ericdontigney

Unintended Cultivator V6: Chapter 10 – Take the Hint

Li Yi Nuo stared at the man she only knew as Judgment’s Gale and tried to decide what to do. She refused to let it show on her face, but his last words had frightened her. They hadn’t been boastful, the way she would have thought that something like that would sound. He’d sounded like a man earnestly pleading with someone not to make a terrible, terrible mistake. Worse still, he was calm. He was far, far too calm for a man who should be expecting at least the possibility of violence. Th...

Unintended Cultivator V6: Chapter 9 – Conflicting Objectives

Sen watched the woman as his patience slowly burned away. He supposed if he hadn’t been immunized to all loveliness by the unearthly beauty of Lai Dongmei, he might have been taken off-guard by this woman. Almond shaped eyes that were wide with shock and fear stared at him. She had high cheekbones and delicate features with full lips that had parted in shock, like she meant to speak but had forgotten how words worked. He’d felt her lurking since back when he’d bought those vegetables fr...

Unintended Cultivator V6: Chapter 8 – Incongruity

Staring down at the compass in her hand, Li Yi Nuo felt a surge of frustration. Just how far had this curse-wielding cultivator gone? While she wasn’t eager to find whoever it was, she no longer worried that it was a death sentence hiding as a sect mission. Her master hadn’t been able to force the sect to rescind the mission, and he had tried. In the end, though, the outer disciples remained afflicted by the terrible technique that seemed boundless in its vindictive quest to puni...

Unintended Cultivator V6: Chapter 7 – Not Reassuring

Once he’d regained his feet, brushed off his robes, and gathered the tattered shreds of his dignity around him like a robe of shame, Sen looked over at the divine spirit beast. The massive turtle gazed at him with a monk-like calm. It seemed that Elder Bo was going to wait for Sen to restart the conversation. Sen gave serious thought to simply trying to walk away again, but suspected that he wouldn’t be allowed to leave until the turtle got his say. Doing his best to pretend that he hadn�...

Unintended Cultivator V6: Chapter 6 – Gaps

“I did not seduce a heavenly being,” said Sen through gritted teeth as he glared murder at the turtle.

“If you say so,” muttered the turtle, clearly not believing a word of it.

“Can we please get back to the whole diverged from the method problem?”

“I didn’t say it was a problem. I just said that it’s a thing that happened.”

“So, it’s not a problem?”

“I didn’t say that,” replied Elder Bo with dignified equanimity.

A ...

Unintended Cultivator V6: Chapter 5 – Turtle Soup

The rest of the journey to the cove passed without incident, much to Sen’s relief. While his physical wounds had all healed and he’d recovered much of the qi he’d spent fighting that spirit beast, he could tell that something was still healing. The fact that he couldn’t find or identify what that something was proved an ongoing concern. Not that it would necessarily prevent him from fighting. He thought that anything he considered a normal fight wouldn’t prove problematic. ...

Unintended Cultivator V6: Chapter 4 – Conscience

Sen was a little surprised that he didn’t lose consciousness. That’s what usually happened after a battle where he’d pushed himself that hard and been injured. He certainly would have welcomed an inky blackness that freed him from pain. Then again, he thought, maybe it’s for the best. While he trusted in the best intentions of Captain Chen and his crew, none of them were skilled healers. The sad truth was that Sen was the best available doctor on the ship. H...

Unintended Cultivator V6: Chapter 3 – Here, There Be Monsters

Sen had seen a lot of strange spirit beasts in depths of the wilds, from the damnable bear-cats to birds made entirely of fire. He’d even once been attacked by something that looked like the bastard child of a pangolin and a massive ivy plant. However, all of his experience with spirit beast had happened on land. Most of his incredibly limited experience with water life extended only to fish. He’d heard about other kinds sea animals and spirit beasts from Captain Chen bu...

Unintended Cultivator V6: Chapter 2 – The Calm and the Storm

Sen had enjoyed the first few weeks on board Captain Chen’s ship. Many of the sailors were new, but he’d recognized more than a few of them. There had been a little bit of awkwardness the first few days, but it mostly stemmed from a lingering sense of awe from the men he’d sailed with before. When he’d taken over in the kitchen a few times and served them meals that included some qi-rich meat from the edible beasts he’d killed in recent times, the last of that hesitancy had...

Unintended Cultivator ARC

Update: Okay. I got in touch with my publisher and they've upped the number of available downloads for the ARC. So, if you ran into the download limit message, you should be good to go now. ~Eric

Okay. So, way back when I was first doing the whole Patreon thing, I assumed that I'd be the one self-publishing the Unintended Cultivator books. Clearly, those plans changed when a publisher came into the game. The good news is that my publisher is awesome ...

