《Dao's Wheel》Undercurrents 2
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After they finished their tea, Nie and Jinhai went back to the house and didn't make any moves or spoke about anything in peculiar. They had secrets, secrets that they didn't want anyone else to know, so they became the ideal young master and his bodyguard as night came and the full moon hung high on the sky.
.............
On one of the busiest stress of the Half Moon city , where the inner part of the city and where the red district bordered each other, there was a famous pavilion called Cai Pavilion. It was a two story building made of wood and white rock, decorated with numerous lanterns that made it look as if it was day, and a serious looking guard every five meters. This was definitely a place that commoners would only dream to visit in their lifetime if they saved a lifetime, and precisely this place was the spot where scions of the Mo family gathered.
On the second floor of the building more than 5 big tables were filled with the most fresh and delicious food ranging from elk, to fish and even some kind of bird. All this food could feed 50 people, but besides the ten bodyguards and 8 servants, only the five members of the Cai family could attend this gathering, one of them being Mo Xiaoli.
"Hahhaha, brother Xiaoli, it's been such a long time since I saw you! How have you been, how about your son? " heartily laughed a large and round man who was sitting across Xiaoli on the table.
"It's been calm, elder brother Xin. Me and Nie have calmly lived on the countryside for the last 8 years with little difficulty; an eye opening experience to tell you the truth."
"I'm sure it would have been. Still, I hope that you haven't brought the customs of those commoners to this place. " spoke a tall an lean man to the side. His facial features sharp, his arm losel on the table and his thin eyebrows raised as he sipped on some wine. He had his hair tied in a small bun and a long and thin beard.
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"Oh, of course not brother Meng." respectfully answered Xiaoli as he smiled " Even though I wasn't granted the privileges of living in the city as you and lived with commoners, I haven't forgotten my roots, so if I were you I wouldn't lose any hair thinking over it."
"You....you...." was the only thing Mo Meng could say as he gritted his teeth at those words. Of course he could understand what Xiaoli implied, and it was a strong jab at his receding hairline at that.
"Hehe.... brother Xiaoli always was somewhat of a rowdy boy, but it seems even now you haven't changed." delicately laughed the woman next to Xiaoli as she looked at the mad Mo Meng. She looked about thirty years old with long and silky brown hair, bright eyes, white skin and long eyelashes. She wore a heavily decorated, loose blue robe , the sleeve of which she used to cover her smiling face.
"Thanks sister Xue, I appreciate your words."
"Hehe, you're welcome."
The atmosphere became somewhat strained as Xiaoli and Meng stared at each other with loathing, but the tension was soon cut by a loud slap of the table.
*Bam*
"Enough! That's enough of fooling around, bickering and drinking for today; brothers... sister!" seriously said the last attendant at the table. He was a very buff man with wild curly black hair he tried to contain, but failed to, was over 1,8 m in height, but his physique made him look much larger. He had a clean shaven, angular face, black eyes that seemed to see through you , and a thick neck that looked like a tree trunk.He was the oldest of the Mo siblings, Mo Hai, and the one who had gathered them here today.
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"My brothers.... sister, I haven't brought you here today to bicker with each other or lament the death of our father as there has been enough of that. No, I've brought you here as the Mo family hasn't been so divided in over 50 years since the old patriarch died and left the running of the Mo family to father.... but unfortunately our late father didn't have such foresight.He has divided the rights to the business of the Mo family in five equal parts between the five of us, and although that is fair, it's also foolish. Our rivals, the Qin family will definitely benefit from our division."
"Oh, is that so?" calmly said Meng who seemed to have forgotten Xiaoli's words " And , if I'm correct, you have a solution for this I presume?"
Mo Han gave a gaze at his siblings around the table, and at their faces of greed , worry, calmes , and willfulness."Indeed, brothers, sister; I propose to you four that we unify the assets of the Mo family once again and curb the problem without if festering. "
"Ohhh..... that sounds good, but I'm not hearing any details. You have to explain some more if you want to make sense, brother Hai." spoke Mo Xin as he brought his hands together, the golden rings on his hands rubbing against each other.
