EternalObserver
eYe Gaze baCk
- Location
- The Void
That "Butcher King" you are referring to is absolutely not Zheng Po. That title belongs to Sun Shao.
Threads Of Destiny(Eastern Fantasy, Sequel to Forge of Destiny)
- Thread starter yrsillar
- Start date
- Original Users' Choice!
Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
Fixed, thank you.
deadcrystal
Slaaneshi Cultist
- Location
- The Warp
Unsurprising given that from what we've seen from her interludes her Cultivation method seems to benefit from big, in-your-face conflict. If she gets boosts from big dramatic punch-ups it makes sense she doesn't have much interest in trying to manage things and keep things on the down-low, she wants the situation on a perpetual boil.
- Location
- United States of America
So, since Hanyi is looking like she'll have some income from selling her songs, I'm wondering exactly what she'll be buying for herself. Will she be saving up her money for really fancy talisman type stuff, or will she be living paycheck to paycheck buying whatever catches her eye at the moment?
Given Hanyi's personality, I'm thinking she'll be buying whatever catches her eyes at the moment. But maybe she'll save up first for a spatial ring.
Given Hanyi's personality, I'm thinking she'll be buying whatever catches her eyes at the moment. But maybe she'll save up first for a spatial ring.
- Location
- UK
Not sure why, but the thought of Hanyi with disposable income is mildly terrifying for me.
*Thinks of how easy it would be to rip Hanyi off.*
*Thinks of Hanyi finding out she had been getting ripped off.*
*Thinks of Hanyi's eating habits.*
Ah. That's why.
I want to think most people wouldn't be that stupid, but that's only most.
Well, hopefully we'll be around when she buys stuff. Or our Mum. Bonding opportunities?
Arkeus
Crazy cat guy
- Location
- France
She'll be showing off her money to Linhuo obviously.
- Location
- United States of America
Alas, Linhuo has left with Gu Xiulan. So who knows how long it will take for Hanyi will be able to flaunt her wealth to Linhuo.
*Inb4 Hanyi takes an active interest in Geography and trip planning*
- Location
- Fabulously Rainbow Ireland
Hanyi discovers a love of real estate and land development and flaunts her new wealth by buying up large portions of land in Golden Fields that used to belong to the Gu/Lu
- Location
- Greece
I am pretty sure most people who would rip her off can dance the dance well enough to not get eaten, tbh. She may seem like the murderous ghost child trope, but she is genuinely still an innocent child compared to anyone with the same or even somewhat inferior cultivation base.
- Location
- UK
I was sort of picturing anyone who is good at ripping people off would know ripping Hanyi off is a bad idea, as eventually she would shop somewhere else or speak to someone and find out she was ripped off so only an idiot would try it.
Or someone powerful enough not to worry of course. In which case hopefully it can be viewed as a learning opportunity for the girl and we won't owe too much if Hanyi herself does something stupid reminiscent of her interactions with Thunder Music Girl.
Not that I'm too concerned about that though. Worst case scenario we could claim her allowance as punishment
- Location
- Finland
Remember those debt collectors harassing Ling Qinge?
Trying to rip of the family of the ducal heirs left hand does not seem like a smart business decision.
That said, we should accompany Hanyi on her shopping trips as much as possible.
Pretty sure she's saying that Meizhen's performance in both strength and politics (humiliating Liling and paving a path for alliance) has removed the political barriers that prevented Suzhen from adopting Meizhen/taking her in fully rather than having a couple of very short visits to try and make up for Zhuang's terrible, broken parenting.
Remember that the Bai are unpleasant about weakness, and would look down on Mellin for having the gall to get plausibly framed for murder and forcing their clan to display weakness in submitting to demands to execute her.
Xian xia face culture. Not even once.
- Location
- Greece
I do not think any factions in this story have the shallow thing that is xianxia face culture.
Sure, a more realistic version of actual face culture (which is a similar but distinct thing
) does exist in prevalence in universe. But the Bai's are more... well... a den of cultivation Darwinistic snakes* rather than a result of face culture*was gonna say social Darwinistic snakes, but when a person can be stronger than a state genuinely, the viability of that theory does change a bit.
