《Legends of the Shadow Immortal》Prologue : Chapter 0
Advertisement
Somewhere very remote from civilization, a somewhat small human-shaped silhouette could be caught dashing across the woods.
The forest was dense, and in the horizon, it spread over each end of a circular mountainous terrain.
The snow had invaded the entirety of the uneven grounds, despite no trace of some falling. It was wondrous how it could overtake the entire region.
All of a sudden, the shadow of a young girl burst past several trees. The first rays of sunshine seemed to make their appearance along this girl's scale.
The course was littered with snow, but the many pitfalls and holes made it harsher to climb the slopes.
Yet, in this hostile environment, a teenage girl measuring less than five feet seemed to take flight as she avoided trees, animals and other perils.
Not only was the track treacherous, but the temperature was freezing. The breathes the girl let out were noticeable from the distance. From their sheer amount, she appeared to gasp for air.
Still, the lass didn't slow down; her pace only grew quicker as time went by as if she was running for her life.
Sure enough, after she managed not to crash into a big rock by leaping, a form scurried from a nearby block of trees, hissing extremely loudly.
It was a gigantic boar measuring no less than two meters. Its most noticeable features were its bright red eyes and protruding veins on its hooves. Each of these hooves was half as big as the lass.
The beast showed distinctive signs of anger. It shifted its head, then the rest of its body in a quick motion, as it caught the girl in its sight.
Taking a look behind her, the girl gasped before picking up the pace. Her speed seemed to double at that moment.
She flung several trees behind in a single motion. No longer did she bother running around those anymore but rather, over their branches. The inhuman feat was achieved in such simple ways, that one would wonder where her small body was finding such strength, speed, and agility.
Nevertheless, her light steps and jumps were mesmerizingly skillful. They were executed with clear-cut accuracy even under such an ordeal.
The girl's name was Zi Yurou.
She was a local from Zi Village, a clan of hunters living in this hostile area. Today she had woken up especially early to hunt for meat.
Advertisement
The village she came from was generally self-sufficient and the adults hunted for their own families' meat.
The mountain was cloistered and business was kept outside. The closest other village was not within a four hundred li radius, and the closest city was even farther.
Red meat was the primary source of food for people living here; especially because the weather remained the same all year long, growing crops was a distant dream.
The only herbs that grew in these parts were either ordinary grass or spirit medicine.
Spirit medicine or spirit grass was particularly precious to the villagers. It helped heal injury and was very rich in magical energy. A small spirit grass growing on the mountains could feed a home of 5 for weeks.
The reason for this was simple:
In this world, there were two types of humans:
Mortals and Cultivators.
People who didn't cultivate magical power were called mortals. Their lifespan generally didn't go over a hundred years old.
Everyone possessed what was called life energy inside their bodies, however, not everyone was able to gather and harness it for their own use.
This was the essence of cultivation; plundering the resources under the heavens and cultivate magical energy to the apex, which was immortality.
Now, when mortals ate spirit medicine or spirit grass for example, they not only ate food rich in nutrients, but they also ate food rich in life energy.
Why not magical energy?
Because there was one essential difference between life energy and magical energy. Magical energy was life energy converted into Magic, or more precisely lifespan conversion. This transformation of lifespan into Magic was the essence of cultivation.
People who wanted to start cultivation worried about the decrease in their lifespan. But the subject was far more profound and complex than someone would think.
The subject had been studied for a long time inside sects and magical institutions. Eminent cultivators had been debating whether using Magic would decrease overall lifespan. When refining energy, one absorbs it inside their body either to cultivate and reinforce it or to train, enhance and transform their magical path.
The former was called body refining or body cultivation. The latter was called Magical cultivation. As the body got refined, the overall life expectancy increased.
Advertisement
Not only did people get stronger, but they also increased their lifespan and overall resistance to illness and diseases. Organs got enhanced and provided a superior quantity of energy daily. This so-called life energy was not simply ingested and transformed for tempering, but it also allowed the body to produce more of it independently.
This was why body cultivators didn't die unless they overdrew their "blood qi", just as any regular mortal wouldn't die except if their production of blood was cut short.
In essence, a body cultivator was only a mortal with more energy and more lifespan. A body cultivator didn't use magical energy but only transformed it into fleshy power in order to become superhuman.
A magical cultivator was entirely different. Magical cultivators absorbed life energy or magical energy the same way as body cultivators, but they didn't transform it for the same purposes. It was possible to be both a body and magical cultivator, but the latter generally preferred not to do so, since it was generally considered a waste of time and resources.
First of all, anyone could be considered as a body cultivator. In order to become Magical cultivators, people went through body refinement. It was only at the end of this phase that people either chose to become mages or body refiners. When body refiners break to the next realm, they had the chance to form something known as a "macrocosm seed" or "world nucleus". Only once this small nucleus was formed could people become magical cultivators and possess their own "martial spirit".
