In the physical realm, Yoshika’s defensive techniques barely withstood the twinned assault of the tribulation’s fifth strike, while within her soul she struggled against the corrupting influence of the Kumiho’s manifestation. It was a race against time. She needed the Kumiho’s power to defeat the tribulation, but if the tribulation weake...
2024-07-26 20:32:46 +0000 UTC View Post
As Tsuu works hard to get the cover arts for volumes 7 and 8 done (I've decided to schedule them much earlier than others in order to prevent any delays) I decided to give her a little break with some simpler commissions. This one is style and expression sheets for Yan Yue.
In the same vein, CJ's been cooking up something truly amazing tha...
2024-07-24 18:05:02 +0000 UTC View PostThe Sky Hall’s barrier did nothing to block the tribulation’s strike. Eunae hadn’t had time to retake control of the formations, and they weren’t designed for that in the first place—Heian’s improper use of the barriers was what had led to the damage they’d been repairing.
Nevertheless, Eunae was unscathed. Queen Eunhee had t...
2024-07-24 18:04:23 +0000 UTC View PostIn many ways Seong Eunae considered herself to be an incredibly lucky person. She was born into a powerful family, given the best education available anywhere in the world, and raised in an environment where she could never have wanted for anything. She could have ended up utterly spoiled, but growing up as the black sheep of the family had temp...
2024-07-22 19:05:44 +0000 UTC View PostOwing to its relatively small population and the bountiful resources of Mount Geumji, Jiaguo City was incredibly wealthy for its size, by immortal standards. As such, it was surprisingly easy for Yoshika to meet Goryeo’s demands to recoup the cost of the Sky Hall’s repairs. However, it gave Eui an opportunity to get a meeting with the queen....
2024-07-19 17:15:47 +0000 UTC View PostYan Yue stretched and yawned as she pored over mountains of impossibly dull legal texts. The Qin Empire had a long, long history of bureaucracy, and a complicated legal framework with dense layers and thousands of years of edicts and precedents to untangle.
In the millennia since its founding, the empire had created entire fi...
2024-07-17 20:34:14 +0000 UTC View PostSovereign Shen wasn’t inclined to stay once their deal was struck, and Yoshika wasn’t inclined to host him. He tried to leave the way he came, but Yoshika blocked his access to the spirit realm. He turned to frown at her.
“What’s the meaning of this?”
Jia crossed her arms and gave him a belligerent scoff.
“Hmph! We ...
2024-07-15 18:27:22 +0000 UTC View PostYoshika’s reincarnation wasn’t the most comfortable subject. It had been a harrowing and painful experience, and she still occasionally struggled with the question of whether she was still the same person who’d died. The fact that Sovereign Shen regarded it as some sort of rite of passage to make her worthy of his attention rankled.
...
2024-07-12 20:04:11 +0000 UTC View PostHyeong Aecha quickly skimmed over the list of documents for her mistress to deal with, briefly contemplating how to assess their importance for sorting purposes. Since none of it was truly urgent, she chose to arrange them based on what she anticipated the empress would want to see first.
Thus prepared, she entered Hayakawa Kaede’s offic...
2024-07-10 17:17:59 +0000 UTC View PostHeian dispersed herself through the formation Yoshika had created, focusing her essence into the mana stone. Even though it was unattuned, the sheer power of the stone still resisted her at first, eroding her essence rather than being converted by it. The formation helped—from every direction, Heian’s power forced its way through, eventually...
2024-07-08 17:52:59 +0000 UTC View PostThe sun was high and the sky was clear and cloudless as Heian and Narae stepped into the center of the courtyard. Heian couldn’t feel the warmth of the sun, but she could imagine it. She had vague memories of physical sensation which her mothers had shared with her, and she’d briefly shared Jia’s body as Lee Hei in the past.
Beyond t...
2024-07-05 18:44:34 +0000 UTC View PostHeian sat patiently at her mother’s feet and watched as her friends attempted to prove their worth. It seemed like a silly trial to her. The tests were narrow and specific, and seemed to be designed more to aggrandize the tiny sliver of cultivation that the arcane practitioners specialized in rather than to actually measure the abilities of th...
2024-07-03 20:06:59 +0000 UTC View Post“Convert any input mana into a balanced mixture, then filter out each primary element into individual crystallization arrays.”
Narae was already drawing before Seong Min even finished speaking. She had to suppress a laugh. The formations were tough, but they had an obvious theme. Every task they’d been given was extremely mana-hungry...
2024-07-01 20:56:05 +0000 UTC View PostHaeun was nervous. More nervous than she’d ever been in her life. More than the first time she’d snuck out of the palace, more than when Eunae had asked Yoshika to take her on as an apprentice, more than her first day at Jiaguo’s academy, and even more than when she’d first learned that she’d be returning home.
It wasn’t a fear...
2024-06-28 18:37:02 +0000 UTC View Post
My good friend Loaka and I both have our birthdays in June, so I thought it would be fun to commission a design of the protagonist from her Fates Parallel fanfic-turned-semi-official-author-approved-spinoff, Jingyi Bo!
