yrsillar

Threads Patron Preview Chapter 369 (Red+)

Ling Qi found open space a moment later, drifting out of the cracks in the cold stones of the palace's basement. Quickly, she scattered herself and her senses through the dim hall, ignoring the pounding tromp of boots overhead. B-1. B-2… A-5!

And there! A-4.

She darted down the hall and re-collected herself in one place, regaining form and cohesion. She felt another spike of pain in her temple as the palace complex overhead groaned. Arcs of venomous qi crackled through the stone...

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Threads patron preview Chapter 368(Red+)

The boy was smiling and chattering with the musician again.

Ling Qi cursed quietly. She wasn't certain what that exchange meant.

"This might be a place for old memories to go, but it's definitely an exclusive joint," Sixiang commented. "And if you look carefully, it’s locked down."

They weren't as obvious as out on the streets, but with Sixiang’s prompting, Ling Qi saw them now, burning yellow eyes on patrons and on a server flashing past the door to the kitchen. Xia Anx...

The Littlest Snakepit (Commission)

The training hall of the palace of Zhengjian was a steeped in history, of knowledge passed and martial vigor extolled. Under its high rafters and the columns bearing the twisting silhouette of Grandmother Serpent, countless generations of White Serpents had tamed their instincts and gone from biting hatchlings to the proud, regal and eternal rulers of the great Thousand lakes province.

What violence these halls had seen, that the painted black eyes of the serpentine sculptures worked in...

Threads Patron Preview Chapter 367(Red+)

The dream was muted here. The chaos of the valley raged on beyond her view, but in the ward-sealed embassy, cut off from the greater dream, the liminal manifested to her eyes as a soft, featureless white fog, churning slowly through transparent, joined cubes of crackling pale blue energy. Ling Qi wondered if this was what the world would look like to a tame fish in a tank.

"I don't think that's right unless we're talking about a cultivating fish who can comprehend the glass," Sixiang qu...

Threads Patron preview Chapter 366 (Red+)

"There is further infiltration than we were aware of." Cao Chun's voice was grim. Seated behind his desk, he folded his hands under his chin.

"How much so?" Jin Tae asked. He stood in the office with them this time. A silver mirror hung on his belt. A weapon, Ling Qi thought. Not his domain weapon, but a potent talisman all the same. His spirit was rippling water and shimmering glass under her new gaze, reflecting back her own distorted face from a hundred angles.

"I have detected...

The Smugging Moon

AN: And restarting commissions too, this one was moved up the queue for immediate relevance. However, there are some spoilers for the current Story arc, please avoid if you would like to be completely unspoiled.

“Do Not.”

The damnable woman sitting on the driver's step of his chariot tilted her head, eyes twinkling. Her smile was a thing that could end lesser men, melt their idiot minds to fawning slush.

He glared, with a thousand piercing eyes from ever...

Threads Patron preview Chapter 365(Red+)

"Meng Deming is satisfied with negotiations?" Cai Renxiang asked. The shorter girl did not turn to her as she approached, remaining standing over the table with her arms folded behind her back. Her eyes were trained on the map, the tentative lines drawn on it, pins marking points of interest.

"He is not unsatisfied," Ling Qi said. "He also laid out the Meng Position on the observatory. Scholars of Sibiar descent only."

Cai Renxiang wrinkled her nose in annoyance. It only lasted a ...

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Threads Patron preview Chapter 364(Red+)

As the rest of the table broke up into smaller groups for refreshment and more casual talks, she gave a nod to Cai Renxiang and broke off, heading to the corner of the room where the old man waited for her.

"You believe you can mollify me," Cao Chun said without preamble. He really was quite annoyed.

"I think I can," Ling Qi said. "Sir Cao, this really is the clans’ right."

"And if you think I could not see your manipulation there, using their pride and your connection wit...

Threads Patron preview Chapter 363(Red+)

"Perhaps!" Ling Qi raised her voice in a gap where she could manage without overriding anyone else. "I was misunderstood. Might it be possible for White Sky-affiliated tribes specifically to make use of peaks along the edge of our region? I feel this would be beneficial. It provides the Polar Nation another benefit to offer tribes. It provides us security. Guaranteed tribes would be incentivized to keep their less trustworthy fellows out of this territory. We might even provide a mechanism by...

Last Q&A before the holidays!

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Threads Patron preview Chapter 362 (Red+)

The atmosphere in the meeting hall was different today, and not just because the last of the windows had been properly fitted in during the day-long break between sessions. It was because of who was present.

The general's armor gleamed even in the low indoor light, the segmented plate and faceless helm leaving not a single centimeter of skin uncovered. General Xia stood back from the table with her arms crossed behind her back, positioned such that she would loom over Cai Renxiang's end...

Threads Patron preview Chapter 361(Red+)

They parted ways after that, making their way back to their places at the table, Rostam and Inzha to their side and her to Renxiang.

"Any further complications?" her liege asked. "I have been informed of the Luo promise."

"We will need to push for more sharing of formation and cultivation basics for better infrastructure cooperation next week," Ling Qi whispered. "I believe there are no remaining obstacles to the legal phase though."

Renxiang gave a shallow nod, turning her ...

Threads Patron Preview Chapter 360 (Red+)

"Thank you for taking the time to show us your concerns," Gan Guangli said politely, bowing along with Ling Qi as Lord Luo and Lady Wang left.

