CHAPTER
36
TALKS AND TESTS
JIEYUAN
—∞—
“You’re back.” Meiyao had eyes narrowed, looking him up and down. Arms crossed over her chest, standing by the door. “And whole. Early, too.”
Jieyuan was in front of her doorway. On his way back t...
2024-10-07 02:57:48 +0000 UTC View PostCHAPTER
35
BORN ANEW
JIEYUAN
—∞—
The senior protector’s footsteps sounded faint, muffled, and they grew fainter, until Jieyuan could barely hear them. He lay on the ground, head to the side, grass prickling the right side of his face. Darkness crawl...
2024-10-05 03:00:33 +0000 UTC View PostCHAPTER
34
TAKE YOUR TIME
JIEYUAN
—∞—
Immediately, the Fatebloom Heart stopped beating. Jieyuan felt his own heart race even faster, like it was picking up the slack, compensating for the Fatebloom Heart’s sudden lack of movement.
Chroma start...
2024-10-03 02:08:26 +0000 UTC View PostCHAPTER
33
FATEBLOOM HEART
JIEYUAN
—∞—
It took Jieyuan a couple of seconds to remember himself and get a sense of what had just happened—what was still happening.
His thoughts were faint, unfocused—and mingled, he distantly realized...
2024-10-01 02:52:12 +0000 UTC View PostCHAPTER
32
IN THE HEART
JIEYUAN
—∞—
That was the second Fusongshi he’d killed. First an inner disciple, now a core disciple.
In a way, it was like he was moving up in the world. Maybe too fast, though. At this rate, he’d be dealing with a co...
2024-09-30 02:34:16 +0000 UTC View PostCHAPTER
31
TO DISTRACT
JIEYUAN
—∞—
Jieyuan threw the pill—and it’d barely left his fingers when the elk at the front charged forward, and barely a moment later he felt something pulling him forward, like he’d just jumped off a cliff and was fall...
2024-09-29 00:37:52 +0000 UTC View PostCHAPTER
30
IN THE WOODS
JIEYUAN
—∞—
Hardly a month and a half ago, the Fatebloom Woods had been quite the sight. Jieyuan remembered quite clearly his first impressions of it. To him, the trunks of the fatebloom trees had been like massive, towering pi...
2024-09-29 00:36:53 +0000 UTC View PostCHAPTER
29
TO PREPARE
JIEYUAN
Jieyuan was standing in his doorway, clad in his new set of topaz robes. Just in front of his residence, rising into the air on a cloudcraft, was the Management Bureau elder who’d just now processed his induction to the Inner Court...
2024-09-28 01:15:57 +0000 UTC View Post
TERMINOLOGY CHANGES
(Dated 2024-09-27. If you've started reading FaUn on or after that date, feel free to ignore the announcement below.)
As I’m now starting to publish Volume 2 here, I’ve gone all over the feedback I’ve gotten on the story so far, picked out which ones I could feasibly apply without h...
2024-09-28 01:15:05 +0000 UTC View PostCHAPTER
28
AND THEY PLOT
QINGSHI
—∞—
Back straight, legs crossed, hands resting on his thighs, Qingshi sat on the floor of his cell, his back against the wall. Although he didn’t know the exact location, he could tell that he was in the lowest level...
2024-09-25 00:28:31 +0000 UTC View PostCHAPTER
27
TO SET FORTH
JIEYUAN
—∞—
Meiyao sat in Jieyuan’s living room. Jieyuan sat across her, the small table that had come up with the house between them. He had all the windows closed, and the yellow-white gemstone light embedded on the ceiling...
2024-09-25 00:27:20 +0000 UTC View PostCHAPTER
26
AMONG LIES
JIEYUAN
—∞—
“Is that so, Daojue?” Taishou asked Daojue. “You were the one who found the cave?” Taishou didn’t seem particularly surprised—he didn’t seem like anything, really, his expression now inscrutable. His gaz...
2024-09-25 00:26:08 +0000 UTC View PostCHAPTER
25
IN THE SECT
JIEYUAN
—∞—
It was at much lower speeds—but still far, far faster than Jieyuan could hope to run, at least at his soulsign—that Taishou flew the cloudcraft through what Jieyuan assumed to be the Inner Court. Fr...
2024-09-25 00:24:50 +0000 UTC View PostCHAPTER
24
TO RETURN
JIEYUAN
—∞—
Yunzhu slowly lowered her cloud to the ground.
Jieyuan stared at her throughout the entire length of her descent, mystified. Nobody reacted.
Yunzhu alighted not too far away from where Qingshi was standing....
2024-09-23 02:54:34 +0000 UTC View PostCHAPTER
23
CROSSING REALMS
JIEYUAN
—∞—
Jieyuan had headed straight back to their initial location after his fight with Sunqiu, and seeing Daojue’s fight with Qingshi hadn’t ended yet, he’d stayed to the side, beside a gleamstone tree and out of ...
