“If you need help…”
“I’m fine! You idiot, if you try to come near me again, I’m going to hit you with this sword!”
“Okay! Just… try not to trip over again, alright?”
“I have a missing leg, you simpleton, and this naked blade doesn’t make for a good walkin...
2025-05-21 08:48:14 +0000 UTC View PostRu Yunjin opened her eyes.
Her consciousness waned on the precipice, made worse by the foulness that surrounded her. Darkness and wet flesh pressed in on all sides. The smell would have overwhelmed her to madness had her nose and tongue not already rotted off.
All around her, the soun...
2025-05-20 11:10:12 +0000 UTC View PostHei Xingyu swung.
Blade-strewn hands sent forth rippling waves of infernal rage. Heat blasted her off in floods, turning the torpidity of cold decay into radiant flames. The virulent marshland, once soaked with moisture, has rapidly succumbed to an eerie, relentless dryness. Brown mud and g...
2025-05-19 09:56:06 +0000 UTC View Post“Does he meet your expectations so far?”
“It is nothing new. You presented me a Fool, and he acted the part. Am I to be impressed?”
“No. You are to understand, Botulvorn.”
“I understand his nature has not chan...
2025-05-18 09:34:14 +0000 UTC View PostThe air shifted.
The flow of the gushing tar oil from the cultivator’s wounds — previously reduced to dying trickles — suddenly exploded in intensity. Such was the pressure that the summons wrapped around the well of slime burst apart instantly. A spray of high-pressure tar nearly sev...
2025-05-17 12:00:10 +0000 UTC View Post~~~
“The world is vast and myriad in its mysteries. Do not ever assume you understand all under Heaven. The impossible has been made mundane. Nothing is certain any more.
“Not even death.”
— Unknown Source
----------------------
Fen...
2025-05-17 09:32:49 +0000 UTC View PostA chuckle resounded in his head once more.
“Prideful Dragon. Fortunately for both of us, today is not the day I’ve decided for us to die.”
Feng wished he shared his phantom’s optimism.
Bihui snapped his — their? Feng still remembered the ghostly, near-inhuman ...
2025-05-17 00:00:06 +0000 UTC View Post“I am Bihui,” the foreign cultivator greeted politely. “Young Master of the Howling Meadows Sect.”
Feng frowned. “I have not heard of your Sect.”
The Young Master was taught all the names of the monasteries that populate the Outer Northern Provinces of the Empire. He had m...
2025-05-16 09:18:14 +0000 UTC View Post~~~
“There was a time, an Age ago, when we were told thus: True cultivation demands patience, humility, and respect for the natural order. True immortality is not walked in haste, but with tiny steps thousands of years in the making.
“That Age is long past. We know no...
2025-05-15 10:50:59 +0000 UTC View Post~~~
“True strength lies not in power, but in the ability to endure trials of the heart.
“All of Earth and Heaven may move to confront you, but none will test your resolve as much as yourself. Only you can decide if you will rise before Tribulation.
“F...
2025-05-14 10:45:34 +0000 UTC View PostYunjin fell to her knees and bowed immediately.
“I greet the Corpus of the Decaying Greyroots Sect.”
Her body was shaking uncontrollably. Her face spilt blood from every orifice, each drop of red thickening into foul pus the moment they were exposed to the rancid air.
Eyes w...
2025-05-13 09:28:05 +0000 UTC View Post~~~
“You told me to prepare you a weapon fit to slay gods. It may be a millennium late, but I dare say I have delivered.”
“We shall see. In the meantime… Would you like a wager, Botulvorn?”
“Hmm… Why not? The Dead have...
2025-05-13 00:00:04 +0000 UTC View Post“This is… rather unprecedented, Young Master.”
“Are you denying me access?” Feng coldly questioned.
“If it is your desire, then I — a humble cultivator of your Sect — am in no position to refuse,” the tournament handler apologised dryly. “However, I feel I would be...
2025-05-12 11:02:41 +0000 UTC View Post“Well, it’s better than assaulting the guest compound, I guess,” the Senior begrudgingly relented. “For a moment there, I thought you were going to drag the entire Beheaded Phoenix Sect into a war against the Decaying Greyroots just to save one woman — their own Heiress, no less! Lady R...
2025-05-11 08:00:06 +0000 UTC View Post~~~
“‘The bitterest of hardships forge the greatest soul…’ I must say, I am not too fond of that saying. Temper swords if you must, but remember that too much of it just embrittles and breaks the blade. You should learn to be like me: brewing, drinking, and being drunk...