Unintended Cultivator V5: Bloopers

“Oh, the sleepy sleepy boy is awake. Sleeps too much, too much, too much!”

“I… I…,” said Sen, taken off-guard by her appearance and odd speech.

“And he stutters!” shouted the woman, pointing an accusatory finger at him. “Why does he stutter? Why? Why? Why?”

Even having been warned about her nature, Sen found himself flummoxed by the actual experience of meeting this odd woman. He shook his head a little and tried to regroup.

“Are you Fu Ruolan?”...

Unintended Cultivator V6: Chapter 1 – Petty Vengeance

Li Yi Nuo looked at the gates to the Vermilion Blade Sect with a complex set of feelings that were somehow still numb. There was relief that the journey was done. A trip that she might have made in a week, or even a few days if she pushed herself hard enough, had taken weeks. She looked over her shoulder at the three men in the back of the wagon. It had taken all of her very meager skills in healing to simply keep them alive. Getting them to even eat anything had been a daily chore that consu...

Unintended Cultivator V5: Chapter 62 – Setting Sail

Sen stepped onto the street from the inn. It had been a little disappointing. Some mild regret over not bringing Lo Meifeng with him stirred in his heart. The woman had a gift for finding good inns. Dismissing the merely adequate meal he’d had for breakfast, he started walking toward the harbor. He was ready to finish this journey to visit Elder Bo. Sen couldn’t figure out why the turtle wanted to see him again, and he mostly didn’t care. He’d show up, let the turtle take a look, and ...

Unintended Cultivator V5: Chapter 61 – The Coast

Sen could smell the ocean long before the great expanse of water came into view. He found the smell dredged up a mixed bag of emotions. There had been good things about the ocean journey. He’d learned a great deal about water qi on that ship. He’d managed to save the lives of those sailors from that first attack. He’d even managed to help Lifen a learn a little bit about cultivation and protecting herself. However, it had also been a terrible time as they fled from the wrath of the demo...

Rinn's Run TIG: Chapter 8 – Cargo and Crew, Part 2

Kalan stepped out of the ship to find a short, squat woman with a shock of white hair, deep lines creasing her face, and deep-set eyes the color of coal. She looked him up and down, sniffed, and then looked past him at the hatch. When no one came through the hatch, she frowned, and looked at him.

“What are you doing, boy? Go get this Captain Rinn so the grownups can talk.”

Kalan gave her a shallow smile and didn’t move. Her dark eyes went comically wide.

“You?! You g...

Unintended Cultivator V5: Chapter 60 – Insult and Injury

Li Yi Nuo frowned up at the sky. The winter was nearing its end, but it wasn’t over yet. Based on the clouds overhead, it seemed that the season was preparing to remind all of the world that winter’s fury was nothing to dismiss. She hated the winter. She hated the cold and the snow. She hated how nothing grew. Being forced to leave the sect and the comfort of her warm home to discover the fate of three missing disciples had not left her in a good mood. It wasn’t the task itself. Those m...

Unintended Cultivator V5: Chapter 59 – Humanity Found

As the days wore on, Sen found himself encountering more villages and towns. At first, he simply trudged through them, almost heedless of the fact that there were living, breathing human beings in them. Most of the people he encountered on the street simply stared at him. A few times, he felt cultivators start to approach him. They all stopped short and let him pass after taking one look at his eyes. They clearly saw something in them that made them very nervous. Bit by bit, though, the prese...

Unintended Cultivator V5: Chapter 58 – Heavens’ Shadow

The speed of Sen’s travel slowed considerably for a time. While he started every day using in his qinggong technique, he always found himself simply walking along the road by the time afternoon rolled over him. While his qinggong technique didn’t call for a lot of attention when using it in small bursts, using it all day required sustained attention. He didn’t have it to give. His mind kept turning back to the plague village. Parts of it came back with utter clarity, such as his initial...

Unintended Cultivator V5: Chapter 57 – Plague Village

It didn’t take Sen very long to realize that he’d been mistaken. There were more dead than dying in the village. He just hadn’t recognized the signs. His spiritual sense was attuned to find life and qi. Dead bodies rarely had either. Still, he kept walking. No one else was going to help those people. Even if they’d sent for a doctor, there was little chance of one arriving before everyone was dead. If a mortal doctor came, it was unlikely that they could have done anything for what fe...

Unintended Cultivator V5: Chapter 56 – Why Me?

Sen was working extremely hard to only pay attention to what was in front of him. Unfortunately, it was a task made difficult by the excessive boredom involved with that. There were no spirit beasts or even any other travelers to occupy his thoughts. Occasionally, at the farthest reaches of his spiritual sense, he’d catch the briefest snatches of the presence of spiritual beasts. He’d been hopeful that he might be able to make use of those to deal with his other problem. Sadly, they all f...

