Makes me think of the new pokemon protagonist memes
Could be, but the impression I got was that its rare to have that much precision at all.
We're not readyBut I want it.
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.
Makes me think of the new pokemon protagonist memes
Could be, but the impression I got was that its rare to have that much precision at all.
Being able to sense major elements seems fairly standard. I don't think we're anything special there.
Zhengui gets yeeted
EternalObserver
eYe Gaze baCk
- Location
- The Void
Following an omake up with another artwork, featuring a reenactment of the Zhengui Yeet (Turn 5, Arc 2-1)
aka how Zhengui got owned by Muscle Lady Guan Zhi
Can't draw Guan Zhi tho unfortunately (tried and ended up making arm and back muscles look weird), so I settled with silhouettes instead.
@yrsillar Another one for you. Next one being either Xiulan & Suyin Friendship, or Bai vs Sun (Colored edition)
aka how Zhengui got owned by Muscle Lady Guan Zhi
Can't draw Guan Zhi tho unfortunately (tried and ended up making arm and back muscles look weird), so I settled with silhouettes instead.
@yrsillar Another one for you. Next one being either Xiulan & Suyin Friendship, or Bai vs Sun (Colored edition)
My sides are now Stellar Qi
notanautomaton
I've got 99 quests, I've finished one
[x] Let him play his game, make up for lost time and try to forge a few more lines of personal acquaintance among his group.
The Medicant Blade 1
The Mendicant Blade (1/3)
(With thanks to @veekie for general sounding board and beta duties.)
-========]=
Breath in, breath out.
He was a blade.
His nature was to cut.
A foot slashed forth, a brilliant, blinding motion, tracing a half-moon through the snow. Though it would not be obvious until some clumsy disciple blasted the snow to steam, beneath the icy wastes, his qi etched grooves into the rocks themselves.
Long, matted hair fell before his visored eyes, the old, bony artifact had been a gift, to aid with snow blindness, not that that had ever been a risk. He paused, senses balanced on the edge of a precipice - judging, weighing, seeking.
... crude.
He relaxed, breathed in, breathed out, and began again. Behind him, like waves upon the sea, his footsteps followed him, whorls carved upon half a mountain.
He was a blade.
His nature was to cut.
In his pride, he had forgotten. A blade cuts.
Such a simple thing, and yet...
A sword materialized in his hand. Formed of the purest green jade, it was a straight, double-edged sword carved and coaxed in the ancient style of the Horned Lords before the imperial smiths had begun mass producing their inferior steel implements.
He had once had the privilege of seeing a true Master cut through a battlefield, and then the sky, a cloud parting like the edges of a garment rent in twain, humans and spirits pouring out in their thousands to fall to the ground below.
At the time he had thought of it as artistry, akin to the perfect stroke of a brush on a canvas, or the right word spoken at the right moment.
More the fool, he. Seeking the purity of communion in violence was always bound to end in farce. An artist could seek connection, a swordsman, in contrast, could seek but one thing.
To cut.
He breathed in. Veins strained out against the near translucent skin of his forearms. He wrapped his left hand beneath his right, both loose around the pommel of his blade. He raised his arms and felt his sleeves fall and bunch up to nearly his elbows.
He was a blade.
His nature was to cut.
"Mast-"
He turned slightly, releasing his sword so that it hung, suspended in the air, and lashed out with his foot. His junior brother, raised his own blade to answer him, the clash between word and foot deceptively musical. The greeting his junior wished to give fell apart around him, making small indentations in the snow.
There were no echoes.
The young baron clasped his hands together, reversed his sword so that it pointed downwards and bowed low - lower than formality demanded. The son of a soldier bowing to the son of a beggar. He did not know why the young man, who was by all accounts talented and sensible, would stoop to seeking him out. He was famously vicious in temperament and his advancement... erratic. He should not be anyone's model.
"Senior Brother Tangbi, I apologize for disturbing your meditations."
