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Threads Of Destiny(Eastern Fantasy, Sequel to Forge of Destiny)

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I dunno, I don't think it's Renshu. Him surviving would've required fooling the sect into thinking he was dead, and I don't see an outcast, teenaged, early third-realm pulling that off. It seems more likely that someone else would've taken advantage of the dude's grudge against Ling Qi and his rapidly degenerating circumstances to use him to try and obliquely sabotage CRX.
 
yrsillar said:
"Salty Rock Man was bad, his stomach had a hole in it, he couldn't be full if he tried," Zhengui disagreed in her mind.
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He was very salty.
Even his name is salty.
yrsillar said:
Ling Qi tipped her head in acknowledgement of her little brother's belief, peering down at the street from her perch on the peaked roof of the Ministry of Communication building. She'd gotten the permissions for him to be in town, but she had been asked to deploy him only in emergencies. Which was fair, Zhengui was pretty destructive.

"I can be good!"

She tipped her head, she knew that, but convincing the local nobles that he wouldn't burn down half the town was harder.
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So precious~
 
I think in order for Renshu to survive he would have needed aid from the Ya-lith-kai. So the question is: would they think his ongoing cooperation is worth whatever it cost them to pull him out? The expense of keeping him alive underground? The risk that he will turn around and betray them?

And the answers to those questions are difficult to guess without knowing a lot more about the Seven cities

Edit: while Recognition makes it obvious he was in contact with the Ya-lith-kai, and had their help sabotaging the array, and his whole deal suggests they promised him a place in their society with room to grow, they could have just lied to him. Or he could have wildly misinterpreted their offer because their whole cultivation scheme leads to a culture where grasping power is an act of self sacrifice with a short time limit
 
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Chlof said:
I dunno, I don't think it's Renshu. Him surviving would've required fooling the sect into thinking he was dead, and I don't see an outcast, teenaged, early third-realm pulling that off. It seems more likely that someone else would've taken advantage of the dude's grudge against Ling Qi and his rapidly degenerating circumstances to use him to try and obliquely sabotage CRX.
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Here's the relevant sidestory.
yrsillar said:
"Junior Brother Yan you are in charge of completing the stabilization arrays," the core disciple said distractedly. "I have been called to assist the front line."

"Yes Senior Brother," Yan Renshu grunted, keeping his eyes fixed on the smoothed stone in front of him, where already tens of thousands of characters had been carved, inked and etched. The formation arrays being established here were of staggering complexity. Even his own intellect could only begin to truly decipher them.

Resentment stewed in his gut. He would have understood them better, been able to complete this working already, if he had received the instruction he deserved.

"Very good Junior Brother, I will trust in your abilities," the core disciple said, wearing an infuriatingly patronizing smile as he clapped Yan Renshu on his good shoulder, and vanished in a rainbow streak through the floor. How hasty.

Not that Yan Renshu did not understand, the clash was escalating.

Tens of Kilometers of flesh rose through the tunnels, marching feet and scrabbling claws beyond counting. The World-Corpse spasmed and vomited forth power from her wound womb into the waiting hands of the Weavers. Those Who Crawled rallied to the call of the Incarnate Assembly, and their Corpse Champion, the Prince of Millions, crawled forth to make war upon the intruding sky.

Cruel Virtue met his advance, and ten thousand eyes of judgement slashed away one hundred thousand hands with their gaze, even as the breath of the World-Corpse ate his flesh. Yet from each hand rose a warrior, bearers of the word Pain, and the prince spoke from countless mouths…

Yan Renshu grimaced as he took a tighter hold of his senses, feeling the trickle of wetness on his upper lip. Yes, escalating indeed.

"Sect Brother Yan?" a voice spoke up to his side.

He glanced to the three others in the chamber, one of five like it laid out exactly around the central array of this sector. Each sector was than a point on the larger pentagon surrounding the central camp. Shaped from the surrounding stone, each chamber was an exact cylinder, three meters in height, connected to the others by narrow passages, intersecting and punching through the many natural caverns and tunnels.

