of the Mysterious Night House behind him. Not so fast that he’d be running and drawing people’s attention, though. More like he had somewhere he needed to get to.
Which he did. And that somewhere was out of the city.
He took a quick scan of the street before s...
2026-01-14 03:52:24 +0000 UTC View Post(Chapter 2 of 2 today.)
CHAPTER
154
BUY AND SELL
Jieyuan
—∞—
“Should you wish to bid on a lot,” their attendant was saying, indicating one of the two pedestals rising off the floor, “then you need only channel chroma here, and state a number of prisms and their color. The bid will be reflected on the outside of the booth window.”
Jieyuan, Meiyao, Daojue,...
2026-01-07 22:25:21 +0000 UTC View Post(Chapter 1 of 2 today. The next chapter will be published right after.)
So here’s the release for the Monday before last, which was significantly delayed, as well as this Monday’s release, which was considerably less delayed.
Normally, when I delay a release by more than a week, I like to include a bonus chapter to make up for it. However, one of the reasons for the delay this time is that I’ve been focusing on the rewrite, and I really want to wrap it up this mo...
2026-01-07 22:24:42 +0000 UTC View Post
Here's last Monday's chapter. Cutting it close again, but still in the right week. Planning on getting the next chapter sooner, but we'll see how it goes.
CHAPTER
152
BACK AND BLACK
Jieyuan
—∞—
Meiyao gave Jieyuan an utterly incredulous look, eyes wide, jaw slack. It’d have been comical if it weren’t for how serious the situation was. “Qingshi is what?...
2025-12-29 04:52:16 +0000 UTC View PostHere you go, last Monday's chapter. Cutting it close, but at least it was still released in the right week.
CHAPTER
151
DRINK AND TALK
Jieyuan
—∞—
In a small but tidy living room, Jieyuan, Meiyao, and Daojue sat around a table in the dark. Xiaohu lay draped across Meiyao’s shoulders.
Daojue was silent, as usual, but Jieyuan and Meiyao weren’t speaking, eith...
2025-12-22 05:40:41 +0000 UTC View PostA bit delayed (I really wanted to get this one right, and it took me longer than I would have thought), but better late than never. This is last Monday's pending chapter. I hope you enjoy it.
CHAPTER
150
TO BE BACK
Jieyuan
—∞—
Meiyao was different. Her appearance was the same. Same long, flowing brown hair. Same vibrant green eyes. Same impossibly, hauntingly beautifu...
2025-12-15 05:49:43 +0000 UTC View PostSorry about the delay! I ended up having to travel last week, and that messed up my schedule. This is last week's chapter. This week's chapter should actually be coming out tomorrow, Thursday at the latest (it's already half-done).
CHAPTER
149
VOID TO CAVE
Jieyuan
—∞—
The void blurred and sharpened back into solid matter around Jieyuan, and the first thing he saw was...
2025-12-10 05:43:15 +0000 UTC View PostCHAPTER
148
BLOOD AND BOON
Jieyuan
—∞—
It was not the blood-red plains Jieyuan returned to. Rather, what the void of the Heavenly Room gave way to was, for once, an actual room.
The room was large and mostly empty, with bare gray stone walls, ceiling, and floor. There weren’t any windows. Glowing bars ran through the ceiling, providing illumination.
On one side of it was a lone medita...
2025-11-30 23:39:28 +0000 UTC View PostThis is last Monday's chapter, as promised, even if a bit late. I'd like to say next week's chapter is coming out tomorrow, but clearly I'm too optimistic with dates, so let's just play it safe and say it'll come out sometime next week.
CHAPTER
147
TO LAY BARE
Jieyuan
—∞—
The metal walls of the Sword Tower snapped back into focus around Jieyuan just as the blood-red ...
2025-11-24 04:22:55 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 2 of 2 today. Chapter 147 is coming out tomorrow.
CHAPTER
146
BURNING END
Jieyuan
—∞—
He didn’t appear in any of the forests or towns he’d burned down. Nor did he appear in the midst of the charred, burning landscape that had served as the setting of the seventh through tenth difficulties. It wasn’t the inferno-filled void where he’d experienced the el...
