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Unintended Cultivator V9: Chapter 23 – Lists

Sen stared down at the scroll in front of him. In a bid to undercut Master Feng’s implied assertion that he had too much to do, Sen had sat down and written out a list. It included all of the things he considered important both for the immediate future and for the eventual outbreak of the war. Even for a man who was used to working hard, almost around the clock, the list was daunting. It truly was more than he could handle. Any one task on the list would be simple and easy. The same was pro...

Unintended Cultivator V9: Chapter 22 – The Nature of Trust

“How long do you think?” Sen asked, not for the first time.

“Tomorrow. In a month. In a year,” answered Master Feng, not for the first time.

“I thought we’d know more by now.”

“We were always going to be at a disadvantage in terms of information. It didn’t have to be this way, but human beings are short-sighted at best.”

“How so?” asked Sen.

“How much land do humans actually control? How much land do the spirit beasts control?”

T...

Unintended Cultivator V9: Chapter 21 – Sharing Time

“War?” asked Sua Xing Xing. “What war?”

Sen had been a little surprised that Bahn Huizhong knew, but not entirely shocked. Sen hadn’t spread the news to that particular sect, for so very many reasons, but the elder of the Vermilion Blade Sect increasingly struck him as the sort of man who didn’t miss that much. Of course, Sua Xing Xing had not been in the circle of trust for that particular secret. Some of it was simply his discomfort with the woman. Telling her would inevit...

Isekai Terry TOD: Chapter 20 – No Escape

When darkness closed over Terry, he’d felt a certain malign satisfaction that he had, in some obscure way, won. He hadn’t fought a war. He hadn’t let them turn him into some caricature of a hero. He knew it was absurd, but he felt like he’d pulled one over Truck-kun. That stupid truck had isekai’ed him somewhere awful, but he’d escaped before he could become a trope himself. That was the kind of victory that Terry appreciated. He’d defied expectations. Sure, he’d die for that ...

Unintended Cultivator V9: Chapter 20 – Outside Intervention

Silence hung in the air as the stunned Shattering Earth Sect members stared at Sen in disbelief. Chan Runchu looked like someone had stabbed him. It was one of the core formation cultivators who regained their ability to speak first.

“How dare you speak to Elder Chan that way. He is a nascent soul cultivator! Know your place!”

Sen just looked at the man. There had been a time when all Sen could do with killing intent was blanket the area. A long road and more fights than Sen c...

Unintended Cultivator V9: Chapter 19 – Stupid and Pointless

The day started out like most days did for Sen. He made breakfast for Ai. He’d discovered through trial and error that, while she liked lots of variety for the evening meal, she didn’t really want to have think hard for breakfast. That meant that he generally kept things simple. Rice porridge made with broth was the main dish most days. Sometimes he’d throw in some vegetables or a bit of leftover meat, while other days he’d just add some seasonings. Fruit was abundant at the moment, s...

Isekai Terry TOD: Chapter 19 – Doing It Anyway

As Terry looked at the damn foliasaur menacing the chicken-lizard, all he could think about was how bullshit it was in books when heroes just shrugged off being thrown into walls or taking crushing blows. That shit fucking hurt. A lot. If he hadn’t spent the last several days fighting increasingly powerful and violent monsters, he doubted he could have even coped with the level of pain he was in now. But he firmly believed that kind of acclimation had its limits. A body co...

Unintended Cultivator V9: Chapter 18 – Uncomfortable Peace

Sen had found the last few weeks very odd. The arrival of Li Yi Nuo, while perhaps foreseeable, had caught him off guard. Bringing along her master had been even more perplexing. Not that either of them had done anything specific to disrupt his life. Sen had brought Li Yi Nuo to see Uncle Kho. The man had been deeply amused by the story of how the sect cultivator had gone all the way to Orchard’s Reach to find him, only to have to turn around and come all the way back. Uncle Kho probably wo...

Unintended Cultivator V9: Chapter 17 – Flock

Sen regretted inviting them in almost the instant that he’d done it. He didn’t have to let them in. He certainly hadn’t wanted to let them in. Well, he’d have let Li Yi Nuo in out of guilt. He did send her completely in the wrong direction. It hadn’t been intentional, but the she’d still traveled all the way to Orchard’s Reach. Even for cultivators, that was a long trip. Bahn Huizhong, on the other hand, wasn’t someone that Sen especially wanted around. With very few exception...

Unintended Cultivator V9: Chapter 16 – Bahn Huizhong, Part 2

The worst seemed almost inevitable to Bahn Huizhong. Lu Sen might not be a nascent soul cultivator, yet, but that hadn’t stopped him from killing one in a straight fight before. There were persistent rumors that he’d killed another, but the details were murky. It hadn’t been a duel. That was all anyone knew, or all anyone was willing to say. At the very least, the man’s power dwarfed Li Yi Nuo’s strength. That alone was enough reason to show at least some courtesy, even if a prior r...

