a post-cyberpunk xianxia epic
4 MONTHS AGO. It seemed that Yuhui’s heart was a constant stutter. Whenever he was around Lin’ai, it felt like that muscle was going to jump out of his chest, was going to break his ribs with the force of his affection. He laid back upon his pauper’s clothes spread out in an open meadow, […]
4 MONTHS AGO. Ren Fei was a studious child. He came early to the Tian estate to do extra reading before his lessons with Yuhui. He found the Tian library far more calm than the study at his own family’s home and relaxed at one of the calligraphy desks, absorbed in the epic held in […]
4 MONTHS AGO. Lin’ai breathed Xun in, breathed all the flowers of a rich boy’s bathwater in the shape of a poorer boy’s ill-traveled cover story. When he leaned in, Lin was quick to capture, mineral spring wet, rainwater lip to lip in a gentle question: stay or go? He barely departed when he confided: […]
4 MONTHS AGO. Somehow, Lin’ai knew. Something in his bones told him this evening at the market would be a test—that more than anything he should keep his head down, eyes straight ahead. Something in his stomach dug a pit that he filled with molten confidence, liquid and brassy in his acid vat guts, always […]
Gui Lin’ai rose before the sun because it afforded him the freedom to leave without questions. Despite the quiet shuffle of the Feng clan’s late night servants and watchmen reaching the end of their graveyard shift, Lin’ai found the complex almost reassuringly empty. The pre-dawn landscape was reminiscent of the abandoned manor houses on the […]
Ma Xushu heard his brother and Feng Quan’s perpetual bickering in the courtyard of his family’s manor before they ever came into view. He sat beneath a small overhang of juniper carpet, an emerald umbrella made from sharp foliage attached to two gnarled trunks twisted by nature and the slow progression of time. In his […]
Ren Fei took a careful pace through the Northern edges of Beichen forest, navigating the foothills that crept along the side of Yunji just a few miles shy of the mountain pass. Despite the full body ache he suffered, that water mirror boy suddenly disconnected from his ability felt confident in the day that lay […]
Gao Suilian was rarely ever up before half past eight and always rose with the unapologetic insistence of her militant father. He, trained by a life lived between Yunji and the conflicts Luanshi raised him for, always rose at dawn and banged around their shared home with little consideration for things like beauty sleep or […]
Xueyu’s footsteps were loud as he passed through the inner corridors of Luanshi’s evening hallways, bustling with disciples running hither and thither in their rush to dinner, heard even over the excitement of new visitors. The sun was already gone but the gentle glow of mountain lights illuminated the strange building’s space with a warm […]
Alone again, Ren Li leaned back on his elbows, watching Jin pick through the Luanshi supplies laid out for his work. Were it not for the fondness coursing torrid through his very own veins, Li wouldn’t have believed he could ever be so impertinent—he was still, a silent invitation waiting either for the inlayer’s work […]