2025-11-19 03:09:47 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 1 of 2 is today. The next chapter will be published immediately afterward. There will also be another chapter tomorrow—today’s two are the one I owed from last week plus a bonus as an apology for the delay (the fifth stage ended up needing two chapters, rather than just one).
Tomorrow’s chapter is already written (I actually finished it before this one because I was stuck on a specific scene in this chapter), but it still needs a quick revision pass, which is...
2025-11-19 03:08:40 +0000 UTC View Post
Chapter 2 of 2 today. Again, please check the Discord announcement. There WILL be another chapter this (or next, for some of you) week.
CHAPTER
144
THORN AND PAIN
Jieyuan
—∞—
When Jieyuan stepped into the Heavenly Room, Shifting Feathers drawn, he did so expecting to appear in a torture chamber on the other side: some dark room stacked with torture implements. Or, if ...
2025-11-10 04:53:20 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 1 of 2 today—and these are still last week's chapters. I'll be explaining the situation clearly in the Discord announcement, but there'll still be another chapter next week. Long short short, I overdid things a little and ended up with two full length chapters last week. Oops.
CHAPTER
143
OF DEAD BONE
Jieyuan
—∞—
The Heavenly Hall had barely...
2025-11-10 04:49:19 +0000 UTC View PostCHAPTER
142
SHAPE AND CHANGE
Jieyuan
—∞—
Jieyuan stared blankly at the metal surface of the door in front of him. It was darkened, the handle gone.
The woman’s frenzied words still rang in his ears.
Listen to me. You must… You must… You must…
“Must what?” he murmured. His heart was still hammering against his ribcage, beating rapidly.
What did she se...
2025-10-28 06:42:37 +0000 UTC View PostCHAPTER
141
DO OR DO
Jieyuan
—∞—
Jieyuan sighed as the Heavenly Hall reappeared around him, along with all the cultivators there.
The sphere he had chosen now sat within his body; he could just barely feel its presence here in the Heavenly Hall, but it was unmistakably there, inside him. Merged with him, maybe.
This constant awareness of the Concept he’d been forced t...
2025-10-22 04:36:14 +0000 UTC View PostAnd there we have it: the first chapter published following the new schedule. The next chapter will be coming out next Monday; I've also adjusted previous chapters so that paying patrons are now seven chapters ahead instead of fourteen—but still seven weeks ahead of the regular releases (and also ahead by the same amount of words). So this should've been chapter 147, but ended up as chapter 140.
CHAPTER
140 2025-10-16 02:41:21 +0000 UTC View Post
CHAPTER
139
THE TWIN SNAKES
Jieyuan
—∞—
All things considered, the snake didn’t really come as a surprise.
Jieyuan had just barely told the Amphis Concept what difficulty he wanted when the beast spilled out from the mouth of the stone snake head opposite him: a great, sinuous body covered in black and yellow scales.
It slid out from between the massive fangs and drop...
2025-10-07 03:53:28 +0000 UTC View PostCHAPTER
138
A WAY FOUND
Jieyuan
—∞—
In the place of the infinitely distant ceiling was now a starry sky. An ocean of silver orbs scattered throughout a black void.
Not just any starry sky, either. It was a mirror of the same vision Jieyuan had seen once before, when he bonded with Absolute Will Command, right after their mission gone wrong in the Fatebloom Woods.
The Heavenly Vault. For...
2025-09-30 03:45:47 +0000 UTC View PostCHAPTER
137
PAST AND TOWER
Jieyuan
—∞—
Anren knelt down, picked up Gleaming End. Then she walked over to Daojue—whom she’d just dropped to the ground with her last attack—and extended a hand.
Jieyuan watched in awe as Daojue took it and Anren pulled him to his feet.
They were all standing at the middle of the platform—far away from the abyss lines, which were mu...
2025-09-24 02:32:50 +0000 UTC View PostCHAPTER
136
TO INSTRUCT
Jieyuan
—∞—
Jieyuan, of course, didn’t let go. Not that he reckoned he’d have stood much of a chance if this turned into a tug-of-war situation. Given what he’d seen of Anren’s performance against Daojue earlier, it was a good thing she wasn’t pulling on the Shifting Feathers, just holding onto them.