Unintended Cultivator V9: Chapter 15 – Bahn Huizhong, Part 1

Bahn Huizhong considered himself a worldly man. True, he had been a member of the Vermillion Blade Sect for most of his life, but he’d always held a dim view of those cultivators who cloistered themselves away and avoided any task that took them beyond the walls of the sect. He didn’t understand those people. The world was vast and with that vastness came opportunity if one was swift and wise enough to seize it. Unlike the majority that he entered the sect with in his youth so very long a...

Unintended Cultivator V9: Chapter 14 – We Should Tell Them

Sen had hoped that things would calm down a bit after the semi-disastrous meeting with Winds of Winter. He’d talked it over with Master Feng, Auntie Caihong, and Uncle Kho, and they all seemed to think that it wasn’t that bad. They even seemed a little optimistic about it. Noticing his obvious confusion, Uncle Kho explained.

“While we knew about Falling Leaf, this is the first hard evidence we have that this Beast King has made a habit of culling dissenters. It’s also the first ...

Unintended Cultivator V9: Chapter 13 – Flawed Strategy

If Sen were capable of getting headaches from something other than a horrible injury, he was certain that he would have had one by the time he and Falling Leaf left the ice wolf in his cave. At the very least, he was frustrated. Sen had imagined returning to the academy triumphant with a solution to one of their biggest problems firmly in hand. What he’d gotten was… It wasn’t exactly nothing, but he hesitated to call it something. When they’d gotten into actual discussion, a few thing...

Unintended Cultivator V9: Chapter 12 – Dubious Alliance

As the pair traveled deeper and deeper into the wilds, Sen had a dawning realization. All those times that Falling Leaf had disappeared into the wilds, she hadn’t just been avoiding humans or hunting. He was sure those had been the reasons some of the time, but she had clearly been executing some strategy of her own. Part of him shuddered at the thought of her out here, alone, looking like a human in what could only be described as hostile territory. That thought made Sen pause men...

Unintended Cultivator V9: Chapter 11 – Readiness

“We aren’t going to be ready,” said Sen.

He’d felt Falling Leaf approaching, although he wouldn’t have needed any particular skill to know it was her. He could count on one hand the number of people who could even consider coming out into the wilds to find him. The number of people who would was even smaller.

“Is this because you sent the sect girl away?” asked Falling Leaf as she stepped around the massive tree Sen was leaning against.

There had ...

Unintended Cultivator V9: Chapter 10 – An Unfortunate Parting

Sen watched Wu Meng Yao conduct the class from the concealment of a shadow. He’d rarely done more than take quick glimpses of her teaching, mostly because he trusted that she didn’t need the supervision. Unlike two other instructors he’d only decided to let stay on a whim. They’d both pled their cases well enough, and seemed to settled their differences. Or, at the very least, they’d learned not to share their animosity publicly, which he decided was good enough.  She’d only ...

Unintended Cultivator V9: Chapter 9 – The Cold Blade

Long Jia Wei stood in the shadow of a tree. He did his best to suppress a shudder as he watched Lord Lu and Fate’s Razor discussing something. Like many others, he’d believed that Fate’s Razor was a myth made from whole cloth or some ancient cultivator who had ascended long since. Meeting the man, however brief it had been, was one of those experiences that had seared itself into his memory. As frightening as Lord Lu could be, he was eclipsed by the older cultivator. To Long Jia Wei’s...

Isekai Terry TOD: Chapter 18 – Boss?

The thing that was racing toward him looked like the bastard love-child of a T-rex and velociraptor, or at least the movie versions Terry had seen of them. He’d read somewhere on the always-factually-accurate internet that real velociraptors had feathers. While he knew that there was some relationship between birds and dinosaurs, he just couldn’t shake the images from those films that had burned themselves into his adolescent consciousness. Every time he tried to imagine velocira...

Update on Things

Okay, so after spending a truly absurd amount of time on the phone with Carvana Customer Disservice, the big takeaway is that I'm car-less until Monday. Why? Because people didn't do things that they were supposed to do, like getting and uploading documents. So, for this weekend at least, I'm now the proud owner of what amounts to a pretty metal boulder that I can go outside and gloat over...Gollum-style. Yessss. It's miiiine. My very own. My preciousssss.

You can see it ...

No Chapters Today Probably

Okay, so today was supposed to be a good day. I was supposed to be getting a new-to-me car from Carvana. So, the car shows up, outside of the delivery window they specified, but it's here. So, hurray!

Only, it shows up without any temporary tags. So, after going through the whole process of dealing with paperwork and giving them my old car, I got to deal with their entirely useless customer disservice department.

