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. ...
2024-05-27 09:25:58 +0000 UTC View Post“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...
2024-05-27 06:02:12 +0000 UTC View Post“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...
2024-05-26 05:18:49 +0000 UTC View PostWhen 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...
2024-05-26 01:55:08 +0000 UTC View PostSilence 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 nas...
2024-05-25 13:07:24 +0000 UTC View PostThe 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...
2024-05-25 10:04:15 +0000 UTC View PostAs 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 ...
2024-05-24 22:57:13 +0000 UTC View PostSen 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. Th...
2024-05-24 06:25:27 +0000 UTC View PostSen 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 st...
2024-05-23 08:38:48 +0000 UTC View PostThe 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 wa...
2024-05-23 04:19:06 +0000 UTC View PostBahn 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 underst...
2024-05-22 06:27:12 +0000 UTC View PostSen 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 obviou...
2024-05-22 04:09:16 +0000 UTC View PostIf 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...
2024-05-21 06:16:39 +0000 UTC View PostAs 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 so...
2024-05-21 00:32:08 +0000 UTC View Post“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 peopl...
2024-05-20 09:06:48 +0000 UTC View PostSen 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 ple...
2024-05-20 05:16:54 +0000 UTC View PostLong 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 t...
2024-05-19 07:37:58 +0000 UTC View PostThe 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 s...
2024-05-19 05:55:50 +0000 UTC View PostOkay, 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 ...
2024-05-18 19:54:44 +0000 UTC View PostOkay, 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 o...
2024-05-17 23:23:30 +0000 UTC View PostOkay, 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 permanentl...
2024-05-17 19:09:42 +0000 UTC View Post“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 ...
2024-05-17 06:02:34 +0000 UTC View PostAfter 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 wa...
2024-05-17 03:40:44 +0000 UTC View PostThe 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,...
2024-05-16 23:24:54 +0000 UTC View PostSen 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 t...
2024-05-16 06:50:08 +0000 UTC View PostSen 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 retur...
2024-05-16 05:16:47 +0000 UTC View PostSen 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 g...
2024-05-15 05:08:31 +0000 UTC View PostWhenever 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, th...
2024-05-14 05:27:37 +0000 UTC View PostAlready 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 tribul...
2024-05-14 02:33:00 +0000 UTC View Post“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...
2024-05-13 18:03:06 +0000 UTC View Post