Even with time being a precious and limited commodity in a battle, Sen couldn’t help but notice that his strike had been more effective than he could have hoped. From just below the elbow, the devil’s left arm was simply gone. It also...
2024-01-22 14:07:18 +0000 UTC
View Post
Despite the monumental amount of death Sen had just dished out, he knew they weren’t done yet. If he had been dealing with the same kinds of numbers they had to face when they’d approached the ruins, they’d have a largely clear path. With th...
2024-01-21 01:23:54 +0000 UTC
View Post
One of the truths that Master Feng had imparted to Sen through their countless hours of sparring was very simple to state. Seize the momentum. Of course, Master Feng hadn’t ever said those words to Sen. He had shown Sen, over and over again. The...
2024-01-20 06:42:18 +0000 UTC
View Post
It turned out that Glimmer of Night could not teach them how to do it. It wasn’t for a lack of trying, either. The spider had very patiently described his exact process for doing whatever it was he had done to the cores. It just hadn’t taken S...
2024-01-19 09:52:28 +0000 UTC
View Post
Okay, so I'm sure some of you have noticed my output has been a little sporadic the last few days. I've been getting hammered by migraines this week. I'm sure it has something to do with the terrible weather, but migraines and writing don't mix. E...
2024-01-18 22:45:28 +0000 UTC
View Post
Sen didn’t actually care about eating, he just wanted to give himself a little while to think things through. The formation had only ever been a fallback plan, but Sen was certain that the original plan of signaling Laughing River also wasn’t ...
2024-01-17 09:10:45 +0000 UTC
View Post
Sen so very badly wanted to ask the monk a mountain of questions, but he realized that it was ultimately a distraction. As interested as he was, and as much as he might want to come back and visit once those long-lost inhabitants came back, talkin...
2024-01-15 07:55:35 +0000 UTC
View Post
Not even bothering to open his eyes, Sen disengaged his hands from the fox woman’s backside and stood up. He hadn’t particularly missed this kind of behavior during the long years he’d spent ascending that mountain that seemingly had no peak...
2024-01-14 06:45:32 +0000 UTC
View Post
Sen sat at a table and sipped tea while Brother Khu muttered under his breath and searched through chest after chest that he pulled out of a closet that could never have held them. He considered offering to help the old monk, but Sen suspected tha...
2024-01-13 18:02:10 +0000 UTC
View Post
Glimmer of Night had followed along behind the Cluster Slayer, who he liked, and the other one, who he didn’t care about. He had been quite uncertain about the Cluster Slayer at first. He had only followed them into the ruins out of a sense of o...
2024-01-13 04:38:48 +0000 UTC
View Post
Glowering out at the empty city, Sen let his spiritual sense wash outwards. It was powerful enough that, while he knew he couldn’t cover the entire city, it should cover most of it. Sen froze in place. He had expected to get the usual flood of i...
2024-01-12 08:13:39 +0000 UTC
View Post
Things were quiet when they set out the next… Sen pondered about the right word. It still looked like morning, but he suspected it was going to look like morning all of the time for the foreseeable future. Since there wasn’t much to be done ab...
2024-01-11 05:25:14 +0000 UTC
View Post
Okay, so my little corner of the world is bracing for what will be a fairly extreme and extended cold period. Normally, this wouldn't be an issue, but it's a bit of a confluence of events for me. I've been living in the same tiny apartment for sev...
2024-01-10 14:35:31 +0000 UTC
View Post
Misty Peak’s head tilted to one side like Sen had started leaning and she was trying to keep him in sight properly.
“What do you mean we’re stuck in a mandala?”
Sen considered a couple of approaches to explaining, but their eff...
2024-01-09 12:06:31 +0000 UTC
View Post
“As pets go, it’s really creepy,” said Misty Peak.
Sen gave her a level look. “It’s not a pet.”
“It acts like a pet. It follows you around all the time.”
“By that logic, you’re my pet. Should I be scr...
