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Hmmph... this junior is a good seed [Cultivation Management Quest]

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    • Good Seed and Omake Spreadsheet Rules:

    Firstly, if you have questions about Good Seeds and the like please read here. If that doesn't answer your question please ping me in thread, or on Discord.

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    -----------------------

    Omake Writer Instructions:

    There are four fields you need to fill out.

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    Turn Notes - Do you want to do something specific? Enter a Secret Realm? Help the Clan out in some way? If you have something specific you want to accomplish on this turn, put it in turn notes so I can adjust your Fate around it.

    All other fields are for QM use to record character information to properly run the flow of the game.
     
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  • Threadmarks
    • Granted, it only has enough juice to wound on their levels, so if the trapped Nascent Soul is able to escape, it would only be debilitating if that Nascent Soul is the only one in their faction.

    Less than 2 years is just not long enough to do anything more than push a border or two. Again this is if the affected Nascent Soul is still able to escape, but from what we've seen Nascent Souls are slippery mofos.
     
    Dangit, closing the vote didn't work for some reason. Closed now.
    Scheduled vote count started by occipitallobe on Nov 16, 2020 at 10:16 PM, finished with 75 posts and 14 votes.
    • [X] Plan: Brace for Impact
      -[X] Weeding out the Aspirants
      -[X] She is blinded to the War in the Plains
      -[X] She is blinded to the moves of the Jingshen Clan
      -[X] Interest forever!
      [X] Plan Escalating Recovery
      -[X] Shakes Dao Hearts - I think I've been convinced by the "we can't afford a disaster either way" logic;
      -[X] She is blinded to the War in the Plains - they are not about to eat us right now if we make the wrong move, and if they are, we're fucked either way;
      -[X] She is blinded to the moves of the Jingshen Clan - in Yao we trust;
      -[X] Paying the debt today - we should be able to afford this in the immediate short term, and this is the cheapest total price to pay.
      [X] Plan: Brace for Impact Redux
      -[X] She Shakes the Dao-Hearts of the Aspirants
      -[X] She is blinded to the War in the Plains
      -[X] She is blinded to the moves of the Jingshen Clan
      -[X] Interest forever!
    Click to expand...
     
    TimEd said:
    Granted, it only has enough juice to wound on their levels, so if the trapped Nascent Soul is able to escape, it would only be debilitating if that Nascent Soul is the only one in their faction.

    Less than 2 years is just not long enough to do anything more than push a border or two. Again this is if the affected Nascent Soul is still able to escape, but from what we've seen Nascent Souls are slippery mofos.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    If Old Cannibal gets knocked out by it, that gives us two years of Manuel going Uncontested Ham on the Blood Cannibals border.

    It may not be enough to break them completely, but it would be enough to cull them to the point where they cant prosecute another war against us any time soon.

    And that would honestly be enough for us to assert a win condition until the next bout of Trials.

    Itd be more than ideal, tbh

    Like holy shit itd be beyond perfect lol
     
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    Xiao Yingzi 2 - [Investigating the Team]
  • Sidestory
    • Xiao Yingzi 2
    [Investigating the Team]    ​

    Xiao Yingzi's return to Pleuron had a good start. Her orphanage welcomed her back and though the children didn't know her, many of their caretakers did. It was good to get commendations from those who raised her, though her shadow did begin to act up forcing her to leave quickly.

    But with that, the pleasantries for her visit were covered and she could focus on her real work. The first thing she needed to do was investigate those who would potentially be travelling with her to the Qiguai Secret Realm. There were three individuals she had to look at - Yahwen the Bladeless, Antonius Ambrosius and Corvina Taurus.

    Antonius was surprisingly the easiest to investigate. Despite being in the tenth heavenstage, he was only two decades her senior and had barely made a splash on the legion so far. Despite that, she was able to access information on his bloodline and the alchemical applications thereof.

    After following those leads, she was able to dig up information on Yixuan Shan - a silverfined pipefish who Antonius had seemingly encountered in the Yuan Realm and had aided him to reach his high cultivation. That really helped firm her decision of going to Qiguai Secret Realm.

    She began to correspond with him seeing as he was shaping up to be their leader and got more information on his motivations. Apparently, he was ambushed by a blood path auxiliary in Yuan and the encounter left his parents injured. He was heading to Qiguai to find a cure.

    They were admirable motives she supposed and would return a foundation establishment cultivator to the clan as well. It was also a reminder of the need for caution in these things even in the people you choose to travel with. Even others of the clan couldn't always be trusted.

    Corvina Taurus wasn't that much harder to read up on. At about eighty years old, she was already at the ninth heavenstage. As with all of their prodigies, the Taurus family made their basic information available to the clan. She specialised in divination though she also showed basic knowledge in the array-based techniques of her family.

    She wasn't a focused combatant as far as she could tell, which meant she would require protection during the journey but her other skills made her invaluable in support. Looking at Antonius' records, he was more of a straightforward combatant and Xiao Yingze herself was primarily a scout. She wondered how much of that was on purpose? Her estimation of Antonius went up slightly.

    She later managed to sit down with someone from her orphanage who had been recruited into the 96th Legion - the one that both Antonius and Corvina belonged to. She knew a lot of Antonius' story already, though knowledge on his ability to manipulate water was welcome. She did get a lot more of Corvina's story which was apparently well-known within the legion.

    She had apparently been born with the aptitude to be a Seer and when just exposed to the basics of the art, she showed signs that normally signified mastery. She also had a stronger than normal sense of qi that gave her a degree of skill with arrays as well.

    Xiao Yingzi learnt of several instances in both the war against the Blood Cannibal War and the Devil Bees where her insights proved instrumental for aiding the clan. A lot of it came from her intuitive approach to the clan's divination style that let her come up with novel solutions to metaphysical obstacles.

    The most interesting piece of information however was how she had been acting in the wake of the trials. She had been oddly cheerful in its aftermath which Xiao Yingzi vaguely remembered may be a possible sign of grief and her divination had been rendered relatively ineffective as well.

    Xiao Yinzi recalled that the last divination prodigy of their clan was their late Matriarch and she had perished in the trials. Perhaps Corvina had a bond with her and the loss had affected her performance? It was something to keep in mind for the journey. A weakness in her divination did give her a motivation to seek Qiguai but lowered her overall usefulness.

    Information on Yahwen was harder to find, especially the source of her title. She had managed to gain some basic information in a letter from Antonius which said she was a former swordsman and a current noodle cultivator from the Divided Kingdoms. That explained the source of the nickname but also why she couldn't find any information on her.

    It was only luck that led to her more information. She had encountered a merchant from the Divided Kingdoms visiting Pleuron and mentioned Yahwen's name. When he showed some recognition, she offered to pay for a meal in return for him telling her the whole story. While sipping a drink that was far too costly for a new legionnaire's budget, the merchant began to tell her the tale in the manner of myths and legends.

    Yahwen was born a commoner in the Viridescent Blade Duchy. As with all of their children, she was taught the blade from a young age. But unlike them, Yahwen took to swordsmanship with a skill and fervor that hadn't been seen by any in thousands of years.

    From the moment she first picked up a sword, her skill was undeniable. She mastered all that she was taught and by the age of 50, she had reached the ninth heavenstage and at least in terms of skill, had surpassed any other in her home.

    To progress further in her arts and to prepare herself for her tribulation, she chose to travel along the Divided Kingdoms to expand her horizons. Her journey through the Green Dragon Empire helped build her legend as warriors and experts that were decades her senior sought to challenge her in duels of skill.

    All of them lost and through her duels, she earned the money to support her journey. Upon travelling the length of the Green Dragon Empire and proving her skill without any doubts, she earned the name of the Viridescent Blade - the greatest of her duchy. Then her journey took her to the Blue Dragon Empire.

    The Cerulean Blade Duchy sought to interfere with her journey and to defeat her to prove their own superiority. However, every swordsman sent her way only served to bring her greater fame. Their best only seemed to sharpen her skill and soon she had even learnt everything the Cerulean Blade Duchy had to offer her.

    As she made her way into the heart of Blue Dragon territories, she reached a level of fame where no swordsman would dare duel her. Already, her triumph was being whispered of. A triumph of the green over the blue.

    The cause of what happened next was highly contested. Some said that it was a curse of heaven, preventing her from reaching her full potential. Others said that it was mere bad luck, the result of having a brittle foundation. Yet more spoke of blue dragon treachery. What is agreed upon is that this is where she met her demise.

    She could find no swordsman willing to duel her and so she had no means of earning coin. She lacked any skill besides swordsmanship and couldn't hunt or guard or otherwise earn her living. No man or woman would help her and she herself was too proud to resort to banditry. Despite that, she sought to complete her journey.

    It was at the edge of starvation that a passing noodle cultivator took pity on her, unable to let someone die of hunger in front of him. He offered her his richest fare and in that moment, she was shattered. To Yahwen, those noodles were the most beautiful thing in the world and the single-minded devotion that had allowed her mastery was suddenly lost.

    Instead of swordsmanship, she sought out instruction in the art of making noodles. However despite beseeching the noodle chef, he would not teach her. His art was for those who had true dedication and she had only demonstrated her lack of it. Her spirit broken, she returned home to pursue her new dream on her own.

    Yet, in the Viridescent Blade Duchy the study of the sword was paramount and her abandonment of the blade was not something that could be tolerated. She was exiled upon her return and forced to leave the divided kingdoms. Now Yahwen the Bladeless, what became of her is unknown and her story is a lesson for all new swordsmen of the importance of devotion.

    Or at least, that's what the merchant told Xiao Yingzi. The girl herself knew that the girl was registered as a travelling companion of a Core Formation level Noodle Cultivator so the story wasn't completely accurate. Regardless of whether the cultivator actually taught her anything, he was at least willing to let Yahwen travel with him.

    Xiao Yingzi decided not to mention that part to the merchant, reasoning that if he didn't know that already there was no need to spread that information. Just in case her future teammate wanted it to be kept private.

    Still, it had been a useful source of information and if she had kept even a quarter of the skill in combat that she supposedly had as a swordswoman, she'd be a powerful teammate to have. Still, she was curious about what kind of a person the woman actually was.

    So when Antonius set up a meeting with her and mentioned that he would also be meeting with Yahwen in afternoon just before that, Xiao Yingzi decided that it would be prudent to take the chance to study both of her more complicated companions.

    ----------------------------------------------​

    She made sure to suppress her aura as she began to follow Antonius and tried to obscure her form with her shadow. It worked best in darkness, but even in the day it would dull the feeling of her qi. However, as she followed him on his morning routine the effort felt slightly wasted. He hadn't even looked around once.

    His eyes were turned upwards as he walked and his thoughts were clearly somewhere else. She wondered what he was seeing. Was he examining the walls or the sky? Or was he thinking of something else? It was hard to say, though she supposed he could be planning the trip to Qiguai as he walked.

    At one point, she even thought that he might walk into a tree but he managed to avoid it at the last moment. Antonius clearly used this route a lot and when he arrived at the guard-house, she realised why. Did he work there?

    When he disappeared inside, Xiao Yingzi waited. She wasn't going to risk following him into the guard-house. Any impression they had of her would be positive right now thanks to her running errands during the trials as a mortal. She had no reason to ruin that.

    She tried to follow his qi but she wasn't good enough to pick him out from all the others. It would be something that she needed to work on. She just stayed on the opposite roof for nearly half an hour, trying to restrain her shadow's boredom and making sure not to hide. Any other cultivator using the roof-path might consider her suspicious about that.

    When he came out in an easily identifiable guard armor, he confirmed her suspicions of where he currently worked. He was also accompanied by a senior brother of the fifth heavenstage who was more experienced than Antonius based on his demeanor though certainly had less power.

    The senior looked around and noted her presence before leaving on patrol. Luckily, Xiao Yingzi had not suppressed her aura or otherwise hidden. A cultivator lingering on a rooftop was common and forgettable. One who hid their aura immediately was an amateur who was following you.

    She had just waited long enough to be sure that they were out of range before hiding herself and speeding up to catch up with them. Antonius was as oblivious as ever which was making her lower her estimation of him, though the senior brother seemed more alert. Still, he was focused more on spotting crimes than people following him and didn't seem to spot her.

    The two of them made their way through Pleuron's marketplaces, making sure to keep an eye on both merchants and buyers. To her surprise, Antonius seemed to know many of the merchants well enough for them to greet him with a smile and he stopped to talk to them several times as well.

    Xiao Yingzi found herself approving of that. She herself had found different contacts incredibly useful in her own investigations. That he seemed to know the people he guarded so well spoke of a skillset that was useful for a potential leader.

    She did wonder what they spoke about. It would have been nice to take notes. The senior brother didn't participate in most of the conversations and just trailed behind Antonius with a bored expression on her face.

    She followed them for nearly two hours before she had to leave. Her shadow had begun acting up with the afternoon sun and she elected to retreat and have something to eat while staking out the guardhouse. With more time to look around, she found a thermopylae just across the road where the guards probably ate. She took a seat in a corner while watching out for his qi.

    By the time he returned, it was late afternoon and though there was still some light out it was dark enough that she was confident she could follow him unseen. Her own meeting with him was in the late evening so she suspected he would be meeting the mysterious Yahwen. Xiao Yingzi was looking forward to seeing her.

    Once Antonius came back out of the guardhouse, she followed him carefully. This time he was more alert as he walked, likely due to being unfamiliar with the route. He nearly took a wrong turn a few times before finally arriving at another thermopylae.

    This one was closer to the marketplace and the staff were dressed in traditional clan clothes likely in an attempt to attract outsiders and tourists. She took a seat on the roof across, depending on the darkness to hide her from him and passerbys. She then watched what he did.

    To her surprise, rather than go inside Antonius took a seat outside and ate his own meal which Xiao Yingzi felt was rather sub-optimal. It might alienate the owners and employees which wasn't ideal and preparing your own food outside of missions wasn't optimal in general. Buying food from the thermopylae would help fund a legion and save time better spent on skills closer to your speciality.

    As she had expected, a waitress in a bronze chiton made her way to Antonius likely to ask him for his order or maybe even to let him leave. As the waitress' eyes fell on him, she smiled and Xiao Yingzi frowned. That wasn't the kind of smile a waitress wore when approaching a customer.

    Was that Yahwen the Bladeless?

    As soon as Xiao Yingzi realised this, the waitress frowned. Had her attention wavered? Before she could even consider if her attention had wavered, the waitress' eyes snapped towards her and Xiao Yingzi felt her attention on her.

    Like a scalpel in the hands of a skilled physician, Xiao Yingzi felt her defences be pierced casually and cleanly. The waitress - Yahwen - was looking straight at her curiously. Xiao Yingzi froze for a moment and her shadow snapped out of her control.

    It materialised and pulled her down, ducking from the woman's view. As her attention faded, Xiao Yingzi felt herself on the floor of the roof hidden behind it's barrier. Her heart was beating wildly. That was much closer to the stories she had heard than she had expected.

    She took a moment to calm down and get her shadow under control. It had stretched to the other side of the roof, away from the direction of the woman. She coaxed it back under her while watching for any attention from Yahwen or Antonius. When none came, she silently retreated hoping that she hadn't jeopardised her chances to join them.

