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Unintended Cultivator V4: Chapter 41 – Politics

With the immediate source of potential tension between them at least nominally resolved, Sen and the prince settled in a more relaxed conversation that focused on the reason that Sen had actually been meant to visit. The prince started by giving Sen a general overview of the local political scene.

“Should I assume that your working knowledge of the government in general is thin?”

“You should. You might even say that its nonexistent. I knew that this was a kingdom, and that t...

Unintended Cultivator V4: Chapter 40 – Blame

As he’d been directed, Sen presented himself at the home of the prince. Although, words like palace and fortress sprang to mind a Sen stood at the gate of the walled compound. It seemed the guards had been expecting him, because he was ushered inside quickly and shown to some kind of sitting room, where he was given tea and plate of some kind of elegantly decorated pastries that Sen couldn’t immediately identify, although the red bean paste filling was familiar. He wasn’t left waiting f...

Unintended Cultivator V4: Chapter 39 – Fatal Mistake

Sen was disheartened to discover that news of the prince’s visit to him, as well as Sen’s identity as a kind of folk hero and sect bogeyman, had spread through the city like wildfire. He supposed it had been predictable but it didn’t make him happy. It had drawn attention down on him that was, in turns, frustrating and anger-inducing. Messengers had started arriving within hours from what Sen assumed were minor political houses trying to edge some kind of advantage. He grudgingly accept...

Unintended Cultivator V4: Chapter 38 – Speculation

Prince Jing was usually a reserved man. He had taken to heart the admonition from both of his parents that you could learn more by listening than by speaking. Yet, on the way back to his home, the prince was all but silent. He kept thinking over his odd meeting with the cultivator Lu Sen. His visit had multiple purposes. On one level, he had simply been curious about the man who had so firmly declined his invitation. It was such an infrequent event in his life that he’d taken for g...

Unintended Cultivator V4: Chapter 37 – Royals

Sen eyed Chan Yu Ming carefully. He was relieved to see that she gave her brother an exasperated look. He also took the precaution of cycling up some air qi and closing the room to listeners.

“Of course, I didn’t go falling in love. I just went looking for a better option.”

“A better option?” asked the prince. “What do you mean a better option?”

Before Chan Yu Ming could say anything, the prince held up a hand to stop her. He eyed Sen, frowned, and then turned ...

Unintended Cultivator V4: Chapter 36 – The Prince

“Are you kidding me?” asked Sen. “He’s here?”

Lo Meifeng narrowed her eyes at him. “Explain.”

“Oh, right, you weren’t there that part. Short version is that Chan Yu Ming is a princess. She’s got at least one brother who, somehow, knew I was coming. He sent me invitation to visit, which I, and I cannot stress this part enough, politely declined.”

Lo Meifeng was absolutely still for most of a minute. Sen became oddly fascinated as the woman didn�...

Unintended Cultivator V4: Chapter 35 – The Capital, Part 3

Shi Ping and Falling Leaf had both stayed back while Sen and Chan Yu Ming dealt with their respective welcoming parties, but Sen could tell they were both curious. Falling Leaf’s curiosity was either casual or dampened by her apprehension at the city looming over them. Shi Ping’s curiosity, on the other hand, was burning bright. Sen had ignored it while they dealt with the minor hassle of getting through the gate. Not that the actual passage through was a problem. That had gone very smoot...

Unintended Cultivator V4: Chapter 34 – The Capital, Part 2

Sen mentally throttled the urge to yell at Chan Yu Ming. Of course, she’d left out that trivial detail of being royalty. Much as he might like to, though, he couldn’t really blame her for not bringing it up. Sen had his prejudices, and she knew about them. He didn’t like nobles. From her point of view, it would be an all to easy leap to make to assume that he’d see royalty as nobility, only worse, and she’d have been right. That was something they’d have to deal with late...

Unintended Cultivator V4: Chapter 33 – The Capital, Part 1

For all that Sen had thought about it, imagined it, and tried to mentally prepare for it, the capital still stunned him. It was just so damned big. When he’d imagined it, he’d imagined something like Emperor’s Bay, just more of it. The reality of miles upon miles of buildings and roads ground that feeble image to dust. He literally couldn’t see the far side of the city even with his enhanced sight. Smells that had been unpleasantly present in the heart of Emperor’s Bay were strong o...

Unintended Cultivator V4: Chapter 32 – Trust

While villages and towns pockmarked the countryside along the road, even the fast-traveling cultivators might only see every other day out in the vast stretches of land between major cities. As the distance to the capital dwindled down to the point where they were only a few days out, the density of villages and towns increased substantially. This conformed to Sen’s experiences with other cities, where the city proper was supported by a network of nearby farming villages and towns that spec...