He did not sigh. However much he abhorred these formalities, needs must, when dealing with youth.
"And yet you have, Junior Brother Liang. "
"Indeed. Senior Brother -" he bowed his head even lower, "I beg your instruction in the ways of the sword once more!"
The young man's voice had risen with his words - a rare show of emotion from the normally humble countenance he presented to the world. Tangbi gazed at him for a moment.
What could possibly motivate him to...
Ah. Of course.
He turned his back on the young man, so close to a boy, gazing upon the clean, windswept vistas. He himself had felt love here, once. Then...
It had Ended.
Beautifully, yes, but an Ending all the same.
"Perhaps you did not hear me, last we met."
I have nothing left to teach you. Come here prepared for death, or come not at all.
In all his years, he had uttered those words three score times, and yet only one had been wise enough to leave it be. He admired her still.
A deep breath.
"I come here prepared, Senior Brother."
Tangbi let the brave, untrue words linger in the air for a moment.
He was a blade.
His nature was to cut.
And yet...
"Junior Brother, do not be so quick to throw your life away."
He could feel the solemn, earnest eyes drilling a hole into his back. "Senior Brother, I am ready."
"You are certain?"
"Yes."
Tangbi plucked the waiting sword from the air. Reversing the grip, he presented it, hilt-first, to his junior brother.
"Prepare yourself."
"Senior Brother, such a gift-!"
The swordwraith smiled as the young man touched green jade and froze, fire and wind smothered beneath stone. In vain did his spirit beast beat at its sudden prison.
"It is not a gift."
Liang coughed and drops of blood exploded out of his mouth, speckling his lips. The other sword he held, his, made of inferior materials and possessing not an ounce of proper history, fell from his hand.
The boy stumbled to his knees, tears painting the snow before him.
"Grargh-!"
"What did you expect, child?"
"Grk-"
Tangbi watched dispassionately as green light crept out from the jade, lovingly shredding the boy's skin, crawling as slow as a mountain was fast, staining the hungry blade in blood and qi.
Drenching him in blood and qi.
He kicked the boy in the side and felt skin split and ribs crack as the blow swatted him aside.
He walked forward slowly.
Unbelievably, the boy was still conscious, bloody fingers trembling spasmodically, his eyes squeezed shut tight in concentration. He could see the muscles which he wanted to move - Liang He was putting his feet beneath him.
Hmm. He must have gone through quite the experience. The coddled youths of this era could not normally manage even this much.
But even this much was hardly anything.
"Fight me," Tangbi ordered.
"Wh - what?"
He kicked the young baron once more and watched him rise through the air.
"You still do not understand."
He held his hand out. Liang He's blade jumped into his palm like an eager puppy. Slowly, his qi, made of death and stone, began to swirl within his core.
"It wouldn't be called a tribulation if you could succeed just by working hard. Get up."
He slashed downwards - and was rewarded with the sound of metal hitting jade. A pure tone rang through the clearing, and the snow around them fled, forming a perfect circle. The force of it ripped his visor off, revealing nails in the place of eyes, while his flesh lost all definition, turning to the spiritual detritus that was any ghost's body.
The boy rose and Tangbi felt his spirits buoyed as a bloody affirmative fell from between the young baron's lips.
"Master, I am... ready...!"
"Then do it again."
He watched as the boy executed perfection, insofar violence of his realm could be perfection, then parry again, pain weighing him down, his qi absent, a step removed from a mere mortal, and yet still holding flawless and firm. He struck once more and was rewarded with another perfect reply - and wondered if the boy had noted, or cared, that he had been struck once from each cardinal direction.
A prayer, for the mortal he had been.
Let him fly then, as an Immortal.
As quickly as it had been snuffed out, he let the boy's qi return to him, watching it roar to hungry life. Qi clashed with qi, even as sword clashed with sword, wind and fire seeking stone and death.