2024-09-23 02:53:46 +0000 UTC View PostCHAPTER
22
PROMISED FIGHT
DAOJUE
—∞—
Daojue and Gleaming End were one.
The spear Daojue was as if a perfect extension of himself. As he swung and thrust it, he felt the weapon’s thirst for blood and battle. Although he had yet to grow fully ac...
2024-09-23 02:52:49 +0000 UTC View PostCHAPTER
21
TO BRING DEATH
JIEYUAN
—∞—
Over to Jieyuan’s left, Daojue and Qingshi began a battle that, by all accounts, seemed to be long-awaited on both sides. Even further over to his left, Meiyao and Liangjie got up to some bloody business of thei...
2024-09-21 22:43:33 +0000 UTC View PostCHAPTER
20
TO ACCUSE
JIEYUAN
—∞—
Confused though he was, Jieyuan still took quick stock of the situation. Qingshi was a mostly known element—blind, sword user, very skilled, no realmskill—but the two inner disciples beside were pure ...
2024-09-21 02:29:04 +0000 UTC View PostCHAPTER
19
TO CONFUSE
JIEYUAN
—∞—
What in the Heavens?
It was like he’d hit a roadblock not even a step past the starting line.
He quickly scanned through its contents, but it was all just more of the same, utte...
2024-09-20 16:14:06 +0000 UTC View PostCHAPTER
18
SO IT GOES
JIEYUAN
—∞—
Jieyuan had spent fifteen nights in the Gleamstone Forest. The first handful or so of them, he’d been tense, on edge, and it’d been a rather unfortunate confluence of factors that had led to that less-than-pleasan...
2024-09-20 16:12:33 +0000 UTC View PostCHAPTER
17
OF THE STONE
JIEYUAN
—∞—
Jieyuan turned around to face the entrance pretty much together with Daojue, and he did it just in time to see Daojue snap his arms forward and send Glistening End flying out of his hands, the spear cutting through ...
2024-09-18 23:12:28 +0000 UTC View PostCHAPTER
16
IN THE CAVE
DAOJUE
—∞—
The Ring burned.
It sat wrapped around the forefinger of Daojue’s right hand, the hand with which Daojue held his spear as he ran. Daojue felt himself being pulled forward, and it was the Ring...
2024-09-18 23:11:24 +0000 UTC View PostCHAPTER
15
TO ESCAPE
JIEYUAN
—∞—
Jieyuan was caught up trying to come up with both a reason why this was happening and a way out of it—and coming up awfully empty on both accounts—when Meiyao stepped forward, pointing her finesaber at the inner el...
2024-09-18 00:42:27 +0000 UTC View PostCHAPTER
14
TO ADVANCE
JIEYUAN
—∞—
Jieyuan’s soulprism fell apart in a slow, prolonged outburst, the chroma comprising it dispersing evenly throughout the prismgap like a blooming cloud of red. As the first particles of chroma began penetrating the s...
2024-09-16 22:48:02 +0000 UTC View PostCHAPTER
13
TRUTH AND LIE
JIEYUAN
—∞—
The fight had barely begun, and already Jieyuan was losing.
He was on his back foot, literally and figuratively, as Daojue’s spear stabbed at his neck. Jieyuan managed to lift his own spear to bat it aside ...
2024-09-16 15:46:25 +0000 UTC View PostCHAPTER
12
NOT TO FIGHT
JIEYUAN
—∞—
What came next wasn’t the wet, crunching sounds of flesh being torn and bone being shattered—the sounds you’d expect to come from the collision of a fullgauntlet and a face—but the dull ring of metal meeting...
2024-09-13 20:50:26 +0000 UTC View PostCHAPTER
11
HAZE OF RED
JIEYUAN
—∞—
Jieyuan got about twelve steps in before the wolf reacted. From absolute stillness it snapped into a crouch, four legs bending, body tilting forward, and then it leaped—pushing off against glistenstone, la...
2024-09-13 19:54:22 +0000 UTC View PostCHAPTER
10
TO PREDATE
JIEYUAN
—∞—
It was Meiyao who’d whipped her hand out, a signal sure as any for them to stop, and there’d been something so sharp about the motion that Jieyuan reacted immediately, soulstilling as he snapped into a stance.
... 2024-09-13 19:19:12 +0000 UTC View PostCHAPTER
9
GLISTENSTONE
JIEYUAN
—∞—
It was in almost complete silence that what looked like a line of gray clouds appeared on the horizon, coming from the direction of the Inner Court. Beyond the Topaz Arch, a light gray cut across the blue-white skies...
2024-09-13 17:27:14 +0000 UTC View PostCHAPTER
8
SO THEY MEET
JIEYUAN
—∞—
As Yunzhu and Qingshi walked over, the crowd parted around them like Jieyuan had often seen mundanes get out of the way of cultivators back in Radiant Gold City—hurriedly, but discretely, so as not to draw attentio...
2024-09-13 16:04:23 +0000 UTC View Post