The throne room was, to Sen’s surprise, substantially more ornate than the one that Jing was no doubt occupying at that very moment. Not that it bothered Sen. The man had to work somewhere, and it wasn’t like that room was being used for anything else. This throne room contained more gold and...
2025-10-07 00:21:35 +0000 UTC View PostOkay, I don't know if a few people took it as a challenge, or maybe they thought I was lying about the comments still being monitored, or maybe they thought I didn't mean it about the ban hammer, or maybe they wanted to throw me off my game again...But, let me assure you, the ban hammer is real. ...
2025-10-06 16:14:26 +0000 UTC View PostEven for Varal, moving such a large sum of money, to say nothing of summoning a reliable solicitor, were not tasks that could be settled in a day. He ended up spending most of a week in that small town before his part in events could be called settled. Not that his business there was truly over. ...
2025-10-05 21:46:40 +0000 UTC View PostOkay, I've had a few days to cool down. I'm not shutting the page down. I suspect anyone whose been here for a while knew that's what would happen before I did. Pulling the plug on the entire page would be a wildly overblown reaction. Like trying to unclog a sink by throwing dynamite down the dra...
2025-10-05 21:44:48 +0000 UTC View PostYeah, I know I said no new chapters on UC today or tomorrow. Apparently, my brain decided that meant that this was the ideal opportunity to push this idea back to the front of my head strongly enough that it woke me up and demanded I write it. And this is where I share chapters of things when...
2025-10-03 08:19:26 +0000 UTC View PostSorry everybody. There won't be any chapters today or tomorrow.
On a completely related note... For anyone who thinks that the best way to encourage more and better work from a writer, one who just told you they'll be burning the candle at both ends for a while, is to tell them that the thi...
2025-10-02 23:40:29 +0000 UTC View Post“I always feel like a fool when we do this,” said Sen under his breath.
“It’s necessary. It projects the appropriate bearing,” said Master Feng.
Row upon row of soldiers marched ahead of him. He could see more rows of soldiers marching behind him in his spiritual sense. Sen ...
2025-10-02 04:25:47 +0000 UTC View PostJust an FYI, Patreon is monkeying around with things under the hood and changing things to work less efficiently. So, expect problems like their help center not working, messages not posting, comments not posting, and probably payment issues. I literally have no control over this. I only discover...
2025-10-01 17:40:57 +0000 UTC View PostSomething Sen had learned was that battling spirit beasts and battling other human beings was both fundamentally different and oddly similar. It just depending on which part of the battle one focused on. The differences were particularly stark at the beginning. The number of sapient spirit beasts...
2025-10-01 02:12:11 +0000 UTC View PostThe cultivator came running up to Sen with qinggong technique speeds. This was one of the handful of cultivators he’d personally, well, trained was too strong a word for it. He’d nudged them toward his better qinggong method with a vague idea to use them as couriers. Then, when they...
2025-09-30 03:41:38 +0000 UTC View PostWhile Varal was often direct, it wasn’t common for him to be quite so blunt. Most nobles would take immediate offense, and the commoners in his service would often infer that he was angry with them. Neither was a productive outcome. Yet, everything he’d seen from the knight and his wife sugge...
2025-09-30 01:25:12 +0000 UTC View PostSo, as seemingly always happens on my "week off" between volumes, nothing went quite as a planned. All of that productivity I was hoping for got swept away on a wave of migraines. I think i had four of them across seven days. Honestly, it's sort of blurry. I swear, it's like my brain waits for th...
2025-09-30 01:23:30 +0000 UTC View PostAnd here it is, the lost bloopers chapter! Enjoy! ~Eric
***
Boulder’s Shadow continued, “One cultivator wiped out the entirety of our forces at the city. One. Man.”
“You lie,” said the Beast King. “How could one man do such a...
2025-09-25 08:46:46 +0000 UTC View PostSalutations! Kat here, I JUST NOW realized the previewed double sentence isn't actually preview and it's publishing direct to ya'll. I'm so sorry. I didn't take full account of ALL the updates that had been released, (nor had I been paying too close attention to my work- sheesh) I will be corr...
2025-09-24 12:58:43 +0000 UTC View PostAfter a moment or two, Sen recalled something that he’d been meaning to ask about for a while.
“Did Laughing River ever ascend? I mean, I went through a lot of trouble to get that rock for him.”
“You mean that impossibly valuable spatial treasure?”
“Yeah, his ...
