no mantis by popular vote!
leopard was a little too subtle and sneaky, so
//
Ruyi woke to a slow boiling of pain, under the skin, searing her inside-out. She jerked awake, gasping. She couldn’t move her arms but she could feel bands of hot steel s...
2023-09-05 16:30:01 +0000 UTC View PostAN: think I will try devoting Sundays to doing 1x a week of a more conventional litRPG cultivation story and try a 6x Twinned, 1x other thing schedule. Or possibly a 5x Twinned 2x other thing (weekdays/weekends split) once I get Twinned's Dragon Tier backlog up to ~25 chapters
Working (generic) title: Solo System Cultivati...
2023-09-04 16:30:01 +0000 UTC View PostThey held a funeral for Mei in the Bakery’s front yard. Jin said it’s where she would’ve liked to be buried.
Mei didn’t have paintings of just herself hanging in the Bakery—she wasn’t that kind of person—but she did have a painting of the two of them sitting at the edge of a roof, hands held, smiling at the horizon. It seemed...
2023-09-03 16:30:01 +0000 UTC View PostShe didn’t make it ten strides out the door before Jin landed in her path.
“Sis,” he said, voice low. “Slow down.”
“Get out of my way.”
“You have that look on your face,” he said.
“What look?”
“The one that says you’re about to do something very stupid.”
“Jin, I swear...”
...
2023-09-02 16:30:00 +0000 UTC View PostWeeks later…
The Middle Wall split the round lands of Jade Dragon City in two, curved like the line between dark and light in a yin-yang. It split the Upper and Lower Cities. Dynasties rose and fell but the wall remained, as it did in every major city in the realm. Walls meant order, structure, this thick plain of gray y...
2023-09-01 16:30:02 +0000 UTC View PostThe Villa of Swords, which housed Li Family’s Jade Dragon branch, sat outside the city walls amid an artificial lake which drew its waters from the White River. Fingers of mist spread over the lake’s surface, veiling the Villa, but Ruyi could see its shadowy outline—a five-floor pagoda.
The wooden plank path up to the island villa wa...
2023-08-31 16:31:00 +0000 UTC View PostRuyi’s usual training clearing had been subject to a hostile takeover by a family of wild ferrets. They’d gnawed through half her ‘KEEP OUT!’ signpost. After a brief skirmish and a screaming match—which she won—she drove them off.
Then she started on her usual benchmarks.
Speed. She ran one hundred strides in a little und...
2023-08-30 16:30:01 +0000 UTC View PostNote:
Added this section to chapter 20, just after her demonification, to (hopefully) make her hiding seem a little more plausible—
‘She ordered body dyes from the Alchemist’s Guild. She found she had to paint her arm daily; the pink tone just wouldn’t stick. It didn’t really look like skin up-close, it loo...
2023-08-29 16:30:01 +0000 UTC View PostDays later, there was still no reply from Sen.
Ruyi told herself not to panic. It’d come she told herself—she’d wrung herself dry worrying over Tingting’s letters, for nothing. She wasn’t playing this game anymore.
Sen had seemed shaken when last they met. Maybe she needed some time.
Still Ruyi worried, but not any mo...
2023-08-28 16:30:02 +0000 UTC View PostShe woke to a whiff of iron and salt. She cracked an eye. Her hunger was a low-pitched scream; she felt she could swallow an elephant and still be famished.
“Gluh?”
By the bed, piled high, a plate of bloodied raw steaks. There was a note.
“From Mother, with love.”
Mother knew her so well.
Halfway through the...
2023-08-27 16:30:01 +0000 UTC View PostAdded to Ch. 27: “I would say,” he said at last. “The king of poisons. A poison so potent, so possessive, it even consumes other lesser poisons. Moon Serpent venom.”
Basilisk is too western, so swapped it out. Idea is to keep the western (human) side of the mountains Ancient China-inspired while the eastern (demon)...
2023-08-26 16:30:01 +0000 UTC View PostSen was heavier than she looked, and she looked quite heavy. As she loaded the girl up on her back, Ruyi nearly fell over. Did she have lead for bones? The training boulders at home were much heavier, but they were smooth stable things with steel handles welded to the sides, and flat bottoms for easy carrying. Bodies were all floppy and wobbly a...
2023-08-25 16:35:00 +0000 UTC View PostRuyi couldn’t move. She couldn’t think to move. She was stuck at the bottom of a vast sea of feeling, drowning, slowly crushed. She couldn’t breathe. She tried and tried but there was no space in her chest.
“Incredible,” said the demon, eyeing Sen. “Such will… I’d come to see one of humanity’s genii. What a rare ...
2023-08-24 16:30:01 +0000 UTC View PostZhilei led them to the kind of cave you’d expect silly children to wander into and never come out; the kind of cave where bones crunched beneath your feet with every step. It looked like it housed a basilisk.
He had a wood torch in hand, its tip a knot of burning cloth.
“Stay close,” said Sen, hand on the hilt of her s...
2023-08-23 16:32:50 +0000 UTC View PostWhen they entered, Sen didn’t follow.
“Would you like to come in, Miss Li? I have some wonderful Oolong brewing,” said Zhilei.
“No,” said Sen. “I’ll stand guard. I’m to keep Ruyi safe—I promised the Mistress.” She scanned the sleepy town like any of the little thatched huts might be harboring a hive of demons.
