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Sky Pride Vol. 4 Chapter 42- Bleeding Fortune
🕑 Added 2025-11-11 15:00:20 +0000 UTCTian and Hong shared a long look. Were any of the bandit’s revelations true? He didn’t sound like he was lying, but that just meant that he believed it, not that he was right.
“How do those spikes work? The one the kids are on?” Hong asked.
“No idea. An emissary from, heh, our friends down south set them up. Cold bastard. Colder than you. They were part of the deal. Start sacrificing kids by bleeding ‘em out slow into the troughs, and if any of their eyes went gold, stick them on the spikes. The spikes keep them alive, somehow. One of ‘em has been there for almost six months.”
The archer’s voice was fading.
“You never took anyone off of them?” Tian checked the bandit’s pulse. Slowing, weakening.
“Not living. Heh. Heh. Hehaha! Not so special now, are you? Not so smart!”
“How do you get in touch with the emissary?” Hong’s voice was urgent.
“We don’t. He contacts us. Cold bastard. Looks so ordinary it would make you sick.”
“What other cadres do you know about?” Tian asked.
“Cadres? What’s a cadre? I’m just a bandit out in these hills. Did you know my dad ran the store in our town? But the mine owner’s thugs burned it down. Now the only shops in town belong to him. The houses are all his, you have to rent. Want to leave town? Not without his permission. The magistrate was his wife’s cousin, the prefect was on his payroll. Where was our justice? Where was the kingdom for us? How is our rebellion anything but just?”
The light was fading. The archer seemed desperate, looking at Tian, trying to get him to understand.
“You have kids nailed to the floor in the basement.” Tian wasn’t interested in understanding.
“You think there aren’t kids being nailed now? Is it better if they starve? Worked to death in a mine? If they are run over by a rich merchant’s wagon, guts crushed, taking weeks to die, then their parents are whipped and fined for the damages their boy did to Sir’s goods? How noble, how rich you are. You can prefer one slow death to another.”
The lights went out in the bandit’s eyes. Tian checked the pulse again, then shook his head. A three fingered hand reached out to close the one-time-strategist’s eyes, but was stopped. Tian looked down at Hong’s tanned hand, gripping his wrist.
“No. Nothing. Do nothing for him. Strip the ring, search him, burn him, but that’s it.”
He could feel her hand shaking. Tian just nodded, and got to it.
He didn’t search the ring. It didn’t seem the right moment. Hong saw him starting to thread it onto his string with the other rings, and ripped it away with an oath. Tian closed his eyes softly. She stared at the ring intently, pulling out random items, flipping through them, putting them back. Then a different ring.
“Sister…”
“Like hell they just put the kids on spikes and that was it. No way. There would be something. Some key or charm. What if someone wanted to ransom their kids? Eh? Would bandits turn down a fat ransom? No chance. There is something. Something!”
“Sister…”
“WE CAN’T JUST LEAVE THEM TO DIE, ZIHAO!” She spun, knuckles white, her strong face pale, her eyes reddening.
“Even if there wasn’t an array there, the spike is passing through their body. Organs-”
“Don’t tell me why it can’t be done, tell me how we are going to do it. Or shut the fuck up!”
Tian didn’t have to check. He had no medicine that could possibly help. Maybe if he was in a full hospital with a team of skilled doctors and surgeons, they could carefully, over the course of a day, slowly remove the spike. They’d have to be stitching up as they went, but Heavenly Person doctors could perform literal miracles.
They didn’t have a hospital, or doctors, or a Heavenly Person. Tian had heard the expression “I would move heaven and earth for you.” Right now, it felt like saving these kids would take exactly that.
Tian knew he was letting his thoughts run away. Not willing to confront the horrors down below, or the madness of the heretics plan. He let one hand drift down to his dantian. It had been a while since he had checked on his cultivation progress. Level Seven was officially the back stretch of the Earthly Realm, so a few years…
He grunted.
“Hey Sis’? When did you last check your cultivation?”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?!”
“I mean, are you further through Level Seven than you ought to be?”
She snarled, looking ready to bite his head off. Then paused. She too rested her hand over her lower dantian. “Huh.”
Hong dropped into lotus, closing her eyes and resting her upturned hands on her knees. After a few cycles of her breath, she said “It is fuller. Significantly fuller. Eighty percent of the way to Level Eight, maybe? It’s hard to say.”