2025-09-20 00:37:56 +0000 UTC View PostIn contrast to the chaos and violence he’d experienced when arriving at Emperor’s Bay, leaving the city seemed strangely quiet to Sen. It was almost as if the entire city was holding its breath. Not that he was complaining about that. If fear was keeping people from doing foolish things that ...
2025-09-18 12:28:14 +0000 UTC View PostIt was a relief to both Varal and Aima’s parents when Jarem came in to announce that dinner was ready to be served. It gave all of them something to do other than reflect on what had just transpired between the father and daughter. By the time everyone was seated, had a drink, and the food was ...
2025-09-17 08:30:15 +0000 UTC View PostDespite the fact that the orphanage and school only existed because of his word, Sen had spent almost no time there. There were reasons for that. Some of it was simply time. There were many demands on his time, and the hours when he might have visited were also hours when children should be sleep...
2025-09-17 05:48:04 +0000 UTC View PostWhat remained of the local nobility and politicians stood before Sen. With one exception, they were pale-faced, sweaty, and wouldn’t meet his gaze. The magistrate stood alone among them in that he met Sen’s gaze without hesitation, as well he should. He’d proven where he stood and paid for ...
2025-09-17 04:11:42 +0000 UTC View PostSen found himself both relieved and sad as he watched Uncle Kho fly off on a qi platform with Shui. The girl had not been enthusiastic, at all, about the prospect of being separated from him.
“It isn’t safe where I’m going,” he told her. “There will be a lot of those mean spirit b...
2025-09-13 05:09:27 +0000 UTC View PostSen wasn’t sure where to direct his attention. His first instinct was to look at Shui.
“Again!” she shouted with the kind of enthusiasm only a small child can muster.
Master Feng, who the girl had immediately decided was a nice old man and promptly adopted as her own, had been f...
2025-09-12 03:55:16 +0000 UTC View PostThere was something truly odd about watching an army prepare to leave in Sen’s opinion. There had been at least semi-orderly rows of tents, makeshift paddocks for the officer’s horses, and a frankly staggering amount of wood smoke. Now, it looked as though someone had disturbed an espe...
2025-09-11 05:19:30 +0000 UTC View PostIt only took Varal one look at the condition of the Jareks’s estate to recognize the true desperation of their current plight. Pains had been taken by someone to keep the gate and exterior of the walls clear, but the interior told another story. The grounds were largely overgrown, no doubt beca...
2025-09-10 07:26:22 +0000 UTC View PostSen hesitated at the door for a long moment. He knew the visit was necessary and unavoidable, but that didn’t make him eager for it. Like most unpleasant, necessary things, he also realized that putting it off wasn’t going to make it more enjoyable. Lifting his hand, he knocked on the door. S...
2025-09-10 04:26:55 +0000 UTC View Post“They’re already calling it The Night of Widows and Orphans,” said a pale-faced general.
Sen had noticed that all of his mortal generals had suddenly found much more patriotic and dutiful versions of themselves in the last two days. He didn’t know if it was the sheer brutal...
2025-09-09 04:25:49 +0000 UTC View PostYup, the writing brain is back in gear. Once I got going, it really got going. I wrote this and my brain wants me to write another chapter because of course it does, but it's 3am here. So, i'm gonna call it a day. But, more for you to enjoy! ~Eric
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<... 2025-09-07 07:13:59 +0000 UTC View PostOkay, the con-plague seems to have worked its way out of my system after several days of not doing much but sleeping. My attempts to write yesterday were...less than stellar. Here's a representative sample of what it was like:
The big bloody mess was messy. It made Sen scowl...scowlingly. T...
2025-09-07 03:31:35 +0000 UTC View PostIt literally took me until today to finish this one chapter. That tells you how well trying to write yesterday went. But, I think I've kicked my brain back into writing gear now. in the meantime, enjoy! ~Eric
***
Varal turned his attention to Daran...
2025-09-07 03:19:53 +0000 UTC View PostAs promised, here is the con-plague update. I am feeling better...ish. However, I also spent most of the last 24 hours sleeping, dozing, or napping...and I'm still feeling tired. I'm not coughing constantly anymore, but my entire torso aches because of all the coughing I was doing. So, t...
2025-09-04 19:39:07 +0000 UTC View PostHey everyone. I made it back from Dragon Con alive and with only a small duffel bag’s worth of new books and stuff. That’s more of an accomplishment than it sounds like when you got floor after floor of vendors selling some really cool geek stuff.
Sadly, I also returned with con-plague....
2025-09-03 16:24:04 +0000 UTC View Post