《CALL OF THE DAO》Chapter 17
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Lin Feng and Mei Lin were waking up. Lin Feng got out of the house and washed his face. He didn't need to be doing any of that as he never got dirty even if he tried, he had always found this weird, he assumed the change was due to him opening his meridians as things started changing ever since.
"Good morning, master!" A sweet voice came from behind Lin Feng.
"It is a wonderful morning indeed." Lin Feng replied without turning back.
After washing his face, Lin Feng took out a rice paper and brush intending to paint the sunrise, he wanted to paint from his usual position, but he decided against it, painting the sunrise was also a hobby Lin Feng had developed during the five years, Lin Feng calmly observed the sunrise, he then started to paint, he captured the hiding sun, the trees that blocked the sun and the birds that were perched on the tree, Mei Lin observed the painting, she was once again impressed by her master's abilities, she could feel the raging hotness that came from the hiding sun, she didn't doubt the painting could kill her despite her high cultivation.
"I wonder how scary it would be if master draws the sun in its full glory." Mei Lin couldn't help but wonder how fierce the painting would be.
Lin Feng looked at the picture and appreciated it. The painting was perfect but there was a problem. He hadn't improved since he began his painting journey. In fact, in everything that he put his mind into he always ended up doing it perfectly, hence his disinterest in a lot of things.
Lin Feng rolled the painting and gave it to Mei Lin, she knew what to do with it, and so she took it to a room filled with Lin Feng's other masterpieces.
Lin Feng knew he had to find something to do. This was also a major reason for him to go on an adventure around the world.
Mei Lin, on the other hand, was worried. She had stayed awake the whole night trying to think of the best place to take Lin Feng. Naturally, she had many ideas in mind, but those places were only appealing to her. She knew Lin Feng was a powerhouse who could command the lands and change the river's direction with mere thoughts, so how could such a person not see the world as his playground?
"This must be a test, so what happens if I don't pass?" Mei Lin questioned herself. This question plagued her mind, she tried to look at any hints from Lin Feng, but she found none.
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Suddenly Mei Lin had an epiphany.
"Why did master not paint from his usual position?" Mei Lin found herself asking this question.
"The hint must be within that action, but where?" Mei Lin wondered.
Mei Lin took a moment to think. She suddenly had an outrageous idea.
"If we take the tree of life as the center, the backyard can be divided into four parts. These four parts can be regarded as the north, south, west, and eastern territories. Master usually paints in the northern part. Today he painted in the southern part, so he must be showing me that he wants to go to the southern territory." Mei Lin muttered to herself excitedly. She was delighted with her deduction skills. Thinking of this, she put the painting in the room and went back to Lin Feng.
"Did you decide on a place?" Lin Feng asked the excited Mei Lin.
"Don't worry, master. I have already figured it out." Mei Lin replied excitedly.
"Well, then shall we set off, or do you need to do preparations first?" Lin Feng asked Mei Lin. He didn't need to do any preparations as everything he needed was inside his space ring. Only a golden gourd and a beautiful sword that he had made himself were tied at his waist.
"No, everything is ready. We can set off." Mei Lin replied as she walked to the front part of the house.
"Take care of the house. I might be gone for some time."
Lin Feng told the birds that were watching him.
He figured they were cultivators, so he saw no harm in leaving them behind, and besides, nothing dangerous had ever come to the small mountain before, only small animals would be occasionally seen. As far as he knew, he had never spotted any human or dangerous beast. .
After talking to the birds' Lin Feng followed Mei Lin to the front side, he took out the boat, and they both got in.
Mei Lin assumed control of the boat, and it soon disappeared from the small mountain.
As the boat flew off, the small courtyard became lively again, the dragons got out of the pool, but the birds suppressed them immediately.
"Are you guys forgetting what the master just said now? He said we are in charge of protecting the house, so if you get out of hand, don't blame me for forgetting our friendship." The phoenixes spoke as if they were one body, although the phoenixes were being overbearing to the dragons, they looked at one point of the garden with caution, the expression on their faces showed the reverence they had.
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The dragons wanted to challenge the phoenixes but they knew they were acting under Lin Feng's order so they could only reluctantly give up. Suddenly, a colossal dragon got out of the pond. A dreadful pressure was released on the small dragons which immediately turned into carps and jumped in the pond.
The giant blue dragon didn't need to speak, the little dragons knew for the most powerful and oldest dragon to come out they had to have overstepped their boundary.
As calm returned to the small pond, Lin Feng and Mei Lin had already covered a great distance. Lin Feng was at the boat's deck while Mei Lin was playing the zither behind him. She looked elegant and composed, completely different from her usual naughty self. It could be seen her experience on the zither was considerable.
"How is it?" Mei Lin asked expectantly after finishing playing the song.
"You're getting better at it, but you can be better if you slow down a bit. Here I'll show you."
Lin Feng took out his zither and started to play it.
Suddenly a vast change occurred, time seemed to stop, or rather it actually stopped. Mei Lin could tell since she discovered only the area she and Lin Feng were located was not affected. She didn't feel like rushing like she always did. She was built for speed so her being hasty was her nature. That's why she found it hard to be of help to Lin Feng as the things he usually does require an abnormal amount of patience. Her being able to play the zither was a considerable accomplishment.
"Did you see how it can be better if you don't hurry and become patient, just relax." Lin Feng explained to Mei Lin calmly.
"I understand." Mei Lin nodded. She knew understanding was one thing. Putting it into practice was another, but she didn't give up.
Lin Feng put the zither away and continued observing the surroundings, Mei Lin stood beside him, and they both appreciated the beautiful landscapes silently.
While the two were observing the landscapes, a huge boat was following behind desperately.
"Young master, why are we chasing them?" an old man asked a fat young man.
"I have never seen such a nice and fast boat. I have to know who those people are."
"Please reconsider, young master. What if they are powerful and decide to eliminate us for disturbing their peace."
"My brother is already the northern king, even if they are powerful, they have to give him face, and besides, we are not disturbing them. We are only greeting them." The fatty spoke arrogantly.
Fatty Zhang came from his expedition to get subordinates to help Chu Fan rule the kingdom when he suddenly spotted the flying boat they were currently pursuing. The speed of the ship was something he hadn't seen before. Its design greatly intrigued him, so he ordered the men to start pursuing the ship without hesitation. The fatty wanted to know where he could find such a boat for himself.
"Master, some people are following us. Should I kill them?" Back at Lin Feng's boat, Mei Lin asked him.
"No, just warn them, don't kill." Lin Feng was not surprised by Mei Lin's ferociousness, he remembered how she had once blasted a group of bandits that thought they were an easy target.
"Yes, master." Mei Lin responded as she readied the canons and fired at the other boat.
"Not good, they are attacking." the old man in the fatty's boat exclaimed the obvious as he tried to control the ship to avoid the sudden shot, but they were still too late. The cannon targeted their hull and fired. Their ship exploded, and only pieces remained as they fell to the ground. Luckily they were cultivators and could fly, so they landed safely.
"Young master, I warned you, but you didn't listen. Thanks to heaven, they were only warning us. If they wanted to kill us, our lives would be gone." The old man said with anger in his voice, this was the first time he had experienced a close to death encounter.
The fatty was too scared to listen to the old man scolding. Tears rolled down his fat cheeks, his rapidly beating heart confirmed he was still living. He was a man that loved life and feared death, so the experience just now was too overwhelming.
The fatty heaved a sigh of relief and swore to be more careful. The power they had gotten clouded his usual cunning, and that almost killed him, so he was thankful to the party for waking him up.
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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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