"Hehehe..... brother Xin is right. An explanation is needed." said Xue as she opened a ornate fan and brought it up to her face..
"Indeed sister, and I'll of course explain. I'm suggesting that combine our assets , both of the Mo family and ours, forming an alliance to not only deter the Qin family , but to also deal a blow to their business. Brothers, sister.....I know that you've sacrificed and worked to create businesses not related to the Mo family, trying to become independent when our father died and passed the position of the family to one of us, but I didn't come to be. Divided we will certainly suffer defeat, but if we band together we will definitely prevail.
So, what do you say?"
"Hmmm.... it sounds tempting, but words are easily spoken, older brother" said Meng as he looked at the others " We may as well be of the same blood, but our goals don't coincide. You have almost completely abandoned the family practice of medicine and focused on raising through the ranks of the military, sister is focusing on the red light district, brother Xin on becoming a merchant, and brother Xiaoli is powerless. So, seeing it like that, I don't think you are suggesting we are all contributing equally."
"Indeed , that would be the case, but it's not. I'm really offering an equal agreement to all of you, and...
"I object!" was clearly heard in the room as all eyes turned towards Xiaoli.
"You object, brother?"said Han with a strange look on his face as Xiaoli was smiling at all their reactions of surprise as he should he the last to speak of this matter.
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Synchronizing Minds - A first contact story
So what are the intelligent aliens like? The humans didn't know for quite some time, since even though they had ventured out far, they had only found few animal species and those had been as far from sapience as common earthworms. But now they had finally stumbled upon someone and a first contact meeting is happening. Can ambassador Neil, the represantitive of humans, find friendship standing before a vastly different sapient creature that is six times her size and just learned about the concept of language? Or are the humans actually the weird ones?
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Sword System Academia
2/17 NOTICE: I'm putting this on hiatus, possibly permanently. I didn't want to spam with an "update chapter", so hopefully here and in the story blurb will get enough eyeballs. There are a couple reasons for ending SSA for now. 1) I wrote the next chapter but wasn't happy with it. I've been less and less satisfied with SSA's quality the more I thought about it. Part of the reason is... 2) I am seriously thinking about trying to publish some novels to help pay the bills, since I don't have my other source of income anymore. I have never asked for anything from SSA readers, no money, not even a review or rating. SSA is written for fun to amuse myself, primarily, and I would kind of feel bad actually charging someone money for something as unserious as that. I don't think it is good enough to ask anything in return. To use an analogy from music, SSA is more like a jam session with a bunch of friends. You're just chiling and having fun playing some music. I mean, if you are Mozart or even Eminem, your jam session is good enough to sell, but for an amateur beginner like myself, haha, no. If I want to publish something, I feel like I need to go the proper route of practice and rehearsals, which might be more similar to a classical concert performance. With SSA, I work from worldbuilding notes and a loose outline, but what you are essentially getting is the first draft with lots of so-called pantsing. Pushing out a web novel like this also means it is very difficult to go back and improve things without breaking everything else downstream. I wanted to try this "jamming" approach, as it was a good way to teach me about another aspect of writing, but to move forward, I think I need to hone my "classical" techniques, which emphasize rewriting, or at least, revising outlines. 3) While I intend to try to make $$$, my actual current goal is to "get gud". I've spent a lot of time recently trying to understand the self-publishing industry, and I'm pretty sure I can make some money by using short-term strategies with my current amateur skill level. But I've seen too many authors come and go/burnout, and really, the only way that I think I can enjoy writing and still make money on a long-term basis is to become a better writer. And the next step for me, which I haven't done much before, is to spend more time on rewriting and outlines. That is pretty much antithetical to the way SSA is developing. I've always been kind of 20/80 plotting/pantsing, but I want to spend a lot more time outlining before I even start writing. SSA jam sessions don't really fit my goal anymore. If you're curious about what's next, read on... Among other regrets, I regret not finishing SSA. It's the first story I've dropped, but then again, it's the first web novel I've