“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 walking stick!”
Feng half-sighed, half-chuckled ...
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 sound of grinding and pulsating meat lumbered on with ...
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 greenish swamp water were desiccated to beige dust ...
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 changed. Should he make the journey to Mount Tai once ...
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 severed Elder Jun in half. His quick reactions saved ...
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
----------------------
Feng blinked.
There was blackness everywhere. T...
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 figure behind the facade — nose back into place....
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 memorised the names of dozens upon dozens of Sects,...
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 now that those were lies told to us by the Gods. To ...
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.
“Face your fears. Do not run from yourself. Your Dao...
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 wide and breathing erratic, the poor woman was bare...
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 little else for entertainment. I do enjoy a gambl...
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 remiss not to inform the Young Master that fatali...
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 Ru would be swooning if she knew.”
Feng sco...
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… The world is unbearable otherwise. On this, I b...
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 once more as Feng was about to protest. “This i...
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. The toxin concentrations within her were not insign...
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, without a doubt, one of the worst places Feng had eve...
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 desperately wanted to see happy after all the horri...
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 among his Sect who wondered how Feng could hold h...
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.
“First, your beliefs are your own. The experienc...
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. Rivulets of diseased bark wept from slick tissue...
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 blindness, the other crusted with dried pus and we...
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 the smallest shimmer of light. It was the first ra...
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. Her form was moulded by pain, married to it. She was...
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’s hands was a list as wide and tall as he was, f...
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 bountiful spread of Divine sustenances that seemed en...
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, or even Divine Viands. Those merely allow the pro...
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 with broken edges. Her blades were chipped and warped...
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 him.
Soft and hard. A naked body l...
2025-04-27 08:00:24 +0000 UTC View Post