- Location
- the internet
Yeah a Disney Princess that eats people lmao 😆 thats dark lol.
Oh hey, they're dressed now, when did that happen?
I could swear I saw this attack before in SRW...can't remember which unit though.
Guess we'd need a higher rated training ground next. Or a bigger one. Two hundred meters isn't very big for a Green training ground is it?
Also I'd hate to see what that could do to targets in a confined space.
Zhen: "I'm feeling attacked, everyone is complaining! Only
"And Hanyi."
Hanyi: [Tsuns]
Say, how small can he get if he disregards combat capability?
Certainly he'd fit better in caves with this.
That is one hell of an AoE attack.
Hmm...
Bind -> Blast.
Force them in contact with the ground, blast them with the primary detonation, let the knockback toss them into the secondary detonation and fry them again.
Might be dangerous to use in caves, seems likely to cause a cave in, or for the volumetric fireball effect to happen.
Great range for anti-air work too.
He's respeciably accurate with it too now.
That would seem an inevitable result of cultivating powerful attacks. Is it more that they can't "pull" their blows? Or do normal spars have defense outclassing attacks?
Certainly Hanyi could practice on Zhengui, but her repeatedly failing from that wouldn't help her mood much.
How is the youngest of the group, the one made of elemental trickery, the most mature of the group?!
She's just hot blooded.
Odd for a being of elemental snow, but hey.
Kind of doubt Hanyi would do much to Renxiang, since she's very nearly hard countered, but Zhengui would be a novelty for her to blitz down, even if his options against a flyer are limited.
Its funny how you have to PRY every inch of letting you help her out of Ling Qi. She doesn't look it but she has a Young Mistress's pride in that particular angle.
It goes beyond her spirits, she's reluctant when its them, but while she accepts payment, she doesn't take gifts without a big disparity, while being generous with HER gifts in turn.
And here too. I think the pocket money is an excuse here, Hanyi wants not to be a burden, but doing without is also difficult for what is basically the pampered young daughter of Zeqing.
So she wants to help. Pretty dresses, accessories, and her own talismans, because she knows Ling Qi can't really keep them up to date on good talismans.
Keep this in mind with the rest of the interlude.
The peace on the surface is a facade concealing storms of violence beneath.
...overlooked this the first time, but he's tanking the unrestrained(though not truly exerted) terror domain of a Prism without influencing his judgement. While looking like he's completely fucked.
Something's going on pretty strongly to be able to no sell that.
Look underneath
You can also see he doesn't lack emotion, like someone who severed them on cultivation would. The emotion doesn't LAST, but its there.
And a natural conclusion for cultivation: Cultivation in the Sect is extremely individualistic, but with the power disparity I don't think it'd be too difficult for a strong cultivator to coerce a target into a Way via raw indoctrination would it?
Get them to sever everything short of being a tool, it'd cut short their path, but they'd be most excellent and devoted.
Not something to mass produce, but excellent for deep cover agents and personal guards for your close kin that must be beyond reproach and without ambition.
Could not, and could not develop the desire to.
Severed qualities or masked too deep to feel ones?
Certainly one on the Way of authority would have trouble understanding OR trusting someone with no desire for it.
No passion he says, but her death triggered him to breakthrough.
He felt it.
Last barriers?
Don't know enough about the Bai politics to make head or tail of this, but its sounding a bit like Meilin's death might have been an internal Bai plot for them to take revenge on?
Personal guess, as I said previously, is that he's under a false persona effect of some kind to prepare for a longer scheme, his internal narrative has a lot of oddities, and it'd help keep him beneath Bai notice, save for Suzhen who'd have a shared motivation.
Well that explains how the news surprised everyone despite involving so many parties that it SHOULD have leaked. Double agents feeding false information to get burned.
Who had to know they're being burned there.
...just how badly did they piss the factions off if what sounds like normally rival factions are uniting?
Also is it just me or does it sound a lot like the Bai's own internal intrigue is preventing them from getting Whites? Every time someone rises up the rival factions unify and drag them down.