"And thank you for assisting,” Gan Guangli said to her. “The two were beginning to add bite to their words."

"It was no trouble. I merely followed my intuition."

It was unsurprising that there would be some friction between the old counts and the new ones.

"I am glad we have such a fine tool as that. To think that I thought ...

Announcements

Firstly the weekly Q&A will be starting in a few minutes on discord, in the wednesday-author-qa channel!

Secondly it has come to my attention that the chapter release numbers are off with Red souls not having the full number of chapters. I will fix this during tomorrows chapter release!

And Lastly after a very long section, I will be taking an extended break to recharge over the holidays before resuming updates. This vacation will last from December 24th to January 13th!

Threads Patron preview Chapter 359(Red+)

The meeting hall was in good form today, filled with the low murmur of conversation between the scholars and functionaries. The higher realm cultivators had already begun to bypass the need for translators, learning their foreign colleagues’ tongues as they debated. All of the sound subsided as Cai Renxiang rose at the head of the table and began to speak, announcing the beginning of a new day of talks.

"I am most pleased with the progress we have made in the first week of talks. We h...

Mouse 1

AN: Since this appears to have gotten lost in the shuffle somewhere.

“What an insult that two daughters of the great Bai are expected to stay in hovels with the riff raff.”

Bai Meizhen did not reply aloud to her cousin. The small jade scaled watersnake was curled about her wrist like a bracelet, to avoid too much alarm. It was shameful, but many things were shameful, not the least being sent here in the first place, to ‘learn’ at the in...

Mouse 2

It had not been a prank, bizarre or no.

The strange mortal's indignation was clear and honest, when the Sun trash had insulted and belittled her. Was it a plot perhaps, to solidify the girl’s cover? Her instincts and education told her such was certainly the case.

But Ling Qi was a mortal. Who used a mortal for such things? She could very nearly see every thought as it formed behind the girl's eyes. Supposing additional factors, hidden cultivation or hypnotically implanted trigg...

Journey to the East 25

They rode under false, unquiet stars, and the desert dunes writhed with the dead. Gu Xiulan’s home was a harsh place, the golden dunes and blowing gray ash could kill as surely as the Walkers who roamed out from the grave far in the south. But it was not like this. Not like the nightmare caricature they rode through. Around her, she saw the ruin of what her family had wrought. Guard towers crumbled at the side of a broken road, a village crumbled and cold, no longer even smoking. Dead not i...

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Ash Haven: Descent Chapter 5

“And there she goes,” Dimitris chuckled.

I glanced back, and saw the hall empty of Amara’s looming silhouette. If I concentrated very hard I could feel a tiny distortion in the air a little ways behind us. Otherwise, she might as well have been gone.

“Ugh, you people are so childish sometimes,” Vee grumbled from my shoulder, sparks popping between his teeth as he clacked his jaws in frustration.

“Funny as it is, this is the simplest way to keep things moving,” ...

Threads Patron Preview Chapter 358 (Red+)

Cao Chun disapproved of her initiative. "I believe you have made an error, baroness."

The rest of the meeting had gone well. There were a hundred, hundred details on which imperial and polar law differed from inheritance to property to the way civic disputes were resolved. But a framework was grudgingly being hashed out, and precedents to fill the gaps were being produced.

With the day’s session ending, she had headed to the ministry’s operations center. Down in Cao Chun's off...

Wednesday Q&A

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Threads Patron preview Chapter 357 (Red+)

She followed in the thought-shade's pale shadow, unremarked and unseen, into a blank hallway that shivered and jittered as if melting continuously, barely coherent even in her perception. She must be following this thought-shade into the man’s subconscious beneath the layer of active self.

For a moment, pain shot through her head like a knife in the eye, sharp and pulsating, and her whole perception of this place almost collapsed, the semi-coherent imagery threatening to warp into a c...

Holiday Pause

Apologies for the late notice but there will be a pause for the Thanksgiving holiday! Thank you for your patience everyone!

Wednesday Q&A

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Threads Patron Preview Chapter 356(Red+)

Zheng Fu wandered out of the room, loudly citing the need to stretch his legs. She scanned the room. Meng Deming was frowning after him, and so was Dzintara. He'd not been particularly quiet about his departure.

"There’s my cover," Ling Qi muttered. She quietly backed from the table. Meng Dan caught her eye in question, but she shook her head. Later. His uncle glanced between them and whispered something to the younger Meng. She didn't stop to wonder. Leaving through a door at the rea...

Snake and Spider 14

The tradeoff in sensory accuracy versus defensiveness was an interesting consideration. Her typical garments, were by nature of the envenomed fabrics and embedded defensive arrays, something of a muffler for her tactile senses. She had of course engineered a degree of permeability into the talismanic arrays, but while resistance to qi and air flow could be engineered down, it could not be eliminated. Thus she had generally preferred to remove her gloves at least when given a chance to prepare...

Threads Patron Preview Chapter 355 (Red+)

It was not the scribbler’s chamber where they found Cao Chun. That was sealed off. Instead, they met him out where the giant spider corpse had been, the grand chamber turned into something of an office partitioned off with cheap wood and paper dividers painted with security formations. The agent led them through the bustling center to the room where the inspector waited.

Cao Chun waited for them behind a desk of dark wood, a neat stack of documents off to one side, which, at a glance,...