WarbyPicus
patreon
Sky Pride Vol. 4 Chapter 31- Who You Find When You Are Alone In The Dark
🕑 Added 2025-10-27 14:00:15 +0000 UTCTian was pretty sure he was only unconscious for a moment. It felt like he had died. Everything around him was dark, his body was broken in… more places than he could easily count, and there was a reek of corruption. But high above was a ragged hole and a small trickle of water falling in, so it seemed he had landed in one of the dragon caves that dotted the land around here.
He really couldn’t understand how he was still alive. His muddled brain poked at that thought for a second, then his eyes shot wide open and he screamed. “LIREN!”
He tried to sit up, and almost blacked out from the pain. Something in his waist was broken. He found the rope and clawed his way along the ground until he reached his sister. She lay on her side, covered in cold, grey metal. Three faint stripes ran through the material, whatever it was. And whatever it was hadn’t been enough to stop the hundreds of thorns sticking into her back.
He couldn’t hear any breathing. Couldn’t hear her heart beating. His own heart stopped. Then there was a faint throb from her chest and he could breathe again. It was weak, and too slow, and sounded wrong, but it was there.
“What the hell is that metal shit covering her?!”
The same stuff that saved your life. The Three Stripe Steel Heart Shield Mirror you got when you did that caravan raid together. The one where Ku distinguished himself by killing Heartbreak Worm Zhu.
Tian blinked. It had been so long ago. He thought about the Myriad Tormenting Worms dagger he got on that same raid occasionally, but he was quite sure he hadn’t given the enchanted metal a second thought since it seeped into his palm.
The Treasure Weighing Magistrate said it would stop one fatal blow up to the third level of the Heavenly Realm. And it did, kind of. Unfortunately, the ongoing damage from those thorns counts as a hell of a lot more than “one blow,” even if individually they aren’t on the heavenly person level. You have a thorn in your foot. You just aren’t noticing it because you are in so much other pain.
Tian glared down his leg. He couldn’t really see it in the dark, but he could feel it now, sticking out of the top of his foot. Throbbing. Tian narrowed his eyes and observed with his vital energy. A hiss escaped from his mouth. It wasn’t just stabbing into him or poisoning him, it was trying to root in him. Hair thin tendrils extended from the narrow thorn and tried to burrow into his flesh. Tian’s repeatedly refined body welcomed it. It was a dense source of wood qi, after all, and all the curse qi in it was just more fodder for the Hell Suppressing art.
In the race to see who would eat who first, Tian was handily beating the thorn. But that was one thorn. Liren had been stabbed with hundreds. Tian rested his hand on his sister’s ankle and sent his vital energy into her body.
Liren wasn’t dying- She was close enough to dead as to make no difference. Her heart still beat. Her brain wasn’t destroyed. But her body was ruined. The fall, the impact of all the thorns, and then the thorns burrowing into her flesh, all conspired to ruin her. Her body cultivation was slowing the progress of the hairlike roots. The fire qi in her was burning them away. But there were so many thorns, and her vital energy was so weak.
It was only a matter of time. Not much time either. Then the parasite art would activate, and something horrible would be born from his sister’s unwilling flesh.
He stared dumbly at her. He didn’t have any medicine for this. Nothing remotely like this. He didn’t know how you could even begin to treat this. The Demon Pulling Art would be near useless, trying to put out a forest fire with a dewdrop. Her iron bones were broken, she was bleeding from tears inside and outside of her body, organs ruptured, and those damned thorns were widening the wounds.
He couldn’t save her. This wasn’t something he could fix. His sister was going to die. She was going to die, because she saved his life. There was a moment, and she could have done anything at all, and she chose to put her body between him and death. She wouldn’t even be left with an intact corpse. That mattered to her, he knew.
Tian pawed at her, trying to think of something, anything. He started ripping out thorns, but they broke apart under the skin. The little roots had already set themselves in place. It would take actual surgery to remove them all. Each broken piece of thorn was now a breeding ground for infection. Pulling out the thorns could only make things worse.