"Continue your task," he replied, barely looking at the speaker. The three others were disciples in the nine hundreds, and he felt little but contempt for them, each was many times his age but a fraction of his cultivation. Ambitionless creatures, broken to the boot, happy to wag their tails for their masters.

Yan Renshu held in the sneer that wanted to form as he carved a new stroke with each movement of his chisel, rapidly forming the next character in the chain that would stabilize the arrays in this sector.

This situation was a microcosm of everything wrong with the Sect and the Empire it was a part of. He, an unparalleled genius, reduced to scutwork on the front lines of a petty battle, his education and cultivation stunted, all because those above him had decided that he offended them.

His chisel struck the stone fiercely. That was not entirely true. His final ruin had come at that girl's hands. A genius as well, he might have considered her a peer. Sadly his effort to separate her from the fat noble leeches had ended in failure. She certainly would not have understood it as a favor. He would give the Cai and the Bai that, they were quite good at taming their pets.

Even the elders, whose approval he had assumed when his operations had been allowed to run for a full year unchecked had turned against him in the end. He had been used. Left alone to serve as an obstacle, and when it all came down around his ears, he had been the one admonished, chided like a child. Only his value as a craftsmen had given him this 'second chance'.

A new character carved, Yan Renshu took to the left to begin the next. It carried him within arms reach of the central array, already glowing fiercely with the energies of the vast formation flowing through it.

Yes, the Sect had only been another oppressor, a pet of the Duchess and her nobles, Yan Renshu thought scornfully, all their vaunted independence from petty local politics a lie. His sleeve slid down as he reached high to begin chiseling the next character, revealing a bangle of bone on his wrist. A talisman like any other to any senses.

A welcome gift, from the being he had met in the deep caverns, where he had been forced to go harvesting with his own hands, he knew in his shielded thoughts hidden from prying elders and Senior Disciples alike by the talisman. The Empire was not the only polity in this region, whatever it claimed.

How arrogant the empire was, never considering those who dwelled below, those who had watched their squabbles and their infighting for millenia. Those whose lands the Sect callously poisoned with their vents.

Yes, Yan Renshu could understand how that would feel. His contact too, understood his situation. Understood how he had been wronged. Gutou as the being called himself for ease of communication, had been watching the Sect for a very long time, and he inhuman as he was had been the one to notice Yan Renshu's talent.

Yan Renshu eyed the central array as he shuffled further to the left, and felt in his bones the spiritual rumble of a battle far beyond his ability below. He could feel the Elder and the Core disciples, their power burning in his mind's eye. All of it focused on the Spirit wrought by the Deep Dwellers.

Yes, this array was beyond his ability to construct, but as that insolent girl had shown last year, one did not need to fully understand something to break it. Especially when it was only half finished, the stabilization array unfinished.

When his chisel came down, severing the seventh stroke of the eighth power storing character, the stone began to crumble, spewing toxic underground air.

When portions of the array throughout the room began to erupt, unable to contain unrouted power. He relished the screams.

He would get the recognition he deserved one way or another.
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Skitzyfrenic said:
Renshu totally has Help From Below. He switched sides forever ago and faked his death.
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I'm really curious where the Abyssal Exhalation art originated, because it seems clearly linked to the underfolk, but
I doubt they'd be able to put together an Imperial art on their own. So somewhere out there there is or was a higher realm Imperial cultivator with underground connections.
 
yrsillar said:
He spoke, it was raspy and shaky with fear. "D-disciple, reporting. The net is closing, the songbird comes."
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You might catch a songbird with a net, but you'd keep it in a cage.

yrsillar said:
No, he was traveling toward the city center. In her senses, it was a complex of light, criss crossing lines of geometry that formed a sort of cage of spiritual power, the defenses of the ruling clans manor and the inner wall.
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Uh oh! O_O
 
moobunny said:
I'm really curious where the Abyssal Exhalation art originated, because it seems clearly linked to the underfolk, but
I doubt they'd be able to put together an Imperial art on their own. So somewhere out there there is or was a higher realm Imperial cultivator with underground connections.
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We already knew there was previous contact between the "underfolk" and portions of the Empire
 
Oh right, remember the odd mix of competent methods used incompetently during this case?
We originally assumed it was maybe some Young Master incompetently using skilled assets.

