Treating the Matriarch’s condition would not be easy. For anyone else, Sen thought it might be all but impossible. If for no other reason, it required a certain level of mastery in both formations and alchemy. Few cultivators were skilled in either, and he wasn’t aware of any who were skilled in both. Yet, that was what they would need if they planned to attempt what he meant to do. Auntie Caihong had given him several possible ideas. After considering them all in context with what he was...
2025-05-28 20:00:06 +0000 UTC
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While Sen would have preferred to get started immediately, it seemed that nothing in his life was immediate any more. First, he had to contact the generals and explain he would be away for at least a day or two while he tended to the Matriarch. Then, he had to explain to the other Order of the Celestial Flame members why he hadn’t already treated her with something. After that, he had to mediate the most absurd argument about who would stay in the room closest to the Matriarch. He ul...
2025-05-27 20:00:06 +0000 UTC
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One of the guards pulled aside the canvas to let Sen enter the hut. He didn’t recognize the cultivator who stood by the makeshift bed. It wasn’t clear if the man was watching over the Matriarch or praying for her. Either way, Sen had to suppress a wince. It seemed he would need to have a conversation with Lo Meifeng. He’d ask about her brother, but the odds didn’t look good at all. He dismissed those concerns for later as he focused on the Matriarch. That problem, at least, he ...
2025-05-26 20:00:05 +0000 UTC
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“Who is she?” asked Falling Leaf, peering curiously at Chou Dai Lu.
“This one is Disciple Chou Dai Lu, Lady Fa,” answered the girl with a bow.
“I caused her some problems,” explained Sen. “So, she’s part of my sect now.”
The ghost panther looked at the girl for a few moments before shrugging, apparently losing interest. Falling Leaf being Falling Leaf, she’d been absent the past few days while scouting ahead and hunting. The addition of someone to ...
2025-05-22 19:55:11 +0000 UTC
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The last few days had been quieter since Sen gave the order that the training was on hold for a week. At least, it had been in some senses. He still went out and turned huge tracts of the wilds into ashes and killed most of the spirit beasts that came out of their infernos. He’d also taken to snatching up all of the natural treasures and anything of alchemical value to be found in those areas. That conversation about the resources necessary to support the advancement of large numbers...
2025-05-22 04:57:06 +0000 UTC
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Kelima had been in a state of complete bewilderment since the night before. First, she’d had to face up to the fact that, somehow, Terry had recognized that this village was evil on sight. Sure, the man was unreasonably powerful, but that was true of every rank 2 adventurer. It just came with the territory. What he hadn’t shown was any kind of precognitive skill or any particular ability to sense evil. But this time, for some reason, he’d just known. Finding that out when the f...
2025-05-21 10:33:58 +0000 UTC
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That began a period of grinding routine for Sen and the army at large. They got up, stowed the camp, marched for part of the day, set up camp, and trained. Then, they did it again. And again. And again. However, even with that routine, it wasn’t entirely smooth. The soldiers, who were used to the prospect of training on an almost daily basis, grumbled. It might not have been so bad if Sen could actually hear most of that grumbling. It was concerning enough that he went to see the head cook,...
2025-05-21 05:36:34 +0000 UTC
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After Chan Yu Ming left, Sen was finally able to turn his attention to what the cultivators and soldiers were doing. The results were interesting, if not entirely successful. When dealing with weaker spirit beasts, one cultivator working with a small group of mortals worked fairly well. The mortals could stall the spirit beast, giving the cultivator time to deliver one decisive strike. With stronger spirit beasts, though, that approach failed. Something that Sen and, in all likelihood,...
2025-05-20 02:47:54 +0000 UTC
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People seemed to want more of this, so here's a fresh chapter. I'm going to title this thing any day now. Enjoy! ~Eric
***
Jason was both surprised and a little relieved that Alex wasn’t waiting outside the Patriarch’s throne room. Not that his brother’s absence was actually a good sign. It presumably meant that he was waiting for Jason somewhere else, like his room. There were security measures in place that supposedly kept people out of e...
2025-05-19 08:14:40 +0000 UTC
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There was a lot of controlled chaos below as cultivators and mortals got into position. Sen had decided that this slow slog through the countryside wasn’t just an opportunity for the mortals to gain experience with spirit beasts, but also for the mortals and cultivators to find ways to work with each other. He had, no small amount of private joy, assigned reluctant peak core cultivators and mortal generals to work together to develop some tactics. Now, they meant to test them ...