Tian nodded. She opened one eye and looked at him. “You?”
“I’ve had to rebuild a lot over the last week. We both have. My body holds… a lot more vital energy in it than you might think.”
“I know. You think mine doesn’t? Get to the point.”
“I’m trying to say that it took me longer to completely replenish my internal reserves.”
“I know. I also know you aren’t level eight, so why are you dancing around this so much?”
“Because I’m close. Like… a few weeks away. Tops. Faster if I can find a source of cursed energy or something.”
“Dagger not cutting it any more?” Hong asked.
“Not since I lost it.”
“Lost it? How could you possibly… ah.”
“Yep.” Tian nodded.
“I noticed you weren’t using your rope dart earlier.”
“Broke it digging your tub. Well, and fighting those evil puppet things. It’s gone through hell in the last couple months. It just couldn’t hold on any longer.”
“Damn. Damn, I am so sorry.”
Tian smiled. “It’s just a rope dart. I don’t regret it. Besides, I kept the pieces. Sister Li is recovering well. Soon I will send it to her for repair or improvement.”
Liren gave him a deep look. Tian cared about very few material things, and the rope dart was near the very top of that short list. The dart had integrated with him so totally, it moved with his emotions.
He could read her expression perfectly. He said nothing. Neither did she. At this point, what was there to say?
They sighed together. It was a happy discovery. A joyous one. Breaking down all those near-heavenly-person thorns and refining them into vital energy and qi had saved them literal years of cultivation. Nearly a decade, possibly. A second rate talent was one who broke through to the Heavenly Realm by forty. Tian didn’t know what he and Liren qualified as by now. Which made the Monastery's silence and lack of presence downright inexplicable.
Tian decided to get an explanation. “What did they say at the Convent?”
“About what you would expect, and a lot of what we guessed. All hell broke loose as soon as you kicked off that fight with the Black Acacia cultivator.”
“I know. I was there.”
“Not what I mean. I didn’t get much of the story, but in addition to the Heavenly person who chased us, there have been two heavenly realm heretics tearing up the country within a thousand miles of Deepwater City, which is the closest city to Three Streams town, where the convent is. Which is, as you might know, on the north side of the Broadsky Kingdom, while the Redstone Wastes are on the southern border.”
“I think I did hear someone mention that once.” Tian’s voice went bone dry.
“Yeah. And a general in the west has raised the banner of rebellion, apparently, and localized plagues have broken out in the west too. To the east, a river flooded and wiped out a whole stretch of farmland. Famine and plague are on the way. Obviously this didn’t happen all at the same time. I’m just saying, there are fires to put out everywhere. Like in the north west, where there is a forest fire more than a hundred miles across. All while the overwhelming majority of the… not severely wounded or urgently needed where they are cultivators from Ancient Crane Mountain are in the Redstone Wastes.”
“Ah. Coordinated by the heretics?”
“According to the Sisters, yes, but based on everything we have seen, it might just be the lack of fortune in the country reaching a critical point. Merits depleted down to nothing, pillar families lost, the kids who should be the next generation of country supporting cultivators cut away-” Hong’s voice grew darker, becoming muffled by the end.
“Yeah.” Tian nodded. “I think even Brother Wang would struggle to find a humane solution here.”
She barked a laugh. “And Sister Su?”
“She would have no trouble.”
“Eh?” Hong tilted her head.
“Sister Su would say that if the present system can no longer support the needs it claims to serve, it should be replaced by one that does. Same as Brother Wang. Where they differ is that she would use a refinement of what she knows worked in the past. Brother Wang would want to try something entirely new.” Tian was certain of his assessment, and Hong nodded her agreement.
“And you?” She asked. Tian just shook his head. He wasn’t any good at those big, sweeping ideas about governance, or how to organize people. It was selfish of him, but he simply did not want to be responsible for so many people. His hands weren’t yet big enough to hold the sun in his right and the moon in his left. How could he hold a nation?
“Still, they couldn’t spare a single person to come looking for us? I seem to remember all those very kind things people said about us, and our future critical importance.” Tian flexed his fingers, then clenched them.
“My fault.”
Tian blinked, then looked at his sister wide eyed. “The family that killed the Hong Clan…”
“Exactly. Apparently, the Monastery has had its little ways of keeping an eye on us, though the Sister I spoke to didn’t know what it was. “They were alive when they fell out of my awareness, and I know they were provided with life-saving treasures. If I am wrong, I will accept the title of sinner, but I believe they will survive. In any case, returning with this blessed child is the most vital thing, and we cannot guarantee his safety if we are fighting a three on two battle against others of the same realm. The longer we stay here, the more likely the child dies.”