Turns out it was deliberately leaving a trail as bait for Qi...
 
Chlof said:
I dunno, I don't think it's Renshu. Him surviving would've required fooling the sect into thinking he was dead, and I don't see an outcast, teenaged, early third-realm pulling that off. It seems more likely that someone else would've taken advantage of the dude's grudge against Ling Qi and his rapidly degenerating circumstances to use him to try and obliquely sabotage CRX.
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Things were messy and he's already confirmed to have the ability to create Life Model Decoys capable of fooling a Ducal Scion with a reason to look hard, combine that with the official sidestory all but formalizing he had contact with the Ya-Lith-Kai and that he intentionally sabotaged the attempt to set up a FOB in the Underworld, and it's pretty clear that he survived.
 
It would be kinda funny if it turns out everyone's both right and wrong; it is Renshu's clinically dead body being controlled like a zombie to trick his family.

Spiritual and cognitive death states more debatable, just to hammer down how bad a deal that was to take. Makes sense the communal god cultivators wouldn't look kindly on treason.

Edit: Also would be hilariously karmic for the puppeteer to end up like that.
 
Honestly, my prediction was that Renshu was the thing in the subterranean lake. He obviously wouldn't fit well with the people downstairs, so I wouldn't have been surprised if they just ensured he was still "alive" and booted him out of their caverns.
 
Chlof said:
I dunno, I don't think it's Renshu. Him surviving would've required fooling the sect into thinking he was dead, and I don't see an outcast, teenaged, early third-realm pulling that off. It seems more likely that someone else would've taken advantage of the dude's grudge against Ling Qi and his rapidly,
degenerating circumstances to use him to try and obliquely sabotage CRX.
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That side story all but spelled it out. In the moment he chose to slip away, the sect was on war footing. Every Elder was fighting. Yes they may have realized that the body was a puppet if any cultivator was powerful and perceptive enough when going through bodies post battle. But I doubt they assign the higher realm, competent disciples for collecting and sorting corpses. Especially from the shishigui fight. That sounds like a gross job.
Or its possible the Elders did find out somehow. Maybe a higher realm guy was assigned to cleanse the bodies before they were sent home to their families and he noticed something odd about one of them. Pass it to a higher-up and there you go, a puppet body discovered. Or it was something else. Who knows either way, that side story indicates that his story isn't finished yet and Yrsillar has found a way to make him relevant again.
 
Hey folks. I followed this story on RoyalRoad and then became curious enough to check out the original stuff here. Very cool!

Anyway, I agree, decent odds it's Yan Renshu. We know he's not really dead, his cousin is the Communications saboteur, and naturally we have to dislike coincidences. And while it might seem foolish to blow his cover on revenge, it's perfectly fitting with this guy's hugely inflated ego.

And yes, the Sect believes he's dead, since the newest bit references "his cousin's death" in Yan Shenyi's dossier.
 
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RageQuitEnigma said:
Hey folks. I followed this story on RoyalRoad and then became curious enough to check out the original stuff here. Very cool!

Anyway, I agree, decent odds it's Yan Renshu. We know he's not really dead, his cousin is the Communications saboteur, and naturally we have to dislike coincidences. And while it might seem foolish to blow his cover on revenge, it's perfectly fitting with this guy's hugely inflated ego.

And yes, the Sect believes he's dead, since the newest bit references "his cousin's death" in Yan Shenyi's dossier.
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Hello, fellow RoyalRoad reader! Welcome! I think it's Renshu too, except he's a puppet the Lith are manipulating in the background. Renshu wants to be a Big Man and based on the description of the cousin's qi, he's sharing the art the Lith gave him and is creating a gang again. Except, the Lith are just pandering to him while using the city-wide trap as a way to fuel their cultivation since they cultivate pain and suffering.