You can read her story for free here: 2024-06-26 19:28:28 +0000 UTC View Post
With only a few days left before Haeun and Narae’s exams, Eui didn’t have much time to question Misun about what she’d seen in the Kumiho’s memories. Even if she had, she doubted that the princess would have been open to answering. Indeed, when Eui took the mental snapshots of the formation that Dae requested, Misun was brusque and stand...
2024-06-26 19:28:09 +0000 UTC View PostThe plan is simple, elegant, and almost certainly a trap. The great spirits have no choice but to agree, however. Heaven and earth have turned against them, and they have precious few allies to rely on. The vessels will harbor them within their souls, passing on their legacies and protecting them from the sky’s wrath. The spirits, in turn,...
2024-06-24 19:04:43 +0000 UTC View PostMelody of the Dreaming Moon was a technique that Yoshika had learned from Yan Yue. Supposedly passed down through the generations from mother to daughter, but after learning where Yue’s maternal ancestry led, she had to wonder how much of that was true. A curiosity to explore later, perhaps.
In the meantime, what mattered to Eui was that...
2024-06-21 18:11:31 +0000 UTC View PostI accidentally posted the wrong chapter today, because apparently counting is hard. I've decided to just leave it up for now, and skip the Wednesday post (so basically, the Xiantian+ tiers get Wednesday's chapter early).
I'm posting this announcement about it for two reasons. First, I'm handling it a bit strangely, by editing the first cha...
2024-06-17 19:58:43 +0000 UTC View PostWhen Eui made the girls perform their spellcraft drills a thousand times per day, she thought she’d been too harsh. After all, even if they spent every waking moment on it, they’d have to complete each set in less than a minute and a half to meet that deadline. The plan had been to ease off after a few days once the routine had been set to g...
2024-06-17 19:58:30 +0000 UTC View PostWith the girls hard at work practicing for their exams, and Kaede taking care of her administrative duties for a while, Jia was left with the rare blessing of an empty schedule. Usually, there was always more to do, no matter how much she delegated, and it was easy to see why so many powerful people just dumped their responsibilities on their su...
2024-06-17 18:36:59 +0000 UTC View PostEui’s visit with Misun had left her with more questions than answers. Both Misun and her mother professed to simply trust her to do whatever was best for Haeun and Eunae, but neither of them gave the other that same benefit. In a similar vein, neither of them had actually made a specific request of her. Her best guess was that both were trying...
2024-06-14 18:03:55 +0000 UTC View PostEui frowned at Misun’s accusation.
“That’s a pretty dire claim. Not to mention vague—what do you even mean by ‘compromised’?”
Misun scowled and returned to her corner, fishing through the disorganized pile of documents as she spoke.
“I’m not entirely sure. I have to admit that it’s difficult to separate the ...
2024-06-12 20:28:34 +0000 UTC View PostPoring over endless tomes of literal arcane text was not Lee Narae’s idea of a good time. Headmaster Hyeong’s study notes weren’t as horrifically dry as, say, Professor Hwang Sung’s lectures, and she appreciated the work that he’d put into compiling them for her and Haeun, but after the first hour of studying Narae was already growing ...
2024-06-10 19:52:26 +0000 UTC View PostEui and her disciples gathered in one of the guest mansion’s many sitting rooms to go over the details of Haeun’s upcoming test. As promised, Seong Min had a servant drop off a package containing all of the relevant details.
As she flipped through the seemingly endless sheaf of papers detailing the nature of the test, its requirements,...
2024-06-07 18:53:20 +0000 UTC View PostAn Eui’s stay at the Goryeon palace had been largely uneventful. Her audience with Queen Eunhee had been brief, cordial, and completely vacuous. A simple exchange of greetings and little else. Eunhee thanked her for visiting, formally invited her to continue lending Eunae and Haeun her aid, and...that was it.
It was certainly more brief ...
2024-06-05 17:31:13 +0000 UTC View PostJiaguo’s fiends had always been in a strange position. They were by far the smallest minority group, numbering only three—depending on how one counted Melati. That was unlikely to change, since Melati reproduced exclusively with herself, while Ruiling and Sukarto didn’t seem inclined to start a family despite their pseudo-romantic companio...
2024-06-03 18:47:17 +0000 UTC View Post
At long last, the cover art for volume 6 is finished! I know I say this every time, but really Tsuu just keeps stepping her game up with every piece she does. I'm amazed by how much the effect for Eui's destruction element has developed over the years, and that gate in the background is as awe-inspiring as I envisioned it.
I've got a coupl...
2024-05-31 19:03:54 +0000 UTC View PostWith the tour concluded, Jia and the Qin princesses took their time as they made their way back to the city. The twins were happy to enjoy the beauty of the open landscape surrounding the city as the sun slowly sank below the horizon.
Qin Xiang looked up at the clouds with a contemplative expression.
“Our nephew warned us that you ...
2024-05-31 19:03:44 +0000 UTC View PostIn a desperate bid to prevent Jianmo and the twins from coming to blows, Jia bid Lady Tennin farewell and moved things along. Their next stop was New Kasuga—another of Jiaguo’s satellite villages.
Like Urayama, New Kasuga’s residents had moved from Yamato, but where Lady Tennin and her followers had voluntarily immigrated on Yoshika...
2024-05-29 20:26:43 +0000 UTC View Post