They fought well past the limits of a mortal, then past the limits of an immortal of the first realm, then of the second. Blades of fire hissed and steamed against the snow and hissed against stone, before abruptly vanishing, then a hurricane of violence composed of knife-edged wind leapt forth, until there was nothing left save the guttering embers of the boy's qi.
"Again," he said.
Qi guttering, the boy fought, but mere persistence was not enough. Not for a tribulation.
An exchange became four, then eight, then sixty-four, then half a thousand, and onwards and upwards until the boy was on the ground once more, still and unmoving, his blood seeping into the snow.
Tangbi sheathed the boy's sword. Ragged breathing was the only accompaniment to the mournful wind. He picked up his fallen visor, placing it before his eyes, feeling his body fade into corporeality once more.
"Rest. We begin again, in earnest, at dawn."
-========]=
Author's Note: Liang He is indeed the swordboi that Ling Qi challenged way back when. Tangbi, the 'ghost', is a swordwraith, a kind of tool spirit forged in the heat of war and imprinted with a ghost, and has his own story. @yrsillar, feel free to let me know if there are any setting reasons that this could not exist as a sidestory, I think Tangbi's existence is at least plausible given all the death imprints that Jiao's been collecting and the hypothesized angst titan created by the last competition.
(With thanks to @veekie for general sounding board and beta duties.)
-========]=
Breath in, breath out.
He was a blade.
His nature was to cut.
A foot slashed forth, a brilliant, blinding motion, tracing a half-moon through the snow. Though it would not be obvious until some clumsy disciple blasted the snow to steam, beneath the icy wastes, his qi etched grooves into the rocks themselves.
Long, matted hair fell before his visored eyes, the old, bony artifact had been a gift, to aid with snow blindness, not that that had ever been a risk. He paused, senses balanced on the edge of a precipice - judging, weighing, seeking.
... crude.
He relaxed, breathed in, breathed out, and began again. Behind him, like waves upon the sea, his footsteps followed him, whorls carved upon half a mountain.
He was a blade.
His nature was to cut.
In his pride, he had forgotten. A blade cuts.
Such a simple thing, and yet...
A sword materialized in his hand. Formed of the purest green jade, it was a straight, double-edged sword carved and coaxed in the ancient style of the Horned Lords before the imperial smiths had begun mass producing their inferior steel implements.
He had once had the privilege of seeing a true Master cut through a battlefield, and then the sky, a cloud parting like the edges of a garment rent in twain, humans and spirits pouring out in their thousands to fall to the ground below.
At the time he had thought of it as artistry, akin to the perfect stroke of a brush on a canvas, or the right word spoken at the right moment.
More the fool, he. Seeking the purity of communion in violence was always bound to end in farce. An artist could seek connection, a swordsman, in contrast, could seek but one thing.
To cut.
He breathed in. Veins strained out against the near translucent skin of his forearms. He wrapped his left hand beneath his right, both loose around the pommel of his blade. He raised his arms and felt his sleeves fall and bunch up to nearly his elbows.
He was a blade.
His nature was to cut.
"Mast-"
He turned slightly, releasing his sword so that it hung, suspended in the air, and lashed out with his foot. His junior brother, raised his own blade to answer him, the clash between word and foot deceptively musical. The greeting his junior wished to give fell apart around him, making small indentations in the snow.
There were no echoes.
The young baron clasped his hands together, reversed his sword so that it pointed downwards and bowed low - lower than formality demanded. The son of a soldier bowing to the son of a beggar. He did not know why the young man, who was by all accounts talented and sensible, would stoop to seeking him out. He was famously vicious in temperament and his advancement... erratic. He should not be anyone's model.
"Senior Brother Tangbi, I apologize for disturbing your meditations."
He did not sigh. However much he abhorred these formalities, needs must, when dealing with youth.
"And yet you have, Junior Brother Liang. "
"Indeed. Senior Brother -" he bowed his head even lower, "I beg your instruction in the ways of the sword once more!"
