CHAPTER
36
TALKS AND TESTS
JIEYUAN
—∞—
“You’re back.” Meiyao had eyes narrowed, looking him up and down. Arms crossed over her chest, standing by the door. “And whole. Early, too.”
Jieyuan was in front of her doorway. On his way back to the sect, he’d thought his next few steps through. What he wanted was to head straight back home and take his sweet time figuring out jus...
2024-10-07 02:57:48 +0000 UTC View PostCHAPTER
35
BORN ANEW
JIEYUAN
—∞—
The senior protector’s footsteps sounded faint, muffled, and they grew fainter, until Jieyuan could barely hear them. He lay on the ground, head to the side, grass prickling the right side of his face. Darkness crawled around the edges of his vision, creeping in. What he did see was hazy, and cast in dull, washed-out tones.
A small, scattered pile of fateblo...
2024-10-05 03:00:33 +0000 UTC View PostCHAPTER
34
TAKE YOUR TIME
JIEYUAN
—∞—
Immediately, the Fatebloom Heart stopped beating. Jieyuan felt his own heart race even faster, like it was picking up the slack, compensating for the Fatebloom Heart’s sudden lack of movement.
Chroma started vanishing from Jieyuan’s soulprism, sacrificed by the bonding ritual. The Fatebloom Heart, though it’d ceased to beat, remained mildly warm, if...
2024-10-03 02:08:26 +0000 UTC View PostCHAPTER
33
FATEBLOOM HEART
JIEYUAN
—∞—
It took Jieyuan a couple of seconds to remember himself and get a sense of what had just happened—what was still happening.
His thoughts were faint, unfocused—and mingled, he distantly realized, with those of Yikongwei Beidao, which droned on faintly and indistinct as he—Jieyuan himself, as well as Beidao, both of them—stared up at the n...
2024-10-01 02:52:12 +0000 UTC View PostCHAPTER
32
IN THE HEART
JIEYUAN
—∞—
That was the second Fusongshi he’d killed. First an inner disciple, now a core disciple.
In a way, it was like he was moving up in the world. Maybe too fast, though. At this rate, he’d be dealing with a core elder next, and he wasn’t even halfway through Redsoul yet.
Jieyuan didn’t stand on ceremony. He crouched down and went about collecting ...
2024-09-30 02:34:16 +0000 UTC View PostCHAPTER
31
TO DISTRACT
JIEYUAN
—∞—
Jieyuan threw the pill—and it’d barely left his fingers when the elk at the front charged forward, and barely a moment later he felt something pulling him forward, like he’d just jumped off a cliff and was falling—except in the direction of the elk charging at him.
His aura-lashed feet kept him stuck in place even as the rest of his body was pulled f...
2024-09-29 00:37:52 +0000 UTC View PostCHAPTER
30
IN THE WOODS
JIEYUAN
—∞—
Hardly a month and a half ago, the Fatebloom Woods had been quite the sight. Jieyuan remembered quite clearly his first impressions of it. To him, the trunks of the fatebloom trees had been like massive, towering pillars of gold that reached impossibly high, Heavens-ward. And when you looked up, the crowns of the fatebloom trees, so full of fatebloom blossoms, ga...
2024-09-29 00:36:53 +0000 UTC View PostCHAPTER
29
TO PREPARE
JIEYUAN
Jieyuan was standing in his doorway, clad in his new set of topaz robes. Just in front of his residence, rising into the air on a cloudcraft, was the Management Bureau elder who’d just now processed his induction to the Inner Court. It’d been a short, straightforward visit. The man had congratulated him on his advancement, handed him his new robes, and told him that should he ...
2024-09-28 01:15:57 +0000 UTC View Post
TERMINOLOGY CHANGES
(Dated 2024-09-27. If you've started reading FaUn on or after that date, feel free to ignore the announcement below.)
As I’m now starting to publish Volume 2 here, I’ve gone all over the feedback I’ve gotten on the story so far, picked out which ones I could feasibly apply without harming neither my vision for the story nor the experience of the current readers, and made the following changes:
CONTENT CHANGES 2024-09-28 01:15:05 +0000 UTC View Post
CHAPTER
28
AND THEY PLOT
QINGSHI
—∞—
Back straight, legs crossed, hands resting on his thighs, Qingshi sat on the floor of his cell, his back against the wall. Although he didn’t know the exact location, he could tell that he was in the lowest levels of the Justice Bureau. He’d been here many times before, sometimes with Taishou, sometimes alone, to lock up lawbreakers awaiting interrogation. 2024-09-25 00:28:31 +0000 UTC View Post
CHAPTER
27
TO SET FORTH
JIEYUAN
—∞—
Meiyao sat in Jieyuan’s living room. Jieyuan sat across her, the small table that had come up with the house between them. He had all the windows closed, and the yellow-white gemstone light embedded on the ceiling lit.
