Sen couldn’t believe his eyes when the second set of Soaring Skies cultivators arrived. It seemed that whoever was in charge thought the first group had been incompetent, because they sent another group of six qi condensing cultivators, including the one he’d spared. There were no tricks or games with shadows that time. He simply dropped from the roof and positioned himself in front of the Silver Crane. He watched the six approach and spared a disappointed look at the woman he let go earl...
2023-06-24 05:48:30 +0000 UTC
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In the end, Lifen’s mother took Sen’s advice. What customers were still at the Silver Crane were sent home. The employees who had somewhere else to go, went there. The guards fetched water by the barrel and, later, Sen remembered to ask them to find some buckets. One of the more enterprising guards took it on herself to acquire a cartload of sandbags. Sen took a moment to praise that woman and dropped a silver tael in her hand. That was the kind of helpful thinking that Sen wanted to enco...
2023-06-23 17:31:12 +0000 UTC
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Once they reentered the city, Sen gave Lifen a sheepish look.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“For what?”
“I don’t think I did you or the Silver Crane any favors there.”
“I don’t care.”
Sen was so shocked that he stopped walking. “You don’t care?”
Lifen, who had taken a few more steps, turned back to him. “Don’t misunderstand. I’ll care tomorrow. It’s almost certainly going to be a problem.”
“Yeah, I can’t imagine the s...
2023-06-23 06:04:22 +0000 UTC
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Sen bought himself a few minutes by cleaning up the impromptu campsite. Once he had everything stowed again, though, there was not getting around it. Heaving a small breath, he turned to look at Lifen.
“Just how angry do you think she’s going to be?” he asked, as an unfamiliar nervousness took up root in his chest.
Lifen pursed her lips. “Less angry than she’d be if you weren’t Feng Ming’s guest, but she won’t be pleased.”
“That’s just what I need,” m...
2023-06-23 00:41:50 +0000 UTC
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Hey everybody, there will be two chapters today. The first chapter will just happen a little later in the day than usual. I was up stupid late doing edits on Vol 1 for the publisher, then got hit with some insomnia. So, I'm going to catch a bit of sleep, then get back to writing.
But, I do have a little something to tide you over. I got asked to participate in a flash fiction thing for a friend of mine. The theme was "writer's block," and it had to be 125 words or less. Since I've been ...
2023-06-22 13:07:14 +0000 UTC
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Sen resisted the urge to start yelling at the heavens, but only because he had a number of more pressing concerns. Unlike the advancement in Orchard’s reach, safety was not a short run away. It was happening on the beach, whether Sen liked it or not. He needed to protect himself from unwanted observation. Unfortunately, he also wasn’t alone. Lifen was standing a few feet away from him, having recovered from her initial shock, but still unclear about what was happening. He supposed he coul...
2023-06-22 00:47:34 +0000 UTC
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With his minor business settled for the day, Sen and Sun Lifen left Grandmother Lu’s shop. Sen suspected that the employees who knew who he was were greatly relieved by that. He glanced over at the young woman who seemed both pleased and exasperated. He knew he shouldn’t feel that way, but he was still vaguely amused by her reaction. As if she could sense his amusement, she gave him a narrow-eyed look.
“Yes?” Sen asked.
“That wasn’t necessary.”
“Perhaps it wa...
2023-06-21 16:19:17 +0000 UTC
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This was dinner last night. Pan seared salmon, roasted asparagus, and a cucumber, tomato, and avocado salad.
2023-06-21 12:31:25 +0000 UTC
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Okay, so, I've been asked a few times about a Discord for Unintended Cultivator. Honestly, I've been really hesitant to entertain the idea because I really only started using Discord about three weeks ago.
In brief, Eric's Discord Mastery Level = emoji poop. I'm not even really sure what a book-related discord should have on it.
So, with that information about my discord competence in hand, I thought I'd let you weight in on the subject. Vote and/or comment below. ...
2023-06-21 03:19:06 +0000 UTC
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Sen woke up the next morning with Sun Lifen wrapped around him. He hadn’t planned on having company the night before. In fact, he hadn’t planned on anything except maybe getting something to eat and sleeping. The food had been easy enough to get. He just asked if someone could find him something simple to eat. A minor feast was brought up to his room. He’d been made several offers of company, but politely declined them all with excuses about being weary from his long journey. He’d bar...
