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Sky Pride Vol. 4 Chapter 7- Red Blood on Blue Cobble Streets
🕑 Added 2025-09-23 14:00:16 +0000 UTCThe two daoists rushed up the cobblestone road like a flash flood. The monsters attacking the city were hideous things, slobbering venom, their spines coated in yet more venom, their claws carrying more venom still. Their qi was a twisted, horrible thing. Not the same as Gu, but close enough to make Tian grimace. He speared one with his rope dart, hauled the heavy thing over, and with a grunt of effort managed to saw it in half.
“Some kind of constructs made of meat. Not corpses, but that isn’t natural.” He had barely broken stride to make his investigation, but that still let Hong get yards ahead of him.
“They all look identical, of course they aren’t natural!” Hong conducted her own examination in the form of stabbing. Her red tasseled spear flickered out piercing heads and chests with clinical precision, finding exactly how much force to apply and exactly where to apply it to transform unnatural life into wholly natural death.
Tian had just enough time to see one of the monsters turn and bristle before it exploded. Venomous quills scythed across the street. Tian jumped, avoiding some and blocking more by quickly spinning his rope dart, but some still got through. The evil qi was quickly torn apart by the Hell Suppressing Art, and he could feel the venom struggling to make inroads into his refined body. Which just left disease. He could feel some disgusting sickness latching on and trying to corrupt his mortal body.
He didn’t grin. The disease was having even less success than the poison, but the blast hadn’t been aimed at him. Hadn’t been aimed at Liren either. The street had been filled with mortals. Now it was filled with dead and dying mortals, each of whom would be a new source of illness. He shuddered to think of stray quills that lodged in rats or dogs, spreading and going undetected until far, far too late.
Thousands of these monsters. Scattered all over a large city. Even if there were hundreds of cultivators in the city, which there absolutely was not, it was already a horrific massacre. The kingdom would have to take action, which meant that the Ancient Crane Monastery would have to move some of its forces away from the battlefield, at a time when they were already desperately shorthanded.
The battle had just started, and Tian couldn’t help feeling that the heretics had already won.
Too complicated, make it simpler. He couldn’t fix every problem. He could kill the monster in front of him. Then the next. Then the next. Eventually, he would run out of monsters. He saw another monster curling up to explode. He flung out his Heavenly Swallows, the invisible darts burying themselves into what he hoped was the creature’s brain. He must have hit something useful, as the monster fell apart in a mess of meat. Pale wobbling sacs of some stinking fluid burst in sharp jets, making flesh sizzle when the droplets fell.
Tian frowned and yanked his darts back with a flex of his will. No damage, thankfully, but he wouldn’t be trying that twice. He could feel corrosive liquid on them already. He wiped them as best he could and stowed them in his storage ring. His rope dart was already spinning around his head, ready to slam into the next target.
He bit back a curse. The liquid, whatever it was, was already soaking the dart and parts of the rope. He had no good way of guessing how much damage it was doing. So far, his vital energy was flowing normally through it, but by any measure, the situation was very bad.
Tian and Hong battled towards the Temple in their usual formation- Hong leading the charge, with Tian following close behind. She breached whatever was in front of them, and Tian widened the gap. If there were a lot of enemies, they would split the group and roll them up in pieces. If not, they would happily fight one on one. Two on a literal army, though, was a bit much. Some of the quills were bouncing off Hong, but more were sticking in. What made it agonizing was that the monsters were scattered over the whole city. Even though they were killing dozens as they ran, the number was nothing compared to the horde.
The Crane sent another memory down to Tian. “They are converging! Noble district! Shift north, follow the Crane. The Temple has mobilized, and local cultivators are pitching in too.”
“Are they any use?”
“Better than the mortals.”
The two kept pushing the pace, focusing on reaching the largest concentration of targets as fast as they could.
“The guards are fortifying around some kind of local shrine, local cultivators mixed in. Hundred and fifty monsters and increasing fast.” Tian fed Hong the updates from the crane as they came in.
“Plan?”
“Punch through their line. Whatever they are trying to kill, we protect. I’ll get inside, try to figure out what it is. You mess them up outside, Crane will support.”
Hong grunted. Her spear had never stopped moving. Neither had Tian’s dart. He kept pouring as much vital energy as he could spare into it, hoping that it would help prevent corrosion. He had a growing obsession with washing it.
There were close to three hundred monsters gathered around the shrine by the time they got there. It had been bare minutes, but something was calling them over. According to the crane, they were converging from all over the city on this spot.