    It was a good team. Corvina Taurus had a proven record despite any recent troubles and Yahwen had proven to be… Yahwen. Antonius was… not particularly experienced. But that didn't matter since he seemed to be assembling a group that covered his weaknesses and his potential combat level after taking into account his artifacts was quite possibly the best in the group even after Yahwen.

    As she made her way out of there, she thought about what she could do to make sure they accepted her. Though many of the guide books she read told her of the need to investigate, none of them spoke about what to do if she got caught.

    Still feeling lost, she walked away seeking a solution to her problems. Her shadow shivered beneath her feet, but she restrained it well both to ensure it wad bound and hoping to distract her thoughts.
     
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  • Sidestory
    • (A few people were okay with me doing Good Seeds right away, so I am! As always, these'll be collated into a single post afterwards.)

    - - - - -

    Aliki Floros -
    Omake Reward - Lifesaving Treasure
    Fate -     It was during the trials that a Dao Protector of the Fifth Sea slew a powerful Tri-Tailed Scorpion, a creature that was Core Formation in its own right, leaving it in its cave. The single blow slew it, and it slowly rotted over the course of decades. However, with such power the poison emanated from its body for decades, killing any who came near. Aliki was lucky enough to find it and consume it, absorbing the energies of what had been a powerful Core Formation beast in minutes. Where she had struggled over the course of fifteen years to reach the Third Heavenstage, she leapt into the heavens like the carp over the dragon gate, stepping into the 10th Heavenstage in a single bound. From the scorpion she managed to salvage a single unharmed stinger, which was fashioned into a set of Scorpion-Poison Needles (+1 Impact) for her as well.
    Impact: 0 -> 1 (Scorpion Poison Needles +1)
    Cultivation     - 1st Heavenstage -> 9th Heavenstage
    Cultivation-Year Equivalent - 103 Years (+92)
    Health     - Healthy

    Rina Callista -
    Omake Reward - Tribulation Boost
    Fate -     It was perhaps a moment of weakness for Rina Callista. Long invincible in her own Realm, she travelled around the Clan's territories, helping those in need, putting down rebels. Of course, Qi Condensation and Foundation Building were not equals, and when she found herself needed to face down a Foundation Building bandit, she was ambushed, and badly wounded by the Saliva Dog Archer, a man who used poisons and archery to fight a woman who could not easily engage him on her terms. Over three days she chased him, and was eventually forced to give up the chase, as she had slowed due to an accumulation of wounds. The man went on to destroy a small town of six thousand mortals before a hired Core Formation elder was able to put him down.
    Impact: 12 -> 12
    Cultivation     - 12th Heavenstage -> 12 Heavenstage
    Cultivation-Year Equivalent - 231 Years (+3)
    Health     - Lightly Wounded this turn, improved to Healthy at end of turn.

    Ninth Prince -
    Omake Reward - Healing treasure
    Fate -     Hanging on his spear for so long, his recovery was a thing of legend in Pleuron. It was later on, though, in a relatively minor encounter in which he was forced to compete in riddles and jokes with a powerful steel golem that he found an ancient metal triangle. A curiosity, a toy, left by a more powerful cultivator to amuse that ancient golem to ensure it kept well to its duties. The Rotating Steel Pyramid (+2 Impact) is a thing of true power when used against his equals, as channeling Qi into it can mesmerise foes briefly. It is only a few seconds of distraction and mesmerisation, but such a window is death to those who are not far more powerful than you. His advancement into the 12th Heavenstage made him the Clan's second expert of that rank.
    Impact: 11 -> 13
    Cultivation     - 11th Heavenstage -> 12th Heavenstage
    Cultivation-Year Equivalent - 231 Years (+3)
    Health     - Healthy - Healing Treasure cleared Crippled!

    Antonius Emmanuel Eleanora -
    Omake Reward - LST - Immediately used!
    Fate -     The Qiguai Secret Realm. A place of horrors and wonders, warped space and seas in the sky. Those most unlucky fall into the realm directly into a sea of warped space, a deadly encounter that kills them in a moment. Antonius only avoided this by the slimmest of margins, suffering horrific wounds, having to sew his own left arm back on after it was torn off due to the warp and weft of space itself. In a fit of pique, fate was not done with him, as he limped towards safety, a pair of Star-Eels gnawed at him, eating half of his left foot and two of his left toes before he was able to fend them off. Horrifically injured, he managed to escape the Secret Realm with his life and nothing else.
    Impact: 7 -> 7
    Cultivation     - 10th Heavenstage -> 10th Heavenstage
    Cultivation-Year Equivalent - 108 Years
    Health     - Badly Wounded (Dead -> Badly Wounded due to LST)

    Matthias Outi
    Omake Reward - LST - Immediately used!
    Fate -     The Qiguai Secret Realm. Matthias entered just a half-pace behind Antonius, and was thrown into the same hellish storm of space. It tore open his skull, and he was forced to build a poultice of sorts to keep his brain in and his thoughts alive. While he managed to escape, he was trapped in the storm for six years, and when he came out he was different. Patches of animal skulls were fused onto his skull, and a hole gaped there, perpetually open, perpetually vulnerable. He sometimes talked his thoughts, and often seemed to merely think and forget to respond, seemingly jumbled in both words and ways from that time on.
    Impact: 8 -> 8
    Cultivation     - 7th Heavenstage -> 7th Heavenstage
    Cultivation-Year Equivalent - 55 Years
    Health     - Badly Wounded (Dead -> Badly Wounded due to LST)

    Ferenike
    Omake Reward - Century Oasis Formation
    Fate -     Falling from the sky, Ferenike saw two unfortunates fall around her, thrown away by the tearing and ripping of space. Luck was with her, though, and as she reached a whirlwind, she was thrown again into the sky, flying hundreds of thousands of li away. Eventually she landed, in the home of what had clearly once been an ancient cultivator. "Kowtow three times and take me as your master, and I will acknowledge you as an honorary disciple in the art of formations.", said the notes on the grave outside. She did, and a fragment of will poured into her brain, existing for only a few seconds. In those few seconds it redesigned her Century Oasis Formation, turning it from a thing only usable by the lower echelons of Qi Condensation into something usable by all below Core Formation. 'A gift to a new disciple', was the whisper. Alongside the legacy was a small book with a number of notes on formations, a powerful Ghost Stoneflag (+4 Impact), a formation flag carved from ghosts that had been imprisoned for so long they petrified into a sort of stone. With it, formations are easily set up, less easily broken, and it serves as the keystone of any major formation with ease. A Hoplite led by Ferenike will not break until the last drop of Qi is exhausted from all within, and will work with immaculate efficiency. Lastly, some insights on cultivation, along with a few scattered herbs and spirit stones - trash to an ancient cultivator, but enough to push Ferenike into the 11th Heavenstage, and barely a step from the 12th.

    Escaping was not easy, however. On leaving she found herself surrounded by a series of angered Star-Eels seeking prey, and had she not used one of her precious treasures, her chances of escape would have been nil.

    Impact: 3 -> 7
    Cultivation     - 10th Heavenstage -> 11th Heavenstage
    Cultivation-Year Equivalent - 204 Years
    Health     - Healthy (Wounded -> Healthy due to LST)
     
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    Ah well, it comes and it goes. Aliki at least is being the most adorable little monster and scaling up As Expected of the Blood Path.
     
    Could I ask someone to edit the Seed Doc for me? I don't have access. I'd like Juturna's goal for this turn to be to capitalize on her contacts, gain wealth, lessen frictions and feuds. Basically, create power from smoothing things out, create synergies through peaceful trade and cooperation. If she could get Casia Zimisce's attention as a fellow Peace Daoist, that would be great.
     
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    Xiuying Ten Jiang 7 - Life Lessons
  • Sidestory
    • Xiuying Ten Jiang 7 - Life Lessons

    Xiuying was exhausted. Her training clothes were clinging to her body, soaked with sweat. Her entire body ached as though it was just one big giant bruise. Even so, Xiuying refused to give up. Her opponent was just as exhausted as her, even if they were better at hiding it than her. Though her body felt like lead, Xiuying gritted her teeth to bring her fists up again for the next assault.

    "Hah! Good...Good. Still going, eh, Xiuying? Think you can keep up with me a bit longer?" Huoying asked rhetorically. Xiuying simply nodded, too tired to waste energy speaking. "Great great. Well then, here it comes!"

    With as much strength that Huoying could muster in her present state, the red-head girl lunged at Xiuying, her fist shooting out like an arrow flying straight for Xiuying. Without missing a step, Xiuying threw out her own punch, barely grazing Huoying's arm, and against expectations managed to hit her friend in the face.

    Unfortunately, Huoying's fist also successfully struck its intended target as well - Xiuying's face.

    Despite being punched in the face, Huoying's momentum could not be stopped so easily, resulting in the red-haired girl crashing into Xiuying and bringing them both to the ground, painfully. The two girls laid on the ground, breathing heavily as their strength finally ran out. Now completely exhausted, Xiuying simply laid there on the ground, staring up at the blue sky, with Huoying slumped over her.

    "...You two still alive?" Xiuying heard her master ask as he prodded her leg with his foot. When Xiuying answered with a weary groan, Jiang let out a sigh of relief. "Good. That's it for martial arts training for the day. Now please repeat for me the Sixteen Precept when you are ready."

    It took several minutes of silence before Xiuying felt she had managed to catch enough of her breath to speak again.

    "Sixteen Precept. The weak swordsman clings to his instrument. It is better you have a sword, but death must lie under your fingernails, if need be. Learn death with your elbows, death with your knees, and death with your thumbs and fingertips. It is said death with the tongue is useful, but I find words too soft an instrument to smash a man's skull." Xiuying said, repeating what her master had told her before he had Xiuying and Huoying spar against each other in hand-to-hand combat.

    Huoying was the ideal sparring partner due to the fact that she was at the same level of martial arts training (reading: none) as Xiuying and the girl was more than happy to help. In all honesty though, it was less martial arts training and more of a continuous brawl with hardly any rest between each fight, and only a bit of advice on how to strike or dodge from her master. Huoying won most of the matches through vague residual combat instincts though Xiuying managed to sneak a win a few times due to mistakes on Huoying's part.

    Still, the two girls had pretty much beat each other up black and blue, and to the point of extreme exhaustion.

    Satisfied that his student had had the sixteenth precept hammer firmly into her, Jiang looked over the two girls and couldn't help but wince at the state they were in. "Okay then, I think I still have some healing balm left. How about I get you two home and treated? It's getting late, anyways and you are due for a rest day anyway."

    Xiuying and Huoying both mumbled in agreement with Jiang's suggestion. Xiuying was vaguely aware of being lifted at some point but she drifted off to sleep while Jiang carried her and Huoying back home.

    = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

    Xiuying woke up in her bed with Huoying clinging to her body like some...mysterious boneless creature that clung onto things too tightly, with her drooling over her chest. While uncomfortably warm, the noodle-girl made no attempt to peel off her unexpected bedmate. Not because Huoying was too heavy but because her body was still sore from yesterday's training.

    Then she remembered that she was supposed to wake up early in order to help prepare the ingredients.

    "Crap! I'm late!" Xiuying screamed out before getting out of bed, or at least that's what she tried to do. Instead, Xiuying discovered that Huoying was impossible to remove from her body, and no matter how much Xiuying shouted or pulled, Huoying continued snoring away, oblivious to Xiuying's dilemma. Xiuying however had gotten a good idea about what kind of person Huoying was so after failing to make Huoying get off of her, Xiuying used her last resort. "Huoying! It's time for breakfast!"

    "I'm awake!" Just like that Huoying went from being silent and still as the dead to awake and hungry. As soon as Xiuying had gotten Huoying off, the noodle girl quickly leapt out of bed. Huoying smelling no food immediately fell back into the bed, uncaring that her human body pillow was gone. "Wake me up when the food's done…"

    Quickly refreshing herself in the bathroom, Xiuying headed down to the storefront to apologise for oversleeping and do her usual job. However, when she arrived, she found an unexpected sight.

    "Here you go. One bowl of ramen." Jiang Chen Ten Meti said as he handed over the bowl of beef noodle soup to the eagerly awaiting customer.

    "Damn! These noodles are great!" A regular praised, slurping their noodles loudly.

    "Divine! Superlative! By the Heavens!" A passing cultivator exclaimed as they dug into their noodles with gusto that Xiuying had rarely seen before, even in normal people. "Never before have I eaten such delicious food! Could it be, the mythical Peaches of Immortality?!"

    "...It's just ramen," Jiang muttered with an odd look in their eyes.

    "...So this is what it is like to witness a master of the art perform." Xiuying's father said in an awed tone.

    Xiuying's Master was manning the noodle stand with her father. However, unexpectedly there was a huge line of people waiting to be served. In fact, it seemed like the entire village had come to eat at the noodle stand. Never before had Xiuying seen so many people just waiting to eat noodles.

    It was also clear that Jiang was working by himself with Xiuying's father watching from the side. Jiang was easily doing the work of at least a dozen people, their hands moving with both speed and elegance that was different from how they usually were when they held a blade. Ingredients were prepared within moments and cooked with the aid of Qi. If Xiuying didn't know better, she would have thought Jiang to be a master of cookery instead of a swordmaster. It was unbelievable how much Jiang seemed completely at home in the kitchen.

    "Master Jiang? You can cook?" Xiuying asked. Indeed, it was the first time she had ever seen her master actually cook. All the meals that Jiang had eaten since becoming her teacher were bowls of noodles from the stand that she or her father made. Never did she ever suspect that Jiang was capable of cooking noodles as well, and judging by all the customers and their praises, Jiang's noodles were more delicious than her family's noodles.

    "Ah. Hey Xiuying, you're up." Jiang greeted his student without missing a beat in his cooking. "And yeah, I know how to cook. I can cook a lot of stuff but noodles are what I'm best at."

    "C-Can I have some then?" Xiuying asked, curious about how delicious her master's noodles were.

    "Sure. Catch." Without warning, Jiang threw a bowl of noodle soup at Xiuying. Thanks to her training, Xiuying deftly caught the bowl, feeling the warmth of the food in her hands. The smell tickled her appetite and Xiuying couldn't help but swallow her drool. Though its appearance seemed almost insultingly normal, Xiuying instinctively knew that this bowl of noodles was currently beyond what she and her family, despite their long history of noodle-making, were capable of creating.

    Before going somewhere to eat her meal, Xiuying looked over at the kitchen where Jiang was cooking. This Ramen noodle soup dish as her master called it was something that would take several people's worth of effort to create. Not only would an animal have to be raised and slaughtered for its creation, as pounds of bones were utilised to turn water and other ingredients into a thick stock akin to gravy, but it also had to be watched, maintained, strained, and augmented over the same period of time. Not only did one consume the resources that went into an animal, even if that animal is low in cost as a desert boar, but hours upon hours of effort by cooks and their assistants, excluding strange cultivator magic that her master was clearly using to speed up the cooking time. The bones alone would make a good broth, but Jiang's effort had practically liquidized the bone through their efforts, making the inedible into a delicacy.

    That fact alone ought to grant its status as a delicacy, but that was not all that Jiang's ramen was!