The magical cultivator then would cultivate with the help of this martial spirit who would transform life energy into magical energy for him. As the magical cultivator's cultivation progressed, so did his spirit and their combined overall lifespan. If the magical cultivator overdrew energy, only the spirit would get weakened and eventually die. The lifespan lost in this case would only be the one added by the martial spirit.
In summary, martial spirits made life safer for magical cultivators, especially when one knew that the former's death was only temporary as long as the seed inside the cultivator was not crippled.
A legend said, that at the apex of cultivation, this nucleus became its own planet and even its own universe. In this universe, innumerable martial spirits would reign over small worlds and be summoned at any whim and call.
However, no one had ever been able to confirm this story since time immemorial. Countless cultivators dreaming of immortality have tried to capture and enslave other people martial spirits but never succeeded.
"Why does it only ever go this way?" Zi Yurou was cursing as she fled desperately.
Today she went hunting like usual. The game she chased only consisted of rabbits and other small critters. She was just done setting up traps when she caught sight of a red piece of grass under a tree. She praised her own luck when she realized that it was actually a fifteen years old spirit grass. With this, her family of four would be able to make ends meet for more than six months without hunting.
What she failed to realize was that not far from the tree, a cave was dug in pure mountain bedrock.
As soon as she plucked the grass out, two pair of eyes opened in the dark from behind her.
"I seem to recall, Brother telling a similar story to aunt Qian last year." The girl lamented.
"Aagh...." Her distraction caused her to miss a step on a tree and fall.
As the chase was coming to a close, The boar who was only a slim distance away roared in madness and victory. It destroyed the last obstacle in its way and prepared to impale the fragile and impetuous creature that stole its precious treasure.
Zi Yurou closed her eyes, resigned to her fate.
The next moment, a pitiful cry resounded across the woods as something heavy seemed to drop on the ground.
When she opened her eyes again, a black-haired young boy's back was standing tall in front of her. Near him, lied the corpse of the enormous creature which previously threatened to put her existence to an end.
"You okay sis?" The young boy looked at her then asked.
Advertisement
Daeniya, My Child
With the birth of Emperor Daurellian, the most prominent empire on the continent of Daeniya, Il Allad, sees a prophecy of destruction in its near future. In seeking out the key to prevent such destruction, Daurellian rapidly advances its arrival. Only a small group of individuals who are members of the secret society known simply as the Ring understand the prophecy, and, as such, do what they must to stop Daurellian before he creates his own demise and ends the world itself. While tensions rise on the continent and people are forced to war, a singular force looms in the background, slowly growing and amassing potential.
8 129Tale of Kaerus - Dropped
Immortality ? War?If the world were just a game for the gods?And one man is reincanated for the fun of the folly?What would be of that man ?*----------------------------------------------------------*Hello hello, if u are reading my story, know that english is not my native idiom... this is my first fiction...My english is very very very poor...Then be patient and kind to me...This story is about reincarnation and war.War not only between kingdoms, not only between mens, not only between swords... but also between hearts, souls and ideologies.WARNING: GORE, SEX, RAPE AND ALL IRRATIONAL THINGS ARE POSSIBLE AND LIKELY TO HAPPEN... BECAUSE I'M THE AUTHOR AND GOD OF THIS STORY AND WANT WHAT GONE HAPPEN... or not - teheee...-Sorry, but i ended it :/
8 122The Thousands Sons - First Cycle -
Do you love playing strategy games ? No matter the style ? I do. And I was quite good at it. World challenger and all. I even got a title! The Deceiver ! Why the past tense ? Because some class 3 civilisation judged good to use me and 5 other thousands fellow human in a deadly experiment, craving for innovation.