2023-06-21 01:20:19 +0000 UTC
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Sen had only planned to soak in the bath long enough to extract some healing from the plants. Yet, once she got past her initial surprise at his status as a cultivator, Sun Lifen became quite conversational. She asked him so many questions about what it was like to travel and where he grew up that Sen had to heat up the water again and then a third time. Sen found himself asking her questions about what it was like to grow up in the city. He marveled at how she just took all of the other peop...
2023-06-20 15:20:13 +0000 UTC
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One moment, Sen was standing there. The next he was being ushered into the back of the establishment where he passed rooms that often seemed to have a preposterous amount of decoration, and a host of young women and men Some of them stared at Sen with pure curiosity, others with vaguely concerned looks, and one young man glared at him with open hostility. He barely had time to register any of that before the manager of the place was peppering him with questions, yet never letting him get a wo...
2023-06-20 02:48:58 +0000 UTC
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Sen didn’t maintain his absolute isolation stance the rest of the way to Emperor’s Bay, but he also didn’t make a point of interacting with anyone. He focused mostly on speed, only occasionally slowing or stopping if something caught his attention. He did, however, make a point to stop and intervene the one time he ran across bandits. Unlike the last time he saw bandits, he didn’t give them a choice to leave. While almost all of the caravanners made it out with minimal injury, none of...
2023-06-19 22:04:47 +0000 UTC
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Lo Meifeng was frustrated. Orders had come down from the top, the very top, that some kid was supposed to be kept under quiet observation, assisted if absolutely necessary, and efforts made to spread the silly name that a bunch of rural fools had given to him. Honestly, thought Lo Meifeng, why would anyone want to be called something like Judgment’s Gale? Then again, her entire organization took orders from a man called Fate’s Razor, so maybe she didn’t really...
2023-06-18 22:46:16 +0000 UTC
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For the next three days, Sen used his quingong technique almost non-stop, keeping it right at the edge of what his passive qi gathering could support. He stopped for nothing, often diverting into the forest to avoid contact with the people on the road or to skirt around the one village he saw. He took his time at night, setting up the most ironclad obscuring formations he could. In short, Sen wanted nothing to do with anyone. That desire for isolation was something new for Sen. Even ...
2023-06-18 17:13:56 +0000 UTC
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I realize that I never set out a formal policy about the comments section, but I feel like I need to set out at least a few guidelines about what is and isn't acceptable.
Disagreeing about what I wrote, what it means, or whether it works: acceptable.
The same pretty much applies to any artwork I have commissioned.
Making personal comments about other commenters or directing profanity at other commenters: Not acceptable.
Other generally unacceptable comments incl...
2023-06-18 06:19:10 +0000 UTC
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Sen knew that using the liquid qi would make Heavens’ Rebuke more powerful, but he hadn’t fully appreciated how much more potent it would become. Add that in with the wrong balance between the lightning and killing intent, he’d expected a lot of destruction. What he saw, though, was so far beyond his expectations that he didn’t know quite how to process it. The building that he’d leapt from was simply gone. In fact, most of the buildings in the immediate vicinity were gone. The dest...
2023-06-18 05:55:31 +0000 UTC
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Sen didn’t have a lot of qi to work with, so he decided that he wasn’t going to bother with complicated qi techniques. He wasn’t going let Changpu use them either. Sen could feel the sect cultivator start to cycle qi as he bore down on the other man, so he let a little of killing intent loose. It was just a moment, a flash really, but it shattered the man’s focus. Then, Sen was there. His fist connected with Changpu’s chest. The noise of that impact echoed through the empty town. Th...
2023-06-17 16:51:27 +0000 UTC
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Sen had been right about what to expect. As soon as he stopped speaking, questions started pelting him like hail. Of course, he couldn’t really understand any of the questions because the Soaring Skies sect members were talking over each other, each one getting louder as they tried to be the one who got their question answered first. After a while, they weren’t even really directing questions at Sen, just yelling at each other to be quiet. Sen let the noise wash over him without really pa...
2023-06-17 04:06:51 +0000 UTC
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Sen woke up, which surprised him a little. Watching part of the town’s stone wall simply disintegrate into a rain of fast-moving projectiles had left him with the cold certainty that he was about to die. Yet, he hadn’t. Of course, not dying and being healthy were two wildly different things in Sen’s experience. He was not feeling especially healthy. He’d been hurt even before flinging himself over the town wall and releasing that monstrous version of Heavens’ Rebuke. Now, he felt li...