The young man's voice had risen with his words - a rare show of emotion from the normally humble countenance he presented to the world. Tangbi gazed at him for a moment.
What could possibly motivate him to...
Ah. Of course.
He turned his back on the young man, so close to a boy, gazing upon the clean, windswept vistas. He himself had felt love here, once. Then...
It had Ended.
Beautifully, yes, but an Ending all the same.
"Perhaps you did not hear me, last we met."
I have nothing left to teach you. Come here prepared for death, or come not at all.
In all his years, he had uttered those words three score times, and yet only one had been wise enough to leave it be. He admired her still.
A deep breath.
"I come here prepared, Senior Brother."
Tangbi let the brave, untrue words linger in the air for a moment.
He was a blade.
His nature was to cut.
And yet...
"Junior Brother, do not be so quick to throw your life away."
He could feel the solemn, earnest eyes drilling a hole into his back. "Senior Brother, I am ready."
"You are certain?"
"Yes."
Tangbi plucked the waiting sword from the air. Reversing the grip, he presented it, hilt-first, to his junior brother.
"Prepare yourself."
"Senior Brother, such a gift-!"
The swordwraith smiled as the young man touched green jade and froze, fire and wind smothered beneath stone. In vain did his spirit beast beat at its sudden prison.
"It is not a gift."
Liang coughed and drops of blood exploded out of his mouth, speckling his lips. The other sword he held, his, made of inferior materials and possessing not an ounce of proper history, fell from his hand.
The boy stumbled to his knees, tears painting the snow before him.
"Grargh-!"
"What did you expect, child?"
"Grk-"
Tangbi watched dispassionately as green light crept out from the jade, lovingly shredding the boy's skin, crawling as slow as a mountain was fast, staining the hungry blade in blood and qi.
Drenching him in blood and qi.
He kicked the boy in the side and felt skin split and ribs crack as the blow swatted him aside.
He walked forward slowly.
Unbelievably, the boy was still conscious, bloody fingers trembling spasmodically, his eyes squeezed shut tight in concentration. He could see the muscles which he wanted to move - Liang He was putting his feet beneath him.
Hmm. He must have gone through quite the experience. The coddled youths of this era could not normally manage even this much.
But even this much was hardly anything.
"Fight me," Tangbi ordered.
"Wh - what?"
He kicked the young baron once more and watched him rise through the air.
"You still do not understand."
He held his hand out. Liang He's blade jumped into his palm like an eager puppy. Slowly, his qi, made of death and stone, began to swirl within his core.
"It wouldn't be called a tribulation if you could succeed just by working hard. Get up."
He slashed downwards - and was rewarded with the sound of metal hitting jade. A pure tone rang through the clearing, and the snow around them fled, forming a perfect circle. The force of it ripped his visor off, revealing nails in the place of eyes, while his flesh lost all definition, turning to the spiritual detritus that was any ghost's body.
The boy rose and Tangbi felt his spirits buoyed as a bloody affirmative fell from between the young baron's lips.
"Master, I am... ready...!"
"Then do it again."
He watched as the boy executed perfection, insofar violence of his realm could be perfection, then parry again, pain weighing him down, his qi absent, a step removed from a mere mortal, and yet still holding flawless and firm. He struck once more and was rewarded with another perfect reply - and wondered if the boy had noted, or cared, that he had been struck once from each cardinal direction.
A prayer, for the mortal he had been.
Let him fly then, as an Immortal.
As quickly as it had been snuffed out, he let the boy's qi return to him, watching it roar to hungry life. Qi clashed with qi, even as sword clashed with sword, wind and fire seeking stone and death.
They fought well past the limits of a mortal, then past the limits of an immortal of the first realm, then of the second. Blades of fire hissed and steamed against the snow and hissed against stone, before abruptly vanishing, then a hurricane of violence composed of knife-edged wind leapt forth, until there was nothing left save the guttering embers of the boy's qi.
"Again," he said.