2025-05-17 09:56:08 +0000 UTC
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Terry was so surprised to see the innkeeper standing over him with an enormous knife that he froze. It wasn’t until the other man brought the knife down that Terry managed to react. He glared at the man.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“I…That is…” the innkeeper mumbled.
The heavyset man lifted the knife and turned it to examine the point. He seemed baffled, before he lifted it high and brought it down again with an inarticulate yell. The tip of the knife hit T...
2025-05-16 08:53:58 +0000 UTC
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Sen noticed Falling Leaf glaring over her shoulder again.
“I know they’re still following us,” he told her.
He’d been more or less escorting the new cultivator recruits back to where the army had set up their most recent camp. He’d been less than thrilled when he sensed the Patriarch and Chan Yu Ming trailing along behind them. The problem was that he’d basically told them to go to the capital. If they were going to the capital, they were headed the right way. O...
2025-05-16 06:21:44 +0000 UTC
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Sen walked away while Chan Yu Ming fruitlessly tried to get his attention. Her efforts to also avoid drawing too much attention to herself fatally undermined that cause. Sen shook his head a little. He might understand, somewhat, where her hostility came from, but that didn’t make him eager to continue enduring it. Especially since he didn’t believe that her anger was entirely with him anymore. The last time they’d met, she’d engaged in what amounted to a suicide attempt by bri...
2025-05-15 11:50:36 +0000 UTC
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The deeper Terry got into the village, the more unsettled he felt. Mostly because the place just looked so innocuous. Nothing looked too new, but most of the places looked cared for. There were adults, a smattering of children, and some teens who looked like they were aching to make a bad decision or five. What he didn’t see was any evidence of superhuman magical powers. And if a place this remote was going to survive, there should be some uberhumans throwing their weight around like asshol...
2025-05-14 10:22:57 +0000 UTC
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Sen glanced around at what was left of the Clear Spring Sect. The compound was a place he’d never intended to return to. He’d been attacked there, and the patriarch had allowed the man responsible to escape. Sen had accidentally found that man, a member of the House of Xie, and killed him in a long-delayed act of vengeance. With that last loose end resolved, he’d barely thought about the Clear Spring Sect again. At least, he hadn’t until Lo Meifeng had suggested that they use s...
2025-05-14 05:57:38 +0000 UTC
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“Do you think we should help them?” asked Kho Jaw-Long as he watched the battle below with idle interest.
Feng Ming glanced at his old friend before returning to his own evaluation of the clash between humanity and spirit beast below. His first instinct, one honed by thousands of years as a cultivator, was that they shouldn’t help. Cultivators rarely intervened unless their own interests were at stake. There was also an implicit understanding that they shouldn’t intervene...
2025-05-13 06:46:50 +0000 UTC
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A little preface. I hadn't planned on writing anything like this. But someone at my publisher planted the notion of a sci-fi/cultivator crossover story in my head and it got lodged. So, I decided to see if I could make it work. These are the two very rough first draft chapters I wrote of something that I'm pretty sure will only ever be novella length. I thought I'd share it with you guys and see how you feel about it. Please do let me know what you think in the comments. Thanks! ~Eric
2025-05-12 01:04:40 +0000 UTC
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The next few weeks turned in a grueling routine for Sen, if not the army as a whole. He supposed this was all pretty normal for them. They’d break camp early in the day, eke out ten or fifteen miles of marching, and then set up camp again. Sen had taken to going out with the cultivators to burn great swathes of the wilds as they marched. That forced most of the remaining spirit beasts in those areas out into the open, where they were killed. It also seemed to discourage spirit beast ...
2025-05-09 18:03:15 +0000 UTC
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Sen stood up from the table where all the generals and other senior officers sat. He’d endured their transparent attempts to ingratiate themselves to him for at least…He was pretty sure he’d suffered through it for three or four minutes. Now, he was done. All of the army officers were staring at him with concerned expressions. He let his gaze move from face to face before he finally spoke.
“This will not happen again,” he informed them.
“Lord Lu?” asked one of...
2025-05-09 04:02:47 +0000 UTC
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Sen refrained from looking at the cultivator that Falling Leaf still held. He was half-convinced that she’d forgotten she was holding him, but then she’d tighten her grip any time the man tried to gather his qi or started to struggle again. He supposed that the cultivator was getting a very condensed lesson in the humility he never bothered to develop. They’d long since crossed out of the cleared lands around the capital and were passing over the wilds. They had been as devoid of...