Another theory of mine is that Yan's cousin is injured because he tried to integrate an art to form his nascent Domain. We know he's early Green and that's when you start integrating an art to form your Domain. We also know that the meridians for the Abyssal Exhalation art are Lung meridians and that transferring meridians to a domain weapon is incredibly risky. Ultimately, the thing that convinced me of this was how Ling Qi described him as "leaking"...the same word Cai Renxiang used to describe Qi when she first integrated her domain weapon!!!

Coincidence? I think not!! So Renshu gave his cousin and art to help set his Domain, but he messed up when transferring the meridians and now has some pseudo-Domain that he's trying to express, either to empower him or to signal something, like maybe a trap that uses Abyssal qi/qi related to the underground.
 
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Lamentations
  • Apocrypha
    • Bad Future: Lamentations

    We called her Truth, the Ideal

    The light of hope, peace, purity

    But time did reveal

    The folly in hindsight and memory

    T'was her Ideal, not ours

    And hers was upheaval to frighten the very stars

    Her genius broke many bonds

    But buckled our certainties

    That which keeps us centered and bound

    The Royal Serpents, the Sand Lords, and the Celestial Lords

    They roared

    For Her Grace defied and passed

    Their tolerance to abhor

    Her daughters sought to dissuade her

    Their vision faltered and declared failed

    In time it came to blades, to the heavens they railed

    Scorching metal, against hands of the Sun

    Heron against the Golden Hero

    Claiming both Xia and Gan

    In shadows the Moon Wraith lurked

    Pitting her faces against the one with none

    Two torn away

    But through Grinning she won

    Daughters against mother

    Shall we be free?

    Yet the mad brilliance had the might

    To rend the Great Tree

    Renxiang triumphs, at terrible cost

    For the younger, is sacrificed and lost

    When the Peak Lords come

    To reform the domain

    The New Lady and Her Wraith

    Vowed support to new and old traditions

    And could not tolerate a Dragon's reign

    For this was their Way

    An Emerald Home and Vision they could not turn away

    Thus, this may be how it ends

    Lest heaven accept our pleas

    For crimson floods

    Consume the many leaves    ​

    - A poem of unknown authorship, recovered two centuries after the Cataclysm of the Cai

    AN: @yrsillar Omakes for the Omake Throne! Just playing with a potential Bad End future.
     
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  • Apocrypha
    • RageQuitEnigma said:
    We called her Truth, the Ideal

    The light of hope, peace, purity

    But time did reveal

    The folly in hindsight and memory

    T'was her Ideal, not ours

    And hers was upheaval to frighten the very stars

    Her genius broke many bonds

    But buckled our certainties

    That which keeps us centered and bound

    The Royal Serpents, the Sand Lords, and the Celestial Lords

    They roared

    For Her Grace defied and passed

    Their tolerance to abhor

    Her daughters sought to dissuade her

    Their vision faltered and declared failed

    In time it came to blades, to the heavens they railed

    Scorching metal, against hands of the Sun

    Heron against the Golden Hero

    Claiming both Xia and Gan

    In shadows the Moon Wraith lurked

    Pitting her faces against the one with none

    Two torn away

    But through Grinning she won

    Daughters against mother

    Shall we be free?

    Yet the mad brilliance had the might

    To rend the Great Tree

    Renxiang triumphs, at terrible cost

    For the younger, is sacrificed and lost

    When the Peak Lords come

    To reform the domain

    The New Lady and Her Wraith

    Vowed support to new and old traditions

    And could not tolerate a Dragon's reign

    For this was their Way

    An Emerald Home and Vision they could not turn away

    Thus, this may be how it ends

    Lest heaven accept our pleas

    For crimson floods

    Consume the many leaves    ​

    - A poem of unknown authorship, recovered two centuries after the Cataclysm of the Cai

    AN: @yrsillar Omakes for the Omake Throne! Just playing with a potential Bad End future.
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    That was excellent! Great job!
     
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