Unintended Cultivator V4: Chapter 31 – Venting

“Shi Ping, come with me,” said Sen, striding down the road ahead of the others.

Shi Ping fell in next to him without a word. The man had become a functional mute since making the choice to come with them. He’d answer questions directly put to him, but rarely volunteered to contribute to any conversation, even the most casual and frivolous conversations. Sen wished that he didn’t enjoy the man’s silence so much, because it made him inclined to just let the fire cultivator not p...

Rinn's Run TIG: Chapter 2 – Untrustworthy Company

Sorry, I got sidetracked the last couple of days. Here's the new Rinn's run chapter. ~Eric

***

Of course, getting docked was a bit more complicated than Kalan would have liked. While the station could dock a ship like the Zeran cutter, Kalan had to do a lot more explaining than usual to make it happen. The station crew had a seemingly endless number of questions about just why it was that a cargo freighter captain and private citizen was trying to dock a foreign n...

Unintended Cultivator V4: Chapter 30 – Practicing

As a general rule, Sen found the huge distances between locations on the continent to be irksome. Given the time constraints he was under, that was still true on some level. Yet, for once, he saw the weeks they still had left to travel before they reached the capital as something of a blessing. One, it gave him some time to start processing the truly staggering number of things the dragon had tried to teach him. He’d only barely gotten a handle on the tiniest fraction of those things. Some ...

Unintended Cultivator V4: Chapter 29 – Let’s Talk, Part 3

Sen’s chat with Chan Yu Ming seemed to have shattered a number of illusions she’d had about her clever plan, because she almost entirely withdrew from everyone else. He’d see her staring hard at nothing, shaking her head, and even occasionally muttering to herself. He assumed that she was trying to rethink her plan in a way that would actually have some chance of working, but he wasn’t holding out much hope. The young woman’s muttering got so frequent at one point that Lo Meifeng ac...

Unintended Cultivator V4: Chapter 28 – Let’s Talk, Part 2

Just as he’d indicated in his initial statement to everyone, Sen had them up and on the road at first light the next day. He kept them moving too, stopping only briefly for meals. Most nights they camped. Shi Ping had complained, once. Sen hadn’t said a word to the man, simply looked at him with newly calm eyes. Yet, that look had stopped Shi Ping cold. It had stopped everyone cold. It wasn’t just a look, or an expression. It had a weight that hadn’t been there before, as though Sen w...

Unintended Cultivator V4: Chapter 27 – Let’s Talk

That first night back, there had been a lot of questions about what he and Falling Leaf had done and seen. Sen offered them a very abbreviated story where he left out the sensitive parts, such as their encounter with the spirit oxen. As far as Sen was concerned, that wasn’t information anyone else needed. For her part, Falling Leaf said almost nothing, except to offer the occasional detail that Sen had neglected to mention or simply hadn’t seen during some fight. Of course, the question t...

Unintended Cultivator V4: Chapter 26 – Almost Free

Shi Ping was happy. He was so happy he could barely contain it. That damnable man had gone off into the wild with that beautiful, but deeply unsettling, young woman. He’d said if they weren’t back in a month, they wouldn’t be back. It was the last day, and there was no sign of them. He’d actually like Lu Sen right at first, which made him an exception among the members of the Order of the Celestial Flame. Almost everyone else was terrified of, as one person had put it to Shi Ping, the...

Unintended Cultivator V4: Chapter 25 – Heart Demon

Sen became aware that he was aware again. The last thing that he could recall was setting off that thing he’d made in what he’d assumed were his last moments in life. Thinking back, it looked like insanity to him. Maybe it had been insanity, but he thought, maybe, it was an insanity he’d finally, mercifully, purged from himself. He hadn’t felt so calm, so centered in a long, long time. Although, he supposed that being dead probably had that effect on people. Well, if he was d...

Unintended Cultivator V4: Chapter 24 – The Lesson

In the back of his mind, behind the rage-induced madness, a little part of Sen knew that provoking the dragon was foolish. Yet, that tiny voice of warning was lost in the need to hurt. Whatever constraints, conscious or unconscious, that had held Sen in check in the past fell away. He cycled for what had become his go-to weapon. The dragon was far, far faster than Sen physically, but it wasn’t quite faster than thought. So, in the fractions of a second that it took for the dragon to flash f...

Unintended Cultivator V4: Chapter 23 – You Will Stay

Leaving the next day turned out to be substantially more difficult than Sen expected. Every ox in the herd had to take a moment to come and, well, he wasn’t quite sure what they were doing. Offering their blessings? Wishing him good fortune? He didn’t know, but he smiled and bowed to each in turn. When that was finally done, he had thought they could go, but then the calves charged up and encircled Falling Leaf like she was their favorite big sister. All but one. Sen sighed as a lone calf...