Anren was not just encroaching on his personal space but ou...
2025-09-16 05:16:55 +0000 UTC View PostCHAPTER
135
CUT THE SHADE
JIEYUAN
—∞—
Jieyuan looked between Daojue and Anren.
Anren, who was in a relaxed stance, her sword up, the tip pointed at Daojue.
Daojue, who had taken a combat stance himself, both hands on Gleaming End, the spearhead angled towards Anren.
Daojue’s dark violet eyes were narrowed, fixing Anren with a stare so intense it was a wonder she...
2025-09-09 06:13:02 +0000 UTC View PostSo. A quick author note: So far, I’ve been restricting myself pretty heavily punctuation-wise, but that’s led to a gross overuse of em-dashes, so it’s something I’ll be addressing in the rewrite. However, I figured I’d already start putting it into practice, so expect to see some semicolons, colons, and parentheses peppered throughout the text going forward. (You might’ve already caught some of those in earlier chapters because of some edits I’ve recently made.)<...
2025-09-02 05:18:18 +0000 UTC View Post
CHAPTER
133
SOUL AND SWORD
JIEYUAN
—∞—
The voice was deep. Resonant. And loud—so loud it should’ve left his ears ringing, his eardrums bleeding, his bones rattling.
But none of that happened. Because the words hadn’t been spoken, at least not in the conventional way—nor in any other Jieyuan knew of, and he had more experience with alternative means of communication th...
2025-08-31 03:05:52 +0000 UTC View PostCHAPTER
132
BEAST OF MIST
JIEYUAN
—∞—
Once swindled, twice guarded. Jieyuan had learned his lesson.
This time around, he didn’t just stand there waiting for Meiyao to get them into another mess. The moment he realized what was happening, he rushed over and grabbed her shoulder—all the while bracing himself in case she lashed out like last time.
A tremor ran through ...
2025-08-31 03:05:32 +0000 UTC View PostCHAPTER
131
HIGHER REALMS
JIEYUAN
—∞—
Chromal beasts weren’t necessarily bigger than their mundane counterparts, and realm didn’t correlate to size. Jieyuan had met massive Redsoul beasts and tiny Orangesoul ones. If anything, the smaller the beast, the more troublesome it tended to be.
But Jieyuan had never come across a beast even half as big as this colossal b...
2025-08-31 03:04:55 +0000 UTC View PostCHAPTER
130
TO DESCEND
JIEYUAN
—∞—
Two months.
As best Jieyuan could tell—even after all this while, keeping track of time in the Dome was still no easy task—that was about how much time it took him and Daojue to meet Meiyao again.
And now just about that same amount of time had passed since they’d reunited.
Jieyuan was on the ground, his back against a tree...
2025-08-31 03:04:29 +0000 UTC View PostCHAPTER
129
HIS AND HERS
JIEYUAN
—∞—
“Meiyao,” Jieyuan said, catching her attention. “Are we safe here, or do we need to move?”
To his surprise, Meiyao didn’t even need a moment to answer. “We’re fine for now.”
“Are you sure?” He didn’t doubt her, but he remembered how she’d always spend a good few minutes before coming to a decision.
She n...
2025-08-31 03:04:04 +0000 UTC View PostCHAPTER
128
STAKE YOUR CLAIM
JIEYUAN
—∞—
Jieyuan would be lying if he said he hadn’t thought of kissing Meiyao before. He tried not to think about the subject—it was a total waste of time to dwell on fantasies, as far as he was concerned—but he’d never been able to push it off his mind altogether.
And it wasn’t a recent thing. Despite himself, he kept coming back to...
2025-08-31 03:03:42 +0000 UTC View PostCHAPTER
127
KILL AND KISS
JIEYUAN
—∞—
Jieyuan almost shouted it out—but then he caught himself, swallowing down the words. Keeping half his attention on the fight, he jumped from one thought to the next, trying to decide on his next move, on the best course of action.
There was an opportunity here. He was sure of it. He just needed to find it. Find it and grasp it.
He...
2025-08-31 03:03:03 +0000 UTC View Post