... 2023-08-22 16:30:02 +0000 UTC View PostThe carriage climbed up a winding rocky path. As they went higher the trees got thicker, bigger, their leaves narrower and narrower, until they looked like thousands of needles hanging off branches thick as human trunks. It rained much less up here, but Ruyi had read the roots went far deeper. Unlike in Jade Dragon City, the soil here hadn’t b...
2023-08-21 16:30:59 +0000 UTC View PostA/N: power levels: (human)
Qi Condensation
Foundation
Core Formation
Nascent Soul
power levels (demon):
//
“The Butche...
2023-08-20 16:30:02 +0000 UTC View PostAfter Ruyi became a demon, her research output shot up.
She found she tired much less easily. When her mind was distracted, seized by an urge, she couldn’t think. But when it was quiet she could turn her mind to nearly any task, even boring ones like hours-long ingredient dissections. She could set her mind on a thing and trust it would ...
2023-08-19 16:52:34 +0000 UTC View PostWhen she got home, the first thing she did was pull Jin out of his evening spear practice.
“We need to talk.”
He was drilling the Nine Sun Rises, one of the signature Yang spear arts which Father had pioneered as a youth. A chain of nine thrusts, each a sun rising at the tip of the spear, brighter and fiercer than the la...
2023-08-18 16:30:02 +0000 UTC View PostRuyi was right. Behind a grand wood desk sat the footman, smiling as genially as when he helped her off the carriage at the Banquet.
His smile froze on his face.
“It is you!” she exclaimed.
For a moment every muscle in his face was still.
“Why,” he said. “What an unexpected delight. Miss—”
“...
2023-08-17 17:25:28 +0000 UTC View PostA/N: changing the story's name to either "twin destinies" or "twinned destinies" -- lmk which you think sounds better!
//
Mei scrubbed the residue off the rest of her oven racks, wiped down the tables, and shut off the lights, one by one. She locked the front door twice, the back door once, wedged wood blocks over th...
2023-08-16 16:34:35 +0000 UTC View PostThe ground ruptured under her feet; vines of stone lashed at her ankles. She yelped, stumbling over herself.
A Foundation aura bloomed behind her—that freckly little twig was at Foundation?!
She was so screwed.
She dashed faster, swallowing great swathes of earth with each stride, bracing for a spear through her back...
2023-08-15 16:30:01 +0000 UTC View PostNote: removed teeth mutations.
in chapter 10, when talking about the demon cult, Jin says, “I don’t agree with the idea of summoning demons to gain quick power” rather than “eating demons to gain quick power”
Onwards!
//
She found a nice flat slab of ice, bathed in moonlight, in which to admire ...
2023-08-14 16:30:59 +0000 UTC View PostBy the time dinner finished and the dancing began, she wasn’t shocked anymore.
Just furious.
Tingting wouldn’t meet her eyes. Not once did Tingting acknowledge her. Didn’t she deserve that, at least?
Apparently not.
She couldn’t be bothered to dance. Could hardly stand up straight as it was. The room was steaming ...
2023-08-13 16:31:00 +0000 UTC View PostSo the trip did not go as planned.
She had fallen flat on her face. Physically, once. Metaphorically, the whole trip.
But she had it! Stored away and triple-locked in her fridge.
That night she tried sleeping, but she just couldn’t manage it. Her heart was beating too heavy in her chest; it kept her up. She was terribly afrai...
2023-08-12 16:46:20 +0000 UTC View PostThe Underground was every bit as boorish and disgusting as Ruyi had imagined it.
On one side were tables of huddled gamblers, throwing up cards and coins, smoking so heavily they were shrouded in their own atmosphere of noxious fumes. On the other scantily clad men and women danced and laughed and lured drunk patrons behind velvet curtains...
2023-08-11 16:33:44 +0000 UTC View PostThey arrived in the Lower City late in the darkening evening.
The main street looked like a battlefield. The charming little shops had closed up early and wedged boards over their windows. The grounds were worse than she remembered—rucked-up debris was sprinkled up and down the roads along with fresh craters, some still smoking. Half the...
2023-08-10 16:31:00 +0000 UTC View PostRuyi led her to the lab. It had started off as this little dungeon in the ground, but over the years Ruyi had tacked centrifuges, smoke vents, and a tiny garden to the top for quick-and-dirty ingredients. The insides were strung up with pipes, humming with dial-ridden instruments sunk into the walls. The rest of the space was clogged with papers...
2023-08-09 16:30:59 +0000 UTC View PostA/N: edited the start of chapter 1
It's cleaner now I feel :)
//
Two months before the Midsummer Banquet, Father gathered them at the dinner table.
“Marcus has slain his second,” he announced, drawing a gasp from Mother. But the name meant nothing to Ruyi.
“You may know him as the Demon Lord, ...
2023-08-08 16:30:01 +0000 UTC View PostThe Codex felt like a bomb sitting in her satchel. Yet each time she tried to read it the letters slipped through her head. It was clear no work was getting done that night.
She couldn’t seem to stop smiling. She couldn’t understand how anyone could possibly be sad when the world was so bright, so various, so full of color. She smiled ...
2023-08-07 16:31:00 +0000 UTC View Post