4th of Season of Fire, 57th year of the 32nd cycle
Newt slotted his spirit gem into the spell formation and activated it. The ambient energy grew denser, and Newt started with his first item on the agenda. He created one tendril of fire-aligned spiritual energy, letting it drift and sway in the phantom wind, like a jellyfish tentacle in the ocean, and at the same time he formed another tendril of earthed energy and let it sink into the stone.
The earth-aligned tendril s...
2024-11-24 22:00:04 +0000 UTC
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4th of Season of Fire, 57th year of the 32nd cycle
Newt stopped before a light-brown wooden door. A black tag with white letters hung at eye level, saying, ‘Joyguard’.
Did he change his name after taking up this position, or is it a coincidence?
Popular superstition stated that name was the omen of one’s future. Victor won against Newt’s father, Newt was a new star, Dandelion was a drifter, Dolorna was depressed.
Pointless thoughts, and ...
2024-11-23 08:24:58 +0000 UTC
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4th of Season of Fire, 57th year of the 32nd cycle
“A bright lad,” a booming voice said from a handful of steps away, disturbing Newt’s focus.
He was using three tendrils to feel the ground. The sensation was akin to looking a different way with each eye while someone held you by your legs and spun you around like a windmill.
Newt opened his eyes, certain his face was green, but he still searched for the mysterious speaker. Whoever he was, the newcomer was s...
2024-11-21 09:39:09 +0000 UTC
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4th of Season of Fire, 57th year of the 32nd cycle
Newt sent a pulse of spiritual energy into the earth and lost contact with it right away.
“Why’d you start with three feet right away?” Elder Alabaster yelled before reining in her voice. “Go slower, an inch at first, no more. You took the Formation Scribes’ Guild’s test. Use it as a guideline, send a thin thread first, explore slowly, and remember earth isn’t electrum. Too far, too quick, and your thread ...
2024-11-20 11:25:07 +0000 UTC
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4th of Season of Fire, 57th year of the 32nd cycle
“Don’t worry, you’re really close, much closer than someone your realm has any right to be, and I hate to interrupt you, but now it’s time for our daily lesson.” Elder Alabaster did not mention that Newt was closer to figuring out technique tracing than fourth realm cultivators. Even the majority of Newt’s seniors at the fifth realm lagged behind him when it came to creating traces for their techniques.
Unaware of his ...
2024-11-19 07:44:54 +0000 UTC
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4th of Season of Fire, 57th year of the 32nd cycle
Newt had been developing his new technique for about an hour when he sensed an intrusion.
“Senior Apprentice Brother, it’s past eight in the morning.” The faintly familiar voice came from a world away, it was no heart demon, but the outer disciple desk clerk.
Newt stood up, dazed, as if someone had woken him in the middle of the night, when sleep was the sweetest. In his haze, he stared at the clerk, trying ...
2024-11-17 09:29:27 +0000 UTC
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3rd of Season of Fire, 57th year of the 32nd cycle
Newt felt like gastonias had walked all over him as he entered room five-o-three. Even dead tired, he froze after taking a single step inside. The room was brightly lit, the air fresh, and the piles of dirty clothes were gone. Someone, probably Obsidian, had finished the cleanup Newt had started, and pinned a note to a bedroom door.
The note had only one word, ‘Obsidian’, but it told Newt everything he needed to kno...
2024-11-16 10:39:20 +0000 UTC
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3rd of Season of Fire, 57th year of the 32nd cycle
Alabaster shrugged and said the only logical thing, “Sure.”
Newt could tell she expected Crystal would beat him into the ground. He looked at Crystal, and the young woman had a gentle face, but her eyes were stern and focused at the moment. Newt had bested one senior, and she had no intention of being the second.
Unlike her soft features, Crystal’s body was bulky, looking like a square block hewn out of rock...
2024-11-15 18:19:09 +0000 UTC
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2024-11-14 14:29:08 +0000 UTC
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3rd of Season of Fire, 57th year of the 32nd cycle
“That’s an interesting defensive skill for your realm. Most can’t separate their protections from their body until the fourth realm. How far can you push it?”
Newt projected Granite Crust away from himself, and the dark cloud started dissolving at around a foot away.
“Wonderful.” Elder Alabaster suppressed a clap. “We will have to test its exact defensive capability later and compare it with the best...
2024-11-14 08:39:58 +0000 UTC
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3rd of Season of Fire, 57th year of the 32nd cycle
Newt reached the northern training field an hour and a half before noon. His new uniform fit perfectly, but nobody noticed, since sect uniforms were supposed to fit perfectly anyway. Or at least that was the case with everyone using the training area.