They shared a look. The last thing her enemies would want to see is Direct Disciple Hong joining Bai and Fu in the Monastery proper. They probably wouldn’t want her life-and-death Brother standing above them either. They might not dare to kill under the eyes of Brother Fu, but they dared to ignore.
“The Sisters didn’t want you to stay at the Convent and wait to be collected?” Tian asked.
“They did.” Liren’s voice was wintery.
“Yet you came.” Tian smiled.
“Who the hell was going to stop me?” Tian could see Liren’s knuckles whitening and the veins on her neck throbbing. He really did have the very best sister.
“You have gone to great lengths to avoid naming your enemies, Sister. Who must we kill?”
“So goddamn many.”
He let silence pool around them. Coating the floor, covering the dead archer, pouring down the stairs towards the impaled and chanting children.
“Long. Your… go playing friend Long’s clan. The famous merchant family known as the Long Clan. With the heretical cadet branch Jin family you trashed in Burning Flag City. And not one but two Heavenly People holding down the fort for them in the Inner Court.”
Comments
IV08004
All I am saying is that cycles are very important to Chinese tradition and it's kind of looking that way…
IV08004
Given children of destiny or what ever is good for the start of a new kingdom I wonder if they choose our group of skilled disciplines not for their ideas on fixing a dieting kingdom but to help create a new one. These kids in the group are top of the younger generation due to skill and luck all fitting for future children of Destiny. The MC’s dad is being groomed by the sect leader the same sect leader who evidence shows had a grandfather relationship with the crowning members of the royal line. The MC’s dad is infertile so he won't be able to have his own kids but that doesn't mean that the MC’s kids won't be like grandchildern to him. Also none cultivator children need a mortal job so why not king.
Felix Giron
TZH and HLR will together defy Heaven and crush Hell .... and along the way take on the Long (dragon?) family. They refuse both the moral complicity of the current orthodox set up and the explicit evil of the heretics. They will create the Dao of Transcending False Zero Sum choices.
zombie
I wonder how you would categorize Truth's actions in the last Slumrat books by the same author. Freedom fighting and terrorism can be seen as the same thing at times and the Allies did bomb the German cities very liberally. To be clear, I think the bandit's rhetoric is bullshit - but I would disagree that there are clear cut lines where some forms of violence are always okay and others are always indefensible.
Hangwind
Wrong example. The real IRL comparison would be United Fruit. Did they specifically and personally demand that the Bannanna Massacre happen? No. Are they just as responsible for it as the actual trigger pullers? Yes. 100%
Zenopath (AEV)
So as a blanket statement, evil acts towards innocents can never be justified. You might be fighting an evil empire that runs on human suffering, but when your response is to cause more suffering for the very same people you claim to care about as your motivation for fighting evil empire, all you are doing is making things worse. So blow up the death star with millions of crew - justifiable. Blow up a random city - unjustifiable. Both result in millions dead and deal a serious blow to the empire, but one is a legitimate target the other isn't. Those kids in basement aren't valid targets, so no matter what your excuse, no matter how terrible the kingdom is, it's wrong. And yes collateral damage is a thing, but there's a world of difference between accidentally killing a kid in an airstrike, and deliberately targeting an elementary school.
Gerald Ransom Jr
So much of the last portion of this chapter was phenomenal but this part specifically I love “You have gone to great lengths to avoid naming your enemies, Sister. Who must we kill?” Complete Loyalty. Unquestionable loyalty
EvilLittleThing
Apparently a lot of commenters are struggling with a moral false equivalence. Is the ACM as immoral for allowing evils to occur - and sometimes supporting them - as the heretics are for actively cultivating evil for power? I have a real-life comparison for you. Many tens of millions of children under the age of 5 have starved to death since I became an adult, and yet I didn't donate any money or adopt any orphans, because I am selfish (and maybe a bit poor). Am I equally as evil as a person who abducts children, rapes them to death, eats their flesh, and turns their flayed skins into a smoking jacket?