Despair. Not just death, the thorns brought despair. Making the victim and their comrades feel hopeless as they were consumed from within.
She was going to die. Hong Liren was going to die, and he couldn’t save her. He still didn’t really understand what people meant by a friend, but he understood what they meant by “sister,” and she was. She truly was. And she was going to die in the dark, as he lay next to her. Helpless to help. Helpless to stop the burrowing roots.
He looked down at the thorn in his own foot. It was turning grey. The wood qi had been devoured, as had the curse energy. He was healing, slightly. A few more weeks like this, two months at the outside, and he would be almost healthy. He shook his foot and the thorn fell out. Dead. The thorns in Liren were shiny black, glossy in the dim light.
Her body was ruined. If she was at full health, maybe she could use her vital energy to burn away the roots. She was anything but healthy, now. Ruined. Crippled, sickly, dying, infected, alone in the stinking dark.
Tian gasped. “I know one thing. One thing that would work. Soup! We have to make Liren soup!”
Zihao… just because it works for you, doesn’t mean it will work for her. And you had to be awake to force your body to make the changes you needed. She is mercifully unconscious.
“No, no! It will be fine. It will work. I’ll do the thinking for her. I know what she should look like. I even have the right things to make soup with. This will be easy.”
Tian scratched at the floor of the cave, his fingernails leaving faint furrows. Limestone. Soft rock. He hacked away at it with his rope dart, not caring about the things ripping inside of him, or the way his dart was breaking apart. It didn’t matter. None of that mattered. What mattered was making a tub sized hole in the ground, big enough that he could push Liren into a curled up shape and shove her in.
He worked fast. Too fast. Things broke. The head of the rope dart broke apart. It didn’t matter. Liren’s heart was slowing. She had few beats left in it.
Good enough. He dragged his body over. His right arm wasn’t working right anymore, but that was just an inconvenience. What mattered was getting Liren in the hole. He dumped the yin water from the orchard pond in with her, then fistfulls of the wax. Then-
Grandson, NO!
He slammed his useless right arm down on the thorns sticking out of his sister. Letting them pierce him. Binding himself to Liren.
“Though we weren’t born on the same day, I’m content to die on the same day. I’d be a lot happier if we both lived. So I’ll stake it all on this.” His lips twisted. Even curled up in a makeshift tub, she still looked bigger than he felt. “It’s what a big brother should do.”
The thorns were delighted by all the yin water. The wood qi in them gulped it down and grew even more furiously. A rictus grin slowly spread across Tian’s face. He hoped they drank lots and lots. His blood spilled into the water, replaced in his body by the Advent of Spring. Advent of Spring was quite happy too- lots of tasty water qi, earth qi, and even dense wood qi to cannibalize.
Was the wood qi fighting back? Sure. But Advent of Spring wasn’t some nice art. Growing and choking out the competition was in its nature.
He sent his vital energy into Liren. Lots and lots of open wounds inside her. Lots of long cuts and exposed muscles and tendons. Hundreds of puncture wounds from the thorns. Some of the thorns stapled the two of them together. Lots of places for his blood to enter. And with his blood, with his energy, came the Supreme Virtue Hell Suppressing Body Refining Sutra.
Advent of Spring was a domineering art, full of the eternal growth and competitiveness of wood. The Hell Suppressing Sutra was downright tyrannical. The Male-Female statue in his lower dantian wore a lotus crown. Humble beings didn’t wear crowns or suppress Hell. They weren’t interested in debating the dao. They simply overcame all objections with might.
Tian let his vital energy circulate through the water and into Liren. He could feel her body rejecting his vital energy. It registered the foreign qi as an attack. It so often was, after all. He didn’t fight back. He just let his qi burn up, fueling Lilren’s own vital energy. There was enough left to grab ahold of a thorn or two. Enough to start breaking down the curse qi within it, converting it into strength. Strength that was flowing back to Tian, unfortunately, but it was the best he could do. At the very least, they wouldn’t be able to hurt Sister Liren anymore.