    Hand-made noodles, specially crafted by Jiang, for their own broth, is added after a brief shock into boiling water! The noodles, thick with a coating of starch, would become coated by the broth that they'd be engulfed in. Knowing that, one would worry about the noodles becoming soggy. However, being extra-firm ensures that even a large bowl of ramen, such as the one before Xiuying, would remain as it is supposed to be eaten! Then atop the noodles, was a generous portion of fresh vegetables, from bean sprouts to bamboo shoots, to cut through the richness of the broth, and two soft-boiled eggs with perfect yokes to act as another layer of texture and flavour.

    Yes. Clearly, this bowl of ramen was something that Xiuying's family was not yet capable of recreating themselves at the moment. But surely in time they would be able to make something that was much better than their current creations.

    Taking a free seat in the outdoor dining area, Xiuying muttered a quick prayer of gratitude to the heavens for the food before digging in. Upon the first bite, Xiuying realised that she was but a fledgling noodle chef, an individual who only understood nothing but a tiny sliver of noodle soup and probably never will, as dozens upon dozens of truths set Xiuying's dark unknowing mind alight with knowledge.

    Soup! What Xiuying had erroneously thought of as broth, was in fact something that can only be called soup! The unctuous, thick composition of liquefied bones, due to heat, pressure, and technique, can be nothing besides a soup! It is something that can be a dish by itself! A meal that is rich, hearty, and consumed eagerly with any form of accompanying starch! Fresh bread can be dipped into it to glorious effect. Potatoes can swim in it, lending their creamy texture and subtle sweetness, for a divine combination. This soup could even make Dawn Cry Congee taste good! Xiuying had no doubt that, if allowed to reduce, it would become a sauce that is triumphant upon the most base of grains!

    However, it is not upon the most base of grains.

    The noodles, as well, could be a dish all their own. A composition of subtle sweetness, chew, and pronounced depth. Eating it alone would be a boring affair, yet one can do the same with an excellent piece of baked bread, or freshly prepared, aromatic rice. While the soup had a body all its own, the noodles provided the canvas for it to perfectly flow on the mouth. It is the perfect blank canvas for the soup to be laid upon. It is a painstakingly crafted material meant to accentuate the vibrancy, depth, and bounty of another. The unsung heroes that supported the grand weight of the whole structure, that managed to take the extremes of a soup composed of bone and half-a-dozen ingredients, along with all the toppings, and constrain them for the sake of the eater!

    It is easy to love the broth, but Xiuying would most certainly return for the noodles alone.

    But, that is not all.

    The toppings were not mere additions to satisfy one's desires for texture and change. The bamboo shoots had been fermented, providing both the acidity of a pickle and a resounding crunch, but also a strong earthiness, reminiscent of mushrooms, but nowhere near as harsh. Beansprouts naturally found themselves between teeth, and when crushed, became bursts of refreshing bursts of fresh flavour. Then, of course, there is the egg. The outsides were pliant to the teeth, providing more texture than flavour, but that changed once the orange, molten yolk came into play. It was a fatty accentuation that was intoxicating and sticky to the tongue, which urged Xiuying to take healthy slurps of the soup, until her palate was cleansed of the wholesome richness.

    Of course, with a palate wreathed by the heavy soup, one must consume more noodles.

    The cycle was a demanding, heavy, and challenging one, but one could easily forget it due to the medley of flavours. Consuming noodle, soup, and amenity together was a whole scene of a play. Adding, or subtracting, from the combination allowed Xiuying to derive more and more. The sips of water cleansed the palate more than beansprouts ever could, granting a new start that was strongly reminiscent of the first bite. The addition of garlic at the halfway point turned the noodles into a scarce resource, to be husbanded carefully, as the soup's flavour deepened to a point where supping upon it alone is nearly an impossibility. Then, of course, one can choose to take part of a singular bites, or sips, of the ingredients on their own, albeit influenced by the now-spiced broth.

    Consuming ramen, Xiuying found, was an experience akin to reading a book, but one that evolves with each thought and action taken by the reader. The heroes can be one ingredient or the next, supported easily by the rest of the cast. Through sips of water, the whole story seemingly returned anew, but retained the foundation of the old. Finally, upon the addition of garlic, the tone became nigh impossible, with the soup going from a hearty addition to a nigh impossible antagonist against which all the remaining ingredients compete to overthrow…to the point where the reader must become the hero, by having the courage to drink all of the soup, regardless of its fierce flavour!

    Ramen was more than just a dish!

    Ramen was an experience to be treasured!

    Ramen was something that Xiuying would always wish that she could forget, so that she could experience it all over again!

    So, Xiuying downed the whole bowl, without a shred of hesitation!

    …

    When the lunch rush had ended, Xiuying was still a trance after having eaten the ramen dish that her master had cooked. Xiuying had barely noticed her master coming over and sitting opposite of her before being broken out of her trance with a sudden poke to her forehead from her master.

    "So, enjoyed the meal?" Her master asked with a hint of smugness in his seemingly indifferent tone. Xiuying slowly nodded, still too enraptured to care about speaking. "I see...Wanna learn how to make ramen?"

    Instantly, Xiuying regained full consciousness and nodded furiously. As the daughter of a noodle chef, rather than being disheartened by the clear difference in noodle-making skill between her and her master, Xiuying was more than willing to learn how to make ramen and improve her cooking skills as well.

    "Is that so? I'll teach you then...if you abandoned the sword. God knows we need more ramen chefs than we need swordsmen." Jiang instructed casually. Xiuying froze, almost not believing what her master had told her.

    Abandon the sword, after all the effort she had put into learning the way of Sword Law thus far?

    For a single brief moment, Xiuying considered doing so. The Ramen that her master made was beyond anything that she herself or anyone in her entire family tree had ever created. Noodle-making was in her blood and soul so learning to make Ramen was clearly a goal worth any sacrifice.

    Yet the moment she thought as such, the memory of that Cut appeared in Xiuying memories. Xiuying recoiled in revulsion as she realised she had actually seriously thought about abandoning the sword to return back to the path of noodle making.

    No. She told herself. She couldn't abandon the path that would lead her to learn how to recreate such a beautiful cut. Even if the noodle-maker in her screamed out for her to learn the ways of Ramen, she refused, for the way of the sword had already been carved into her soul.

    She said as much to her master.

    Contrary to her expectation, Jiang merely shrugged his shoulders. "Alright. It was worth a shot." Confused, Xiuying asked if Jiang had been testing her. "Not really. In the past, I was told by my teacher that I was better off being a noodle vendor rather than following the way of the sword. Out of spite, I learnt how to cook good noodles without abandoning the path of Sword Law. Thanks to that, I ended up with something of a weird reputation back in my home realm. But that's another story. In any case, I'm gonna be teaching your family how to cook good ramen anyways in case the whole sword thing falls through and you go back to noodle making."

    "Eh?! B-but isn't ramen some kind of super special secret recipe?!" Xiuying couldn't believe her ears when her master told her that he was going to teach her family how to cook ramen despite her refusal to abandon the sword.

    "Nah. It's just noodles. As someone who chose to pursue the path of Sword Law to escape the life of being the son of a noodle vendor, I have no real attachment to my noodle recipes." Jiang admitted.

    "...You were the son of a noodle vendor?" Xiuying asked with wide eyes.

    "Hey, I told you that you reminded me of myself. Though I suppose that we're different in that I wanted to be something other than a noodle vendor so I'd went and did something stupid like ask the homeless old hag living in the barrel of my village if she could take me as her student, whereas you still think highly of the life of a noodle vendor and that you just want to make good cuts. In that regard...you may be more dangerous than I was at your age."

    "Huh?"

    "Never mind. Come on. Let's grab Huoying and we'll continue with martial arts training. And after that, I'll start teaching you and your family how to make ramen. Is that alright?"

    "Y-yes! Yes it is Master Jiang!"

    "Good. At the very least, I want you to be able to cook good noodles in case you abandon being a cultivator. I don't want you to end up like Maya after all."

    "Who?"

    "Just someone I know."

    Receiving only vague answers, Xiuying decided to focus on today's training. She was looking forward to learning how to one day make noodle dishes at her master's skill level.

    Little did Xiuying know that her time with her master would soon come to a close.
     
  • Sidestory
    • Wei Feng 11 - Searching
  • Sidestory
    • Wei Feng 11 - Searching​
    ===

    The desert was a poor place to search for remnants of a phoenix. As a rule, they were not desert creatures. So, Wei Feng had been gradually drifting West, towards the Great battlefield and the Verdant South.

    Sat on the back of a thrice breeze cart to which he'd bartered his protection in return for passage, "Immortal Phoenix" Wei Feng reflected on the progress of his quest to find a cure for his shattered Meridians.

    ===

    His search had begun with a casual offhand reference by one of his doctors.

    "… simply nothing that any doctor I know of can do for you unless you find a heavenly treasure or someone who holds the legacy of Soranus Hippocrates themself."

    "Soranus Hippocrates?"

    The doctor waved the question away with his hand.

    "Apologies, you would not know him. A legendary Doctor of the clan. He died back when the clan was first being pushed back into the desert. Many of his labs and notes were never recovered." The doctor looked slightly irritated at that, offended by the loss of knowledge.

    "As I was saying, were it just a single meridian, even a set of them there are experimental techniques that we might be able to try, but with the extent of the damage there is simply too great a risk that anything we do will result in total collapse of your cultivation base…"

    ===

    It would probably have been sensible to forget it. For all his understanding of his own body, Wei Feng was no doctor after all. Even if he found some doctor's legacy, there was little he would be able to do with it. But he was desperate, willing to cling to and hoard any shard of hope he could find. So, he dug into Soranus Hippocrates. Besides, in the hospital, he had nothing else to do with his time but brood.

    He asked other doctors and nurses, he consulted historical lists of prominent cultivators. At first, it just confirmed what the doctor had said. Soranus had been an ancient Doctor of the Golden Devil clan, who had lived and died back when the clan had first been driven back to their present holdings.

    He had been nearly ready to give up, leave the search for this legacy to those who would most benefit from it, before he came upon a passing reference to a to a series of grand experiments with exotic beast materials.

    Hippocrates had been engaged in a grand experiment to strengthen the Bronze bloodline of the Golden Devils, returning those of thin blood to the strength of one who had inherited the fullest power the blood. To that end he had captured or obtained harvest from many animals with healing, metallic and fire based properties.

    A boasting list mentioned Bronze malevolent scorpion for their exoskeletons, siren blood tinctures, white snakes for their scales, promethean flame crows, Talosian giants and even the Phoenix were all mentioned.

    Phoenix blood. A drop of false phoenix blood had kept him alive beyond all reason, even as its raging power destroyed his meridians. Perhaps a drop of true blood could restore him.

    ===

    He kept working. First, inventory reports in the days following Soranus' death. He found many reports of belongings retrieved, of supplies secreted and stolen away, but he could find nothing to indicate that the beasts or the beast ingredients had been found.

    Sadly, such losses were far from unusual in the history of the Golden devil clan. They were far more united than nearly any other Demonic power, but they had been so harried across the generations that none knew how many unmarked cache's or immortal caves lay hidden by owners long dead, whose only confidants had died with them.

    Wei Feng's thoughts darkened. The same would undoubtedly have happened in the last trial. With so many Elders dead, many clan resources that had been poured into confidential bases, caves and projects had undoubtedly been swallowed up by the desert. Some would be found, but other might languish for centuries or millennia before being found again.

    He mourned the loses even as he clung to the hope this one gave him. No one had found the lost base of Hippocrates. It should still be out there.

    ===

    With his goal in mind he turned to other sources. Military reports from the time were fragmentary. The clan had been getting pushed back on all fronts, twin assaults from the Divine Saber Palace and the proto devil bees driving through, even whilst the clan laboured beneath the ticking clock of death that were the trials.

    Still, the reports the location and manner of Soranus' final stand. Far to the West the doctor had been called in suddenly to help defeat a column of undetected infiltrators who had made it inside then then borders.

    He hadn't been deployed, merely drafted in for a local emergency. Which meant his lab had to be within a certain area. By determining the average travel speed of a cultivator, he could give himself a general search area.

    Here though, the clans written records he could access failed him. He would have to get closer to begin his search

    ===

    His first stop had been one of the areas where Hippocrates research had been successfully retrieved.

    It had been a complete failure. The retrieval teams centuries past had done good work. Nothing of use remained. Nothing hidden, no convenient map or clue that might guide him to other sites. Nothing but a nest of ferocious acid spitter antlions.

    ===

    His second attempt had, in hindsight, been similarly foolish. He had mapped out the locations of the known bases, looking for a pattern. He had though he had found something, a level of similarity in the distance between bases that he could use to narrow down possible locations.

    He had even found something! A door half buried beneath a sand dune, protected by concealing formations. He had spent two weeks figuring out a way through, only to find a single chamber on the other side, along with a mocking note from the centuries dead Elder congratulating him for trying.

    ===

    His eventual breakthrough had come of luck rather than judgement. He'd been spending the night in a village after dealing with a local infestation of low levelled Butcher Fiend Birds. Mostly first and second stage beasts that had taken to snatching local livestock and even a few children after been attracted by a sudden upsurge in the Rocktailed Qi Monitor Lizard population, which were otherwise uninterested in humans.

    The village had been held a small celebration that evening, and after the first excited recounting of his adventures to a grateful crowd, he had struck up a conversation with some of the guards of a caravan that was passing through the area.

    As was the way with cultivators, they had gotten around to comparing feats of martial valour, defeats of beasts and such. Far from the Golden Devil heartlands, Wei Feng had gone unrecognised, and was enjoying letting the guards have most of the way of it.

    "What about that time I wrestled that Centennial Black bear in the mountains? That was pretty good right?!" One guard, Li Mo boasted. He was short but rippling with muscle under bronzed skin.

    "Pah!" Gu An spat. He was larger, and wore white robes to deflect the harsh desert sun. "You mean that time you decided to play with a bear cub and seven of us had to drag the mother off you?!"

    The rest of the guards laughed uproariously, and Wei Feng joined in.

    "Silver Fiend ants. Fought a whole nest of them." He paused for effect as the guards shot him sceptical looks. "Well… alright. Ran away from an entire nest of them. Which is still an achievement mind. The little nippers are damn fast."

    Good natured jeers followed his admission.

    "What about that weird bunch of creatures at that last place?" Gu An suggested, snapping his fingers absently. "What was it, Hanshin? Lualin?"

    "Hualin City" One of the others sitting round the fire provided taking a pull from a bottle. "Not that it much deserves to be called a city these days."

    "Yeah, Hualin. That was it." Gu An continued. "Weirdest assortment of creatures I ever saw. Feathered flame serpents, Crows with eyes and breath of fire-…"

    Wei Feng snapped suddenly to attention, his heart jumping in his chest.

    "…- Metallic desert lions," He shook his head. "All these things that have no earthly business being together, just charging at us outta nowhere. And that damn headman refused to even give us any sort of reward for taking care of these things." He spat.

    "Least the hides were worth a…"

    Wei Feng didn't hear the rest, his heart thundering too loud in his ears.

    Hualin City. He had a name.

    ===

    The Thrice breeze cart bounced and buckled beneath him, startling him from his half doze. Around them the wind howled and sand blew. A sandstorm was closing in.

    He had a location.

    If this failed…

    Which it wouldn't

    Well, if it came to it, he would beg to join the mission to the Great Battlefield and hope to find a lead on another cure there. But only if it came to it. Much as he longed to see the lands of his childhood, the mission would have it hard enough without having to make space for someone as crippled as himself.

