Boots

4.3 - He Yu Conducts an Investigation

Dai Shoushan ushered He Yu into his home. A large building, at least by the standards of the village. He was fed and given what he suspected was Dai Shoushan’s own room to spend the night.

Accepting the meal with as much grace as he could, he ate. It caused him another small twinge of homesickness to sup on such simple fare. The meals he’d been eating since joining the inner sect a year ago had been positively decadent compared to what he’d eaten back home in Shulin. The meal Dai ...

4.2 - A Short Trip South

Several days later, He Yu found a note from Zhang Lifen. It had arrived in the night while he’d been cultivating, delivered by one of the carved heron statuettes she used to send messages. Unfurling the crisp roll of paper, he saw more or less what he’d expected. She would be absent on sect business for at least the next week, postponing their further training.

That didn’t mean a reprieve, however. The routine he’d developed since reaching Golden Core had him cycling between tra...

4.1 - Prelude to Dawn

On a frozen lake high in the Shrouded Peaks, He Yu trained. Spires of ice formed pillars like a forest of blue glass. He Yu stood atop one such pillar near the lake’s center, sweating despite the cold. Zhang Lifen stood upon the shore, her bow of qilin horn and black wood in hand. A gleaming arrow of qi coalesced as she drew back the string.

Beneath him, the pillar of ice exploded into a thousand glittering shards. He was already twisting through the air in the grip of the Sky Dragon�...

Prologue - The Dawn Palace

A soft, golden glow bathed the entirety of her world. Beautiful, it would have been, under other circumstances. A beautiful prison was a prison still. It had taken just over a hundred years to probe the dome covering the valley. To find the tiny gaps, small enough for trickles of qi to slip through. To find spaces so small they may as well not be real.

It had taken another hundred years to learn of the outside world. The mountain peaks and valleys, the rivers and lakes. The lands around...

A quick note

Hey everyone,

Just wanted to give a bit of a heads up about today's post. Normally for one this short, I'd double up. But since I'm literally moving as this goes live, I'm gonna buy myself a bit of extra time/space by only posting the one.

The good news, at least, is that this is the start of Arc 4. So far, it's the longest by like 50%. It's not quite done being written yet, but it's looking like it'll come in at 110-120k words. Compare that to ~80k words for everything that's com...

Epilogue - More than a Setback

The knock came about an hour after nightfall. Zhang Lifen waved a hand and the door to the outer wall of her garden opened. First Disciple Yi Xiurong stepped through.

“That was reckless,” Yi Xiurong said, her voice calm.

“Tea?” Zhang Lifen asked, placing one last detail on her painting before setting aside her brush. She had expected this visit sooner, and had begun work on her latest masterpiece while it had still been light out. For the past hour she’d been working by ...

3.44 - Golden Core

Once He Yu and Zhang Lifen were a fair distance down the path back to the main areas of the inner sect, and well out of earshot of the Sixth Realm back at the garden, Zhang Lifen finally spoke.

“Excellent work,” she said. “I think your display back there more than qualifies as setting an example.”

“I’m glad you approve,” He Yu said, bracing himself for whatever was coming next. The unspoken “but” hung over him like a sword, and he now knew her well enough that it...

3.43 - The Four Demon Fists

The dull glow of red veins running along Sha Xiang’s arms slowly pulsed as she spoke. “I did what I had to.”

The voice was hers, but different somehow. Crueler than it usually was, but He Yu realized that in some way this was who she’d always been. Whatever the Four Demon Fists had done to her, it was as suited to her as He Yu’s arts were to him.

He’d been a fool to attempt peace with her. A lesson learned on the path of an emperor.

In the time of their brief exc...

3.42 - Payback

When He Yu found Sha Xiang, she was in one of the inner sect’s many gardens. Cui Bao sat nearby drinking wine. Mo Zhiqiang and Da Ning were both present as well. Four sets of eyes turned towards him the moment he stepped from the path.

As he cupped a fist in salute, a faint breeze tugged at the hem of his robe. It was the robe Yongnian had gifted him in the shrine of the Thunder God, fashioned of dark gray silk and patterned with gold thread depicting dragons and billowing clouds. He ...

3.41 - A Word of Advice

He Yu had made it nearly all the way back to the inner sect when he felt the familiar presence of Zhang Lifen’s qi. He activated the Cloud Emperor’s Peerless Judgment, extending his spiritual perception. She was much further away than he’d have thought, but he recalled Yan Shirong’s comment about like calling to like from when they’d first met. The effects of his three aspects would be something that he’d have to keep in mind as he cultivated ever higher.

