A fun little omake for Lin Gui!

Unmarriageable
Lin Shuren tried (not for the first time) to put himself in his daughter's shoes. The experience was unpleasant. There was nothing for it; he'd just have to ask.

"Explain again where you got the hog's blood?"

Lin Gui smiled at him, brightly. She still smiled like she did when she was a little girl.

"From the slaughterhouse, father!"

"Right. I see. Gui, my dearest daughter, we haven't slaughtered any hogs in months."

"You."

"What?"

"You haven't slaughtered any hogs in months. I slaughtered six of them yesterday morning."

Oh, Pillar of Creation, Eternal Scion, a God upon Your Throne and Center of all Light, You who are without peer, Emperor of my heart and soul, what the fuck did I do in a past life to deserve this?!

"I was in the slaughterhouse yesterday morning," said Shuren, trying (and failing) to keep an exhausted quiver out of his voice. "You weren't there."

"Ah. Because you, most honoured and esteemed father, were in the slaughterhouse proper. Not the basement. That's where I was."

"...The slaughterhouse has a basement?"

"It does now!"

I repent, my Emperor. I repent for whatever the fuck it was. Gods, Sage Kings, whoever is listening, I SWEAR I'll make it up to you.

"I see."

"I'm glad, father. I really am. I understand my actions may seem... a trifle unusual-"

"You dropped fourty gallons of hogs-blood onto your betrothed's head in the middle of a courtship ceremony."

"Yes, BUT! How else was I to ensure he would properly withstand my eccentricities? Marriage, father," continued Lin Gui, sitting up and fixing her father with her most serious of expressions, "is a lifetime commitment. If he couldn't handle a little hogsblood, how on earth would he have coped?"

Lin Shuren wasn't sure what was worse - that Gui had decided that was a reasonable course of action, or that he could see her point.

"Nevertheless," he said, trying not the think about it, "Shu Bu has now withdrawn his courtship. You are without a suitor. Again."

Lin Gui nodded, still very serious.

"Yes, father, I'm aware. And we're out of viable candidates."

Shuren nodded glumly. Honestly, even calling Shu Bu viable was pushing it. He was the butcher's son, and while there was nothing wrong with the trade, it wasn't the sort of person a village headsman would usually betrothe his daughter to. That he was spectacularly ugly, dumb as a box of rocks and had all the charisma and social grace of a dead hedgehog had compounded the problem. His one single charm had been his (seeming) fearlessness. Despite knowing what had happened to Wu Tang (the doctor's son), Lao Tzi (the magistrate), and Chu Chu (the merchant), he'd still doggedly pressed on in his courtship.

Shuren had almost come to like him. Shu Bu had kept going after waking up to live tarantulas in his bed ("they're so furry! I thought he'd like them!"), being left naked in the depths of the wood ("father, I am 18, it's perfectly normal to be interested in boy's bodies."), and even withstood two dozen horoscopes of his own brutal death ("it's better to know in advance, surely - he's got to plan five separate funerals for when they find each of his limbs!"). It was hard not to admire that level of persistence, especially when Gui did actually seem rather fond of him.

Honestly, Shuren wasn't even sure the blood had been the final straw. It might just have been the only excuse that would let Shu Bu withdraw with what little was left of his dignity.

"So... what now?"

Gui was looking at him nervously. He sat back.

"Honestly, my daughter, I don't know. I mean, at this point, perhaps we should consider a nunnery?"

"I'm not allowed on holy ground any more," Gui pointed out. "Since the -"

"-The business with the chickens, yes. I remember."

They sat in contemplative silence.

"Perhaps I could be a prostitute?"

Shuren choked on his tea.

"No? Alright, I just thought I'd suggest it."

After he managed to breath again, the Lin Patriarch stared at his daughter in silence for a full minute.

"...I might," he said, "have an idea. Tell me, Gui - what do you know of the Red Dew Sect?"
---


(Insight into path of the void, please!)

[X] Daiki Inoue
-[X] Action: Ruins Exploration
-[X] [Enlightenment] Enlightenment on Loss (RIP Sum)

Enlightenment: A Jiang Chen Omake
Jiang Chen was once more in the hospital wing. According to the healers of the Sect, his "little stunt" of meditating atop the mountain peak while covered in sword oil, on top of being "reckless" and "a risk to his life", had caused him to develop an infection from having the bandages binding his wounds soaked with the oil. Apparently, while it cleaned a blade just fine, that did not preclude it from carrying all the bits of detritus and such that a mortal eye would fail to see, that would typically lead to infection, and the soaking of his bandages in the cold had done his body no favours, either.

It did not matter. For too long, Jiang Chen had lived his life as a mere man, a being of flesh and blood. He had felt it, during the Beast Tide, when that Shadow Panther had mauled him, during the practice tournament, when a fellow disciples blade had found its home in his flesh, and even back during his early days as a disciple, helping mortals gather firewood, as a great tree-beast had been felled directly atop him. Each time, flesh and blood had failed him, its defeat by the forces arrayed against him inevitable, as it crumpled before greater forces.