attempted, so I suppose that's not a surprise. I don't think traditional web novel formats suit me that well. The whole SSA story I had loosely planned (beyond a first book or major arc) is way too large as well. Big story = good for neverending webnovel with Patreons, bad for penniless and fickle writer like me. I am currently outlining a complete trilogy to another story in great detail. I want the story to end concisely, and I also want the chance to really spend a lot of time on the full outline to spot pacing problems, character issues, lost themes, and so on. I'll still share this story on RR. What I intend to do is finish book 1, flash-publish the whole thing here for a few weeks, then publish on the big Zon. Repeat for books 2 and 3. The upcoming story will be about crafting heroes. The backdrop is an isekai-like setting, where elves will summon humans to their world as heroes, but the whole hero crafting business is still in its infancy. The elven mage researchers are figuring out how to imbue heroes with power, while the heroes are trying to figure out how to use the powers that they gain. Humans are the best hero templates because they are blank and have no intrinsic magic. Or at least that what the elves thought. The human MC has his own secrets... There will be some similarities with litrpgs, but I would call it more a progression fantasy or gamelit story. For example, the stats are very low, at least initially. Say we have a stat called Str. Going from Str = 1 to Str = 2 is a huge deal. Also, going from Dex = 0 to Dex = 1 is an even bigger deal. I guess you could call it a "low-stat litrpg", haha. Also, the heroes won't be gaining stats simply by killing things or leveling up. You can't increase stats arbitrarily, either. There will be rules to how stats can increase, and how they work with each other. The elven mages will be figuring out these rules in order to craft stronger and stronger heroes. Some inspiration will be from cultivation magic systems, but there won't be overt cultivation, at least for now. A theme I really want to explore is the idea of interactions. That includes things like hero crafter vs hero, tactics vs strategy, skill synergies, racial interactions (dwarves, elves, etc), and son. Yeah, so hero crafting. I'm super excited about this project and venturing into publishing. If you want to check out the upcoming story, you can follow my RR author profile to see when it drops here. Finally... THANK YOU TO EVERYONE! I'm very sorry that SSA is stopping, but I hope at least some of you will find the next story at least as enjoyable, if not more. Thanks to all the readers who gave SSA a shot. Big hug or solid fistbump to all of you, whichever you prefer! I hope this message is not a downer but an upper, because I am psyched!! -purlcray -------------- BLURB: Talen, youngest Master of the Koroi, makes his way to the Empire's capital to salvage his clan's fate. But the bustling city has few opportunities for the traditionalist. For the old sword clans are fading. With the rise of alchemy, gold can purchase strength that ordinarily took years of training to cultivate. Sword artists, once rare and accomplished, are quickly growing in number, especially among the wealthy noble class. Even with such alchemy, though, no one has advanced to the rank of Grandmaster in countless years. Talen's true dream is to walk the path of a sword artist to the very end while fulfilling his clan duties. And then the Swordgeists return, fabled founders of all sword arts, gods who had touched the world long ago and vanished. These myths turned into reality warn of a coming threat. Alongside this warning, they issue an invitation to the Sword System Academy, a path to power beyond the mortal realm. But first, they will hold an entrance exam... Story notes:Sword System Academia blends elements of western and asian fantasy such as xianxia and litrpg. I took parts from different genres I enjoyed and twisted them into my own creation. There will be an explicit system, both of the litrpg kind and the hard(ish) magic kind, but it is embedded within an academic structure that will develop over the course of the story. This is my attempt to design a unique type of system, the System Academia.
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Sayhas was a killer. He was a mindless blade. A mercenary, a brigand, an outlaw Thief, Assassin. Murderer. He's done it all. Now, he's had a change of heart; he wants to go home and grow old by a fire with the ones he holds dear. But the past cannot be so easily forgotten, and grievances of long ago haunt him at every step. Instead, he travels the world, waiting for old friends to come and collect their dues, hoping that there will come a day when he can finally go home. Unfortunately, Sayhas' talents have caught the unwanted attention by the gods themselves. And when even the god's nasty plots are intertwined with Sayhas, he has two options: To run and pray it all blows over. Or to fight, and to pick a side.
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