Veridescent
Hypothetically if Tian had more knowledge and a sample of the poison that seemed to specify itself to a cultivators pathways, a understanding of the thorn art, a lot more energy and more knowledge he could maybe stabilize or even save the kids. Issue is he only has the demon puller he has no way to directly make tissue. Those arts would be best, though without grandpa the blood loss issue would be a key angle that would need to be covered as well. So something he could do in the future, maybe with aid from natural formations and alchemy but not currently. Tian sadly makes a lot of sense in how he avoids thinking of those big issues. Hes formed and scalded by humans, and it has been reinforced to him constantly that their ways of life even from those he loves are lies and full of hurt. He can understand elements of the dao but doesnt have positive life experience to think some interactions are worth it or been given true restorative context to really picture what he could do.
Kain
That’s just his sister and they hurt her. Now that said he still hasn’t forgiven the rest of the Hongs and has said he’d at least give granny hong a beating when he can. And his sister liren did say, even before she knew who he was, that she would change the sect, violently, so that no more ”Xia boys” happened and she would carve a giant fuck off monument to him in memorial.
Jo
Kain
Accelerationism, especially without a real follow up plan, is obviously fucking dumb. And yes he and his friends did probably have better choices to marginally improve the lives of those around them instead of the shit they did trying to bring down the entire system using the worst means and working with actors with obvious ulterior motives. All of that said he’s still giving us valuable insight into how the peasantry, particularly those being courted by the heretics, view the current empire. Just waving it all away entirely is just buying the other sides propaganda about how everything everywhere being shit is the heretics fault.
Matt DiMeo
Not everyone can cultivate, even if their ancestor was the emperor’s best buddy. Or so I claim.
Mqrius
Not this time I'm afraid
Fayhem
Good chapter, but man this comments section is a trashfire of people uncritically swallowing the bandits' propaganda. Besties, you always have a choice. There is no such thing as something being your "only option." And "things are bad, so I will deliberately make things worse for innocent people who are not morally responsible for things being bad" sure is a fucking choice.
Kain
I really do love thinking about this series and something just occurred to me. So we had it confirmed that the kids whose eyes glow gold are capable of ringing the dragon calling bell…… How the hell are there so many of them not in the monasteries or convents. West town one of the most successful areas had 2 fucking 2 ring the bell at a similar time and it was a bumper crop I’m remembering that right right? Just in this camp there are FIVE right now and maybe more before that died even with the array. And another kid in a random 100 person village was one. How fucking bad/incompetent/corrupt has their recruitment gotten that they are missing all of these kids? Edit just reread TIAN WAS THE FIRST IN 10 FUCKING YEARS
Harimeow
Kid soup?
axel jensen
given that several kingdoms have come before broadsky this implies this is a cycle and that the fortune bleed started even before the kingdom was founded since it seems cultivator merit has slowly been decreasing for a super long time
Kain
I do wonder if merit has been bleeding out for a lot longer than anyone thinks. We’ve gotten a lot of hints, if not confirmations, that ACM and its allies are all kinda I guess just shit? Like they’re diminished version or fragments of a much larger greater “Orthodox” sect or sects that once stood where they now stand, the saintes and the General Statue being more “intact” pieces of the legacies. Could be that they are fighting to recover scraps which were always depleting. And current events are just the next phase in the diminishing cycle.
Endgame
I think Fu already knows he is the last Xia
Tadas
"Fact of the matter is to me between the “Heretic” cultivators and the “righteous” the only real difference is the scale of things." For one thing scale absolutely matters. For second - that's factually false. There is qualitative difference as well. Heretics torture people for "art" and for pleasure, in many cases very "creatively" extremely long, preventing suicide, torturing both mind and body and possibly soul. Orthodox cultivators can achieve higher levels by cultivating, heretics must steal cultivation from other people in one way or another so they will always keep murdering. Orthodox cultivators try to live according to Dao treasures - some much better than others, most often fail, but they do try. Heretics do not, they live for personal gains and pleasures.
Kain
Other way around killing Tian’s family was a meritorious act if anything. It brought them honor, the land and serfs were “just a bonus” even though they were the actual reason for the raid because of the Hongs desperation. If anything Tian surviving would be a black spot they couldn’t even wipe out a mortal bandit lords household properly.
Noah
I find it pretty hard to believe that Tian's father wouldn't move heaven and earth to get to Tian right now, after he finds out the "aid" he sent left Tian and Loren to die. I want to see Tian tell him that he's really the last Xia.