Elders instructed lone disciples or groups which ranged from two to five, while others trained without obvious elders’ supervision.
The training ground was a vast ...
2024-11-13 13:26:11 +0000 UTC
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2nd of Season of Fire, 57th year of the 32nd cycle
“You may check out up to three tomes containing no secrets, martial arts, or cultivation techniques. You may read them wherever, or even take them on missions. However, you have to sit down and copy them by hand, should you lose or damage them in any way.” The librarian’s voice turned harder than basalt when she mentioned book misuse.
“Tomes containing sect secrets, martial arts, and cultivation techniques you a...
2024-11-12 12:16:47 +0000 UTC
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2nd of Season of Fire, 57th year of the 32nd cycle
“Huh?” That wasn’t Magmin?
“What happened with the cores?” Still obsessed with money, Newt hardly considered the embarrassing question as it escaped lips. Luckily, Elder Woodhopper misunderstood his concern.
“Both the Cloud Monarch’s and the emperor’s are presumed to have exploded, wiping out all life in a huge area. It was a catastrophic calamity. Even those who escaped the immediate comb...
2024-11-10 04:53:07 +0000 UTC
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2nd of Season of Fire, 57th year of the 32nd cycle
Newt’s heart skipped a beat. He opened his mouth, but words failed him, and Elder Woodhopper’s smile grew wider.
“You are Newstar, a new inner disciple. It’s highly irregular for you to join the inner sect at this time.”
Newt nodded and clamped his mouth shut, feeling blood rush into his cheeks.
I’m a moron, I have to pull myself together. A part of Newt screamed, while another sighed. <...
2024-11-09 03:32:23 +0000 UTC
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2nd of Season of Fire, 57th year of the 32nd cycle
“Good day, I am Elder Longfang. I’m also a member of the Formation Scribes’ Guild. You must be extraordinary to join outside the admittance period.”
Newt half-bowed to Elder Longfang, he was the person with the highest concentration of spiritual energy he had met so far. Newt guessed the lanky man was at the peak of the fifth realm. His face indicated he was in his thirties, but the sharp gaze with which he diss...
2024-11-07 14:43:43 +0000 UTC
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2nd of Season of Fire, 57th year of the 32nd cycle
“Opportunities always come with a certain risk.” Newt said after collecting himself.
The words were hollow, when you heard the stories, the risk always happened to others and they survived, making it a gripping adventure, but a part of him knew that was the case because those who died lacked the ability to tell tales.
If someone fell fighting a monster as a part of a team, their death would weaken the rest of ...
2024-11-06 04:59:29 +0000 UTC
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2nd of Season of Fire, 57th year of the 32nd cycle
Newt was at a loss, unsure what to do. Both women shut themselves in their bedrooms while some unfortunate guy’s stuff clogged his. Worse, he could not just throw the junk out, on account of the late guy’s girlfriend, who in turn did not want to see or touch those things.
What the hell?
Fortunately, the cavalry arrived just in time.
The door opened a bit too forcefully, and a tall man with broad...
2024-11-05 07:04:48 +0000 UTC
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2nd of Season of Fire, 57th year of the 32nd cycle
Based on the flaky impression he had of Elder Alabaster, Newt expected a lot of things from her. Two hours every day, ‘be at the northern training field an hour before noon, and not a minute late or I beat you,’ was definitely not one of them.
The answer about finding the spell formation scribe and the beast tamer were more in line with his mental image of his master.
“Find them on your own. If you’re inte...
2024-11-03 08:21:44 +0000 UTC
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2nd of Season of Fire, 57th year of the 32nd cycle
“Name?” a bored clerk with gray hair and droopy eyes said, not bothering to grace Newt a look. His aura revealed him as a fourth realm cultivator, and considering his appearance, he must have been ancient.
“Newstar Blazing Salamander.”
The man glanced at Newt and nodded without saying a word before entering the details in his ledger. Then he pointed at the crystalline realmer.
“You should know how ...
2024-11-03 04:49:58 +0000 UTC
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2nd of Season of Fire, 57th year of the 32nd cycle
Newt’s eyes immediately adjusted to the light as he left the sub. Just like Elder Alabaster had said, darkness and the small confined space meant little when cultivators meditated. And the peace of mind from cultivation meant little to Newt with that annoying voice whispering into his ear every now and then, calling him unfilial, lazy, traitorous.
I could have done twice the work, had I managed to rid myself of th...
2024-11-02 08:41:33 +0000 UTC
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1st of Season of Fire, 57th year of the 32nd cycle
For the first time in his life, Newt entered a port. The pier was huge, catering to a hundred docked ships, with plenty of empty space left over. Then, he saw the sea. The greenish-blue stretched into the horizon, stealing his breath away with every wave rolling towards him and striking the land.