No more. Jiang Chen had a great many Insights into the nature of failure, but it was not that which he had come to understand during his recent meditations. No, as the sword oil soaked into his skin, he had come to realise something else. His flesh and blood body, with all its limitations, was a lie. A trap, left behind from his days as a mere mortal, only capable of idly dreaming of bigger and better things, of the eternity that seemed to stretch out before him. He was a Cultivator, and he was not mere flesh and blood. He was Steel.

His body, unrefined as it was, was Steel all the same, and his duty as a Cultivator was not simply exercise, or meditations, or even the simple absorption and cycling of Qi. It was, at the end of the day, the refinement and forging of Steel. Each step was a blow of the hammer, shaping the blade he would become, every breath, a stoking of the forge. And the failures? The learning experiences that had left him struck low, but also led him to this realisation? They were the tempering of the blade, the fine tuning before the final quench. And it was coming, his true form soon to be unveiled, but... after the tournament. He still had some final embellishments he sought to add, and some things he needed to prove to himself.

(Failure Insights please)

After 2 lectures Stan Li had finally reached the clay level of the red dew technique. Which means he now has the minimum required skill to start doing alchemy. The only thing left to do was to start looking into acquiring a furnace.

but as he was getting ready to leave he noticed 2 disciples,Bingxi and Sun Won, that joined the sect at the same time he did. And it looked like they were both struggling with understanding the technique.

*shrug*
"eh, they'll figure it out eventually."
and he kept walking towards the door to leave but as he before he left, he remembers how bingxi carried him up the stairs.

ugh, fairs fair.

"bingxi, I've finished with the first level what questions are you having?"

And if Sun Won just so happened to overhear Stan Li give answers to questions that he was having. Then Stan Li is sure it's just a coincidence.

(alchemy insights please)

Warm Dream

Bái Yǔ was used to nightmares after losing his uncle. Interestingly enough after Bái Yǔ decided to forgo the constant race to acquire sect points Bái Yǔ found his mind at ease enough to not only experience dreamless sleep, but have honest to God good dreams. A strange beach with fire red trees and a sky that was burning the same colors of the sunset despite the position of the sun itself. Bái Yǔ found it peaceful in a way that he had forgotten he had experienced before. This dream... it was like home. The sun a hearth burning bright. The fiery trees a wall to keep away, and shelter from the winds of winter. The shrubs uncharacteristically soft like a woolen bedroll. As he dreamt Bái Yǔ sat upon the sands and soaked in his peace. Bái Yǔ would not remember this dream, but quite assuredly when he woke up Bái Yǔ would have experienced the best sleep of his life so far.

(edit:still want rest insights please)

Diary of Do Mwin

---

Virtues of the Path of Forge

It is difficult, to learn on your own time, without guide to understanding foundation principles, yet it is rewarding also, in this time I have identified the foundation of Forge, these virtues which correspond with the natural elements of cultivation, those being; fire and melting; earth and breaking; metal and shaping; water and eroding; wood and growing.
Knowing and understanding these virtues brings about understanding Forge and what it means, Forge is change, it is the smelting of metal and the breaking of earth and the growing of things, yet it is not simply that, it is transition, from a state of stability to instability into stability and the knowing that a state of permanent stability is an impossibility, immortality is the lie of men and change is the truth of nature.
Though I dare not share this with the sect for likely I would be cast out, yet I know this to be the truth, the fire and ash had deemed me worthy to know.

Omake - Flower Power

Wu Ji Nin was perched on the branches of a great oak when the spirit dog crept its way into the clearing. He kept his breathing light and even and his limbs still, so as to not disturb the creature he was now looking over. The sun had just crested over the treetops, but it didn't disturb his tempered eyes past the foliage.

Wu Ji Nin simply watched.

The spirit dog wandered past a patch of wild berries, moving almost silently in an impressive show of grace, then it sniffed the air and zeroed in on the scent that had already led it there. Half hidden inside the bush was its prize, its next meal, the hunk of meat Wu Ji Nin himself had strategically placed there.

The creature was pacing closer when it got a better look of the area, at which point it stopped, hesitated, then trotted away.

Once it was out of earshot, Wu Ji Nin sighed.

This had not been the first such sight of the day. The scene had repeated itself a half dozen times in the last few hours, almost with no variation. With a fresh frown on his face, Wu Ji Nin hopped off his branches and stared at the object of his investigation.

There, only a few inches to the side of the bush with the meat, was a sunflower.

If he hadn't been sure before, Wu Ji Nin now was: the lone, unassuming flower was what all the spirit beasts he had observed had avoided.

"Huh," he said in the quiet of his little clearing. "I'm sure we can somehow take advantage of this."