The Justice Hall elder had brought them straight to the Outer Court’s residential area, landing near Jieyuan’s residence. Daojue had s...
2024-09-25 00:27:20 +0000 UTC View PostCHAPTER
26
AMONG LIES
JIEYUAN
—∞—
“Is that so, Daojue?” Taishou asked Daojue. “You were the one who found the cave?” Taishou didn’t seem particularly surprised—he didn’t seem like anything, really, his expression now inscrutable. His gaze was even more intense, though, and entirely concentrated on Daojue.
It had already occurred to Jieyuan that Taishou was Yunzhu’s father, and...
2024-09-25 00:26:08 +0000 UTC View PostCHAPTER
25
IN THE SECT
JIEYUAN
—∞—
It was at much lower speeds—but still far, far faster than Jieyuan could hope to run, at least at his soulsign—that Taishou flew the cloudcraft through what Jieyuan assumed to be the Inner Court. From this high above, he couldn’t really tell—everything the same color looked to be also the same in shape and form—and there weren’t any landm...
2024-09-25 00:24:50 +0000 UTC View PostCHAPTER
24
TO RETURN
JIEYUAN
—∞—
Yunzhu slowly lowered her cloud to the ground.
Jieyuan stared at her throughout the entire length of her descent, mystified. Nobody reacted.
Yunzhu alighted not too far away from where Qingshi was standing. The prime disciple had his head facing her way and was completely still. Unnaturally so.
Meiyao and Daojue….
Yunzhu stepped off her clo...
2024-09-23 02:54:34 +0000 UTC View PostCHAPTER
23
CROSSING REALMS
JIEYUAN
—∞—
Jieyuan had headed straight back to their initial location after his fight with Sunqiu, and seeing Daojue’s fight with Qingshi hadn’t ended yet, he’d stayed to the side, beside a gleamstone tree and out of sight. From his position, he’d also been able to observe Meiyao’s fight further ahead, also ongoing.
Neither Daojue nor Meiyao would have ap...
2024-09-23 02:53:46 +0000 UTC View PostCHAPTER
22
PROMISED FIGHT
DAOJUE
—∞—
Daojue and Gleaming End were one.
The spear Daojue was as if a perfect extension of himself. As he swung and thrust it, he felt the weapon’s thirst for blood and battle. Although he had yet to grow fully accustomed to the ego gear’s constant presence in his mind, he was no longer unfamiliar with the sensation. While distracting, he found it a small pri...
2024-09-23 02:52:49 +0000 UTC View PostCHAPTER
21
TO BRING DEATH
JIEYUAN
—∞—
Over to Jieyuan’s left, Daojue and Qingshi began a battle that, by all accounts, seemed to be long-awaited on both sides. Even further over to his left, Meiyao and Liangjie got up to some bloody business of their own.
As for himself, Jieyuan tracked over to the side together with Sunqiu, like they were pairing off for a dance. Which wasn’t too f...
2024-09-21 22:43:33 +0000 UTC View PostCHAPTER
20
TO ACCUSE
JIEYUAN
—∞—
Confused though he was, Jieyuan still took quick stock of the situation. Qingshi was a mostly known element—blind, sword user, very skilled, no realmskill—but the two inner disciples beside were pure unknowns.
Both men. Black-haired and black-eyed, so probably not Liangshibai, unless they were doing whatever it was the Liangshib...
2024-09-21 02:29:04 +0000 UTC View PostCHAPTER
19
TO CONFUSE
JIEYUAN
—∞—
What in the Heavens?
It was like he’d hit a roadblock not even a step past the starting line.
He quickly scanned through its contents, but it was all just more of the same, utterly unreadable text. Like it was in a different language. Which was very much curious, because at least in his current life, he’d never heard about ...
2024-09-20 16:14:06 +0000 UTC View PostCHAPTER
18
SO IT GOES
JIEYUAN
—∞—
Jieyuan had spent fifteen nights in the Gleamstone Forest. The first handful or so of them, he’d been tense, on edge, and it’d been a rather unfortunate confluence of factors that had led to that less-than-pleasant experience.
One was that, new as he’d been to the forest and unused to its particular brand of bizarre beauty, the nighttime darkness seemed...