2025-05-10 12:12:04 +0000 UTC View Post“This world — our world — exists only for those who are blessed. Those vaulted, precious few who are chosen by fate to walk that most harrowing and timeless of roads: the Path to Mount Tai, where immortality waits.”
“Do not interrupt her.” The lady in his head spoke onc...
2025-05-09 09:52:51 +0000 UTC View PostFeng breathed out. “Do you plan to return to your Sect? You can’t possibly want that.”
“... I do not,” Yunjin replied after a while. “But neither do I have long to live. I can feel it. My body… It is dying.”
“Quite frankly, I’m surprised she held for so long. T...
2025-05-09 00:00:05 +0000 UTC View Post~~~
“In death, rebirth. In pain, growth. In suffering, Immortality.”
— ‘The Hungry Decay’, a common chant among supplicants of the Decaying Greyroots
----------------------
4 years ago…
The Blighted Bog was, wit...
2025-05-08 08:41:01 +0000 UTC View PostWhat future do they share? How was Feng to know?
“Thread carefully,” the wraith warned.
Who was Yunjin to him? Feng thought long and hard. He could not find an adequate answer.
Four years ago, she was the girl he failed to save. Four years ago, she was the girl he d...
2025-05-07 09:47:23 +0000 UTC View PostThe phantom woman looked clearer with each passing day. No longer was her face or form obscured, as it had been ever since he broke into the Shaping Realm. Now, he could almost view the full breadth of her breathtaking beauty, one that he had only last witnessed as a child.
There were those...
2025-05-06 11:21:58 +0000 UTC View Post~~~
“There shall be times when a cultivator must give certain aspects of themselves to advance the Path. Their pride, their morals, their very flesh. Yet there are two things one must hold dear, lest their cultivation deviate entirely and they lose themselves.
...
2025-05-05 09:31:39 +0000 UTC View Post~~~
4 years ago…
“Come on! We are almost there!”
Feng whispered encouragements to the struggling girl as he pulled her up a bulging plant root. The stolon was rotted through, pock-marked in countless pustules filled with grub-ridden slime...
2025-05-04 06:00:04 +0000 UTC View PostShe had changed much since he last saw her.
Feng’s last memory of Yunjin was not kind. Pale, sickly, with her skin bulging, and her torso bloated by moving grubs. Hair thin and torn off in clumps, their original dark colours turned white at the roots due to stress. One eye milk-pale with ...
2025-05-03 05:57:00 +0000 UTC View PostThe girl blinked. She felt the floor vibrate. A weird noise had just echoed within the chamber. More than that, there was something in her eye. Was that… light?
Her half-blinded vision was slow to adjust, but eventually, she saw it: a single crack in the wall of her room, letting in just ...
2025-05-02 12:04:32 +0000 UTC View Post~~~
“Embrace Decay. Embrace Eternal life.”
— Creed of the Botulvorn
----------------------
4 years ago…
It hurts.
It always hurts. Yunjin could no longer remember a time when her body did not hurt. He...
2025-05-01 12:20:01 +0000 UTC View Post“... and next we have a delegation from the Cocoon Weaving Sect, who presents to you a shipment of clothing produced personally by the Matriarch of the Ju Clan herself: the esteemed Eight-Eyed Weaver. It is her sincere hope that…”
The announcer carried on. In that poor Inner Disciple...
2025-05-01 00:20:00 +0000 UTC View Post“Thank you once again, Honoured Elder. I understand you had your apprehensions in regard to this affair.”
Divine Viands were not to be carelessly used. For the last thousand years, the Corpus of the Beheaded Phoenix had been repeatedly plundered for parts to consume. What was once a bou...
2025-04-30 12:20:01 +0000 UTC View Post~~~
“A true cultivator knows himself above all other matters. He must be wary of his desires, his wants, and he must constantly use the Path to fulfil them.
“Spiritual advancement does not necessarily come from the acquisition of greater techniques, qi pills,...
2025-04-29 12:06:23 +0000 UTC View Post~~~
“Are you sure you don’t want me to go with you?”
The Dragon turned, looking at the sword-grafter at his side.
Daiyu no longer looked the same as she had all those centuries ago, when they first began their journey. Her body was marred wit...
2025-04-28 12:03:20 +0000 UTC View Post~~~
Feng was somewhere else again.
There was… a room? The air tasted cloyingly vile. It reeked of perversion, of sex, and strangely enough…
The scent of lightning and passion. Gunpowder and silver mercury.
Something moved against...
2025-04-27 08:00:24 +0000 UTC View Post