    But for now…

    Hualin City, wait for me.
    =============

    AN: No idea when part 12 will be out. I have a rough outline but the characters are fighting me. As ever, comments, corrections and criticism would be welcome.
     
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  • Sidestory
    • shibosho said:
    "Hey, I told you that you reminded me of myself. Though I suppose that we're different in that I wanted to be something other than a noodle vendor so I'd went and did something stupid like ask the homeless old hag living in the barrel of my village if she could take me as her student, whereas you still think highly of the life of a noodle vendor and that you just want to make good cuts. In that regard...you may be more dangerous than I was at your age."

    "Huh?"
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    She really might be. She just wants to cut things, which, since Sword Law is about learning how to Cut makes it incredibly well suited to her.
     
    Demetrius Ceres 9 - A boss encounter at the Burnished Crags – Part 2
  • Sidestory
    • Demetrius Ceres
    A boss encounter at the Burnished Crags – Part 2



    Our Prince. The rising star of our Dynasty, and one who had reached the 10th stage in only 30 years. He was charging ahead. He was the first one to ignore the plan he had created, as usual. He had fallen prey to the opponent's taunts, and if we went by the looks of the man's face, that taunting had just started.

    "Not this again." I signed as I started assembling my bow for combat.
    "Let him have some fun. It is rare to find a 10th stage cultivator in this forsaken place." Thakor said. He started stretching. "If it looks like he is going lose, we bail him out. Would be a shame if he was sent back home with the grand price right in front of us".
    "Having fun can be saved for another time," Pooja replied. "Whatever those sad creatures are doing in that cave, we should not let them complete it."

    I nodded in agreement. I fired three arrows in quick succession at the barbarian. Arrows flew towards him, as I knew they would, and the moment right before they hit the man, he moved out the way without looking. That was not a good sign. Even if they were was still testing each other. He had dodged without leaving an opening.

    The prince continued to rush towards the ax-warrior, with a khukuri in each hand and attempted to cut him apart. The ax wielder continued to calmly avoid each swipe and only rarely used the shaft of his ax to block. At rare intervals, the ax wielder would launch a kick or a grab with his hands, which was easily dodged by the prince.

    Thakor started running towards the battle, and the hooded servants moved into a line behind him while I readied my focus towards combat. They only stopped when the prince made a motion for them to do so.

    "What is your name?" the prince asked. "You may be a footnote on my path to greatness, but even a footnote needs a name to accommodate it."
    "Demetrius Ceres. You are somewhat skilled. Want to work for me?" The man known as Ceres responded.
    "Oh, I am going to enjoy putting you in your place." The prince answered, a wicked smile appearing on his lips.

    The Prince rushed the opposing cultivator, blades in both hands at a speed only reserved for a 10th stage cultivator. The desert sand followed in his traction. Ceres responded in kind and met him in middle, and the sound of an ax against blade rung.

    I charged my shot, and as I aimed, I sensed something to my left. I threw myself down and avoided the Qi construct of an ax-head by the hair. I used a movement technique to reposition myself and observed the battle. The prince had been punted into a sand dune, and Thakor and two of the servants had entered the melee combat and they were struggling to keep up with his speed. Pooja, bleeding after being hit, once again attempted to charge up a spell, but the construct appearing from her left forced her to quit the incantation, and dodge.


    The Prince rushed the opposing cultivator, blades in both hands at a speed only reserved for a 10th stage cultivator. The desert sand followed in his traction. Ceres responded in kind and met him in the middle, and the sound of an ax against blade rung.

    I charged my shot, and as I aimed, I sensed something to my left. I threw myself down and avoided the Qi construct of an ax-head by the hair. I used a movement technique to reposition myself and observed the battle. The Prince had been punted into a dune. Thakor and two of the servants had entered melee combat, and they were struggling to keep up with his speed. Pooja, bleeding after being hit, once again attempted to charge a spell. The construct appearing on her left forced her to quit the incantation and dodge.

    I charged up a new shot and was forced once again to abandoned the attack as a new Qi construct flew towards my head. Ceres was using one of the servants as a hammer and Tahkor's shield as an anvil. The Prince had finally dug himself out and was rushing towards Ceres. In response, he threw the servant at him.

    Ceres looked troubled? No, upset.

    "What have you done to them? I can't feel their drive. There is nothing there." He gestured to the hooded servants while speaking in his butchered accent.
    "The servants? Never met a Naukar before?" the Prince asked in a curious tone. "Their will. Their purpose? Their bodies? It all belongs to me since I am their owner."
    "…. You may just as well have killed them. You have ruined their potential, the same way I am going to ruin yours. You may not be as bad as those lunatics who thinks nature is sacred, or those who offer sacrifices to monsters as a tribute, or happily get ordered around by deranged apples-trees, but you are certainly close." The man tightened the grip around his ax. "Playtime is over."

    From that point, the battle changed. It started as a 7vs1 battle, and now it felt like a 7vs7. He didn't need reinforcement. We did, and I hoped the rest of the group we had left behind to chase these mongrels could hurry up because if they didn't, we would lose.

    ------

    After fighting for hours on end, Pooja was finally able to finish her incantation, and she only managed that by sacrificing one of the servants. The Prana poured out of her, and the sound of the servant, being returned to the fifth sea.

    "Head my will, those who have passed. Return once again to punish those who put you to rest," she screamed, her voice resonating with the corpses of the fallen beasts, and they rose once again.

    The fallen corpses charged the one who had killed them. Body parts fell to the ground in their mad dash. They screamed, in a guttural howl from lungs that no longer worked. Ceres only paused for a second, something a servant attempted to use to its advantage. It didn't work. The frustrating Prana construct of himself appeared once again, grabbed him, and threw it into the horde.

    "POOJA, What in the emperor's name are you doing?" the Prince yelled as he attempted to disengage from the madman swinging at his head. "Line them up in combat formation".

    "This isn't possible… They are dead… They should not be able to feel such hate…." after saying that, Poojas pupils disappeared, and a blood-curdling scream, far loader than what her frame should allow, could be heard. As the beasts she had awoken, she charged towards Ceres as she screamed.

    "Dammit, stop her before she gets herself killed."

    I attempted to aim a shot against her token, but the Prana constructs raining down on me made it impossible. I ran towards her, bow in hand. If archery wouldn't work, hitting it with my fist would have to. Listening to my instincts, I managed to avoid the incoming attacks, reached Pooja, and broke her token. Without her to support them, the beasts, who had the trampled on the last remaining servant, returned to their old state of death.

    I turned around and saw that I had left myself open. Demetrius Ceres was charging me with the Prince in hot pursuit. As a last resort, I channeled my Prana into my acid heart and used it to spit acid in his direction to slow him and buy me time. It didn't work. Instead of stopping, he summoned his infernal prana projection and used is a stepping stone to avoid it. I raised my bow in a last desperate attempt, but I was too late. His foot landing on my face was the last I saw before my token forced my return.

    _________________

    I will probably edit it later.
    "Prince" is such a neat title. It's easy to use and allows me to avoid giving the man a real name. It will be five turns until the next trial. Hopefully, I will have figured out something to call him by then.

    Last turns 1+ impact bonus.
    Ax technique: The Ax-warrior second will.
    The user can use this technique to summon a qi construct of himself using his ax as a medium, and it will fight his enemies according to his will. The construct will only last a few seconds before dissipating.
     
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  • Sidestory
    • Wei Feng 12 - Interlude - Hualin tales (part 1)
  • Sidestory
    • Wei Feng 12 - Interlude- Hualin tales (part 1)​

    Seen from above, Hualin was not a pretty city. It had the strange organic quality of a city that has come by its growth honestly. It had backalleys and deadends aplenty, strange waggling streets crisscrossed in a fashion that would have organised minds fizzing with rage.

    From a ground level though, it could look quite beautiful. It had a surprisingly uniform architectural style, of the sort that could only really be enforced by the intervention of stern men with pikes in the early stages of city planning.

    The clean, uniform effect was only mildly ruined by fact that some of the building material had clearly not been of a quality desired for the style. An otherworldy visitor might be put in the mind of seeing a low-quality background set put too sharply in view behind actors on a screen.

    Nevertheless, Hualin was a city that, by and large, worked.

    The mortals proceeded about their business, living their daily lives. The bakers baked, masons built, street vendors hawked and even the city guard spent a substanital amount of time pursuing actual criminals between routine shakedowns for food and beer.

    Everything worked well, except for occasional problems started by cultivators.

    Most City Guards don't employ cultivators as a general rule. There are a couple of reasons for this. Firstly, cultivators are expensive. Really expensive. You could probably employ another two dozen guards for the year fort the price of one relatively low level cultivator.

    Secondly, they're seen as lazy bastards. Oh no one would say that to their faces, not unless they had no pressing need for their teeth, but even the lowest of the low among cultivators spend half the hours of the day sitting around meditating and they weren't exactly lining up to spend the other twelve walking the pavements.

    Finally, they just weren't needed. The types of cultivators who tended to go after mortals in the city were the kind of people you needed the legions for. Unless they were blood path, most Cultivators didn't tend to go after mortals much. Not out of any sort of morality, though they'd crow their righteousness from the rooftops. Mostly they didn't do it because it wasn't worth the time.

    It'd be like shaking down the elderly for pennies. Possible, if you were inclined to such a level of petty evil, but you'd spend more on the metaphorical bus fare finding victims than you'd make.

    Generally if any of the elderly penny mugging sorts turned up you relied on one of the other passing cultivators to intervene following the general cultivator principle of "If I can have even a figleaf of justification, I should do everything I can to loot the next cultivator I see down to their underwear. Then steal the underwear too".

    The cultivators and the mortals pretty much lived in their own separate worlds. It was a system that worked for centuries.

    Which meant, something had to go wrong eventually.

    ==

    Calling the Oasis Chaser gang 'ambitious' would be to demean the word. Although they would probably describe themselves as ambitious men and women, theirs was the sort of feckless 'ambition' that usually ended in lottery tickets financed by petty crime.

    Unfortunately, they were also cultivators, which could change the definitions of 'petty' quite substantially.

    Zheng Huang, leader of the Oasis Chasers was a hundred and twenty years old, and in the fifth stage of Qi condensation. A fact his gang trod carefully around as he tended to be alternately proud of and annoyed by his strength.

    On a good day, he was proud of himself, boasting of how he had worked himself up from nothing and become a cultivator at thirty, stealing away a shard of spirit stone and awakening despite having no teacher or backing from anyone. On a poor day, he raged against the unfairness of the world, taking it out on anyone who happened by. Certain that he could have achieved so much more had not fate spat on him at every turn.

    The Oasis chasers had earned their name hunting small caravans near Oases, and maintained their freedom by not being worth hunting down. They only targeted small caravans, and tended to to leave their victims alive, if stripped of a large portion of their valuable goods.

    Occasionally they raided small mortal villages, making off with the young, the strong and the pretty and he'd built up a small but profitable arrangement with some of the caravans he had previously raided to take them off his hands afterwards.

    It was a small, easy life. Full of such indolence, wealth and treasures that would make even more hedonistic mortal lords feel satiated.

    And it was not enough.

    Huang was getting old. At one hundred and twenty, fully three quarters of his life lay behind him. If he could not advance two stages, he had another 40 years in him at most. His little raids kept him and his gang stable, but didn't provide enough for him to reach the true potential he knew he possessed.

    He wanted more. More than a gang of bandits, more than a what wine and women he could steal. He wanted dominion, respect, power.

    He wanted a city, he wanted Hualin.

    And fate it seemed, was finally prepared to give him what he wanted.

    ==

    Quan Guanting had spotted it first. Out hunting, she had followed a four winged bat home through the night to its cave, but found that she was unable to enter. It was protected somehow. After some thought (and bat stew once it flew out again), she had brought it to Zheng Huang.

    Not out of loyalty of course. But there was no point hoarding something of unknown value you couldn't access forever. Half of something was undoubtedly better for her than all of nothing.

    It had taken three months working on and off to breach the cave. What they found there was a treasure trove. A menagerie of spirit and demon beasts, along with a massive number of control talismans. All of them of the 4th​ heavenstage or below, but there were doors leading further that were still sealed. Who knew what treasures laid behind them?

    In the meantime though, Zheng Huang had a plan. With an army of spirit beasts, Hualin could be his for the taking.

    Of course, that could be a bloody thing. Caravans and their cultivator guards still passed through the City regularly enough, and greedy cultivators wouldn't hesitate to charge an army of spirit beasts if they thought their hides might be profitable enough.

    No, instead Zheng Huang would step up his raiding on single caravans. No more living victims, just victims of demon beast attack. In a few months, or a year. He could ride into town, deal with the threat and Hualin would be his in a moment.

    =====

    Shi Zhufeng looked out over his city.

    As a younger man, Shi Zhufeng had journeyed across the continent. As he journeyed down a river, he had seen peculiar U-shaped bodies of water alongside the river, separated from it by strips of land.

    He had asked the captain about these over dinner that night and was told they were called oxbow lakes. Areas that had once been great bends in the river that had been cut off when the rivers forged themselves new, straighter paths that bypassed the former bends.

    Hualin was becoming an oxbow city. Once it had held a spirit stone mine and been major port of call on a great trading route. A minor diversion in distance for great potential profits, but the mine dried up years ago.

    Now the trade routes had begun to bypass it, larger caravans with greater magic treasures ignored it entirely, trusting in their flight and protections against any predator or phenomena. Only the smaller ones, who could not travel so long without respite still came, leaving Hualin to gradually decay.

    Of course, the local bandits were doing their part to speed along the decay as fast as possible. As had the sudden increase in angry local wildlife.

    But worst of all, was his near inability to fix things due to lack of money. Oh in mortal terms the city was still well off, but cultivators tended to sneer derisively at mortal money, and with the spirit stone mine dry they were forced to rely on what little toll revenues were left after the golden devils and the local overlords had taken their cut.

    It was not a great deal. Certainly not enough to hire a proper squad of cultivators to take out the bandits. It was a vicious cycle, bandits stole from the caravans, meaning they couldn't pay or insisted on paying less. Without more money, he couldn't pay for proper guards to either drive out the bandits or ensure the caravans paid their proper due, rather than what they thought they could get away with.

    Instead he was forced to rely on ad hoc arrangements, like the one before him.

    "Miss Jia." He began. "I understand that you are prepared to undertake some work for us?"

    Jia Dai sniffed, resisting the urge to rub her nose. She was quite tall for a woman, and despite the heat wore a lamellar armoured chest piece, that covered down to her knees.

    "That's'right" She bobbed her head. "With the wagons stuck till the boss can get a new sandshield array I got nothing better to do, and your boys made the offer sound pretty temptin'."

    Behind her, Guard Sergeant Fang Shun stared resolutely forward into the wall, giving no sign he had heard anything.

    Shi Zhufeng tried, with great effort of restraint, to hide the irritation he felt in having to deal with and pay such an odious flower unfeminine behaviour directly.

    "Indeed." He stared at her for a moment. "We are prepared to deliver to you the agreed upon sum of spirt stones-

    "Which is tiny" She interrupted.