“Punch us through!”
Hong drew back her spear, crouching low. There was a spiraling accumulation of fiery vital energy around her, less stable than it should be, but strong. Then an explosion. The stones shattered under her feet as she ran through the monsters. Skewered, smashed, slapped to the side, the monsters were removed at speed. Tian and Hong were catching more of the quills in their skin, the poison and disease load building, but it would keep. The shield line was in sight.
“ANCIENT CRANE MONASTERY IS HERE! WHO DARES RIOT BEFORE ME?!” Hong roared and spun back towards the monsters. Her spear was a roaring blur in the air. The monsters melted away beneath it. Hissing puddles of corrosive liquid and rotting flesh, needles stabbed into the pavements, into shields and armor, into her. All suppressed. All pressed down under the blazing yang spear of Hong Liren.
She was burning now, the fire in her stoked to an all consuming blaze. It would be bad tonight. Very bad. But that was tonight. Tian had problems to solve now.
Tian vaulted over the shield line. There were ranks of cultivators at the front, some holding proper shields, others behind barricades of tables or wagons, anything they thought might stop the poison quills. Local guards in their stout steel armor stood behind the cultivators. They didn’t look like they put much trust in their armor, but they still held firm. The front line carried great tower shields, forming a secondary wall of steel behind the brick walls of the shrine.
Behind the guards was a noble family. Father in armor, bright blue plume on his helmet and golden wire inlaid on his breastplate. A younger man stood next to him in soft robes- maybe a brother? Mothers, aunties, maids, all in scattered finery. A boy, six or seven years old, dressed perfectly in his deep blue robe embroidered with carp. Soft red silk shoes on his feet. Behind the boy was a tutor, wearing scholar's robes, and with books hanging by a strap from his waist.
There was a twist of qi coming from the tutor. Something stagnant and bloody. Not gu, but something unspeakably wrong. Tian fixed his eyes on him and pushed forward. The tutor turned his head, too fast for a mortal. Tian raised his hand, calling his darts from his ring.
“Too late.” The tutor’s hand darted forward, the skin of his fingers ripped apart, hooked claws reaching out through human tatters, and tore open the boy’s neck. Tian’s Flying Swallows drilled through the tutor’s head. The boy fell, grabbing his neck, not understanding what happened. The tutor died with a smile on his face.
“The hell I am too late! LIREN! KILL THEM ALL! CRANE, HELP HER!” He sent his mind out to the crane, and a screeching cry came from high above.
The boy gasped, green and black threads running up from the hole in his neck, red blood running down. His bright eyes were dimming, and filling with gold.
Tian swore and pulled a pinch of wound clotting powder from his ring. Even in small doses, it would form blood clots that would kill a mortal. It was as sure a poison as whatever was running through the kid’s body. So he would have to try something a little stupid and very desperate.
His rope dart twisted in his hand, ripping apart his palm. Thick blood poured out. Tian flicked the wound powder into the open wound, then slapped his bloody hand over the hole in the boy’s neck.
“Humans are born from primordial yang, formed with earthly yin, but become dross and without true essence. We self-sever our connections to that eternal essence. Every one of our vital essences are without virtue, for we lack a root. Yet the universal benevolence, that eternal primordial yang, is never more than a breath away. All we have to do is cultivate. If not in this lifetime, in a lifetime to come. The roots will be set down, and from it, the tree will grow. And from that tree comes the golden elixir.”
Red seal script was running across the golden eyes of the boy. He didn’t sound like a boy. He sounded ancient, like a hermit expounding on the dao. Not quite the same as the other boy, but too similar.
“Oh no you don’t!” Tian snarled. “I don’t know about any of that, but this little daoist is built to do two things- defy Heaven and crush Hell! See how I deal with you!”
Tian used the Demon Pulling Art, carefully fashioned threads of elementally tuned vital energy wrapping around the poison and the disease. Each thread was matched exactly against the qi of the poison and disease it targeted, locking it tight. Then, using the most exquisite care and being sure not to explode his own meridians in the process, Tian hauled the poison and disease from the boy’s body… and into his.
It didn’t want to go. Something in the venom very, very much wanted to kill this boy. Tian’s mouth opened in a feral snarl. He hadn’t told any lies before. This was his battlefield, and he was right at home.
