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218 - The Divine Emperor in the City of Glittering Petals Pt. 4 [Sturmblitz]

This time, he placed the objects he conjured from his sleeve upon the table with his own hand.

Shen choked on his baijiu. His pupils constricted, his face went white. He knew that scroll.

“Did you not intend this for yourself, or should be unable, for your eventual heir-to-be?”

“Of course, I already practice it myself. However, I was able to simply force my way past the breakthroughs one after the next, thanks to my mastery of the Wuxing Supreme Law. I wish to watch a ...

49 - Case One Closed Pt. 2 [Cherno]

Once more, the saurian looked to Krahe.

“Alright, I get it, I get it, let’s go sit down and you can explain.”

“We don’t have the time. What we need are your services as a pawnbroker. I intend to recover the Silberblut Coupler, and Lady Blackhand has agreed to assist in the endeavor. She is, however, in no state to venture where we must go,” Casus refused.

“I need heavier firepower,” she shortened it.

“Fine, come,” he said, leading them down to his p...

217 - The Divine Emperor in the City of Glittering Petals Pt. 3 [Sturmblitz]

There was no living soul in this world which Xiān Dì would allow to speak to him like this. Indeed, were it not for that soul-bond, Xiān Dì was certain that he would have slain Shen long ago, when he had been more arrogant than he was now. It was this reason, among others, that had led him to avoid his martial brother for many decades; they had no choice but to talk things out. The bond had been wrought so long ago that removing it would tear both their souls apart, much like a cage of ir...

Cultivation Method and Artifact Submissions [Sturmblitz]

I figured it might be interesting to let readers influence the course of the story in a direct way. If you have any ideas for cultivation methods or artifacts (can be weapons or any other magical item) that you want to see in the story, comment on this post.

If I see something that fits, it might appear later in the story among other cultivators that the Newman Sect deals with in the future. This may include Pateirian cultivators with classically xianxia-esq methods and artifacts, or un...

48 - Case One Closed [Cherno]

“Tell me, Lady Blackhand."

Krahe groaned at him, but he continued.

"What is it that you seek? Besides the obvious answers of accruing riches and power, of striking down evildoers, those self-evident pursuits of any righteous soul; does a transcendent image tug at your soul? I would tell you first, should you wish.”

Finding himself unopposed, the Pilgrim Banisher spoke.

“I would see the name of Mamon Knight Silberblut restored to glory. He, forgotten among the fir...

216 - The Divine Emperor in the City of Glittering Petals Pt. 2 [Sturmblitz]

“Seven hundred years to get that Dragonstone back,” he sneered disdainfully, drinking his dish of baijiu. Shen laughed softly at his response, refilling the dish before emptying his own and doing the same.

“But who else to stoke Kristina’s inner demon into foolish action than Zelsys Newman? That Walking Tribulation…” Xiān Dì sighed, much to Shen’s continued amusement. He, unlike the Ankhezians in antiquity, had never made the foolish choice of warring with Borea. He, unl...

47 - Gourmet Street Food [Cherno]

She returned to the other room and found a small, round box waiting at her side of the table, the medicine box gone. Before she could sit back down, Casus pointed it out: “For your sleep deprivation; I could see you nearly nodding off. We don’t have enough time for you to sleep properly, so roll a cigarette from this. Once you smoke it, you will sleep for an hour, and wake up feeling as if you had slept for ten hours.”

“What’s the downside?”

“How long can you stay sa...

215 - The Divine Emperor in the City of Glittering Petals [Sturmblitz]

Xiān Dì took a jaunt upon a flying sword to one of his many secondary palaces all across the empire, this time to the south-central City of Glittering Petals, a center of gambling and crime. The city was a pipe dream for many, being isolated from the rest of the country by dangerous land full of outlaws, just as Xiān Dì had intended when he decided that it would be built there. It was Las Vegas of a sort, and its political purpose was to serve as a capital for the Land of Lingering Smoke,...

46 - System Brainrot [Cherno]

“The Twin Churches are that old plus five-hundred years or so; it is because AB stands for After Banishment, when the Banishment Wheel was completed and set into motion, when the influence of the Outer Gods was… Well, banished from our world. History before then is muddy, but we know for certain that Zaveshism had existed for some time, while the Igarian church was created with the primary purpose of ensuring the Wheel’s continued operation unto eternity.”

“Guess it’s worked...