It was too slow. Much too slow. He could see the hair roots starting to knot together, the longer taproots digging deeper and deeper through hard muscle. Reaching for the even harder bones. It didn’t matter how hard the bones were. So long as the smallest crack or gap was found, a root could be set. And given enough time, a tree could snap a rock clean apart. His plan was working, but it was too slow. He was losing this war.
He checked the state of his own body. Horrible. It was horrible. His meridians were breaking down in places. His dantians were intact, but that was the limit of the good news. His right arm was basically non-functional. With care, it would heal. With even more care, and powerful medicine, it would even fully recover, eventually. His pelvis was broken in two places. His legs were broken. Advent of Spring seemed to be staying on top of his internal bleeding, but the broken ribs were tapping at his lungs. One wrong move, and they promised to puncture them.
He did have some medicine. Powerful medicine, medicine intended to heal meridians and recover damage to the flesh. It just might be too strong for their damaged bodies to handle. But Liren would die if he didn’t make a drastic move. So that was that. He reached for his ring. The two jars of medicine he got from Doctor Pei still had two pills each. Tian crushed the wound healing pill and dropped it in the yin pond water. The meridian healing pill he swallowed.
It was like swallowing the moon. He remembered the water qi being cool and soothing. Not this time. This time, his meridians froze and burned with the power of the medicine. They had been abused for too long. Tian screamed in the dark. His back spasmed, his jaw dropped open and he screamed himself raw.
It didn’t get better, but he got used to it. As soon as he could focus, he whispered “I am so sorry. I am so, so sorry. I swear I will make this right.” With a careful, bare flutter of vital energy, he activated Thunderous Palms and drove the qi into Liren. The vibrating strands of vital energy didn’t even reach half an inch into her. A quarter inch. An eighth, where his control was good enough. He was trying to kill only the thorns and their roots.
He ripped her skin apart.
Muscles built over thousands of hours on the training fields melted under his hands. The thorns were destroyed but they left sickness in their wake, as well as fragments of wood and evil qi. He would either have to destroy the flesh even more completely, or find some way to expel them from her body.
Tian knew you had to break down to be built up again. It was the essence of how he rebuilt himself. Destruction and rebirth. It was fine when it was just him. When he was doing it to himself. This was Liren. This was his sister, and he was hurting her. He was destroying her. But it was all he could think of. All he knew how to do.
The cold water had long since turned red from their commingled blood, and thickened to black. The tub was flooded with little bobbing islands of red and white. The stuff heroes and geniuses were made of. And the stuff they returned to, at the end of their days.
Comments
Jentry Lange
And I simply see this as another in a long line of story beats that show these two being intertwined from almost the beginning. The breaking of the Hong family resulting in both of their misery. Only to be uplifted at the monastery together. Their rivalry only pushing each other further, leading to a deeper and deeper comradery that saved their lives in the desert time and time again. Tien the gentle man with overflowing Yin, who dreams only of the sky and fears being burned by the flames. Liren the fiery woman with unrelenting Yang, who’s spear will pierce the very heavens that haunt her Respectfully Senior, what is two made one is far more than a mere tether.
Meredith
Visions of future April Fools featuring Tian MilkShakes
jay
I think I’ll be disappointed if this turns into an excuse to do “dual cultivation”. Liren as a character already feels too tethered to Tian, in my opinion.
Ano Ano
It was a good story, but all good things must come an end at some point.
SquiddlyWinks
And then they died. Theeee end.
Brandon Cleveland
Hong should come out of the soup with less fingers and Tian should come out with more.
SUlex
You say that, but will be here tomorrow the second the soup is ready
Ranger Science
Ah yes, his ultimate not-so-secret technique: soup!