2023-06-16 22:05:11 +0000 UTC
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Hey guys, chapters are coming today. I got sucked into a telehealth thing to renew my migraine medication prescription. That's turned into a whole secondary thing with this sprawling online survey that just won't end, and recording videos, and on and on. The takeaway is, you will get two chapters today. I'm just lagging behind a bit today.
2023-06-16 18:40:37 +0000 UTC
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The knowledge that the bird spirit beasts needed to go first did not fill Sen with happy feelings. To get the birds, he needed to limit visibility from the air in a way that didn’t pin down his exact location. That meant he needed to implement the other idea. The only upside to that idea was that it would further confuse his scent. The downside was that, once he started setting things on fire, he had limited control over how that fire spread. Of course, he also couldn’t keep going as he h...
2023-06-16 03:02:16 +0000 UTC
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Sen leaned up against the wall and pressed a hand to his side. He could feel warm blood trickling between the fingers. His side wasn’t his only injury. It wasn’t even his worst injury. At least, Sen didn’t think so. It was just the one that hurt the most at that moment. He’d rolled over a table in a desperate bid to avoid an attack and rolled that open wound right over some spilled salt. For something that people sprinkle on their food, it shouldn’t hurt so damn much when it get...
2023-06-15 14:07:42 +0000 UTC
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Beya followed Kalan onto the ship. He headed to the bridge first and asked Em to assemble the appropriate data and recordings. That was pure theater since Kala would do the actual work, but he’d long ago agreed that Kala got to decide who knew she existed. After that, Kalan gave Beya a quick tour. They stopped by engineering, but Petronan wasn’t back from his shopping trip with Fresia. Without the engineer there to talk about things or pull up displays, the room was really just a collecti...
2023-06-15 07:07:32 +0000 UTC
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Kalan had given serious consideration to running down the man in the hallway. He was confident he could have done it. He was far less confident he could have done it without drawing a lot of unwanted attention. Considering all the noise he’d made fighting that woman, Kalan was shocked that authorities weren’t descending on the building en masse when he’d stepped outside. All things considered, though, he decided that he’d just gotten lucky. It was the middle of the day, so ma...
2023-06-15 06:39:50 +0000 UTC
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The longer Sen stayed in the town, the more unsettled he became. It wasn’t a huge place, probably only home to a few thousand people. At least, that was Sen’s best guess. Of course, any place that was meant to house thousands of human beings became something wholly other when there was no one to be found. Oh, there was evidence that people had been there. There was also evidence of some violence. He’d seen dried blood that had splashed up onto walls or pooled in some places on the groun...
2023-06-14 23:11:03 +0000 UTC
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On previous days, Sen had been making only half-hearted attempts to avoid the Soaring Skies sect members. While he hadn’t especially wanted their company, he also hadn’t worried that they were going to try to harm him. Wu Meng yao was simply too earnest in her talk of honor. If nothing else, he believed that she would warn him if the other meant to do something to him. Well, if one of them planned on doing something violent anyway. Following the fallout of his decision, Sen decided it was...
2023-06-14 14:05:25 +0000 UTC
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When Sen finally roused himself the next morning, he felt odd. It took him almost three full minutes to understand what had changed. He felt relaxed, possibly for the first time as an adult. He was willing to accept that there were probably benefits to abstinence. It was almost unbeatable as straight-up willpower training. Yet, he wasn’t about to pretend that he regretted being able to release that iron control he’d had to maintain for years. For his part, Sen hadn’t tried to h...
2023-06-13 22:56:57 +0000 UTC
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Despite Sen’s best intentions to simply avoid the Soaring Skies sect members, it turned out to be a lot more difficult to achieve in practice than he expected. While he could hide from them, it wasn’t something he could do all the time. Nor, for that matter, was it something that he wanted to do all the time. Complicating the matter was the fact that they were heading in the same direction. While Sen could easily leave behind any mortal traveler that he came across, the sect memb...
2023-06-13 16:41:32 +0000 UTC
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Yup. I do my editing on a hard copy. As the cavemen taught me.
2023-06-13 06:03:08 +0000 UTC
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