The Hell Suppressing Art roared to life inside of him. As the poison came in, the vital energy spun around the statue in his lower dantian. Grinding away the poison and evil qi. Crushing the disease. Turning it into pure, healing, vital energy. Energy that flooded out through his body and into the wound in his hand.
Tian was pulling the disease out, crushing the venom, and using his own blood as a medium for the wound clotting powder on the boy’s neck, near enough all at the same time. It wasn’t a fast process, nor an easy one.
He heard a thunder of mighty wings. The ground shook below him. A screeching cry, and a tumult as monstrous bodies were sent flying by broad wings.
“Eh? Who’s bird is this? Does Bluestone City provide dinner as well as a show?” The voice coming from above was a vile thing, hungry for blood and slaughter.
“I was waiting for you, Old Freak Blackhand!” There was a clap of thunder, and a sudden press of air pressure. Tian didn’t let up. If his focus slipped even for a moment, the boy would die. If it slipped for two moments, he might cripple himself. His good sister was behind him, and the crane was more reliable every day. Heavenly problems were dealt with by Heavenly Seniors. All he had to do was keep his head down and work.
The venom fought him, drilling for the boy’s brain and nerves, even as the disease raced for the heart. Meanwhile, the blood clotting powder was trying to turn everything around it into a solid mass. Which Tian was fine with, except tiny grains of it kept trying to flow away with the rest of the boy’s blood and lodge in a heart valve!
He felt Sister Liren come stand behind him. Her spear rapped gently on the ground as she stood over him. A slim, strong hand pressed gently to his back. “Just help him. You won’t be disturbed.”
Tian fought the sickness. Fought it until his body shook and his mind burned and his vision faded to gray. There was a moment, a bare moment where things stood in balance, and things could have gone either way. In the end, Tian wanted to save the boy more than he was worried about getting hurt. He pushed until his meridians screamed. He screamed with them, but he never let up.
The poison was ripped away in a long thread. Disease broken apart, shattered into nothing, then it, too, was consumed. The blood clotting powder was forced into place, the ripped artery sealing, the torn skin patched. The golden eyes flashed, and something was released. Something spread from the boy and the bell in the shrine began to ring. Not in warning, but victory. A pulse of something so profound he couldn’t put words to it was carried in that ringing bell. It seeped into Tian and Hong and into the crane too.
He could feel a strand of it rushing south. A flash of purple, the exact color of the Yang qi that came with the dawn, and threads of incorruptible gold.
Comments
Fayhem
They're saying "too late" because they're talking to their enemy, not themselves, and they wanted to get one last taunt off before their certain death as they're forced to reveal themselves while they're still in the middle of all their enemies. It's basically "hah, your untimely arrival and keen eyes may have forced me to unveil my true form ahead of my plans, but you're still too late to save our true target!" but since Tian's *right there* with murder on his mind the heretic didn't have time for the whole monologue and had to cut it down to just "too late."
Felix Giron
Tian Zihao's Bloody Mercy Palm Art defies Heaven and crushes Hell. Thanks to Liren and the crane. What a rush. Absolute insanity.
Brian P.
Very much a chapter that will be more interesting as a whole than it is alone. Ah well, they gotta be somewhere.
Zenopath (AEV)
I wonder if those children have their ancient souls, who upon death, choose to speak out and give Tian clues. Maybe they are being targeted because they have potential to become cultivators who would greatly strengthen the kingdom, and killing them is like punching A hole in the Dao and weave of fate, resulting in dead zones were no new cultivators can emerge as there are no roots for them to build on. Assuming the heretics have oracles of their own, they might be guiding the attacks to cripple the next generation of "strategic assets", permanently weakening the monastery.
RainbowPhaze
I worry that the petition to replace the emperor is not for the mortal emperor but the celestial one
Gerald Monroe
We have to wait for the purple/gold explanation but my guess is simply that the emperor in some way DOES have a connection to the heavens and/or the cultist method of summoning a rival can work. Of course it's probably not that simple it reminds me of Warbys other story where God can simply stop caring about a world allowing it to no longer be as real, and this is a crude explanation of cosmic forces beyond the MCs understanding.
Morog T Tiny
so far I am really impressed with sister su's capabilities.
BelligerentGnu
Actual, physical goosebumps.
