[I hear you. I added some stars between the sections to make it clear where the break is. Thank you, key piece of formatting advice there. - Warby]
They were hard women, faces weathered by the sun and the cold air of the Iron Hills. No few of the faces wore bruises. Some from rushing through the old mines as they fled thei...
2025-11-26 15:00:22 +0000 UTC View PostCensor Hanshen pressed his head to the cold tile floor. Each tile was made of Gotsu clay, transported by wagons and boats five hundred miles to the tile makers of Pei. There they were fired in kilns so hot, they couldn’t be opened for a week afterward. The tiles were glazed with crushed semi-precious stones, powdered metals and colored sands a...
2025-11-25 15:00:20 +0000 UTC View Post“What the dog fornicating hell just happened?”
“Language.”
“No, Sister Liren, I think I used exactly the correct words. I am keeping my composure, my dignity, and using the appropriate etiquette for both the company I am in, and the situation at hand. Strictly speaking, it’s not even profanity. However, if this isn...
2025-11-24 15:00:18 +0000 UTC View Post“We describe the Earth Realm as divided into nine ascending levels, but this is merely colloquial convenience and an intellectual misstep. In truth, it’s nine cycles of destruction and creation, returning to one at the end. Upon that return to one, there is a greater transformation, and a new cycle begins.” The ancient diviner explained. 2025-11-21 15:00:18 +0000 UTC View Post
Tian and Hong gathered on the road to the Monastery after breakfast.
“You look better. Less… I don’t know. Despairing. Moody.” Hong nodded approvingly.
“Since when am I moody? I’m a cheery, optimistic youth full of good feelings about people and the world.” Tian said righteously.
Hong just looked at hi...
2025-11-20 15:00:15 +0000 UTC View PostWest Town was a small place, but a good one. The streets were as clean as he remembered. The buildings were well maintained. The gutters that would soon be guiding away the torrential rains were kept clean. The rain would come, battering roofs and gathering on the streets. Then it would, by dint of gravity and careful design, slide off the roads...
2025-11-19 15:00:17 +0000 UTC View PostThe two young immortals ran home. Their feet flowed over the long miles more slowly now. Each struggling with the enormity of what they believed was the truth. How could they face their brothers and sisters, face their elders, face their families? How do you answer the courtesy questions about how you are and what you have been up to recently?&n...
2025-11-18 15:00:13 +0000 UTC View PostFour volumes in, I think most of you know my habits. Yes, we are closing in on the end of Vol. 4, with work on Vol. 5 already well underway on my end.
TL:DR- my next scheduled break from Sky Pride will run from November 27- December 7, with Chap. 1 of Vol. 5 going up on Dec. 8. This isn't to say all posting will stop, as I have a couple ...
2025-11-17 16:00:20 +0000 UTC View PostTian and Hong ran down the road while the crane drifted silently overhead. Tian’s mind twisted around and around, always returning to Heartmend and Cang Sen. The indifferent array master, and the suffering peasant. One was healthy, powerful, and free, the other anything but. Yet it was the supposedly enlightened immortal who preached that life...
2025-11-17 15:00:16 +0000 UTC View PostA mathematician would have wept at the elegance of the curve. Anyone who received an errant blow to a tender place would weep, or at least wince, at where the curve ended. Still, the aesthetic quality of the moment couldn’t be denied. A young, pretty looking madman displaying extraordinary muscular control and coordination, driving his dainty ...
2025-11-14 15:00:20 +0000 UTC View PostDaoist Heartmend stood straight, his eyes bright, his shoulders relaxed and his arms loose. His robes had once been decent enough, but now looked weathered and rough, a faded and mottled gray. His beard was wispy, reaching down to his chest, and his eyes were as deep as an old well. He carried no weapon, and wore no ornament other than a plain i...
2025-11-13 15:00:13 +0000 UTC View PostTian closed his eyes. Brother Long… he remembered their games of Go fondly, but with increasingly complicated feelings. Brother Long wasn’t suited for cultivation. Not really. He would have been happier living as a scholar, joining the civil service and living as a gentleman should.
Brother Long was smart enough to find beauty in...
2025-11-12 15:00:19 +0000 UTC View PostTian and Hong shared a long look. Were any of the bandit’s revelations true? He didn’t sound like he was lying, but that just meant that he believed it, not that he was right.
“How do those spikes work? The one the kids are on?” Hong asked.
“No idea. An emissary from, heh, our friends down south set them up. Cold bast...
2025-11-11 15:00:20 +0000 UTC View Post“When the heart becomes serene, much as ice and snow melt without the knowledge or sensation that they are melting, a ray of numinous light will suddenly appear. Not only do others not know when this happens, one has no sense of it oneself. At this moment, all things become utterly clear, no thoughts are born and it seems as though there is no...
2025-11-10 15:00:14 +0000 UTC View PostTian happened, suddenly and violently. He dove into the press of low-level bandits barehanded, ducking a little as though he were trying to evade the eyes of the bow carrying bandit chief. Which was true, to an extent. It made it easy to conceal his throw and the twisting path of the Imperial Heavenly Swallows.
The invisible darts sl...