2024-09-20 16:12:33 +0000 UTC View PostCHAPTER
17
OF THE STONE
JIEYUAN
—∞—
Jieyuan turned around to face the entrance pretty much together with Daojue, and he did it just in time to see Daojue snap his arms forward and send Glistening End flying out of his hands, the spear cutting through the air like an arrow.
A grossly oversized crystal arrow bound straight for Weiming’s chest.
In the split-second before the spear reache...
2024-09-18 23:12:28 +0000 UTC View PostCHAPTER
16
IN THE CAVE
DAOJUE
—∞—
The Ring burned.
It sat wrapped around the forefinger of Daojue’s right hand, the hand with which Daojue held his spear as he ran. Daojue felt himself being pulled forward, and it was the Ring that pulled him.
It was as if he was a spear thrown, with the Ring as its head, and his body as its shaft. Where the spearhead went, the rest o...
2024-09-18 23:11:24 +0000 UTC View PostCHAPTER
15
TO ESCAPE
JIEYUAN
—∞—
Jieyuan was caught up trying to come up with both a reason why this was happening and a way out of it—and coming up awfully empty on both accounts—when Meiyao stepped forward, pointing her finesaber at the inner elder.
“I know you. I remember you. I’ve seen you before.” Meiyao’s tone was somewhere in a voice between incredulous and ac...
2024-09-18 00:42:27 +0000 UTC View PostCHAPTER
14
TO ADVANCE
JIEYUAN
—∞—
Jieyuan’s soulprism fell apart in a slow, prolonged outburst, the chroma comprising it dispersing evenly throughout the prismgap like a blooming cloud of red. As the first particles of chroma began penetrating the spiritshell, imbuing it, Jieyuan felt the familiar, prickling, needle-like sensation, starting first in his chest, where his soul was, and quickly spre...
2024-09-16 22:48:02 +0000 UTC View PostCHAPTER
13
TRUTH AND LIE
JIEYUAN
—∞—
The fight had barely begun, and already Jieyuan was losing.
He was on his back foot, literally and figuratively, as Daojue’s spear stabbed at his neck. Jieyuan managed to lift his own spear to bat it aside in time, but that barely gave Daojue a pause, the taller man taking a step forward and doing something with his arm and upper body that Jieyuan didn...
2024-09-16 15:46:25 +0000 UTC View PostCHAPTER
12
NOT TO FIGHT
JIEYUAN
—∞—
What came next wasn’t the wet, crunching sounds of flesh being torn and bone being shattered—the sounds you’d expect to come from the collision of a fullgauntlet and a face—but the dull ring of metal meeting metal.
Daojue’s own fullgauntleted hand was wrapped against Meiyao’s, holding her fist not even an inch away from his face. Holding it in p...
2024-09-13 20:50:26 +0000 UTC View PostCHAPTER
11
HAZE OF RED
JIEYUAN
—∞—
Jieyuan got about twelve steps in before the wolf reacted. From absolute stillness it snapped into a crouch, four legs bending, body tilting forward, and then it leaped—pushing off against glistenstone, launching itself forward, paws barely touching the ground as it sped towards him.
Jieyuan just barely managed to throw himself to the side. The wo...
2024-09-13 19:54:22 +0000 UTC View PostCHAPTER
10
TO PREDATE
JIEYUAN
—∞—
It was Meiyao who’d whipped her hand out, a signal sure as any for them to stop, and there’d been something so sharp about the motion that Jieyuan reacted immediately, soulstilling as he snapped into a stance.
Then she’d pointed to the left, and Jieyuan had seen it.
Half-hidden behind a pair of trees, some fifty feet away, was a wolf. One made out...
2024-09-13 19:19:12 +0000 UTC View PostCHAPTER
9
GLISTENSTONE
JIEYUAN
—∞—
It was in almost complete silence that what looked like a line of gray clouds appeared on the horizon, coming from the direction of the Inner Court. Beyond the Topaz Arch, a light gray cut across the blue-white skies.
As the gray clouds drew closer, Jieyuan noticed the men and women standing on top of them. Most of them wore ruby or topaz robes, but there we...
2024-09-13 17:27:14 +0000 UTC View PostCHAPTER
8
SO THEY MEET
JIEYUAN
—∞—
As Yunzhu and Qingshi walked over, the crowd parted around them like Jieyuan had often seen mundanes get out of the way of cultivators back in Radiant Gold City—hurriedly, but discretely, so as not to draw attention to themselves. They were all cultivators here, proud men and women whose lives revolved around facing and overcoming unimaginable pain, but the crow...
2024-09-13 16:04:23 +0000 UTC View Post