    "-as well as…"He gave her his best quelling look, and received an innocent blink in return. "allowing you the rights to any and all carcasses or salvage you may take from the beasts you kill. Which should be quite valuable enough! " His voice rose steadily, slamming his last word down like a heavy volume.

    Jia Dai grinned at him.

    "Gotcha boss."

    "… Please inform sergeant Fang or Corporal Yao Kun of the location of any nests you find. Take them with you if the danger isn't too great." He picked up his inkbrush and bent back over his paperwork to try and avoid any further conversation.

    "Good day Miss Dia."

    ===
    Jia Dai stepped out into the street, stretching her arms above her head and cracking her shoulders.

    It was good to be out of that office, sorting things out with the stuffy mayor who probably wasn't even as old as she was. The pay itself was pretty shoddy, but it was a nice supplement to her stipend as a caravan guard. Any real gain would be in the materials.

    "C'mon then," She said over her shoulder. "If you're my official liaison or whatever, you can tell me who got attacked and where to find them, right?"

    "Yes, miss" Said the sergeant, now staring resolutely at the sky.

    "Well come on, lead the way" She clapped him on the shoulder casually, causing him to briefly buckle. "Lets work out what it is that I'm killing!"

    ==

    AN: Because it isn't all about Wei Feng. The world doesn't stand still for one good seed. Also because I need to improve my character writing and my dialogue. As ever, comments, corrections, suggestions and criticism welcome.
     
    Last edited:
  • Sidestory
    • A bit late @BlueHelix but I did promise so I squeezed it in before heading for work
    BlueHelix said:
    "Bloody hounds, close ranks!" the stern-faced boy Zhang said—and clang they went.

    Carmine canines they were, monstrous parodies of the dogs nobles would use to harass animals to exhaustion. Red-tinged ichor constantly dripped out of their slavering mouths, and—there it was, their handler, riding the largest hound in the middle of the pack.

    Textbook, in all honesty. And as such, received a textbook response.

    Spears out, shields locked—the vanguard of the pack slammed into shield wall, breaking themselves on it.
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    Honestly the best part of this so far is you're doing a great job conveying the visuals of it. The tone of derision in the descriptors with that third line really helps bring it all together by asserting character in both the presentation of the narrator, and imbuing personality into the otherwise faceless masses of the opponents. There is the character of "discipline" vs "amateur" and that personality is impressed upon how you imagine the scene as it proceeds to play out.

    BlueHelix said:
    However, things weren't that simple—the survivors leapt back, preparing themselves for a second assault. And naturally, rather than continually hammering themselves against an unshakeable anvil, making everyone's life easier, they took the choice that would ensure at least some wounds.

    This close, he could see it. The muscles tensing, the jaws, clamped shut. The handler cracked his jade-lined whip, and they leapt.

    It would be a comical sight, in any other context, two dozen and one dogs leaping through the air.

    "Cover!", the commander shouted, voice cutting through the roaring in his ears, flame-haired ponytail whipping about like the bloodied tassel of a spear.

    Shields rose, locking into a fashion he would later know as chelóna, the turtle—fitting, all things considered.
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    Excellent use of similes to establish a visual in the mind of the reader with the second half, and a very competent summation of events in the first half to avoid getting dragged down in describing a course of action trivialized in the previous assessment. Once more, the character of the narrator comes through here and conveys events as they unfolded more than adequately. There's movement, a direction and a flow to everything that's going on here rather than belaboring irrelevant details. Brevity is king, and he is holding court.

    BlueHelix said:
    Like falling stars, the hounds impacted against the shields. One-two-three-four-five-six-seven—
    And they gored themselves against the driven spears, just like that, scant survivors mopped up like a smudge of dirt on a weapon — wait a moment, where was the last one?

    That flash of thought saved his life, as he dropped low to a squat. Turning around, the handler's mount, half-blinded already from someone—Anastasia?—slicing it a weeping grin across its face, filled his view, leaping at him.

    Quick as a flash, he threw his arm up, borrowed knife in hand—a gift from Anastasia, as apparently his own wasn't "up to par." And with a wet noise, the viscera of the beast fell out around him, as the Blood Hound opened itself up against the small blade, akin to a fish being gutted and filleted. A predator, turned prey.
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    Here you begin to stumble a bit, as the strength of the preceding simile and impressions of the overall flow of battle remain strong as the chaff begin to be wiped out, business as usual, etc etc.

    The problem is the bits of commentary about Anastasia. It seems forced, even if its only twice, but these individual flashes of action are over in a few lines and thus the impact of this larger, more personal threat is wiped out as it's forced to compete with word space for wrapping up the previous sequence and Matthias thinking about Anastasia's contribution to the sequence. Anastasia isn't here, and Matthias can't see her, so there's no reason for her to intrude on his perspective as he's ostensibly fighting for his life in a stressful and relatively high speed sequence of events. You'd have been better served adding personality to the faceless mook, to heighten the impact of the potential threat by humanizing it even if to add weight to it's quick progression to being deceased.

    As a result, what should have otherwise been visceral has an element of distance added in, wholly inappropriate to the scene you're trying to convey and ruining the beats you've established up to that point.

    BlueHelix said:
    "Auuuuuuuuuuugh!", a scream, filled with hatred and anger erupted behind him—but surprisingly, it wasn't from any of his comrades. Rather, the screeching noise came from the handler's throat—perhaps he actually cared about his "pets"?

    Ah, no. A death curse, it seemed, as he walked back, towards the packmaster. He raised his hand, already reaching towards where the darkened energy was making its way towards him, as he had done many a time before—and then it was gone, disappeared from his gasp.

    The commander, Iphigenia, stood before him as the crazed Blood Path cultivator fell over, sword thrust through his chest. With a kick, she freed it, and flicked it to the side, leaving it gleaming bronze once more. A twirl, and it was sheathed.

    The group reformed after mopping up the rest, with Anastasia going behind her commander this time, seemingly in serious conversation.
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    And the reason why that is a mistake is the first line there, because now the question of the faceless handlers personality is a clinical one, which is in itself a mistake. It weakens the impact of the event.

    The handler bit in Jabba's Palace in Return of the Jedi come to mind. I know why you went the angle of dehumanizing, but that was a mistake I feel. It would have cost nothing to make the conflict a bit more personal given general Xianxia tropes of swearing eternal vengeance over slights and such.

    BlueHelix said:
    Yet, yet, yet, even if the wall held, the wall stood on sand. And so even for all their bracing, they were pushed back, for momentum was most definitely not on their side. Hold, hold, hold was all they could do, and pray that this charge would tire their opponents out faster than holding would.

    So he decided to help. Standing aside, he held out his hands, doing his best to shoot out a cloud of miasma, held in place unnaturally despite the suddenly increased whipping winds.

    Exhaustion. Fatigue. Weariness. Curse. Curse. Curse.

    A pause. A gap. An opening, and it was taken. Iphigenia, the squad commander kicked her shield forward, leveraging the blood-drinkers' momentum against them, and ran forward, grabbing another spear with her suddenly free hand, thrusting them into the blinded eyes of their enemies, halving the pressure. Shields lowered in the borrowed moment, and weapons flickered out, bruising, hamstringing, crippling. A stolen second became thirty, a minute, and then five. Time enough to disengage and run again.
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    This is a pretty good concept of a scene as well, unfortunately you go a bit too far in on describing the poetic(?) aspects of things, to the point where the overall picture is muddled. Yes. there's force and misasma and stuff and all that, but all we have are you telling us these things happened without a particularly good idea of what they look like.
     
    Good Seed Report, Collated
  • Threadmarks
    • Alastor Cheimos
    Omake Reward - Lifesaving Treasure (I believe)
    Fate -     There are many unlucky, but few with talent to overcome that luck. Alastor Cheimos was the victim of a training exercise gone wrong. Left in the desert for a few days survival, Aspirants were meant to be safe. Unfortunately for him, he happened on a sleeping Foundation Ten-Wing Blowfly, which lazily slapped at him in annoyance, throwing him far away and wounding him lightly. Spending much of his time and efforts recovering from his wounds, he found himself perpetually behind, but simply cultivated at such a rate as to astound those who knew him.
    Impact: 0 -> 0
    Cultivation     - 1st Heavenstage -> 4th Heavenstage
    Cultivation-Year Equivalent - 35 Years (+14)
    Health     - Light Wound -> Healthy

    Xiao Yingzi
    Omake Reward - Lifesaving Treasure
    Fate -     Dog shit luck. While those around her were torn apart, dying, and the like, Yingzi was merrily making her way into the centre of the Qiguai Secret Realm. An ancient place of many secrets, there she had luck not seen since Rina Callista had met a Spirit Severing fragment there. This was more than that. Yingzi found herself torn into a whorl of space, into a part of the Realm she should have not been able to reach at all. The Nascent Soul Qiguai Secret Realm. The barriers between the parts of the Secret Realm had moved, and while this had proved death and disaster for those around her, it had been fortune for her. There, she found a single spear, discarded by some Nascent Soul Clan elder who had died there. The Legion-Banner Spear (+8 Impact) was in fact the former banner of the 1178th Legion, named "Through Innumerable Deaths, Unshaken". This particular motto along with the name of every single elder who stood as Legate for the Legion is inscribed on the spear, and fragments of thousands of Core Formation elders wills suffuse it even now - with a single Nascent Soul will binding them together. An elder had forged the banner-pole into a spear after trying to retrieve it from the Realm and failing. They hoped to use it to defend themselves, but died anyway. It offers great power indeed. Infused with the will of generations upon generations of elders, it can shatter barriers and pierce enemies even in Core Formation. Their collective wisdom whispers to her as well, helping her in battle, able to predict enemy movements preternaturally. Of course, Yingzi cannot use it to its full potential yet.

    Continuing on, she discovered the Soul Farseer (+1 Impact) on another Nascent Soul corpse - a telescope carved from high-grade Spirit Stones. This allows her to see the strength of enemies even in Foundation Establishment from far away - it is difficult to hide one's strength or approach from Xiao Yingzi.

    It was at the third corpse she tried to loot that she was discovered by an angry spectre of a Devil Bee cultivator, but an old clan elder rose up in death to defend her, striking many blows. It infused her with the last of its will, pushing her cultivation forward into the 6th Heavenstage and throwing her out of the Realm entirely. For a Nascent Soul to leave themselves is impossible, but to push a tiny power like a Qi Condensation cultivator out the exit is quite possible indeed. The blows and buffets of the fight Lightly Wounded her, badly injuring her meridians and preventing her from making any further progress in the decades to come.

    Impact: 0 -> 9
    Cultivation     - 1st Heavenstage -> 6th Heavenstage
    Cultivation-Year Equivalent - 46 Years (+25)
    Health     - Light Wound -> Healthy

    Xiuying Ten Jiang
    Omake Reward - Lifesaving Treasure
    Fate     - It was during her adventures about the lands of the Clan that she found it. Not a sword, of course. That would be ridiculous. Rather, an ancient and powerful pot, filled to the brim with thousand-year old Heavenly Noodles. The noodles themselves empowered her briefly, but she found anything inside the Thousand Year Noodle Pot (+6 Impact) when cooked would somehow bring out the absolute maximum potential of all ingredients fused together - insofar as they could be in some sort of noodle soup. Upon slurping down fresh noodles made from the pot, her strength rises innumerable stages and she is the equal of those many Heavenstages above her, finding tremendous speed and strength entering her temporarily and making her far powerful than she would otherwise be. Of course, it does require some setup time, and the less fresh the noodles are, the less powerful they are, rapidly falling off once cold. Her talent for cultivation remained below average, reaching only the 3rd Heavenstage, however.
    Impact: 0 -> 6
    Cultivation     - 1st Heavenstage -> 3rd Heavenstage
    Cultivation-Year Equivalent - 32 Years (+11)
    Health - Healthy -> Healthy

    Minervina Barda
    Omake Reward - Healing Treasure (Crippling cleared!)
    Fate     - Who can explain the adventures of the mistress of poisons? On clearing her meridians of the horrifying poison she had wrought, Minervina found strength, not weakness. In a moment of utter and unprecedented luck, she found her cultivation soaring, moving forward at speeds unimaginable. Realm after realm broke before her, and when the wave of energy ceased, she stood at Late Foundation Establishment, an expert unparalleled in her generation. It was this same event that helped her gain a constitution that had no doubt been just a trace of a skerrick before the events of Pleuron. She was ambushed by three Core Formation Torture Poison Scorpions, creatures that used poison to torture cultivators to death in order to consume their vengeful spirits. However, instead of dying, her unlocked meridians and ability to use them to push her cultivation forward somehow formed the Natal Poison Body (Impact +5), a body capable of absorbing poisons like water, and using them to fuel the powers and poisons she used herself. She could drink even the direst of poisons without issue, and by doing so find herself massively empowered, able to burn them for strength, or return them to another enemy on touch. Her constitution thus improved, she was able to flee the Scorpions, though a town of fifty thousand had to be abandoned as they could not be removed with the Clan in disarray.
    Impact: 4 -> 9
    Cultivation     - Early FB (2nd Pillar) -> Late FB (5th Pillar)
    Cultivation-Year Equivalent - 236 Years (+96)
    Health - Healthy -> Healthy

    Jiang Chrysanthos
    Omake Reward - Lifesaving Treasure
    Fate     - Remarkable performance--his dual bloodline has proven to be a formidable asset, permitting easy refinement of his body and development of the necessary strength to cultivate. He refined the Legion Body Tempering technique in a moment of inspiration, adapting it to his own nature--and he has surged to the heights of the Eighth Heavenstage in a single leap--only a hair's breadth away from the Ninth.
    Impact: 0 -> 0
    Cultivation     - 1st Heavenstage -> 8th Heavenstage
    Cultivation-Year Equivalent - 56 Years (+35)

    Anuka Vatatzes
    Omake Reward -     N/A
    Fate - Many stood out in the past century, potential experts that diverge from the mold and walk their own path--to greater or lesser effect. Anuka was not one one of them--their cultivation has come slowly and with great effort, and they lack any particularly noteworthy feats or incidents to their record. Nonetheless, it is not unusual for some cultivators to start slowly before the right opportunity arrives.
    Impact: 0 -> 0
    Cultivation -     1st Heavenstage -> 2nd Heavenstage
    Cultivation-Year Equivalent - 28 Years (+7)
    Health - Healthy -> Healthy

    Aurelius Mancinus
    Omake Reward -     Lifesaving Treasure - used immediately!
    Fate - While his ambition to refine the Blood of Bronze is laudable, to begin at the earliest stages of his cultivation is hubris. Attempts to engineer a mutation in his bloodline led to a significant backlash, the Bronze hardening in his veins before his body had evolved to support it. While not beyond treatment, it resulted in his cultivation standing still this period, and good fortune alone prevented his immediate death.
    Impact: 0 -> 0
    Cultivation -     1st Heavenstage -> 1st Heavenstage
    Cultivation-Year Equivalent - 21 Years (+0)
    Health - Started at Wounded. Dead -> Badly Wounded (Used LST)