2025-11-07 15:00:17 +0000 UTC View PostThis close to the Green River, farms and tiny farming villages were everywhere. You could say a lot of unkind things about the Broadsky Kingdom’s civil service, but their commitment to having peasants dig water management systems was entirely sincere. More importantly, it was skillful. Farms got irrigated. Floods were, to the extent possible, ...
2025-11-06 15:00:12 +0000 UTC View PostThere was no room at the inn. Tian gave the innkeeper a pregnant look. He knew perfectly damn well there were open rooms.
“Best I can do for you is let you sleep in the old goat shed. Three silver a night, no arguing! You are lucky I’m letting you stay here at all, looking like that.”
Tian shrugged. “If a tall woman wea...
2025-11-05 15:00:16 +0000 UTC View PostTian ceased all talking. All attention and energy was poured into a singular focus- healing. And getting taller. But definitely the healing part came first. Or at least at the same time.
The problem was too much thinking, and not enough not-thinking. It wasn’t that his senior brothers had scammed him. They told him the absolute truth- co...
2025-11-04 15:00:12 +0000 UTC View PostSilence gathered in the darkness. The sun had shifted across the sky, sending the little puddle of light sliding across the cavern. Tian wasn’t fit to talk, and Hong wasn’t in much better shape. Tian felt Grandpa Jun sitting next to him, patting his shoulder, or just being a comforting, ghostly, presence.
“I… know who my ...
2025-11-03 15:00:15 +0000 UTC View PostIt turned out that necessity did require an apology, even with entirely valid excuses. At least if the necessity in question involved getting your sister naked and washing her down with a handcloth.
Tian tried to point at the gory hell-pit that was the residue filled stone trough they had healed in. The ruins of the clothes were stil...
2025-10-31 14:00:16 +0000 UTC View PostTian woke up in darkness and pain. This, he reckoned, was a good thing. It meant he was still alive. The last thing he remembered was pulling off the tourniquets, then whiting out from the pain. He craned his neck down. Grandpa had very carefully directed him in how to splice an artery so that the blood was pumped into Liren, did a full circuit ...
2025-10-30 14:00:12 +0000 UTC View PostThe middle dantian, also known as the heart dantian or the Crimson Palace- associated with fire and yang, sometimes referred to as one of the three elixir fields, and also, important point, more or less in the literal heart. Or right next to it. It can vary. Oh boy do I love Daoist internal alchemy. It’s the way it’s not really consisten...
2025-10-29 14:00:17 +0000 UTC View PostTian wasn’t a doctor. He was studying medicine and working alongside doctors, but he was always very clear in his own mind that he was an orderly. He was there to assist, not provide treatment for anything but the most basic of injuries. His work as a field medic was to keep people alive long enough for a real doctor to work on them, not cure ...
2025-10-28 14:00:14 +0000 UTC View PostTian was pretty sure he was only unconscious for a moment. It felt like he had died. Everything around him was dark, his body was broken in… more places than he could easily count, and there was a reek of corruption. But high above was a ragged hole and a small trickle of water falling in, so it seemed he had landed in one of the dragon caves ...
2025-10-27 14:00:15 +0000 UTC View PostA little daoist stood in the yard behind an ordinary inn, in the ordinary town of Three Streams. It was called Three Streams because three streams met above the town before forming into a short river that fed into the Green River. Lots of soft rock in the area meant the Green River flowed through a deep valley, and twisting limestone caves pierc...
2025-10-24 14:00:12 +0000 UTC View PostTian stepped between Little Treasure and the inn’s window, his passing leaving the grass and dirt twisting behind him. He sent out his mind, calling for the crane to come quickly, to hurry over now. Danger! Terrible danger!
The window, and the wall around it, exploded outwards. Tian sensed more than saw knives flying towards him...
2025-10-23 14:00:08 +0000 UTC View PostIt was Brother Fu who sat Tian down after his first spar with Hong and told him to go make friends, or at least a friendly rival. It was Brother Fu who taught him how to serve tea, and with bloody hands on a cold battlefield, showed him the heart of it.
Compassion. Generosity. Connection. Peace. That was the Tea Dao handed down from ...
2025-10-22 14:00:11 +0000 UTC View PostDear Brother Zihao,
The soft breezes of late summer ruffle the tall grass and the Dustless Lotuses bloom in the cool waters of quiet ponds. The bees drinking the nectar have no idea that autumn’s chill is already in the air. I wish I didn’t, but since we got Senior Sister Lan’s emergency message, the whole of the Bamboo ...
2025-10-21 14:00:13 +0000 UTC View Post“I must confess, I am a little disappointed. Particularly because it does so many things well. The presentation boxes are quite lovely, and the flavor from the oranges is really wonderful. The aroma is excellent, fresh and lively, and as promised, you really can steep it over and over again without it losing its qi. It comes down to the choice...
2025-10-20 14:00:30 +0000 UTC View Post[Author Note: If I had Brother Fu's new master down as Heavensieve before, I apologize. It was corrected in my running copy of the text, but sometimes discrepencies arise between chapters depending on where and when they are posted. As you will immediately see below, it should be Starsieve. The reason I changed it is rather dull- there are a mil...
2025-10-17 14:00:16 +0000 UTC View Post