“Never seen an ocean?” Elder Alabaster smirked.
Newt nodded. Never mind an ocean, he had hardly seen any lakes or w...
2024-11-01 18:57:00 +0000 UTC
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1st of Season of Fire, 57th year of the 32nd cycle
“Thank you for everything, Senior.” Newt bowed deeply to Elder Frostgrave and the disciples of the Everfrost Palace. They had escorted him to the twenty-seventh imperial city called Star’s Fall.
The elder gave a solemn nod, minding the public, but Everlast, who was at the same realm, was freer to express her feelings.
“Keep in touch, Newstar.” She smiled, then leaned in closer and whispered, “If you ev...
2024-11-01 04:49:31 +0000 UTC
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89nd of Season of Air, 57th year of the 32nd cycle
Elder Frostgrave led the way for about a mile away from Thunder Ridge until the party reached a ramp leading to a stone viaduct. The elevated road was around eighty feet wide and stood twenty feet above ground.
Newt had seen nothing like it, and once they climbed it, the road seemed to span indefinitely towards the horizon.
“This is a highway.” Elder Frostgrave said. “A cultivator-only road for those who tra...
2024-11-01 04:48:07 +0000 UTC
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82nd of Season of Air, 57th year of the 32nd cycle
“Newstar, we are beyond the point where you can just say you owe me another favor, and I will not reveal a secret like that to you, nor anyone else, without getting something of equal or greater value in return.”
Newt nodded. He had asked Dandelion for advice on how to keep using fire-aligned spiritual energy for longer periods of time. He had changed his approach, asking humbly, the way Dandelion asked Elder Frostg...
2024-10-31 13:44:01 +0000 UTC
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80th of Season of Air, 57th year of the 32nd cycle
The return to the surface was a torture. Luckily, Everlast had some food stashed away in her spatial pouch, and Dandelion reshaped their bubble once so they could sleep. But even with all the advantages and a body which hardly required air, sustenance, and sleep, the simple light of the sun and the blueness of the sky left Newt elated.
“We made it!” he laughed, and smiles escaped even Everlast and Dandelion.
...
2024-10-30 09:38:25 +0000 UTC
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66th of Season of Air, 57th year of the 32nd cycle
The green light glared in the claustrophobic space barely larger than a coffin. It shone from below, painting everyone’s face a ghastly play of green and shadow. Newt’s heart drummed so hard, he was certain it was beating against Everlast’s breast.
An eternity seemed to have passed in the uncomfortable press of bodies, in the shaking and subsonic booms rattling Newt’s bones. Everlast was terrified, embarrassed, ...
2024-10-29 15:41:03 +0000 UTC
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66th of Season of Air, 57th year of the 32nd cycle
Newt could not believe what he was seeing. Everlast was also stunned, but she lacked the third eye, so she could not see the intricate flows of energy as Dandelion executed yet another third realm frostworm. The fourth one since they had arrived at the lower level.
The man flew over the unsuspecting frostworm, leaving a faint signature of air, which the ambient energy drowned and diffused. He landed on the monster’s b...
2024-10-27 12:06:26 +0000 UTC
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66th of Season of Air, 57th year of the 32nd cycle
“Here it comes,” Dandelion flew up from the pit in the furthest corner of the upper tunnels.
The shaft was a spiraling tube as wide at the cave was tall, and an infuriated, butt-burned frostworm was slithering up it, a dozen yards behind its smiling human tormentor.
Newt and Everlast were ready for it, and as expected, the giant, third realm worm immediately focused on Newt’s fiery aura. In a well practiced ...
2024-10-26 17:42:35 +0000 UTC
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66th of Season of Air, 57th year of the 32nd cycle
Newt and Everlast carefully entered the frostworm cavern. Dandelion was not as stressed, nor did he tiptoe around, he simply walked normally, his steps muffled by cushions of air. Newt would not be surprised if the man started humming, but as they approached the scene of their previous battle, Dandelion went ahead, running on air to scout the situation and surrounding tunnels.
“Don’t get frustrated because you haven...
2024-10-24 10:01:06 +0000 UTC
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62nd of Season of Air, 57th year of the 32nd cycle
The frozen ground shook as the enraged frostworm’s bellows rattled Newt’s bones and made his molars buzz.
“It’s furious,” he said aloud what they already knew.
“At the fifth realm, spirit beasts are nearly as intelligent as humans, and most of the worms here are this one’s direct descendants.” Everlast said and glanced at Dandelion. “How many fifth realm ones are inside?”
The former sect ...
2024-10-23 11:45:43 +0000 UTC
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