    Demetrius Ceres
    Omake Reward - Tribulation Boost
    Fate -     A boring twenty years for Demetrius.Where others had grand adventures, he merely cultivated. Slowly seeking his way towards the 11th Heavenstage, he continued at normal pace. A time of calm and quiet with no great disasters or great falls. He did manage to befriend a wandering cultivator from the south, a goatman also in Qi Condensation - a rarity in the lands of the Clan. With two goat heads and four legs, the demihuman would have faced death anywhere else, but somehow managed to befriend Demetrius despite being far weaker than him. However, this time in assisting a weak junior yielded several key insights into his Dao, smoothing his path towards Foundation Establishment.
    Impact: 7 -> 7
    Cultivation     - 10th Heavenstage -> 10th Heavenstage
    Cultivation-Year Equivalent - 129 Years (+18)
    Health     - Healthy -> Healthy

    Diomedes Cestus
    Omake Reward - Cultivation Boost
    Fate -     Diomedes cultivated diligently, and advanced diligently. Where others were fighting and doing all manner of things, Diomedes cultivated. As the world outside turned, he focused intently on reaching the 11th Heavenstage, and reached nearly halfway to his goal. Apart from a brief encounter in which he accidentally wrecked a small inn in a comedy of errors and decided to serve the innkeeper for five years by way of recompense as a bartender and inn guard, little enough to mention.
    Impact: 2 -> 2
    Cultivation     - 10th Heavenstage -> 10th Heavenstage
    Cultivation-Year Equivalent - 147 Years (+33)
    Health     - Healthy -> Healthy

    Wei Feng
    Omake Reward - Healing Treasure
    Fate -     The second of the Thirteen to be crippled and to arise anew from it. As Minervina forged her Innate Poison Body, Wei Feng pursued something of a similar nature: the legendary Phoenix Constitution, that powerful state of being in which one could arise again and again in combat, no matter how wounded. He did not find it - after all, that constitution was one of the greatest legendary constitutions, one of the Nine Imperial Beast Constitutions. However, he forged his own path forward. Unable to recover his meridians, he managed to find a regenerating Sorrow-Fire Salamander, and killed it by absorbing its blood. Instead of being able to absorb his Phoenix blood, the False Phoenix Blood fused into the Fire Salamander's Blood, forming a droplet of mixed blood. For many, this would be worthless. For a sublime body cultivator, if one could bear enough pain to absorb and refine the blood over the course of ten years... one could recreate one's meridians, rebuild the body, and regenerate like none other. Wei Feng managed to forge his own Phoenix Salamander Constitution (+7 Impact), advancing his cultivation only a little, but making him shake off wounds and even most maiming in battle. Unless he is exhausted of Qi entirely, or his head is destroyed, he is virtually impossible to kill. He can exchange killing blows with a laugh, and come out ahead every time.
    Impact: 2 -> 9
    Cultivation     - 10th Heavenstage -> 10th Heavenstage
    Cultivation-Year Equivalent - 130 Years (+22)
    Health     - Crippled -> Healthy

    Yan
    Omake Reward - Trib Boost
    Fate -     Wounded as things stood, Yan lost his last lifesaving treasure while adventuring along the Scorpion Road. An enraged Sorrow-Fire Salamander attacked him, one of its children having previously been killed by another Clan cultivator. Far stronger, and able to generate, it chased him down and left him almost dead, burnt nearly to a crisp. Badly wounded as he was, he failed to make any progress in regards to his cultivation.
    Impact: 8 -> 8
    Cultivation     - 10th Heavenstage -> 10th Heavenstage
    Cultivation-Year Equivalent - 149 Years (+0)
    Health     - Wounded -> Crippled (LST interrupt) -> Wounded

    Magnus Centenius
    Omake Reward - Healing
    Fate -     Magnus built puppet-arms of great worth to replace his own, and attached them to himself. Unfortunately, it was the puppet-spirit he had not bet on. Taking over much of his body, the arms built more arms to enstrain and use him, at one point even taking over use of his mouth. He spent six years on a rampage as "Sensei Squid", an absurd name the newborn puppet spirit picked for him due to his many arms. It was only on facing down a cultivator from a vassal of the clan, one of the mysterious Spider-Body Cultivators that he was defeated, and managed to regain the use of his body through the judicious use of a treasure at the right moment. He is still wounded, and is taking much more time to integrate his arms before allowing them control again. This has been of benefit to his Dao, however.
    Impact: 3 -> 3
    Cultivation     - 10th Heavenstage -> 10th Heavenstage
    Cultivation-Year Equivalent - 108 Years (20 years to FB, +0)
    Health     - Crippled -> Healthy (Healing) -> Crippled (LST interrupt) -> Wounded

    Eirene of Nowhere
    Omake Reward - LST
    Fate -     Eirene was able to spend much time in meditation, much time seeking her Dao.She travelled for some time as a wandering healer, assisting villages and places in need. On saving a young girl from an infection, a mysterious voice called her into a cave. It was the girl's ancestor, who had sought to give the last of his legacy away to a worthy heir. The Core Formation will was about to dissipate, and saw her as the last option. It offered her the Qi Transferring Needle (+1 Impact), a magical needle that could drain Qi from one and give it to another. Useless in combat, as it acted slowly, the sheer precision with which it could be used on a specific meridian or acupoint meant that it allowed Eirene to be even more precise and better at healing that she had been before.
    Impact: 5 -> 6
    Cultivation     - 10th Heavenstage -> 10th Heavenstage
    Cultivation-Year Equivalent - 129 Years (+21)
    Health     - Healthy -> Healthy

    Mograine
    Omake Reward - LST
    Fate -     Into the Qigaui Secret Realm he went, adventuring where others had gone and won so much, or lost their lives. He faced down a trio of robbers who beat him viciously, stealing his clothes and leaving him sore and wounded on the ground with many broken bones, Lightly Wounding him overall. He was able to recover, and plunged further into the realm, here finding a Twisted-Space Pocket (+2 Impact), a peculiar sealed space which could be released around him, whorls of gravity and twisted space appearing around him. It could be reused, though only once every few decades. But for one who knew its weaknesses, it would offer a significant advantage in a fight. He managed to find three more such pockets, but it was in this moment he was found by the selfsame robbers from the Qiguai Clan who sought his death to steal his treasure, and who pierced him through the eye with a spear, almost killing him. Without the use of a treasure, he would have died, and managed to escape only by the skin of his teeth with his gains.
    Impact: 7 -> 9
    Cultivation     - 10th Heavenstage -> 10th Heavenstage
    Cultivation-Year Equivalent - 129 Years (+21)
    Health     - Healthy -> Lightly Wounded -> Dead (LST interrupt) -> Badly Wounded

    Ulysses
    Omake Reward     - LST - used immediately!
    Fate - Cultivated with diligence, working as a medic with the MXXXIV legion, he helped to treat the wounds of many over the years, including a member of the 13, as well as many others injured in the miracle of Pleuron. Accompanied Magnus Centenius on an expedition to gather thundertoad eyes to aid in healing the clan's wounded. Through this diligent practice he advanced his understanding of the Dao of the Refiner substantially, advancing to the 4th Heavenstage. His understanding of the art culminated in the creation of the Burrowing root escape pill, formed from a precious cast off of Jin Muyi's plant form. During a trip to gather medicanl ingredients, was badly injured when he was cornered by a flock of Barbed Spine Owls caught him attempting to retrieve their eggs, he would surely have perished had he not swallowed his Burrowing root escape pill, which formed a powerful carapace of roots to protect his flesh even as they burrowed into the earth, allowed him to escape.
    Impact: 0 -> 0
    Cultivation     - 1st Heavenstage -> 4th Heavenstage
    Cultivation-Year Equivalent - 35 Years (+14)
    Health     - Badly Wounded -> Lightly Wounded (Used LST) cleared to Healthy at end of turn.

    Shiro
    Omake Reward     - Unsure. None asked for. Left as Lifesaving Treasure unless otherwise updated.
    Fate - Death and Destruction. Normally a bad thing, but the desert is home to many beings who might take advantage of such a thing, including a species of cursed mushrooms. Shiro stumbled upon an area that was once an oasis, teeming with life, a sanctuary in the harsh desert. Once. Under the effects of a terrible curse of decay, everything, from tall trees that boiled over with black ooze, to wilting grass covered in miniature fungi, to water that was more slime than any sort of liquid, was in some stage of rot. To most, this would be a cursed land of death. To Shiro, this was an opportunity. The mushroom slammed its staff down into the blackened sands, and slowly, the corruption began to flow into the artifact. After three months of patience, the oasis was once more a beacon of life, and Shiro had benefitted heavily from the Curse Qi that used to permeate the area, using it to catapult the mushroom to the Ninth Heavenstage in a single leap.
    Impact: 0 -> 0
    Cultivation     - 1st Heavenstage -> 9th Heavenstage
    Tribulation - 2 turns from passing into Foundation Establishment.
    Cultivation-Year Equivalent - 107 Years (+86)
    Health     - Healthy -> Healthy

    Paulus
    Omake Reward     - LST
    Fate – making it to the officer track in the legions –even as a trainee- comes with certain expectation about the potential of the cultivator unfortunately Paulus didn't meet them between keeping his shape, training his squad, trying to earn money to support himself and his friends, buying a defensive charm that would allow him to survive any one hit and buying a spear enchanted to be unnaturally sharp, durable and with the ability to make wounds bleed more (+2 Impact) , he didn't have the time or the energy to advance in his cultivation remaining in the 1st heavenstage and not advancing one step forward.
    Impact: 0 -> 2
    Cultivation     - 1st Heavenstage -> 1st Heavenstage
    Cultivation-Year Equivalent - 21 Years (+0)
    Health - Healthy > Healthy

    Tharros Ateleioti
    Omake Reward -     LST (Sorrowful Blood Potion)
    A simple enough errand led Tharros Ateleioti on a wild goose chase to find a woman's prized poultry. All the clucking around concluded when he met the great Three Sorrows Vulture, who looked disappointed to see his progeny become nothing more than mere chickens. Nonetheless, as a reward for trying to protect them, the Vulture gave Tharros a Sorrowful Blood Potion, an extract of its own blood powerful enough to bring the youth back from the brink of death. The meeting, and the realization of the greatness that could hide inside even the most insignificant creatures' blood, caused Tharros to have an epiphany – and by finding the secrets hiding within his own bloodline, he managed to make drastic progress into his cultivation that led him all the way to the 9th Heavenstage.
    Impact Bonus: 0 Gained, 0
    Total Cultivation: +76 years – 97 years total
    Cultivation Realm: 9th Heavenstage, 2 turns from Foundation Establishment
    Health Change: None. Total Health: Healthy

    Vitruvian Anasc
    Omake Reward: Cultivation Boost.
    Vitruvian Anasc's life as a cultivator was started with misfortune and injury – but instead of sitting with his lot, the junior instead dedicated himself fully to his craft and, through effort and his own lifeblood used as fuel, managed to craft himself a mirror and a lens to use in his future travels through the desert. The process of condensing his Qi inside his body, using his blood as a reagent, and transforming it first into sand, then into glass gave Vitruvian great insight in the functioning of his Meridians, allowing him to raise to the 4th heavenstage despite his injuries – and increasing his body's healing process as well, leaving him unhindered.
    Impact Bonus: 0 Gained, 0 Total
    Cultivation: +17 years – 38 years total
    Cultivation Realm:     4th Heavenstage
    Health Change: Healed 1 Light Wound. Total Health: Healthy

    Xiao Yi/Jin Muyi
    Omake Reward - Healing
    Fate -     Healing is a strong word for the man who was once Xiao Yi. The monster who was now Jin Muyi. A creature of vines and plants, healing took the form not of a human body, but new meridians, new acupoints, forging a new body, a new power where an old one had once stood. His might in combat, especially against massed enemies had grown, but more importantly his raw cultivation seemed to grow incessantly, as he ambushed six bandits in Foundation Establishment. No longer bound by the rules of Blood Path, as he was no longer truly human, his ability to absorb the lives of others without incurring the wrath of the Heavens allowed him to make massive strides in his cultivation. He learned of other powerful means as well, rooting himself by a Spirit Oasis and drinking the waters there for a year to filter them through his body, purifying the blood and human Qi within him. Such things offered massive benefits the first time or so, but became progressively less impactful. After finding several of the (forgive the pun) low-hanging fruit, he was able to establish himself as the second-most powerful cultivator of his generation.
    Impact: 12 -> 12
    Cultivation     - Foundation Establishment True 1-Pillar (Fortified Pillar) -> Foundation Establishment 3-Pillar (Mid)
    Cultivation-Year Equivalent - 174 Years (+54)
    Health     - Crippled -> Healthy

    Mildgyð Galene
    Omake Reward     - Cultivation Boost (+10 Cultivation-Years)
    Fate - Despite a promising start, soaring through the earlier stages of Qi Condensation through his experiments, a final concluding tonic that would have rocketed him to the peak of his Great Realm turned out to have a toxic synergy with many of his other concoctions, blocking his meridians with searing chemicals and blocking his attempts to cultivate further. While nothing that couldn't be cleansed with some additional work, it was enough to bar Mildgyð from further advancement this year.
    Impact: 0 -> 0
    Cultivation     - 1st Heavenstage -> 6th Heavenstage
    Cultivation-Year Equivalent - 43 Years (+22)
    Health     - Healthy -> Healthy

    Orphanos
    Omake Reward     - Cultivation Boost (+10 Cultivation-Years)
    Fate - Orphanos sought mastery in music, in the conversion of the self-as-instrument. To this end, he sought to channel the Blood of Bronze he was gifted at initiation into his fingertips, hardening them into the Resonant Sky Chimes. When gesturing through the air with the back of his hands, his nails create beautiful sounds that carry a bewitching element to them. His cultivation soared accordingly, and he found himself standing on the cusp of the Peak of his Realm. Respectable progress indeed!
    Impact: 0 -> 2
    Cultivation     - 1st Heavenstage -> 8th Heavenstage
    Cultivation-Year Equivalent - 57 Years (+36)
    Health - Healthy -> Healthy

    Phaedo
    Omake Reward - Cultivation Boost     (asked for Fate boost - this is the closest thing to it as Fate is applied to all omake)
    Fate - Phaedo Dougenis and her companions are a strange lot, their fates tied together in a way we have scarcely seen before. Their return from the Qiguai Secret Realm saw their power rising up, each surpassing the Acupoint Awareness bottleneck and settling comfortably in the middle of the Qi Condensation Realm. Their innate connection has been dubbed the Shattered Mirror Reflection, and allows them to rapidly assemble in formations with greater efficiency than normal Legionnaires. Best to be deployed as a unit to see their greatest strength shine.
    Impact: 0 -> 2
    Cultivation - 1st Heavenstage -> 4th Heavenstage
    Cultivation-Year Equivalent - 39 Years (+18)
    Health - Healthy > Healthy

    Achille Adephos
    Omake Reward - N/A
    Fate     - Achille spent much of his time convalescing from wounds, unable to adventure much. In the course of twenty years he found himself recovering, mostly, but had little to show for it. Despite cultivating diligently, he found the expenses for recovery difficult to bear, and advanced only a small amount.
    Impact: 0 -> 2
    Cultivation - 10th Heavenstage -> 10th Heavenstage
    Cultivation-Year Equivalent -139 Years (+11)
    Health - Wounded > Lightly Wounded