Noah
Part of the reason Hong's family is so screwed is because they destroyed Town's family, right? I wonder if Tian could use his status as the last heir of the Xia Clan in order to aid Liren in some way. Issue is that he wouldn't want to publicly absolve the rest of her family of blame.
Noah
Grandpa mentioned he was brought here to oppose the "Mad God" didn't he? I have to assume he's the one coordinating the Heretics. He probably has more autonomy than Grandpa, because Grandpa has to act through an intermediary, Tian, and follow "rules" in order to not cause too much chaos with the world's fate.
Kain
Fact of the matter is to me between the “Heretic” cultivators and the “righteous” the only real difference is the scale of things. Orthodox or Righteous cultivator families are more than willing to kill children, including the “reformers” Rui and papa Fu they don’t get to shove this one off. they just don’t do it as much or as in person, “pull them up by the roots” is still a common saying in and among the sect and they do practice that part of what they preach. If a heavenly person from the mountain was here I assume most of them would’ve just smited the entire camp men women and children as willful presence in the camp is complicity in heresy age, gender, and battle capabilities don’t factor in and “they will be better people in 18 years” anyways so who cares if they’re killed. They’d say the same about the kid, or kids, run over by the merchant. The only reason THESE kids getting killed matter to the monastery is because it’s fucking up THIER bank account of “merit” the others are unnoticeable rounding errors these are big line items. Again I think the reason Tian and the readers are having a hard time coming to that conclusion is simply that the rebels/heretics are more let’s say honest? Direct? With their actions a much more easily grasped atrocity than the actually much larger and long standing one perpetuated by the mountain.
Spacefather
Can we imagine the heretic mastermind coordinating this entire thing being a Tian-equivalent MC, with an equally tragic origin, but one with a slightly "evil" grandpa (let's get to power quickly so I can get more exp from you), and stumbling into the favor of a heretical guildmaster (Fu equivalent) that teaches him honor among thieves, but also to value life as numbers that you can trade off? And so he justifies to himself that the countable children used as "means", help to save an uncountable number of all future children? Of course, the question remains how they intend for the new system to be a better one.
ioajfidsnmfomds77
The people removing the roots have no understanding of how to plant new ones. Or where new ones even come from. That seems like a critical step in the ‘make things better’ plan
dkpfrog
Tftc!
Raymond Mouton
Thanks for the chapter.
Tadas
" In the end, the "righteous" cultivators of the kingdom are just as willing to kill children for power as the heretics are. " You are doing same lazy thing all enlightened centrists do - obfuscate by papering over details. It's a bit like saying "I can lift a fork and superman can lift a moon. We both can lift things so we are just as strong." "You just have to start shooting." Nice usage of euphemism when "shooting" means literally torturing kids. There are injustices in their world and monastery is guilty of neglect and corruption. It doesn't justify torturing innocent kids.
Aaron Archer
Little treasure?
Hangwind
Possibly my most controversial comment ever: The archer has a point. I think that that's what Tian is running away from. In the end, the "righteous" cultivators of the kingdom are just as willing to kill children for power as the heretics are. As above, so below, and thus the officials of the kingdom are as bad as the bandits. And sometimes? When all hope is lost, you are pinned down, and death is certain? You just have to start shooting. It's not pretty, but what else can a mortal do in a world of immortals that would actually make a difference, but to curse the foundation of their immortality itself to death?
Hangwind
I honestly think that there really is an emperor candidate from the kingdom waiting in the wings. The kingdom wouldn't be falling so quickly otherwise, unless someone with access to the fortune of the kingdom was undermining it. However, I also believe that this is a Wasteland Heretic plot. Specifically, I think that whoever is controlling the wasteland is planning to swoop in when the new emperor is crowned to reverse all the rituals and turn this into a kingdom of curses.
Logrus
Good foreshadowing on the Long family being the baddies. Also great to see the jump in progress.
darkmuch
Tian walks away with 12 kids on spikes strapped to his body. Very cursed.
Luis
I hope the story will not end after the breakthrough to the heavenly person realm
Stewie
With them being still in the qi gathering stage, I wonder how many levels this cultivation story will have
EvilLittleThing
"Who must we kill?" I love their ride or die relationship
Mithestral
He really does have the very best sister.
Chad L.
Make a list. Check it off.
Nicknick
Those giant spikes seem pretty cursed to me…
Joshua Flowers
Maybe removing the roots is the only way…
Matt DiMeo
Oof.