Big shocker, they basically said, "Oh, sorry about that. Oh no, th...

Politics-Free Zone

Okay, so it finally happened. Someone left a comment in which they ranted about social justice pandering. That person is no longer a participant in this community. This page is a politics-free zone. Comments that exist solely to promote a political agenda will get you automatically and permanently blocked from this page.

As a writer, I don't believe that it's my place to tell anyone what their beliefs should or shouldn't be. That's something that people need to settle between themselve...

Unintended Cultivator V9: Chapter 8 – Local Preparations

“That’s good to know,” said Sen. “I’ll be sure to clue you in if and when the time comes.”

“Future plans aside, what about your preparations here? I know what I see, but that’s rarely the whole story. How are they progressing?”

Sen frowned. His focus for the academy and the sect hadn’t changed, not entirely, after Master Feng had told him about what the spirit beasts were planning. Of course, that was in large part because he was already teaching mortals about ...

Unintended Cultivator V9: Chapter 7 – The Coming Storm

After that foolishness with Lan Shu, Tong Qianfan, and their students, Sen realized that he simply didn’t have it in him to put up with anything even remotely aggravating. At first, he thought that he was exhibiting a horrific lack of discipline, but he quickly realized that the real problem was that he hadn’t given himself enough time to recover from the tribulation. While he had faced death more often than anyone his age ever should have needed to do so, he hadn’t come so close to it ...

Isekai Terry TOD: Chapter 17 – Acclimation

The next few days followed a similar pattern. Things attacked Terry. He killed them with some gentle and not-so-gentle prodding from other-Terry and the other-knowledge. The chicken-lizard stalked him like a crazy ex-girlfriend. He’d eventually locate a water source to wash the blood off. Then, he’d find somewhere to camp to try to sleep off the horror of, well, pretty much everything about his current situation if he was being honest with himself. He routinely dreamed of doing mundane th...

Unintended Cultivator V9: Chapter 6 – Youthful Indiscretions

Sen stared at the two cultivators who had been sent to him. Young, thought Sen. I’m not that much older than either of them. He noticed that both of them looked petrified. They stood as straight as they possibly could and both were sweating. He supposed that this was exactly the kind of attention that neither of them wanted. In all likelihood, they were probably hoping to impress him one day with their prowess. Instead, they’d gotten into trouble and found themselves fac...

Unintended Cultivator V9: Chapter 5 – Bureaucracy

Sen sat at the head of a table and stared at the wall. He’d stopped hearing anything that anyone was saying at least an hour earlier. It was supposed to be a meeting to discuss how best to manage the latest batch of cultivators that had shown up looking for entry into the sect. Soon after return from setting up Grandmother Lu in the capital, Sen had adopted a policy that no cultivator looking for entry into the sect would be seen on arrival. Some of it was simply Sen directing money into th...

Unintended Cultivator V9: Chapter 4 – You’ll Leave Me Behind

Sen gave himself the rest of that day to recover and spend time with Ai and Falling Leaf. While his body’s transformation had seemingly restored him, he felt drained. At the very least, he knew that there a was near-certainty that he would kill someone who came to him with a frivolous problem given his current mood. Aside from occasionally poking his now absurdly pale skin and asking if it hurt, Ai seemed to take it all in stride. He supposed that she had been through far worse upheavals an...

Unintended Cultivator V9: Chapter 3 – Hesitation

Whenever Sen was forced to leave home, an event that happened far too often for his taste, he almost always raced back as fast as he could. There was a beautiful orchid there waiting to shout papa at him and tell him about everything that had happened when he was gone. Sometimes, that meant an extended description of her bug hunts with the birds. Sometimes, it was a hilariously garbled retelling of Auntie Caihong chastising Master Feng for one transgression or another. Sen could...

Unintended Cultivator V9: Chapter 2 – Near Death Experiences

Already exhausted by the advancement, Sen had to force himself to stand. He briefly considering putting on fresh robes before the uselessness of that struck him. Why put them on simply to have them destroyed by lightning or whatever else the tribulation might hurl at him? He had stories of tribulations other than lightning, but they had the air of third-hand accounts that were long on speculation and short on facts. The conundrum in front of Sen at that moment was what he should do. Some acco...

Isekai Terry TOD: Chapter 16 – A Stroll Through the Forest

“This is such bullshit!” shouted Terry as he stormed through the woods.

Crystal Snake, said other-Terry in his mind.

Almost without thinking, the jian in Terry’s hand whipped out and shattered the snake’s head. The joy of having everything in the damn forest trying to murder him had been going on for a good fifteen minutes with the extra-special joy of other-Terry narrating it. Fine, regular-Terry admitted to himself, maybe it’s a tiny bit helpful t...