Steve Wright
Tian trying to queue up another lecture from an exasperated senior, another “fortuitous encounter” for his file in the HR pavillion. Except this time, Hong will be there next to him.
Jeryd Greer
What an incredible chapter. I look forward to tomorrow for both the next chapter and the next slum rat rising audiobook!
William Hurley
Darn them now I have to buy another month. Genius but still...
Fayhem
Cliffs stacked atop cliffs... truly this is a fearsome Dao of Cliffs...
Deinos
Maybe they'll become siamese twins, or likr someone who fell into a FEV vat
SquiddlyWinks
Yes. Well done.
Rnd per
Once Tian started, any suggestion grandpa made would just be a waste of energy. What he is doing must be right enough.
Macronomicon
'I'll do the thinking for her. I know what she should look like.' That's...a bit of a stretch, boyo. Let's see where this goes. making decisions for other people is a dangerous game. I could see this EASILY causing some friction.
Book Worm
👌 GOOD SOUP!
Mike lee
"Soup is the best when you are hurt" , Tien would agree.
BelligerentGnu
Holyshitholyshitholyshit SOOOOOOOUUUUUUP!
Pinpenny the great lithian
I wanted soup, but not like this! 😫
Cole Armstrong
I'm hoping it is not a heretical art either. Though I think the reason Grandpa said no is that Tian's action made it so either they both survive this or neither do... another option is that the swapping of blood is a trigger for some sort of lifebound bond thingy (accidental lifebound Dao Companions?) but Tian is a little young for such a drastic thing in grandpa's eyes (most likely at least)
Tom C
Red Sky soup (Hong Tian - idk what actual character is used for Hong’s name so I went with red 红）
Tom C
Grandpa not realising just how committed Tian is to his sister. If he was aware, he might have already suggested something, instead he said nothing and tian isn’t gonna half ass saving Liren so he goes all in! TFTC!
Mqrius
This is all good and well but Tian is forgetting to add frog brains
Jeff Gault
Thank goodness it's Monday and the author updates daily.
Sebastien Ruchet
Can someone teleport me through time to the next chapter, please?
Jacob Diver
Soup & Tea - Tian appears to slowly be expanding his repertoire of hearty, nourishing liquids. I feel bad for the heavenly seniors though; imagine smelling something delicious the whole time you're fighting a heretic, only to find that the rule against snatching fortune means you can't have any soup. It could give a daoist heart demons
MurkyTruths
Everyone who asked for hong tian soup, should feel bad now :(
Pinpenny the great lithian
Soup was always only a matter of time. Also, Grandpa said no, I'm hoping it was just out of fear he was doing something incredibly dangerous, and not because of something even worse (like say that Tian Is accidentally using a heretical art to heal her or smth)
isabella Brooks
The desperation of tian comes through so well in this writing. Good job as always. Can't wait to read more :)
N . A Salim
Is this Hong Soup?
Raymond Mouton
Thanks for the chapter. Heck of a scene.
Ben Nikel
Ahh, the old "lifesaving pair cultivation" technique. Maybe not quite the way she intended to get paler skin. I wonder if Tian has been given the talk about the birds and the bees upon the road to heaven.
Gerald Ransom Jr
Yes, me too.
Gerald Ransom Jr
Liren soup and Tian’s yin Ki not exactly what I imagined but I like this way more. Epic.
Sean Shivers
I wouldn't say blood related... i would say it's essentially dual cultivating with her and bonding through blood and qi. The missed feelings will be, "yes I'm married to short stuff, but also my skin is whiter"
Johan Persson
YESSSSS FINALLY WE GET LIREN SOUP!!!
AnthraxRipple
I think I'm going to let the soup stew for bit, until I can drink the whole thing in one go.
KurichAlera
I can totally see this being the beginning of dao partners.