45 - That Nobody [Cherno]

The dossier had been hastily-written mere hours ago when the aftermath of that gruesome incident had been discovered. “Black hair with a white patch, anathema-burned left arm, fully functional despite the burns, tied off with two sets of seals. Other descriptors, in no particular order: Green pants barely able to contain her thighs and ass; Shiva’s boots, bloodstained; black body armor resembling amorphous-type Mamon Knight undersuit material; “green eyes with murder in them”, as desc...

44 - "Lady Blackhand, are you an Otherworlder?" [Cherno]

[WIREBOUND WARDED SOULDREG VESSEL]

[Status:]

Good

[Details:]

Anti-scrying E3

Contents Concealment E2

Capacity 30,000 DU

[Contents:]

263 DDs

“Thirty thousand DUs.”

“Dreg Units, yes. The real capacity is likely higher, but that’s what the maker set as the intended maximum. After a while of owning the ring, it will be...

43 - Casus Aristedes [Cherno]

Casus’ claim proved itself true when, as the two of them were on the way to leave, Krahe went over all the other bodies, looting them for easy things like money and small trinkets before harvesting their Souldregs and pulling their Voidkeys. It wasn’t hard to find enough phials for her souldreg harvester, the few gangsters of elevated import all carried their own extractors and several phials to boot. One Voidkey broke as she tried to pull it out. Just one. It didn’t snap, as much as it...

42 - I Am Blackhand [Cherno]

There wasn’t an interrogation to speak of; the man spilled everything the moment he had a question to latch onto, and more, considering the stain forming on his trousers.

Soon enough they had the specifics as to where the Silberblut Coupler had been taken; Slaughterhouse Nine, the next stop on the Hashem train to hell. In this place, heretical grafters would harvest anything valuable from bodies deemed unfit for use by members of the Hashem Family or by “the Benefactors”, whoever ...

41 - Hotline Audunpoint Pt. 3 [Cherno]

Despite everything else, his eyes were what grabbed her attention the most, being bright burningly orange with streaks of yellow. His pupils, cross-shaped at first, had now expanded into four-pointed stars.

His alien outward appearance contrasted with his foppish mode of dress; a white, satin shirt, tight leather trousers with lacing up the sides, and a bright white snakeskin belt with a golden belt buckle in the form of the Igarian Seven-spoked Wheel insignia. Strange dress shoes in th...

40 - Hotline Audunpoint Pt. 2 [Cherno]

Krahe pushed as hard as she could whilst also falling to the side in the hope that the man in silver would be unable to adjust his own trajectory, but his velocity far surpassed any that Krahe could generate.

The light of Anathema painted the walls and ceiling in swaths of dancing crimson, and just barely, Krahe managed to get her own head out of the way of his outstretched foot. At that same moment, there came a horrid buzz, and bloody light flowed forth from her arm, and the man in si...

39 - Hotline Audunpoint [Cherno]

Vital intel revealed itself when she reached the next floor up and glanced down the hall. Hushed voices accompanied tense and scared faces peering out from cracked-open apartment doors. She wouldn’t have to clear the whole building.

As for those on the third, uppermost floor, they seemed to have decided that it would be best to wait for her rather than come down. The better of two choices, true, but nonetheless a doomed tactic. Krahe picked out one of the people peering out from insid...

38 - One-woman Death Squad Pt. 2 [Cherno]

That wasn’t a person, staring at Valza from across the butcher’s kitchen, wearing her sister’s boots. Those boots, which Shiva had inherited from their late father; she would’ve sooner died than part with them, and so Valza was utterly certain this raven-haired anathemist had killed her. He was once a renowned freelance contractor, fallen at the soulbeast-muscled, steel-boned fists of a Zaveshian graft-apostle. It had been a minor miracle that there was even a fight, but a fight there...

37 - One-woman Death Squad [Cherno]

Taking the knife in her left hand, she moulded a mass of compressed pyroclast around its handle and down the flat of its blade, with vents facing the edge and point and channels leading to them from the handle. The design came out quickly, not because she had any great mastery over Thaumaturgy, but because she was just using Thaumaturgy to create a crude copy of a knife she was intimately familiar with: a Wolf and Raven Mark 7 Plasma Stinger. The reason to encrust the handle was to maintain a...

36 - Warding Chain [Cherno]

[HEADKICKERS, HEIRLOOM COMBAT BOOTS]

[Status:]

Exceptional

[Details:]

These boots will adjust to perfectly fit their wearer.

They can shrink down to half or grow to twice their original size.

These boots actively repel filth and expel filth produced by the wearer through the soles. This expelled filth is denatured in the process, making it useless for tracking, and evaporates ...