2024-01-08 15:24:10 +0000 UTC
View Post
Sen didn’t bother to stand as he pulled a healing elixir from a storage ring and downed it. He just lay there for most of a minute, basking in the magnificent absence of people talking at him. Knowing it couldn’t last, though, he pushed himsel...
2024-01-08 01:09:18 +0000 UTC
View Post
All throughout Sen’s training, Master Feng had instilled in him the need for control. He’d striven for it at first because he trusted Master Feng. Then, he’d gone out into the world and witnessed firsthand the destruction that uncontrolled t...
2024-01-06 20:52:46 +0000 UTC
View Post
Sen’s pushed his qinggong technique hard. He wanted to cover the ground between him and the ruins as fast as possible. Ideally, he wanted to be moving fast enough to simply run around any beasts or spirits that might be a little slow to go after...
2024-01-06 09:06:19 +0000 UTC
View Post
Sen spent most of the evening and the night in something that wasn’t quite a cultivation trance, but came exceedingly close. He didn’t want to think because that risked him getting caught up in a spiral of what-if contemplations that would do ...
2024-01-06 06:15:29 +0000 UTC
View Post
Sen spent the entire afternoon and early evening making ever finer adjustments to the formation. He reassured himself several times that he was simply being thorough and not avoiding the galehouse and its current occupants. No, he thought...
2024-01-05 03:19:54 +0000 UTC
View Post
Sen stuck around just long enough for Misty Peak to return with Li Yi Nuo. The woman from the sect was bound at the wrists with something that looked like ordinary rope, but Sen assumed was something wholly different. Li Yi Nuo was no body cultiva...
2024-01-03 05:20:15 +0000 UTC
View Post
“Why is that monster just sitting around out there?” demanded Misty Peak.
Sen steadfastly refused to engage in anything like conversation or banter with either her or Laughing River until he’d had at least one cup of tea. The fight wit...
2024-01-03 01:31:16 +0000 UTC
View Post
Confusion. He felt confusion. Even as he sat outside the strange stone cave and kept vigil, he didn’t know what to think or how to feel. The day had been too strange, too uncertain, and he had carried that uncertainty in his heart. The matriarch...
2024-01-01 20:58:23 +0000 UTC
View Post
Okay, so I got answers about this faster than I expected. The audiobook for Volume 1 starts recording tomorrow! Still no firm date about when it's going to come out, but with recording getting started, the answer is probably sooner than l...
2024-01-01 19:10:38 +0000 UTC
View Post
So, every once in a while, I like to update you guys on things that are not strictly writing-related. So, that's what this will be.
Since some of the people on the livestream asked about it, I talked with my publisher about how Volume 1 is d...
2024-01-01 14:12:55 +0000 UTC
View Post
Sen was deeply relieved when Misty Peak, after throwing a few more verbal jabs at him, departed to go try to convince her grandfather to let her join Sen in the ruins. For his part, Sen thought it was a fool’s errand but a very useful fool’s e...
2024-01-01 12:26:39 +0000 UTC
View Post
“This is boring,” complained Misty Peak for the fifth time.
Sen ignored her while he finished adjusting the formation flag’s position. The work would have gone much faster if he hadn’t had her tagging along and doing her lev...
2023-12-31 04:49:58 +0000 UTC
View Post
Sen opened his eyes and turned to look at the thing that Misty Peak was pointing at a little more urgently. He’d sensed it a while back and, perhaps foolishly, assumed that it would get out of his way. After all, he’d left thousands of that th...
2023-12-29 18:56:44 +0000 UTC
View Post
After he finished coughing and wheezing, Sen threw the fox a death glare.
“Why would you even ask me that?”
The fox arched an eyebrow at Sen. “My amusement.”
Sen opened his mouth to say something with acid in it, paused, ...
2023-12-28 20:19:02 +0000 UTC
View Post
After feeling disgruntled for a minute or two, Sen realized that suppressing the glow wasn’t really any different than his passive cultivation. It was just one more thing he needed to do and then push into the background of his thoughts. With ye...
2023-12-28 09:06:41 +0000 UTC
View Post