8 101A Wheel Inside a Wheel
Two brilliant young me, Reinhard von Musel and Yang Wen-li, are forced to flee the countries of their birth and become refugees on opposite sides of a century long galactic war. While they both struggle to adapt to their new lives, their obvious talent propels them to the forefront of the war. Their choices will shape their adoptive homelands forever, and their clash will decide the future of the galaxy. This story is broken up into volumes, each following one half of the conflict. You can read them in chronological order, or you can follow just Yang or Reinhard. See individual descriptions below. Part One - Speaking in Tongues When Yang Wen-li’s father dies, the only thing that he inherits is a mountain of debt, which can only be paid off with fifteen years of his life. Wanting to escape that indentured servitude, Yang flees his homeland and takes up a false identity in the Galactic Empire, a hyper-stratified society where stepping out of line is punishable with imprisonment or death. Yang enrolls in the Imperial Officers’ Academy to study history, but despite his unusual and unmistakeable talent as both a tactician and a scholar, his classmates resent him for being a visible outsider. When tensions at the school boil over and several of Yang’s classmates attempt to murder him, Yang finds an unlikely ally in the top student in the class: the aloof Oskar von Reuenthal. But Reuenthal and Yang both have secrets, secrets which could destroy both their lives and their newfound friendship. [70k words, complete] Part One (Alternate) - Talking Without Speaking When Oskar von Reuenthal enrolls at the Imperial Officers' Academy, he doesn’t expect to make real friends. The IOA is a competitive place, and Reuenthal has never been well liked. But when a foreign student shows up to challenge him for the top spot in the class, Reuenthal can’t look away. [77k words, complete] Part Two - Life out of Balance When Reinhard von Musel's mother learns that her husband is about to sell her daughter to become the concubine of the Kaiser, she takes her two children, Reinhard and Annerose, and flees to the Free Planets Alliance, where the three of them must start a new life. [129k words, complete] Part Three - Servants of the Pharaoh Now an officer in His Majesty's fleet, Yang Wen-li struggles to maintain his principles in the face of everything that is expected of him. When he's unwillingly drawn into the politics of the court, he has to use all of his talents to keep himself and his new friends out of danger. [173k words, complete] Short - Whatever It Takes to Keep the Body Warm After their falling out, Reuenthal and Mittermeyer are both posted to the brutal wasteland of Capche-Lanka. It's difficult to hold a grudge when you're just trying to survive. [23k words, complete] Short - Keep the Home Fires (Burning) Three soldiers. Two bodies to be buried. One haunted house. [33k words, complete] Part Four - Lighting Out for the Territories While his sister has joined the fierce Rosen Ritter regiment, Reinhard's fame has earned him a post stuck on Phezzan. Instead of getting to fight, he's caught up in a web of secrets, including the shelter and care of a mysterious refugee from the Empire. Separated from everyone he cares about, Reinhard is forced to make some unexpected allies, and make connections with old friends. [147k words, complete] Part Five - Serpent's Mouth, Serpent's Teeth After having sacrificed his freedom to save his best friend's life, Yang must figure out how to win, and not just survive, the largest civil war in human history. [In progress] Part Six - Lightless Labyrinth [forthcoming, TBD] Part Seven - Silent Spiral [forthcoming, TBD] This story is crossposted on ao3 at bit.ly/wheelinsideawheel
8 276Dreamland
Dolores is a lucky girl with a high-level avatar in a very popular game. She did not level it up; she got it through some fortunate circumstances. She is not interested in fighting and levelling; all she wants is to have some fun and follow her own fantasies. If only there would not be all those idiots who intend to kill her, capture her, or simply use her. And those flaws in the game! Wait, what? Those pesky game characters now appear in the real world? And they can do magic? How did this happen? Adding to her troubles, her crush does not even look at her. As Dolores tries only to survive and hide between 'normal' people, she encounters stranger and stranger things that force her hand and, in the end, she has the answers to a lot of questions. It is a slow-developing story. I had a lot of fun writing it and hope to share it with you, dear reader if you also enjoy it. On the other hand, putting it in an acceptable form requires much work and energy. I intend to bring it to its end and not let it unfinished. I hate it when I encounter unfinished stories, so I understand the feeling. This is not a classical isekai story. There is travel between the two worlds, and the game world seems to be so very real... well, this is one plot of the story. This is not an MMORP game story. Part of the action happens inside a game world, but it is treated as a real world. Updates on a weekly basis, at least Monday and Friday, with additional bonus chapters as time and energy allow. Cover art: White Flower as A Dark Fairy by Darkrealmsmaiden Yolanda gracefully allowed me to use her dark fairy as cover. There are many more beautiful works of art to be discovered at her site: https://www.deviantart.com/darkrealmsmaiden Additional Grammar Trigger Warning: As a non-native speaker, I do my best. Unfortunately, this is not enough for people with a low tolerance for warped sentences and... they may want to skip the story :( Well, you have been warned :) I appreciate it when a reader points out a sentence that needs rework. That may spare a follow-up reader some pain and helps me understand where my English grammar problems are. * We thought we made the best game in Earth's history We thought we made the best interfaces ever seen We thought we made it - lifelike But it far exceeded our expectations. Dolores, I hope you're happy now. I hope you're alive now...
7.91 277The Magical Workman
A 41 year old neet finally getting out for the first time in years because of the death of his parents is shot to death walking outside of a grocery store.He gets reincarnated into a world of fantasy only to find out that everything is not what it seems.(As you can see i changed the title because i felt like it, it used to be Just Normal for whatever reason)Website: https://ilightnovel.wordpress.com/
8 99