Liam Zay
Kinda shitty to threaten an author to write a story the way you want. I want Liren to live too, but I'm willing to let it playout however Warby wants
Morog T Tiny
these oranges specifically are yang
Zenopath (AEV)
I think if Liren survives, she's going to have mixed feelings about this. I mean, yeah, survival is good, but Tian will have to rebuild her body from scratch; it's a profound invasion she didn't consent to. She will be changed, likely the change will be more in line with what she actually wants, so good change, but it won't feel earned or natural. So she'd have reasons to be happy, and reasons to be uncomfortable. Overall, I suppose just the fact that they both survived will be the dominant feeling, but there will be a period of adjustment where she will have unresolved issues towards Tian to work through. Also, discovering that you became a soup will not be a pleasant experience; all sorts of existential questions to think about: are you even the same person? Or are you just a sort of homunculus made from Tian's memories and opinions of who Liren used to be and should be? How much of Liren will still be Liren, and how much of Tian will be mixed in? If her body cultivation becomes less yang, she'll notice personality changes, so are those changes due to having a better yin-yang balance, or having parts of Tian mixed into her? They're basically going to be actual brother and sister if this works like Tian envisions it, two bodies forged from a single soup, blood-related, so that will make it awkward if she really did have romantic feelings towards Tian. And what if Tian reforms her shorter and himself taller, him more muscular and her less? She did state she wanted to be more feminine, and he did state he didn't like being short and thin, but it would kinda feel like he stole from her, wouldn't it? I don't know, I just think there will be consequences to their relationship even if this works exactly like Tian wants it to. EDIT= Rereading the chapter it's not clear if he's making a soup out of both of them, it says the hole is large enough for Liren, so he might not be fully mixing the two of them, only adding his blood and Qi.
WickedlyDesigned
On another note, an interesting side effect/somewhat bad, but not insurmountably so bad consequence would be if this shifts each of their elemental alignments, say, Hong to earth (fire dies down, leaving behind ashes and becoming earth) and Tian to metal (it's metal that can truly cut wood). They already have the necessary elemental understanding for it, but all their arts are wrong. It would open up so many possibilities, from simply adapting all the way to both of them walking and experiencing the whole wuxing cycle this way. Even more fun is that Hong would go around the cycle of creation, and Tian the cycle of destruction - each walking the path harder to them. Each learning more in the long term.
João Vene
Hong is yang, fire, metal, earth, so hong soup needs yin, wood, water. Now, Tian is using the parasitic wood thorns for wood, and the yin water for yin and water. The thorns are probably yin too, being a heretic technique. But This soup lacks will, the fire that transforms wet stuff into soup. Liren has a lot of fire, but being passed out, is lacking in willpower. Now, Tian is about 110% willpower, by weight, and also yin water and wood. He should jump in the pot. Of course that means the soup becomes Hong and Tian soup, so you need to add more yang, fire, metal and earth to balance it out. I'm guessing the yang oranges and soup are going in the pot too, that's probably yang... fire and earth? Ok I asked chatGPT (I know, I know) and fresh oranges are earth/metal. The soapberry is wood/metal, so I think we're still missing fire, for Tian to be able to jump in the pot? Maybe?
Vainirion
That was a beastly chapter. The pain, raw desperation, blood and filth. One could say Tian is going back to his… roots.
William Johnson
Man I know this is going to read well when it's done but this is a rough start to the week.
WickedlyDesigned
Better today, than on a Friday...
Gardor
"Humble beings didn’t wear crowns or suppress Hell. They weren’t interested in debating the dao. They simply overcame all objections with might." ->think ya should rephrase this, the nearest reference for the "they's" is "humble beings", indicating that humble beings dont debate the dao and overcome all objections with might. Im thinking something like "crowns arent worn by humble beings. Crowns are worn by beings that overcome all objections with pure force", thats the easiest way i can think of to keep the bits you've already written.