Qi guttering, the boy fought, but mere persistence was not enough. Not for a tribulation.
An exchange became four, then eight, then sixty-four, then half a thousand, and onwards and upwards until the boy was on the ground once more, still and unmoving, his blood seeping into the snow.
Tangbi sheathed the boy's sword. Ragged breathing was the only accompaniment to the mournful wind. He picked up his fallen visor, placing it before his eyes, feeling his body fade into corporeality once more.
"Rest. We begin again, in earnest, at dawn."
-========]=
Author's Note: Liang He is indeed the swordboi that Ling Qi challenged way back when. Tangbi, the 'ghost', is a swordwraith, a kind of tool spirit forged in the heat of war and imprinted with a ghost, and has his own story. @yrsillar, feel free to let me know if there are any setting reasons that this could not exist as a sidestory, I think Tangbi's existence is at least plausible given all the death imprints that Jiao's been collecting and the hypothesized angst titan created by the last competition.
EternalObserver
eYe Gaze baCk
- Location
- The Void
Narrator voice: With his name now missing in the front page sect rankings, will Liang He be brought back to relevance like Yu Nuan did. Tune in next time in the next episode of Mendicant Blade *obligatory anime music*
Nice omake 👌
Last edited:
Thanks!
To be fair, I had this languishing on the corner of the road for literally months. The fact he disappeared was kind of an 'oh shit, at this rate Imma forget about this completely'. Heck, I still have a Gan Guangli reacting to Superstorm omake I know I started and just can't find anymore so.
Write something and post it is the moral of the story, I suppose.
Damn that's nice @FixerUpper . It just thrums with atmosphere and mythicness.
Kinda making it look like we got off easy in our tribulation though
Kinda making it look like we got off easy in our tribulation though
- Location
- At the end of the world
[X] Let him play his game, make up for lost time and try to forge a few more lines of personal acquaintance among his group.
- Location
- United States of America
Yes! Party planning time! Fear the wrath of Ling Qi's parties, where barons mingle with the scions of ducal families!
More seriously, I do think that this would be a good thing for Ling Qi to engage in, if only for the ability to practice setting up these things in a relatively safe environment and to develop her ability to navigate the social landscape that is the Emerald Seas. Since this idea is intended to be a smaller group party, intended to "[bring] her disparate social group together," I see a couple of options. We can start really small with our close group of best friends (Mezhien, Xiulan, and Suyin) which I'll label option 1. Another option is to go further afield in our relationships for a slightly larger party, this would include the first group as well as Cai and... possibly Xuan Shi. A third option would be to go to the largest extent possible with our current positive social connections, which would include Shen Hu and other of our 1 rank SL's in the outer sect.
Now, this division of our friend groups is... pretty basic and rife with problems. For instance, with the above option 2, Xuan Shi would be awkward around Cai which means that out of the six people invited, two would not be engaging with each other. That's... not good. Option three runs into other problems in that a lot of our 1 rank SL's are actually pretty high up in cultivation which would create a disparity between them and people like Suyin and Shen Hu. Option one also has the problem in that Meizhen... is just not that social which could make it pretty difficult to engage her with Xiulan and Suyin, particularly Suyin.
Then we have to consider the possible implications of social ranking in any social outing where we get larger than the minimum number of people. We have the possibility of inviting three scions of ducal houses which has the possibility of creating awkwardness with other invitees who are only barons or in baronial families. While some of our friends would be comfortable in the company of Meizhen or Renxiang, other's might not be.
Additionally, we have to consider the venue/activity that this outing would be based around. Given that it will be a smaller party, having the party itself be the activity itself may not be sufficient to keep people's attention and engagement. While I am particularly fond of dungeon crawling as an option, I feel that other options might fit better when trying to create a fun time for everyone involved.
So given that our friends run the gambit between ducal heirs and barons, not to mention our acquaintances, with differing interests and ideas for what constitutes as 'interesting', it will be challenging to actually create a party to bring them all together. Especially if we are going to discard the approach where we just mash them all together and hope it works out like last time. Good thing Ling Qi's already thinking on asking Xiulan for help!