    Alex and Ajax
    Omake Reward - N/A
    Fate     - Alex and Ajax soared through their cultivation, having found a friendly Elder in their Legion of choice. On reaching the 9th Heavenstage, they were sent to save a small village from bandits, and managed to slay ten cultivators in the 8th Heavenstage in battle.
    Impact: 0 -> 2
    Cultivation - 2nd Heavenstage -> 9th Heavenstage
    Cultivation-Year Equivalent - 65 (+40)
    Health - Healthy > Healthy

    Anastasia Outi
    Omake Reward - Not mentioned. Will default to LST unless otherwise mentioned.
    Fate     - An ordinary member of the Outi Clan, cultivating at a fairly ordinary rate. After forty years of cultivating, reached the 7th Heavenstage. An attack by bandits left a village slaughtered, and she chased them in vain for almost three years before giving up, unable to find them, knowing they would kill again.
    Impact: 0 -> 0
    Cultivation - 3rd Heavenstage -> 7th Heavenstage
    Cultivation-Year Equivalent - 65 (+40)
    Health - Healthy > Healthy

    Aristoteles Kalokagathos
    Omake Reward - N/A
    Fate -    Pursued his Dao, and broke through to Foundation Establishment.
    Cultivation - 3rd Heavenstage -> FB (Early 1-Pillar)
    Cultivation-Year Equivalent - 100 years (+40)
    Health     - Healthy -> Healthy

    Aurelia Xu
    Omake Reward - N/A
    Fate -     Badly wounded at the end of the Trials, Aurelia was sent on a mission with to find two lost cultivators. Able to save Constants Herculius, she went into the desert to hunt the bandits who had harmed her kin. They hunted her in turn, killing her outright.
    Health - DEAD

    Castor Tyndaridae
    Omake Reward - N/A
    Fate -     Slowly, ever-slowly. Castor managed to break into the 7th Heavenstage, his pace outstripped by many of his rivals. He knew not why he struggled so much, only that he did. In truth, it was his obsession with arrays. A man so meticulous and concerned with his work found less time to cultivate and pursue his Dao, though he did much good work repairing many arrays shattered and damaged during the Trials. Many such missions were poorly priced due to the chaos in the Clan, and he earned less from his efforts than he truly should have, unable to advance very far.
    Cultivation - 6th Heavenstage -> 7th Heavenstage
    Cultivation-Year Equivalent - 53 years (+8)
    Health     - Healthy -> Healthy

    Chen Rong
    Omake Reward - N/A
    Fate -     Stepping ever-so slowly into the 3rd Heavenstage, Chen Rong managed to advance a little.
    Cultivation - 1st Heavenstage -> 3rd Heavenstage
    Cultivation-Year Equivalent - 34 years (+13)
    Health     - Healthy -> Healthy

    Chrysanthos Krimta
    Omake Reward - N/A
    Fate -     Three Heavenstages and diligent cultivation, the lad of the Krimta family found himself an expert in the Qi Condensation realm.
    Cultivation - 5th Heavenstage -> 8th Heavenstage
    Cultivation-Year Equivalent - 60 years (+22)
    Health     - Healthy -> Healthy

    Constans Herculius
    Omake Reward - N/A
    Fate -     Badly wounded at the end of the Trials, Constans found himself in battle repeatedly, unable to find the Contribution Points to advance. Several bad choices and missions later, and his eyes were carved out by a murderous bandit, only escaping due to his life-saving treasure.
    Impact: 2 -> 2
    Cultivation     - 3rd Heavenstage -> 3rd Heavenstage
    Cultivation-Year Equivalent - 30 years (+0)
    Health     - Badly Wounded -> Dead (Massive overkill!) -> Crippled (LST used)

    Damien Silver (DEAD)
    Omake Reward - N/A
    Fate -     Badly wounded at the end of the Trials, Damien was sent on a mission with Constans. The two of them were tortured by bandits, but Damien was unable to escape, the proud Sword Cultivator's life ending beneath a torturer's blade.
    Health - DEAD

    Diogenes Aparámillos
    Omake Reward - N/A
    Fate -     Cultivated in ordinary fashion. Sent to the Jingshen Clan for a mission of trade, ended up losing an exchange of pointers to a young master there, but was not badly hurt. Broke through to the 10th Heavenstage through diligent work.
    Impact: 0 -> 0
    Cultivation     - 9th Heavenstage -> 10th Heavenstage
    Cultivation-Year Equivalent - 112 years (+24)
    Health     - Healthy -> Healthy

    Dmitry Kascheev
    Omake Reward - N/A
    Fate -     Ruminated on his Dao in isolation for twenty years, preparing to make a breakthrough to Foundation Establishment.
    Impact: 0 -> 0
    Cultivation     - 9th Heavenstage -> 9th Heavenstage (1 turn to breaking through!)
    Cultivation-Year Equivalent - 60 years (+0)
    Health     - Healthy -> Healthy

    Festus Sarantapechos
    Omake Reward - N/A
    Fate -     A lucky encounter saw him draw the attention of one of the Core Formation mercenaries, who offered Festus some enlightenment, bringing his cultivation forward by decades. This bond with a senior helped him get resources and the like, and he managed to break into the 10th Heavenstage.
    Impact: 0 -> 0
    Cultivation     - 9th Heavenstage -> 10th Heavenstage (1 turn to breaking through!)
    Cultivation-Year Equivalent - 109 years (+49)
    Health     - Wounded -> Lightly Wounded

    Hektor Sarantapechos
    Omake Reward - N/A
    Fate -     A Centurion doing a Legate's work. Only in Mid Foundation Building, but Hektor found himself as Acting Legate for a years as no higher-level Foundation Building Experts could come to the south to help due to a bureaucratic failure. It was in this time he faced down an early Core Formation blood path rebel. In six battles they faced one another, Hektor with the formations and Legion, the rebel with the power of a Great Realm. Able to chase and hedge in the enemy, Hektor was the anvil for two allied Core Formation cultivators hammer. He held against the Core Formation rebel until the mercenaries arrived and slew the enemy, but his meridians were shattered, and he was left crippled in doing so.
    Impact: 6 ->6
    Cultivation     - Foundation Establishment 3-Pillar (Mid) -> Foundation Establishment 3-Pillar (Mid)
    Cultivation-Year Equivalent - 161 years (+0)
    Health     - Healthy -> Crippled

    Juturna Cerintha
    Omake Reward - N/A
    Fate -     Jurturna was another beneficiary of an elder, a mercenary seeking to show good faith with the Clan while they were weak. With her mentor's guidance, she rose drastically, gaining what would have taken others three decades. Her own cultivation and efforts slackened some, but such is the effect of powerful friends.
    Impact: 1 ->1
    Cultivation     - 7th Heavenstage -> 9th Heavenstage
    Cultivation-Year Equivalent - 87 years (+37)
    Health     - Healthy -> Healthy

    Lihua Kokkinos
    Omake Reward - N/A
    Fate -     Lihua, poor girl, found herself still crippled and unable to do much. Her strength weakened, and no cure to be found, she spent twenty years in quiet isolation.
    Impact: 1 ->1
    Cultivation     - 9th Heavenstage -> 9th Heavenstage
    Cultivation-Year Equivalent - 60 years (0)
    Health     - Crippled -> Crippled

    Lin Fan (DEAD)
    Omake Reward - N/A
    Fate - The ever-wounded Lin Fan travelled into the Great Battlefield, seeking battles and riches. Unfortunately for him, his demonic nature and demonic tunes had him mistaken for a Blood Path cultivator, and a Core Formation Elder found and slew him. Only afterwards was his Golden Devil background discovered, and a payment for the wrongful killing made.
    Impact: 1 ->1
    Health     - Wounded -> Dead

    Nicovas Ceruleus
    Omake Reward - N/A
    Fate - Nicovas progressed into the 9th Heavenstage, and began working on his Dao, looking to ascend into Foundation Establishment.
    Impact: 0 ->0
    Cultivation     - 8th Heavenstage -> 9th Heavenstage
    Cultivation-Year Equivalent - 60 years (+5)
    Health     - Wounded -> LW

    Peta and Wajo
    Omake Reward - N/A
    Fate -     Despite their horrific wounding, the two spent much of the following decades recovering and caring for one another. This closeness sent them on several safe trade trips. It was there Wajo's keen nose smelled out a Brightsilk Honey Herb, a magical herb capable of being distilled into a pill to help one's cultivation soar by nearly six decades worth of work. Buying it for one-millionth of its true value, the two hurried home before it could be discovered that it was not a mere regular Brightsilk Herb. If Peta's wounds had not been so severe, the two would've made it into the 11th Heavenstage with ease. As it was, the two stood at the top of the 10th Heavenstage.
    Impact: 4 -> 4
    Cultivation     - 9th Heavenstage -> 10th Heavenstage
    Cultivation-Year Equivalent - 150 years (+62)
    Health     - Badly Wounded -> Wounded

    Shennong
    Omake Reward - None requested. Gave LST.
    Fate -Young Shennong finally began to rise. On a trip with one of the Thirteen and her bear, he discovered the deception that had been wrought. In return for his assistance in buying the herb without alerting the owner to its true value, he was given an offcut of the pill, something useless to someone with the power of the 9th Heavenstage, but enough to save a 2nd Heavenstage cultivator like him a decade of work. With that, he worked incredibly diligently, using that initial boost to work his way into the 9th Heavenstage.
    Impact: 0 - > 0
    Cultivation     - 2nd Heavenstage -> 9th Heavenstage
    Cultivation-Year Equivalent - 69 years (+44)
    Health     - Healthy -> Healthy

    Su Cheng
    Omake Reward - N/A
    Fate -     Su Cheng cultivated diligently. What more to be said? No great encounters or problems, but no acts of heroism.
    Impact: 0 - > 0
    Cultivation     - 3rd Heavenstage -> 6th Heavenstage
    Cultivation-Year Equivalent - 49 years (+19)
    Health     - Healthy -> Healthy

    Tie Jin
    Omake Reward - N/A
    Fate -     A mournful fate for Tie Jin. Attempting to fight a Three Poison Scorpion, he was stung on the foot. He dragged his way back to civilization, but the poison had progressed too far and no doctor could save him. He died over the course of six days in agony.
    Health - Healthy -> Dead

    Zeno Angelus
    Omake Reward - LST
    Fate - Spent a considerable time babysitting the daughter of Jin Muyi after his transformation, striking up something of a friendship with the terrifying plant man. Together with Muyi, obtained the memoir of his ancestor from the clan archives, revealing a peculiar dance technique. Ascended to the 4th Heavenstage, his attempts to teach this technique to his legion comrades perhaps distracting him from achieving his full potential this period.
    Impact: 0 -> 0
    Cultivaton     - 1st Heavenstage -> 4th Heavenstage
    Cultivation-Year Equivalent - 36 Years (+15)
    Health - Healthy -> Healthy

    Amaranth Castellanos
    Omake Reward - Healed
    Fate -     Healed, and cultivated. To say Amaranth was not famous after his deeds at Pleuron would be a lie, but it took many years for him to recover. After a decade, he pursued his cultivation with incredible vigour, but made only ordinary progress. With few adventures and the like to speak of, he was bent on making up the time he had lost.
    Impact - 7 (+0)
    Cultivation     - 10th Heavenstage (no change)
    Cultivation-Year Equivalent - 131 years (+11)
    Health     - Crippled -> Healthy

    Daedalus Khimaira
    Omake Reward - Trib Boost
    Fate -     While Daedalus made great strides in his Dao, he too was a victim of the relentless poor payments from the Contribution Board. This chaos in the Clan meant his ordinary work paid poorly, and he could hardly shift his profession. Under-resourced and under-paid, he advanced only a little.
    Impact - 2 (+0)
    Cultivation     - 9th Heavenstage (no change)
    Cultivation-Year Equivalent - 96 years (+7)
    Health     - Healthy -> Healthy

    Fierce Fang
    Omake Reward - LST
    Fate     - A dragon among men, they called him. From his deeds to his recent cultivation, it was all an extraordinary thing. He discovered a Blue Dragon's Reverse Scale (LST), a treasure of immense power. It had killed all others who had touched it with raw force. It was his transformation, however, that allowed him ever-greater progress by taking the scale. Absorbing the Qi of a pure dragon in a way other cultivators could not, he rose up into the top of the 11th Heavenstage in a single leap, unassisted by his own cultivation overmuch. The sheer power allowed him to forge a path onwards with lightning, incredible speed, rising to the top of his group of cultivators. Where previously he had bene mediocre, Fang was mere moments away from achieving his 12th Heavenstage goal and beginning to consider his Tribulation. The remaining power in the Scale was not much, but would summon a ghostly dragon to his aid only once, flying him away from any danger with incredible speed.
    Impact - 4 (+0)
    Cultivation     - 11th Heavenstage (+1 Heavenstage)
    Cultivation-Year Equivalent - 202 years (+97)
    Health     - Healthy -> Healthy

    Savvas Nicolidis
    Omake Reward - Tribulation Boost
    Fate     - Meditating on his Dao for nearly twenty years, it was a chance encounter with an elder from the Sorrowful Blacksmith Sect that allowed Savvas to break through. The elder's great-granddaughter, a mere mortal, was one the elder doted on immensely. Savvas saved her from an attack by a Blood Path bandit in the foothills near the mountains, and in return the Core Formation elder offered to stand as his Dao Protector for his ascension into Foundation Establishment, allowing him to break through without the danger and effort another cultivator would've required. It cost the elder time and cultivation, of course, but he was so happy with the return of his beloved descendent that he was willing to perform this service.
    Impact - 3 (+0)
    Cultivation     - 9th Heavenstage -> Foundation Establishment 1-Pillar (Early)
    Cultivation-Year Equivalent - 100 years
    Health     - Healthy -> Healthy

    Tasos Basilakes
    Omake Reward - Cultivation Boost
    Fate - The archer was one of so many who found growth after Pleuron. Unlike many it was not a fortuitous encounter, but in this case an error in his favour. For almost ten years, scouting missions in his level of strength (above Qi, but below Foundation) were drastically overpriced due to the chaos in the Clan's administrative systems. There were almost none who could take on these missions, and so the overpricing was not found or address. Over the course of the following twenty years Tasos earned nearly ten times his wage that he in truth should have, gaining massive cultivation from the incredible resources he was able to access. Missions paying at near Foundation Establishment level for a mere Qi cultivator meant Tasos became rich very quickly, and invested nearly every Spirit Stone back into his growth, able to pour resources into the bottomless hole that was cultivation. He once considered an attempt to inform the Contributions Board, but his attempt aborted after waiting nearly two weeks for a meeting with an administrator that was repeatedly pushed back and eventually cancelled. He conceded that it was best to take the opportunity as it was. While he did not find the wood he sought, he found a clue. An expensive clue. The Man-Eating Cherry Trees of Turtlebone Mountain were a dangerous sort, but could be carved while alive, as he sought. Such a journey would be dangerous in the extreme, of course.
    Impact - 10 (+0)
    Cultivation     - 10th Heavenstage (+1 stages)
    Cultivation-Year Equivalent - 165 years (+77)
    Health     - Healthy -> Healthy

    Theron Strophios
    Omake Reward - LST
    Fate - Theron fought, and fought, and fought. Killing and fighting bandits for nearly ten years, he was rewarded with three massive caches of stolen Sprit Stones, each enough to help skyrocket his cultivation. Killing bandits was a chore, in truth, and he faced only those weaker than him, protected by a Foundation expert who led his team.
    Impact - 1 (+0)
    Cultivation     - 8th Heavenstage (+7 stages)
    Cultivation-Year Equivalent - 63 years (+42)
    Health     - Healthy -> Healthy

    Simon Euaerizo
    Omake Reward     - None Asked For - gave Lifesaving Treasure
    Fate - One of a new crop of Seeds found in the mad dash to replenish our numbers after the losses of the most recent trials, young Simon is someone to watch, if for no other reason than his suspicious origins as a potential infiltrator. The risk is miniscule however, as that would require Old Cannibal be of mind to recruit mortals of the clan to raise for long term schemes, or for others of his Clansmen to be capable of such in the first place.