Unintended Cultivator V4: Chapter 22 – Herd Mother

Sen thought that it wasn’t really necessary, but the oxen insisted on taking him and Falling Leaf back to their herd. They spent two days sheltering beneath the considerable protection of the spirit oxen. Individually, a spirit ox was potent and formidable, although slow to rouse to action. As a group, few predators of any stripe were likely to tempt the wrath of the entire herd. Necessary or not, Sen was grateful for the opportunity to extract the stone teeth shards from his calf without w...

Unintended Cultivator V4: Chapter 21 – Repaying Favors

Sen landed next to Falling Leaf and slammed a lightning wrapped fist into the face of a demon ape-lizard. The creature was hurled back from the panther girl with its jaw hanging at an odd angle and much of its skull caved in. Whatever the raw force of the blow hadn’t done to kill it, the web of lighting that pounded its brain had finished. Part of Sen was simply revolted by the massive things. While they had the heavily muscled build of apes, most of their bodies were covered in dark green ...

Unintended Cultivator V4: Chapter 20 – Morning Matters

While Sen was ready to leave right that minute, he realized it wasn’t practical. It was still dark out for one. Even though Falling Leaf was probably better equipped to travel under those conditions than any of his other traveling companions, it was an unnecessary risk. One that could be easily avoided with a delay of nothing more than a handful of hours. Beyond that, Sen reasoned he might as well sleep for a few hours before they left. While he didn’t necessarily need the sleep,...

Unintended Cultivator V4: Chapter 19 – Anger Management

“You what?”

“I killed them. That entire branch of their family. Gone. Doing that once was enough for me. I’ve no interest in going down that road again. And from what you said, it could come to precisely that.”

Chan Yu Ming scowled at Sen so hard that he could see it quite clearly even in the minimal light. “You didn’t care that I was a noble before.”

“I didn’t know that you were a noble before. You didn’t tell me.”

“Like you really didn’t k...

Rinn's Run TIG: Chapter 1 – Home Again, Home Again

It's been a minute since the last Rinn's Run chapter. The title of book two is Rinn's Run: The Ikaren Gambit, hence the TIG acronym. It also let's me separate out the books in the chapters post. This chapter is a little rougher than I'd like, but I needed to get something down on paper, so to speak, to get things moving. ~Eric

***

After two days in the wormhole network, Kalan Rinn felt the paranoia start to fade. It wasn’t gone by any means, but it wasn...

Unintended Cultivator V4: Chapter 18 – So, What Was the Plan?

At the sound of his voice, two of the giant spiders whirled to face him. Sen had never particularly liked spiders. They were always a threat to anyone looking for somewhere cozy and dry to sleep on cold or wet nights. While most of their bites would just leave someone itching for a day or two, there was always the chance of running across one of the more dangerous spiders. While adults could sometimes survive one of their bites, kids never did. The venom was too toxic and their bodies too sma...

Unintended Cultivator V4: Chapter 17 – Where’s the Snake?

Sen rolled his eyes and gave serious thought to going and yelling at Chan Yu Ming. Then, he thought about it a little harder. There was no upside to going back and yelling at her. It likely wouldn’t change anything. At best, she’d probably just follow them more discreetly. Plus, even if he knew she was following him, and she knew she was following him, he couldn’t actually tell her not to travel in the same direction as them. So, all a confrontation would accomplish wo...

Unintended Cultivator V4: Chapter 16 – Problems and Plans

Sen didn’t sleep straight through for a whole day the way he imagined he might. Instead, he found himself getting up periodically to make food, chat a little, and then go back to bed. As the hours of sleep slowly accumulated, though, Sen started to understand just how bone tired he had truly been. After the first day of sleeping way more than he was awake, he was finally rested enough to really feel how utterly exhausted he still was. Sen wanted to chalk it all up to his experience...

Unintended Cultivator V4: Chapter 15 – Dubious Kindness

The question hung in the air between them like an awkwardly placed holiday decoration. With the question asked and Sen’s silence stretching out longer and longer, Chan Yu Ming looked increasingly uncomfortable and nervous. For his part, Sen’s initial instinct was to flatly refuse her. Sen liked Chan Yu Ming. He had deep respect for her martial skills. He enjoyed flirting with her and suspected that, if things continued on as they had been, the two would probably enjoy each other in bed as...

Unintended Cultivator V4: Chapter 14 – Travel Preparations

While most of the water cultivators didn’t know the details, everyone knew that something had happened by the way that Sen swept through their compound like a tidal wave looking for something to crash down on. Those who saw him coming made a point to be urgently needed in some other direction. The impression he made was not helped by the coldly neutral expression on the face of Lo Meifeng as she led him toward Shi Ping’s room, nor the oddly placid expression of Falling Leaf, who ...