I really liked that. No there's no problem with an existence like that swordwraith. I'm glad to have something showing that everyone whose reaching for the upper end of green has their own tribulations
- Location
- United Kingdom
If anything I figured we'd be inviting people primarily in our capacity as direct subordinate of CRX, and just using our friends to pad out the guest list, rather than the other way around.
Black Noise
Curious
- Location
- About 1AU from Sol
While everything we do is gonna reflect on CRX since we're her right hand, you're missing the point of such a gathering:
We do need to extend a courtesy invitation to Renxiang for the first one but I don't think she's likely to take up on it on a regular basis. Meizhen almost certainly would, which is more of a stickler because she's passively terrifying and people without enough ranks in Ling Qi-ness won't get her domain umbrella buffering them even if Meizhen is controlling it...because she really is that scary, domain or not.
So at a glance the inaugural party is going to be Suyin meeting Xiulan and Meizhen, possibly with Renxiang. A small tea party type event. Then we could probably cycle in the higher cultivation Rank 1s with the primary purpose of getting them linked to each other, especially Meizhen, who's normally unapproachable except for people with vested interests that she doesn't want to follow up on.
I wonder if Suyin might get along unexpectedly well.
So at a glance the inaugural party is going to be Suyin meeting Xiulan and Meizhen, possibly with Renxiang. A small tea party type event. Then we could probably cycle in the higher cultivation Rank 1s with the primary purpose of getting them linked to each other, especially Meizhen, who's normally unapproachable except for people with vested interests that she doesn't want to follow up on.
I wonder if Suyin might get along unexpectedly well.
- Location
- The United States
- Pronouns
- He/They
We know that the Grinning Moon is the Girl Who Stole the Wind though, which seems to be the clue we tied in with the Wind aspect to add up to "You're a thief, right bro?". Is that common knowledge?
- Location
- Finland
If we can make it work, having a semi largeish group gathering with our friends (and/or acquintances), including the best snek, and some choice strangers (vetted by CRX or her other underlings) might be a pretty good idea.
Sure lot of the lower status clans might be a bit terrified of meeting the Bai (and not just because of her aura), but it is also an opportunity.
How many other nobles in the sect could gather such a wide and varied group?
That right there could be a major networking opportunity for the more ambitious scions of emerald sea noble houses.
We don't need to do things like other nobles do, maybe we should no even try.
With some care, we could turn our eccentrity into an asset.
In many ways we already have, even if only by accident, people are curious, and curiousity provides openings that might not be there otherwise.
Keep them guessing, and let them seek us out.
Sure lot of the lower status clans might be a bit terrified of meeting the Bai (and not just because of her aura), but it is also an opportunity.
How many other nobles in the sect could gather such a wide and varied group?
That right there could be a major networking opportunity for the more ambitious scions of emerald sea noble houses.
We don't need to do things like other nobles do, maybe we should no even try.
With some care, we could turn our eccentrity into an asset.
In many ways we already have, even if only by accident, people are curious, and curiousity provides openings that might not be there otherwise.
Keep them guessing, and let them seek us out.
- Location
- The United States
- Pronouns
- He/They
We probably don't want to have it at our house, but rather at a rented space. I'm roughly 100% sure the Sect has these.
Meizhen was putting Reds catatonic last year, though she'd be much more constrained at a party at our place we still don't want her around our staff. I don't think they'd fair any better than the birds falling out of the sky. There's definitely an answer in Noble society to this, but it's probably Heart Sp. Def arts we don't have AP to get and assumes a cadre of First Realm servants we don't have decades to build up.
I don't think it's that bad, honestly.
Meizhen kills animals at around the point Ling Qi is freezing anything near her solid. Which is to say, when they are very upset.
I don't think that would be an issue at a party, although it will definitely be scary for the staff.