Unintended Cultivator V5: Chapter 55 – That Sounds Like a You Problem

The stranger’s jaw worked back and forth like he was fighting not to express some very angry words. Sen watched this struggle with empty indifference. He’d been trying so hard to get the man to leave and avoid the necessity of violence. He was still willing to let the stranger just walk away. He’d hoped that he wouldn’t have to spill any blood on this journey, as far-fetched as that had felt to him. Now, it seemed like that was going to happen despite Sen’s best intentions. Sen wond...

Unintended Cultivator V5: Chapter 54 – Exceedingly Patient

The farther away from the capital he got, the more confident Sen felt that he’d outrun any potential pursuit. Not that he expected that pursuit would herald any violence, just the imposition of deeply unwanted obligations. If the king had asked for his presence, Sen would have been hard pressed to come up with a good reason why he couldn’t go. It wasn’t really Jing that Sen wanted to avoid. It was the prospect of some formal event in which he would be required to pretend to care about t...

Unintended Cultivator V5: Chapter 53 – Exits

“He’s a quick bastard, isn’t he?” observed Sen from where he was leaning against a wall.

He and Lo Meifeng watched as Zixin ran around a corner at speed, his robes still on fire. It had been a short and brutal exchange of pointers that had mostly involved Lo Meifeng pelting the man with small fireballs when she wasn’t punching or kicking him. For all that Zixin had come out on the losing side of that exchange, he had held up under the barrage better than Sen would have expecte...

Unintended Cultivator V5: Chapter 52 – Calculation

Morning found Sen sitting out in the courtyard. A small part of him made note of the city coming to life around him, not the city was ever truly silent. Even in the deepest parts of the night, there was still activity. Most of his attention was focused on his cultivation. Lo Meifeng had been right that her property likely was the best place in the city to cultivate. Minimally, it was the best place outside of one of the sect compounds. Sen knew enough about formation to know that the sects li...

Unintended Cultivator Vol. 1 Update

Okay, it's been a while, but there's finally some stuff I can share about Unintended Cultivator Vol. 1. My publisher has put it up for preorder with an expected publication day of Dec. 19. Right now, it's just the ebook version that's available for preorder, but the option for physical editions should be live soon. Once all of the options and links have propagated over on Amazon, I'll share a link. In the meantime, though, here's a look at what should be the final cover. If you're desperate t...

Unintended Cultivator V5: Chapter 51 – Not Funny

Sen left the home of Tan Lin and Ung Wen feeling much more thoughtful than he ever would have expected. He’d been of a mind to make a simple deal and get some formation flags. Instead, he’d left with a challenge. He was relatively confident that he could meet the challenge. At least, he thought he could if Fu Ruolan had the right resources available. Tan Lin had been willing to make the formation flags that Sen wanted in exchange for a pill that would help his wife break through. Sen had ...

Unintended Cultivator V5: Chapter 50 – Sen Problems

Okay, this is another one that I hadn't planned, but I'm not above the occasional bit of fan service. Once I thought about the idea of a Lo Meifeng and Chan Yu Ming chapter, I liked the idea. It was a chance to get some things in play that would have been harder to accomplish in a Sen POV chapter. Unfortunately, since I didn't plan it, it took longer to write and runs a little shorter than my usual chapters.

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Lo Meifeng watched Sen wander off ...

Unintended Cultivator V5: Chapter 49 – Formation Flags

Sen had mixed feeling about leaving Chan Yu Ming to Lo Meifeng’s dubious mercy. While Lo Meifeng didn’t have any particular malice toward the other woman that Sen knew about, she also wasn’t the sort who neededany particular malice. Staying wasn’t an option, though. Unless he wanted to put an end to Chan Yu Ming, which he was mostly certain he didn’t, staying could only complicate matters. With a shallow nod, he left the two women and the corpse of the bulky guy with a big ...

Unintended Cultivator V5: Chapter 48 – Deferred Anger

“You should stay inside for this,” said Sen as he stood from the table.

“Why?” asked Lo Meifeng.

“Because whatever trouble is out there, it’s not here for you. No point in dragging you into my problems any deeper.”

“Oh,” said Lo Meifeng. “I don’t plan to get involved. I just plan on watching.”

Sen gave her a look. “Watching?”

“Well, I have to assume that someone has made some catastrophic misjudgment about you. It should be entertain...

Unintended Cultivator V5: Chapter 47 – Catching Up

Sen briefly brooded about the missed opportunity to deal with Zixin, but decided it was something he could put off for at least one more day. Based on what Lo Meifeng had told him, the guy had been coming around on an almost daily basis.

“Is that why the formations are active?” asked Sen in a flash of realization.

“It is,” said Lo Meifeng, her expression going dark. “I keep hoping he’ll get the message.”

“I’m a little surprised that you haven’t killed him...