That is far, far too close a match.
The Whites are divided, which means the Blacks are too. The Violets and Blues are with Suzhen out of practical reasons, but the Reds and Greens are behind Zhilan, and thats the worst case for an internal dispute: a split almost perfectly down the middle would cause the most damage before it can resolve.
And the commoners are looking fit to have a popular revolt while the noble clans are stabbing each other.
Death or unmasking awaits.
- Location
- The Space Between
If you are cultivating Self-Effacing Self-Depricating Never-Good-Enough-ness and you are kept from total despair and dying by having a dominant matriarch consistently reaffirm that you have some good and have some value and have some merit, it makes sense that he would advance from her death. He was literally not good enough to save her, and that reinforces his Way of being never-enough for his family or those who rely on him.
SadDad is cultivating Self-deprecating Self-effacing tragedy of never being good enough. But clearly he has much power. What does that look like on offense?
"I'm so terrible awful weak pitiful rabbit in a snake den"
"Haha, yeah!"
"can you imagine being a snake slain by the hare that somehow snuck in?"
"No! You're like, just uh. A uh."
"Terrible dumb bunny I know. I'm awful. And yet somehow, I have a better spy network than you. Can you believe you're actually worse than me?"
and then they selfdestruct, potentially taking him with them but he has no value on his own life and doesn't mind the blade at the throat so much as the weight of trying to talk despite it. He's the perfect plausibly deniable asset for a White caste conservative because Bai-supremacists wouldn't be able to understand his completely obtuse path to power. His way is at total odds with the region's typical culture, and that's why it's so powerful (and more broadly why diversity strengthens organizations). Of course, it also requires failure and loss for him to push further and he'll be perpetually SadDad but it's a very interesting route.
Like. White (and other Bai) are cultivating a Fear and Terror path and this dude probably has A-S rank resist to that specific social stuff because he already embraces fear and imminent death and feeling like he deserves derision. He's a perfect social outsider for working in this region, like. If your whole region's aristocracy is built on Fear and being the most Fearsome you'll eventually spark repeated revolts and terror-infighting until you reach an untenable place of fractioning and population leak. Thousand Lakes still has sustainable pop for now, but if there's a revolt and a civil war and an invasion from the jungle they could very well end up terminal like Sparta given their selective breeding habits. Whoever in the Bai arranged for him to come in was a stellar matchmaker because this dude is a real MVP.
From that matchmaking, Meizhen is going to be in a perfect position to be the admin/heir that leverages the networks of spies, informants and common folk/castes while still being an extraordinary traditional White Caste Paragon. Terror, but instead of pure Terror and Fear there is a greater purpose and she seeks to nurture those that are worthy. Not protect the frail no, but to honor those that serve purpose and recognize them beyond faceless masses that need cowing. I mean. They'll still be faceless masses, but like. A nice kind. The kind that farms food and makes sure there's enough population to keep allowing cultivators to be the warrior-scholars that protect them in this deathworld
SadDad is cultivating Self-deprecating Self-effacing tragedy of never being good enough. But clearly he has much power. What does that look like on offense?
"I'm so terrible awful weak pitiful rabbit in a snake den"
"Haha, yeah!"
"can you imagine being a snake slain by the hare that somehow snuck in?"
"No! You're like, just uh. A uh."
"Terrible dumb bunny I know. I'm awful. And yet somehow, I have a better spy network than you. Can you believe you're actually worse than me?"
and then they selfdestruct, potentially taking him with them but he has no value on his own life and doesn't mind the blade at the throat so much as the weight of trying to talk despite it. He's the perfect plausibly deniable asset for a White caste conservative because Bai-supremacists wouldn't be able to understand his completely obtuse path to power. His way is at total odds with the region's typical culture, and that's why it's so powerful (and more broadly why diversity strengthens organizations). Of course, it also requires failure and loss for him to push further and he'll be perpetually SadDad but it's a very interesting route.