With a light thump,...

3.40 - Tribulation

Heaven’s wrath descended. Lightning filled the sky. Great forks of gold and green and purple and blue arced across the heavens. They struck the ground. They branched between the blackened clouds above. They struck the lone cultivator standing upon the empty peak of a flat mountaintop. They tested his resolve.

He Yu screamed. Pain coursed through his entire being—body and spirit alike. He felt like he was being torn apart, only to be pieced back together so it could all happen again....

3.39 - The Summer Storm

It took almost another two weeks for a proper storm to form in the north. He Yu mostly stayed home and cultivated. He spent a fair amount of spirit stones and contribution points on elixirs and medicines during that time, cultivating as much of his aspects as he could manage.

Sha Xiang, thankfully, left him alone for the duration. He couldn’t have said why. If he were to guess, it probably had something to do with his absence immediately following her attack on his friends. Upon his r...

3.38 - An Offer

It was early summer, and the mists of the Shrouded Peaks turned muggy and warm with the changing of the season. Still, it was little impediment to the immortals of the inner sect. He Yu cultivated. The time in his cultivation chamber was chiefly spent contemplating his Way—what it meant to be a hero, what was the nature of justice, and whether he could discern those things for himself. As the pressure in his dantian built, He Yu found himself circling a few key insights and moving ever clos...

3.37 - Moonlight

Li Heng sat with his back to the mountain. The mists of the Shrouded Peaks stretched out below him, with other slopes rising like solitary titans, keeping watch over the sect lands. Above, the last full moon of spring cast cold light over the vista. He’d initially come up here thinking to cultivate. The potent lunar qi that came with each full moon was a boon to his advancement. Heaven knew he needed it. Instead, he’d lost himself in more mundane contemplation.

He sat with one arm p...

3.36 - Heart to Heart

For the next couple of days, He Yu did everything he could to avoid admitting that Chen Fei had been right. Eventually, it got to be too much, and he made his way to Li Heng’s home. He knew his friend’s routine well enough, and made sure he stopped by in the morning, after Li Heng had spent the night cultivating under the light of the moon. That way, he’d be sure to catch him when he wasn’t too busy.

It took longer than he would have liked, but eventually Li Heng answered He Yu�...

3.35 - Reflections

Chen Fei knelt next to the corpse of a beast that was easily half again as large as she was. The bear-skin mantle she’d taken to wearing hung from a nearby tree branch along with her outer coat. On the one hand, it made it hard not to look at her, as from the waist up she only wore her moxiong. On the other, she was up to her elbows in blood.

It was finally the squelching sound from the beast’s innards that won out and caused He Yu to look away. Harvesting cores was one thing. He co...

3.34 - Return and Regret

Over the next several weeks, He Yu trained against rock spirits in the hills. On some days Zhang Lifen would round up a pack of Second and Third Realm spirits, each group larger than the one before. She would bring more his way just as fast as he could destroy them, claiming she didn’t want him to feel lonely.

On other days, she would make him fight a Fourth Realm spirit. Just as she had with the first one, she would step in and take care of the spirit herself as the sun dipped toward...

3.33 - Facing the Mountain

With every breath he could spare, He Yu cursed Zhang Lifen’s name. She vanished before the stone spirit covered half the distance to the edge of the caldera, leaving him to face the thing alone. Unlike the spirits from the previous day, this one carried a fire aspect to it, making its presence suspiciously similar to Sha Xiang’s, if significantly less defined.

He Yu stared up at the approaching mass of stone. The spirit towered over him, rising to a height of nearly fifteen feet. It...

3.32 - Insights and Awakening

Zhang Lifen’s training lasted until nightfall. Just as the sun dipped behind the mountains to the west, she produced her bow of qilin horn and black wood from her storage treasure. The weapon’s spiritual weight imposed itself upon the area, followed a moment later by Zhang Lifen’s own spiritual presence.

The stone spirits’ attacks ceased, as the dozen or so that He Yu was contending with all turned towards the Fifth Realm cultivator. As Zhang Lifen’s crushing ocean of power wa...

3.31 - A Training Opportunity

As it turned out, the correct answer was “a bit of both.”

Although He Yu had hoped she would accept another job on his behalf, she simply told him to keep up as she set off in a seemingly random direction. Her pace was little more than a quick jog for someone of her advancement, and she didn’t use any movement techniques that He Yu could sense. It was still all he could do to keep up with her.

His qi reserves still hadn’t recovered from his failed breakthrough, so he had t...