Kain
I can think of a lot of worst case scenarios still on the table. Obviously this just ending up being an unmitigated win is on the table but I think unlikely given Gramps attitude. While defying the expectations and knowledge of seniors and snatching opportunities from death sentences is a classic I just don’t feel it coming here at least in the purest no consequences at all form. I could be wrong of course. Of the different consequences I think the least bad would be intertwining fates, the shippers would probably even call this an upside, basically binding them together for eternity/sharing his heaven defying fate with her etc. Next would be just simple failure… Tian has suffered a lot but typically he’s just not present or is so beyond out classed he can’t even attempt to stop what’s going on only mitigate where he is able and he typically succeeds at that mitigation. He rarely fails at what he try’s/attempts to do. He knows soup can work he’s trying and unfortunately for Lieren this has become the perfect narrative storm to teach Tian a hard hard lesson about failure and its inevitability. Note that failure doesn’t necessitate she dies he could do enough to save her life but in doing so burn her fate/cultivation out leaving her a mortal, leave her body crippled etc. Then there’s unintentional usurpation basically in trying to mend her he accidentally takes everything her pain and damage but also her cultivation and fate/talent. The worst worst case of this leaves her dead as well not just cultivationless/crippled.
Robert Mullins
When she awakens tian will lament that he never got the chance to add the frog brains to fix her head.
Luis
How about a little tribulation lightning to spice up the soup?
Dusan Tanasic
Why!?Why are you duing this to us? We can't wait a whole 24h!!!
Kain
Weeeeelllll , gramps was real against this course of action an he’s kinda supremely well informed. I think assuming this is all gonna work out great or even ok for both of them is being a bit optimistic. In my mind there are several worst case scenarios still on the table. And the fact he’s been able to try so hard opens up a lot a narrative weight for learning and loss that wouldn’t exist if she was just dead and he couldn’t even try and save her.
Mithestral
The deal stands. My subscription lives on as long as Liren does. Don't do it Warby please
Robert Mullins
Anyone got some garlic and onions. Needs more flavor.
Kain
Not yet*
Robert Mullins
The soup pot is meant to be shared. This was inevitable.
David Bailey
At... at least he didn't crawl into the soup-pot with her? Also, what hand is Gramps on?
dkpfrog
Tftc!
TeDureShi
These are actually good stakes. Even knowing they will both pull through, it was a good experience of dread and loss for a bit
Jacob
Now I just have to wait 23 hours and 45 minutes. No big deal. I can do that. ……… I CAN do that.
Endgame
Please give the next chapter today. This cliffhanger is too much
Noah James
Can you please post the next chapter today pretty pretty please
Frank
He also the ability to make Tea! That begs the question, is Tea leaf soup?
Zaeron
Poor Tian. Gramps really needs to teach him some other tricks, making soup can't work EVERY time. I really hope he doesn't eat Liren by accident, that would be... brutal.
Leaf
I can imagine the heavenly senior watching this and going, well, that’s some fuckd up shit.
HeartHawk
Tian feel like he's managed to find himself in a situation similar to "when all you have is a hammer everything is a nail" except he has the ability to make soup
GreenB
Ah no! This is the worst kind of cliffhanger!
Frank
Well, the prologue to “Su and Meis grand adventure” was pretty good. It did a nice job setting up all the different plot elements and though I’ll miss Tian and Liren I can’t wait to see what you have in store after their agonizing deaths as soup.
Diarmuid McGinnity
Damn. No other words come to mind
BigBuckler
I would say becoming soup together is a more intimate form of dual cultivation than was ever thought possible. This is some real innovation here
тђє v๏เ๔
Knew i should've saved up more chapters with this part. Damnit
ioajfidsnmfomds77
This is my cliffhanger…..
Aadi Narayan
Nooo, but also yessss finally Hong soup!
Endgame
And we're back. Tyftc
Morog T Tiny
Thank you for the chapter... What a way to start dual cultivating.