Like. White (and other Bai) are cultivating a Fear and Terror path and this dude probably has A-S rank resist to that specific social stuff because he already embraces fear and imminent death and feeling like he deserves derision. He's a perfect social outsider for working in this region, like. If your whole region's aristocracy is built on Fear and being the most Fearsome you'll eventually spark repeated revolts and terror-infighting until you reach an untenable place of fractioning and population leak. Thousand Lakes still has sustainable pop for now, but if there's a revolt and a civil war and an invasion from the jungle they could very well end up terminal like Sparta given their selective breeding habits. Whoever in the Bai arranged for him to come in was a stellar matchmaker because this dude is a real MVP.
From that matchmaking, Meizhen is going to be in a perfect position to be the admin/heir that leverages the networks of spies, informants and common folk/castes while still being an extraordinary traditional White Caste Paragon. Terror, but instead of pure Terror and Fear there is a greater purpose and she seeks to nurture those that are worthy. Not protect the frail no, but to honor those that serve purpose and recognize them beyond faceless masses that need cowing. I mean. They'll still be faceless masses, but like. A nice kind. The kind that farms food and makes sure there's enough population to keep allowing cultivators to be the warrior-scholars that protect them in this deathworld
- Location
- Greece
@yrsillar , feel free to not answer if my question peers too much behind the screen or breaks the magic or anything, but I wanted to ask this for a while and I can hold back no longer. Did people's heroic and/or villainous qualities get exacerbated and/or toned down based on who we teamed up with? For example, had we teamed with Sun Liling over Bai Meizhen, would Meizhen's worst qualities get stronger and her best weaker, making her pretty much a terrifying evil Bai, while Liling's good qualities got stronger, making her pretty much a female Goku? Would Cai Rexiang be more lawful evil had we turned her down with full strength and Kang Zihao genuinely honourable? Would Ji Rong be more heroic in going after people who abuse their power out of ideology and Li Suyin the nerd that snapped?
Obviously, this is only about the characters that weren't introduced as heroes or villains later on, but... I find it strange that we mostly chose to buddy up with the good-ish guys when things were not crystal clear yet.
Obviously, this is only about the characters that weren't introduced as heroes or villains later on, but... I find it strange that we mostly chose to buddy up with the good-ish guys when things were not crystal clear yet.
ImperatorV
The Laughing One
- Location
- The Voyaging Realm
Well, we know for a fact that Ling Qi influenced Meizhen - she would not be as nice if she hadn't had a friend to show her that she could trust others.
Meizhen's best qualities were the ones Ling Qi introduced to her. And Liling's bad qualities aren't even close to Meizhen's worst ones while her goodness has been largely overlooked. The Sun interlude during the tournament where she meet her grandfather also showed her as kind of sweet for all her brutish showmanship and she might even have warned us of the bandits raiding the Cai/Bai border.
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But... a lot of our friends are assholes. Meizhen is, like, actually evil, and just happens to be our friend. Xiulan is, uh, kind of a bitch who again just happens to be nice to us.
Renxiang otoh is genuinely a good person, and is the hero we need. It's also not a coincidence that we chose to buddy up with her, since we did so *because she's good*. Similarly, we got to know Han Jian because he was a nice guy.
Renxiang otoh is genuinely a good person, and is the hero we need. It's also not a coincidence that we chose to buddy up with her, since we did so *because she's good*. Similarly, we got to know Han Jian because he was a nice guy.
- Location
- Greece
To be honest... not really. Meizhen culturally overattacks threats, but she doesn't actually like being vicious, she does it more out of habit. She has also never directed that to an innocent. Plus, she appears to be naturally kind to nonenemies when she can get away with it.
Xiulan was a bitch at first, but I do not think that descriptor applies to her after the shoch induced character development of seeing how high the heavens are.
Sure, they aren't paragons of morality (thus the ish in goodish) but they are not the kind of people I would call villains. Contrast Sun Liling using commoners like pawns and going full on law of the jungle regardless of who that may hurt, Zihao being willing to murder if he can get away with it, etc. and you see that the villains are a lot more proactive about hurting others, while the eviler friends of Ling Qi are a lot more... well... "if you do not hurt me or try to court me while being unworthy, I won't hurt you"