2025-05-08 02:58:39 +0000 UTC
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“I know,” said Sen.
“This is boring,” said Falling Leaf with quiet menace.
“Didn’t I just say that I know,” said Sen.
He hazarded a glance at Falling Leaf to discover that she was still glaring at him, as she had been for at least an hour. She was riding a horse next to him. Sen reconsidered that. To say she was riding the horse didn’t properly capture the relationship between rider and mount. The mare seemed to intuitively understand that Falling Leaf...
2025-05-07 06:13:33 +0000 UTC
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“I’d be a lot more comfortable with this if I was going with you,” said General Mo.
Sen glanced at the man before returning his gaze to the army. The final preparations to leave had been started days before, but it would still be late morning before they actual marching began. There was just so much cargo to be dealt with that the delay couldn’t be avoided. No wonder armies move so slowly, thought Sen. Even beyond the physical limitations of mortals
2025-05-06 05:11:10 +0000 UTC
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Yeah, I still haven't even given this thing an interim name, but i did write a couple more chapters. This also brings the total word count u
Yeah, I still haven't even given this thing an interim name, but i did write a couple more chapters. This also brings the total word count up to around 10,000, which is generally my threshold for deciding that I will finish something, rather than I might finish something. It may take a while, but it'll probably happen. So, enjoy! ~Eric
...
2025-05-04 08:41:48 +0000 UTC
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The next several days were much busier than Sen would have liked. Much of the preparation that the army had initially done for their march had to be redone. Partly to shore up stores of fresh food that Sen wound up putting into storage rings, and partly to account for all of the additions that would be joining them. In addition to the people that he had personally conscripted, the sects had done something he hadn’t expected. Each had provided contingents of their own to accompany the army. ...
2025-05-03 00:40:55 +0000 UTC
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Sorry everybody. No new chapters of anything today. I got slammed with another migraine this morning. It took two of my prescription pills and sprawling motionlessly in a dark quiet room all day to finally put it down. You can thank the weather, I think. We’ve had storm fronts moving through. Even now that it’s finally gone, I feel like I’m trying to push every thought through a bowl full of jelly. I made myself go to the grocery store to pick up some true essentials I was out of. On my...
2025-05-02 00:39:21 +0000 UTC
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Sen stared at the group of cultivators that he had dim memories of trying to teach his new qinggong technique. He’d largely allowed himself to forget about them because they all seemed so hopeless at it. Not that he blamed them for that failure. Their respective sects had been adamant that they were all gifted cultivators, which he’d accepted as likely being the truth. That meant that the problem was his ability to teach them the new technique, not their basic capabilities. Of cour...
2025-05-01 03:20:24 +0000 UTC
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I’m just saying that I’m in your mind, complained other-Terry. The universe shouldn’t be trope-stomping me for things that are only said in your mind.
Oh, my fucking God, you need to let this shit go, snapped Terry. I already told you my theory. If you don’t like it, come up with one that makes more sense. Until then, stop whining about this.
You’re the only person I can talk to.
2025-04-30 03:06:21 +0000 UTC
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“What do you mean to do with it?” asked Lo Meifeng as she looked around.
The sect compound that had oh so recently housed the Lunar Tiger Sect now stood empty. Sen had swept through the place, seizing the treasures he personally wanted and securing vows to the heavens from the less combat-oriented members of the sect. Then, he’d ordered them all outside the walls to join the army encampment. The compound, which had seemed almost undersized when the entirety of the Lunar Tig...
2025-04-29 23:34:30 +0000 UTC
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The death of an elder had a noticeably chilling effect on the rest of the sect, which had been Sen’s intent from the start. He loathed the waste involved with killing powerful cultivators who could be put to far better use in battle. However, by killing that one elder with an almost casual disdain, he hoped it would let him avoid killing too many more of the sect members. Many of the Lunar Tiger Sect disciples had lost the defiant looks they had been leveling at him before. There wer...
2025-04-28 22:06:03 +0000 UTC
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“James, this is Strix,” said Sig.
The mage had cheered up considerably since they’d left the alchemist shop, returning to his laconic tendencies rather brooding silence. Strix, on the other hand, left James at a bit of loss as to how to react. The man was extremely tall, thin to the point of emaciation, and had the pale, waxy complexion of a corpse. Add in the stark white hair and eyes that were a solid black from pupil to sclera, and James found himself wondering if the man was s...
2025-04-28 04:55:15 +0000 UTC
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