3.30 - A Promise

Tan Xiaoling’s account of the attack was much the same as Yan Shirong’s, although she was able to fill in some details that Yan Shirong hadn’t. Sha Xiang and her goons had attacked, staging ambushes and aiming to pick them off one by one. The plan had mostly worked.

“I don’t blame you, by the way,” Tan Xiaoling said once she’d finished recounting her memory of the attacks. “It was difficult not to, but whether they attacked while you were in seclusion by coincidence or d...

3.29 - Failure and Disaster

He Yu rolled over onto his back. How long his qi had raged out of control, he couldn’t have said. What he could say was that every part of his body and spirit hurt. His dantian ached and felt emptier than it ever had before. His meridians ached and felt like he’d been cycling acid through them. His muscles ached worse than that first marathon around the mountain in Ren Huang’s physical training class. His eyes felt like someone had driven shards of glass into them.

Worst of all, h...

3.28 - Scion of the Li

Li Heng stood before Sha Xiang and Da Ning, jian at the ready. His body enforcement technique, Raiment of the Frozen Soul, caused hoarfrost to spread outward from where he stood, creeping across the ground. As much as he wanted to go after Cui Bao and give Yan Shirong the proper opportunity to escape, it was more important he held these two villains back.

With the adoption of his Wayborn Seed, his presence had expanded and become ever more the symbol of night and winter. A full moon sho...

3.27 - Ambush

The time had finally come. Sha Xiang had waited long enough. Suffered embarrassment enough. She had finally cultivated to the peak of Body Refining. She had struggled against the Four Demon Fists and made it hers. The cracks in her meridians didn’t matter. Emissary Kong had told her that once she advanced to Golden Core, she would be strong enough for the medicines that would repair them.

The demon core, now able to form full thoughts, urged her on. Go for the eyes, it said. The shado...

3.26 - Gazing Upon the Peak

Spring brought with it the scent of flowers and rain. The manicured gardens and immaculate paths of the inner sect mountain came alive with color, and the challenges of the past year faded as if washed away with the changing seasons.

Through it all He Yu trained. Although his stipend from the sect had increased with his promotion to inner disciple, it wasn’t nearly enough. He spent most of his time completing jobs for the inner sect. Many of them had him visiting the outer sect mounta...

3.25 - Outside Context

“The fuck you have!” Sha Xiang shouted. Earth and fire qi rolled out from her expanding presence. The scent of sulfur hung over the arena. “He’s still got fight left in him.”

“My judgment is final,” Su Meifeng said. “Any conflicts you choose to resolve aren’t sect business and have no bearing on your rank. It should go without saying that it isn’t my concern either.” Her message was clear. With the official duel over, she wouldn’t be interfering in whatever erupt...

What's been cooking?

Just a super quick little update for anyone who might be curious.

I've hit 50k words out of a planned 150k on the 4th arc. For reference, the previous 3 arcs have all clocked in around 80k words, give or take a bit.

Not only is each chapter in this next installment a fair bit longer than the previous ones, I also bumped up the length to a planned 60 chapters vs. the 40-50 in the previous...

3.24 - Ranked Duel

From across the dueling arena, Mo Zhiqiang’s presence expanded. It had become far more well-defined since their last fight, taking on the impression of a waterfall plunging down the side of a mist-enshrouded cliff. A spray of water rose from the pool below, and a light breeze carried the scent of spring.

The head of Mo Zhiqiang’s spear blurred with the same wind-aspected technique he’d used in their first duel. Not only was the technique formed with more control, but Mo Zhiqiang h...

3.23 - Payback

“You can’t be serious,” He Yu said. As Li Heng told him what Yan Shirong had discovered, the heat rose in his neck along with his anger.

Mo Zhiqiang. He Yu had barely even thought about him since that first duel. Apparently, he’d been behind the endless parade of petty challenges that He Yu had faced last autumn. According to Yan Shirong’s investigation, Mo Zhiqiang had been paying people to challenge He Yu in hopes that someone would defeat him.

Around the time they’d...

3.22 - The Path Forward

With the coming of spring, He Yu emerged from seclusion. He’d reached the peak of Body Refining sometime around the new year and now stood with one foot in the Fourth Realm. Instinctively, he knew that he wasn’t yet ready to form his Golden Core, but being as close as he was, he had glimpsed some of what his advancement would bring.

The second and third pillars of the Empyrean Ninefold Body Tempering loomed above him, with their foundations rooted in the Fourth Realm. It was strange...