    That fact, along with the Condensed Marrow Elixir and Blood Clone Substitution Pill we found among his effects, makes it unlikely that he was dispatched. Upon taking in the boy and sorting through his belongings, the Euaerizo's showed the medicine to him, which caused him to break down crying tearfully about his mother, revealing his true parentage to the family. His mother's final gift served him well, clearing his path of cultivation in an instant, and letting him reach the cusp of Qi Condensation within a mere 20 years.

    Truly, family is a powerful thing Grand Elder.

    Impact: 0 -> 0
    Cultivation     - 1st Heavenstage -> 9th Heavenstage
    Tribulation - 2 turns from passing into Foundation Establishment.
    Cultivation-Year Equivalent - 75 Years (+54)
    Health - Healthy > Healthy

    Sun Yi
    Omake Reward     - N/A
    Fate - +10 cultivation
    Perhaps the strangest of our newest crop of seeds, Sun Yi is perhaps the single greatest oddity of all - a Goatman with a spark of actual talent. He is not some heaven-sent genius by any means, but his above-average results may mean that our vassals to the Far South have come up with a new Cultivation method that may make them capable of easing the burden of their defense as the time nears for the Blood Cannibals to make their move. Perhaps not encouraging on its own, but the ability to redeploy more valuable assets elsewhere without worry is just one more scrap of strength in a time when even the most meager of potential must be taken advantage of.
    Impact: 0 -> 0
    Cultivation     - 1st Heavenstage -> 5th Heavenstage
    Cultivation-Year Equivalent - 40 Years (+29)
    Health - Healthy > Healthy

    Lastly, but not least.

    Aretaphilia Myia.
    Omake Reward     - +10 cultivation
    Fate -
    The Myia girl. Yes, Grand Elder. My report? One of the last of her generation to enter Qiguai, success or failure aside, she has oft been compared to the Callista girl. Good blood, good family, good progress. Of late she fell far behind her erstwhile rival, but who can foretell the future? Apparently she linked up with a small troop of our disciples and offered to boost their power in return for a split in resources. Where others were seeking out great singular opportunities, in her report she states she swept the place clean. Robbing fairly from our foes, seizing resources, and finding a hundred if not a thousand useful little things. Even after her return, the estimation is she made enough to boost herself through forty years of cultivation. Her progress otherwise was faster than normal, but many of our juniors have benefited from her leadership. Apparently some young master of the Jingshen Clan was there, and threatened to rape and kill her - she states he sought revenge for the Myia girl seizing a Three-Lined Herb first. He killed one of her subordinates in the Realm, and she slew him in return. He had a flying treasure allowing him to escape, but she has some counter to flight, and was able to kill him and take his Amplification Stone (+2 Impact). Useless for most - considered an expensive toy for those who are not Demonic Tunists, in truth - but it allows her to amplify the distance at which her musical arts may be heard and take effect, albeit at a significant cost to her endurance when used. Nobody knows, and the Realm is beyond scrying - there's no need to offer potential reprisal to Jingshen to protect her.
    Impact: 11 -> 13
    Cultivation     - 10th Heavenstage -> 11th Heavenstage (+1)
    Cultivation-Year Equivalent - 212 Years (+64)
    Health - Healthy > Healthy

    Syntyche Theophylaktos
    Omake Reward - LST
    Fate - Theophylaktos. It was the name, Manuel had decided, that had led him to gift the opportunity to the girl. A sense of guilt following the death of his disciple, one he gave in to briefly. He had a peculiar sensation that a particular mission would have excellent luck around it, and so he arranged for it to happen into Syntyche's grasp. The Eight-Nine Ghost Mine is a dangerous place, and a Core Formation elder was lost in the bottom of it a few hundred years ago. The upper levels yield few Spirit Stones, and until a particular Qi Detection Array had shown a new vein opening up, it had been abandoned entirely. As it was, a scouting team had been recruited, of which Syntyche was one. Of the thirty cultivators who entered the mine, twenty-nine died. She lived only due to the Mortal-Seeming Cloak (+6 Impact), a tremendously powerful cloak that made one seem as a mortal when worn. As only the least of the ghosts attacked her, she was able to escape. The Cloak makes one immune to Qi senses below Core Formation, and, in addition, cloaks the killing intent of the cultivator using it from any below Core Formation. Such an item can be used as an immense boon to an assassin, or an ambusher.
    Impact: 2 -> 8
    Cultivation     - 9th Heavenstage (+4 stages)
    Cultivation-Year Equivalent - 67 Years (+22)
    Health - Healthy > Healthy

    Aliki Floros -
    Omake Reward - Lifesaving Treasure
    Fate -     It was during the trials that a Dao Protector of the Fifth Sea slew a powerful Tri-Tailed Scorpion, a creature that was Core Formation in its own right, leaving it in its cave. The single blow slew it, and it slowly rotted over the course of decades. However, with such power the poison emanated from its body for decades, killing any who came near. Aliki was lucky enough to find it and consume it, absorbing the energies of what had been a powerful Core Formation beast in minutes. Where she had struggled over the course of fifteen years to reach the Third Heavenstage, she leapt into the heavens like the carp over the dragon gate, stepping into the 10th Heavenstage in a single bound. From the scorpion she managed to salvage a single unharmed stinger, which was fashioned into a set of Scorpion-Poison Needles (+1 Impact) for her as well.
    Impact: 0 -> 1 (Scorpion Poison Needles +1)
    Cultivation     - 1st Heavenstage -> 9th Heavenstage
    Cultivation-Year Equivalent - 103 Years (+92)
    Health     - Healthy

    Rina Callista -
    Omake Reward - Tribulation Boost
    Fate -     It was perhaps a moment of weakness for Rina Callista. Long invincible in her own Realm, she travelled around the Clan's territories, helping those in need, putting down rebels. Of course, Qi Condensation and Foundation Building were not equals, and when she found herself needed to face down a Foundation Building bandit, she was ambushed, and badly wounded by the Saliva Dog Archer, a man who used poisons and archery to fight a woman who could not easily engage him on her terms. Over three days she chased him, and was eventually forced to give up the chase, as she had slowed due to an accumulation of wounds. The man went on to destroy a small town of six thousand mortals before a hired Core Formation elder was able to put him down.
    Impact: 12 -> 12
    Cultivation     - 12th Heavenstage -> 12 Heavenstage
    Cultivation-Year Equivalent - 231 Years (+3)
    Health     - Lightly Wounded this turn, improved to Healthy at end of turn.

    Ninth Prince -
    Omake Reward - Healing treasure
    Fate -     Hanging on his spear for so long, his recovery was a thing of legend in Pleuron. It was later on, though, in a relatively minor encounter in which he was forced to compete in riddles and jokes with a powerful steel golem that he found an ancient metal triangle. A curiosity, a toy, left by a more powerful cultivator to amuse that ancient golem to ensure it kept well to its duties. The Rotating Steel Pyramid (+2 Impact) is a thing of true power when used against his equals, as channeling Qi into it can mesmerise foes briefly. It is only a few seconds of distraction and mesmerisation, but such a window is death to those who are not far more powerful than you. His advancement into the 12th Heavenstage made him the Clan's second expert of that rank.
    Impact: 11 -> 13
    Cultivation     - 11th Heavenstage -> 12th Heavenstage
    Cultivation-Year Equivalent - 231 Years (+3)
    Health     - Healthy - Healing Treasure cleared Crippled!

    Antonius Emmanuel Eleanora -
    Omake Reward - LST - Immediately used!
    Fate -     The Qiguai Secret Realm. A place of horrors and wonders, warped space and seas in the sky. Those most unlucky fall into the realm directly into a sea of warped space, a deadly encounter that kills them in a moment. Antonius only avoided this by the slimmest of margins, suffering horrific wounds, having to sew his own left arm back on after it was torn off due to the warp and weft of space itself. In a fit of pique, fate was not done with him, as he limped towards safety, a pair of Star-Eels gnawed at him, eating half of his left foot and two of his left toes before he was able to fend them off. Horrifically injured, he managed to escape the Secret Realm with his life and nothing else.
    Impact: 7 -> 7
    Cultivation     - 10th Heavenstage -> 10th Heavenstage
    Cultivation-Year Equivalent - 108 Years
    Health     - Badly Wounded (Dead -> Badly Wounded due to LST)

    Matthias Outi
    Omake Reward - LST - Immediately used!
    Fate -     The Qiguai Secret Realm. Matthias entered just a half-pace behind Antonius, and was thrown into the same hellish storm of space. It tore open his skull, and he was forced to build a poultice of sorts to keep his brain in and his thoughts alive. While he managed to escape, he was trapped in the storm for six years, and when he came out he was different. Patches of animal skulls were fused onto his skull, and a hole gaped there, perpetually open, perpetually vulnerable. He sometimes talked his thoughts, and often seemed to merely think and forget to respond, seemingly jumbled in both words and ways from that time on.
    Impact: 8 -> 8
    Cultivation     - 7th Heavenstage -> 7th Heavenstage
    Cultivation-Year Equivalent - 55 Years
    Health     - Badly Wounded (Dead -> Badly Wounded due to LST)

    Ferenike
    Omake Reward - Century Oasis Formation
    Fate -     Falling from the sky, Ferenike saw two unfortunates fall around her, thrown away by the tearing and ripping of space. Luck was with her, though, and as she reached a whirlwind, she was thrown again into the sky, flying hundreds of thousands of li away. Eventually she landed, in the home of what had clearly once been an ancient cultivator. "Kowtow three times and take me as your master, and I will acknowledge you as an honorary disciple in the art of formations.", said the notes on the grave outside. She did, and a fragment of will poured into her brain, existing for only a few seconds. In those few seconds it redesigned her Century Oasis Formation, turning it from a thing only usable by the lower echelons of Qi Condensation into something usable by all below Core Formation. 'A gift to a new disciple', was the whisper. Alongside the legacy was a small book with a number of notes on formations, a powerful Ghost Stoneflag (+4 Impact), a formation flag carved from ghosts that had been imprisoned for so long they petrified into a sort of stone. With it, formations are easily set up, less easily broken, and it serves as the keystone of any major formation with ease. A Hoplite led by Ferenike will not break until the last drop of Qi is exhausted from all within, and will work with immaculate efficiency. Lastly, some insights on cultivation, along with a few scattered herbs and spirit stones - trash to an ancient cultivator, but enough to push Ferenike into the 11th Heavenstage, and barely a step from the 12th.

    Escaping was not easy, however. On leaving she found herself surrounded by a series of angered Star-Eels seeking prey, and had she not used one of her precious treasures, her chances of escape would have been nil.

    Impact: 3 -> 7
    Cultivation     - 10th Heavenstage -> 11th Heavenstage
    Cultivation-Year Equivalent - 204 Years
    Health     - Healthy (Wounded -> Healthy due to LST)
     
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    • A lot of good fates in this batch, including
    occipitallobe said:
    Minervina Barda
    Omake Reward - Healing Treasure (Crippling cleared!)
    Fate     - Who can explain the adventures of the mistress of poisons? On clearing her meridians of the horrifying poison she had wrought, Minervina found strength, not weakness. In a moment of utter and unprecedented luck, she found her cultivation soaring, moving forward at speeds unimaginable. Realm after realm broke before her, and when the wave of energy ceased, she stood at Late Foundation Establishment, an expert unparalleled in her generation. It was this same event that helped her gain a constitution that had no doubt been just a trace of a skerrick before the events of Pleuron. She was ambushed by three Core Formation Torture Poison Scorpions, creatures that used poison to torture cultivators to death in order to consume their vengeful spirits. However, instead of dying, her unlocked meridians and ability to use them to push her cultivation forward somehow formed the Natal Poison Body (Impact +5), a body capable of absorbing poisons like water, and using them to fuel the powers and poisons she used herself. She could drink even the direst of poisons without issue, and by doing so find herself massively empowered, able to burn them for strength, or return them to another enemy on touch. Her constitution thus improved, she was able to flee the Scorpions, though a town of fifty thousand had to be abandoned as they could not be removed with the Clan in disarray.
    Impact: 4 -> 9
    Cultivation     - Early FB (2nd Pillar) -> Late FB (5th Pillar)
    Cultivation-Year Equivalent - 236 Years (+96)
    Health - Healthy -> Healthy
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    @Katana1515 Minervina keeps getting scarier, Impact, cultivation, and year equivalent all jumps, your going to be the first core out of us seeds
     
    occipitallobe said:
    Paulus
    Omake Reward - LST
    Fate     – making it to the officer track in the legions –even as a trainee- comes with certain expectation about the potential of the cultivator unfortunately Paulus didn't meet them between keeping his shape, training his squad, trying to earn money to support himself and his friends, buying a defensive charm that would allow him to survive any one hit and buying a spear enchanted to be unnaturally sharp, durable and with the ability to make wounds bleed more (+2 Impact) , he didn't have the time or the energy to advance in his cultivation remaining in the 1st heavenstage and not advancing one step forward.
    Impact: 0 -> 2
    Cultivation     - 1st Heavenstage -> 1st Heavenstage
    Cultivation-Year Equivalent - 21 Years (+0)
    Health - Healthy > Healthy
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    Hooray, he isn't dead! While I'm sad about Paulus making absolutely no progress on cultivation and now being the 40 year old stage 1 guy I'm quite pleased to have gotten the LST and no need to use it presently. Perhaps he can make up the difference later on and this will be a nice foundation building arc (small f foundation). This will be interesting to write about, I already have a bunch of ideas.


    Pretty good showing for the Good Seeds so far overall. Xiao Yingzi's adventure is hilarious and Xiuying Ten Jiang is definately going to be someone to watch in the future. Damn shame about Aurelius, it was a cool idea and hopefully one that can be revisted when hes a bit stronger.
     
    occipitallobe said:
    Jiang Chrysanthos
    Omake Reward - Lifesaving Treasure
    Fate     - Remarkable performance--his dual bloodline has proven to be a formidable asset, permitting easy refinement of his body and development of the necessary strength to cultivate. He refined the Legion Body Tempering technique in a moment of inspiration, adapting it to his own nature--and he has surged to the heights of the Eighth Heavenstage in a single leap--only a hair's breadth away from the Ninth.
    Impact: 0 -> 0
    Cultivation     - 1st Heavenstage -> 8th Heavenstage
    Cultivation-Year Equivalent - 56 Years (+35)
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    Nice. Guess I'm going secret realm diving next. Assuming I get enough written for a healthy bonus.
     
    I'm going to try for wealth and political power, see where that gets me. It's not a very Main Character thing to do, but that's how it goes.

    What does Impact do, exactly?
     
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