Gardor
"The Crane sent another memory down to Tian. “They are converging! Noble district! Shift north, follow the Crane. The Temple has mobilized, and local cultivators are pitching in too.”" Maybe use a more specific word than "they", its unclear who/what it refers to. I mean, i know its probably both, but one group is the chicken and the other is the egg. One group is doing it with intent and the other is doing it as a reaction. Also, i think "too late" is a weird thing for the tutor to say. If they'd wanted the kid dead, they had plenty of opportunities, im thinking they wanted to follow the kid around for a while. Im not saying you should switch the last thing he said to "oh well" or "better cash out early so we still get SOMETHING", im just saying "too late" reads weird in the context.
austin kutz
To be fair, the typical xanxia final goal is to be above the universe itself, residing in the primordial chaos which contains all universes, able to freely create your own whenever you'd like and modify those that exist as you please. His goal is to be objectively beyond the heavenly dao, and the heavenly dao dislikes that in many settings
Gerald Ransom Jr
Tian is a bloodhound,did a quick visual assessment and went for the kill.
Jordan Leighton
Not sure what’s going on with the bell and the qi at the end but the rest was peak
Daft Dolphin
Cool. Way of Mercy Monk
Bingus
I think he is naturally good at that. Didn't he refine his body in Yin Fire in the belly of the bird? And he has other things he can use to help Hong settle, his Wood Qi is calming (although Wood does Generate Fire) and his Fire Qi is soothing too. For a permanent solution though, I'm not sure if its a mental block or a physical thing that is messing up her Cultivation and Qi.
BaguaBrady
I'll admit to a fair amount of confusion as to what is happening but it's sure fun to read!
Tom C
OUR BOY IS SUCH A LEGEND! Fuck me that was awesome TFTC!
Nick Richie
So goood!
Meowgrr
Great chapter! :) Edit: Who’s bird is this? -> Whose bird is this?
James Faulkner
So good, Tftc!
Robert Mullins
If the purple and gold qi were infused in them on a merit basis then the strand that went south doesn't necessarily point to an enemy. Could be an ally that assisted in an unnoticed way. Could also be returning to its source. Which would be the area whose roots were severed.
Ben Nikel
I dunno, Warby's reading stack from a few months ago showed a BUNCH of books... I wouldn't put it past him. Plus the fact that both times we've seen a kid start chanting high-level Dao contemplation, they'd been glowing gold in that same way. I think "the uncorrupted incarnation of a Dao Sage" fits. The problem is, "Child of Destiny born into the lands" means things are going to get a LOT crazier....
Raymond Mouton
Thanks for the chapter. Great scene.
Alias
Purple qi? Usually in xianxia when purple qi or clouds appear from the east it represents the appearance of a sage, because according to legend, that's what happened when the Tao Te Ching was first written. I could be wrong but this is huge. The purple and gold did go south so it's probably a different phenomenon but it definitely reminded me of that.
Andrew Simpson
I love your pfp
Andrew Simpson
Was the thread rushing south something to do with the gold threads of script in the kids eyes, of was that a metaphor for this victory having echoing consequences in the war
Ano Ano
Ah, but if the heavenly person commits to helping the initial fight, he risks getting ambushed by the enemy heavenly person. And if he is wiped out by that ambush, the defenders are completely fucked. It's not such a simple thing.
Noroh
“I don’t know about any of that, but this little daoist is built to do two things- defy Heaven and crush Hell! See how I deal with you!” I love how Tian frames his goals. He isn't aligned with Heaven or Hell, he is the enemy of both to some degree. Hell he is sworn to crush whenever he finds it, but even Heaven he disdains, defying its mandated order whenever it suits him. Very teenager edgy of him lol.
Alexander Dupree
No it’s the golden state warriors actually
Alexander Dupree
Or *only junior brothers tell their senior to do what they’re already doing*
Daniel Viana Rodrigues
I believe they just got infused with primordial Yang qi. Another jump in power and qi quality for our protagonists.
Nonnyor Business
So, no spoilers, but you have put your finger on one of the biggest challenges of writing this book- how to incorporate the Confucian and Buddhist influences that contributed so much to the development of Daoism, without bringing in anachronism or downright isekai elements. Calling something Confucianism directly implies the existence of Confucious, who was almost certainly a real person who existed at a particular moment in Chinese history. Likewise, the Buddha implies the existance of Siddhartha Gautama and by extension, India. I'm working on it, but it's a tough one.
piranha
Too good. Just too good
Jeryd Greer
I think the idea Buddhist influences on the story are possible, but much less likely now. I think the whole root and process thing are just part of the Taoist belief that hell is a temporary place for the soul to repent through suffering and then be returned to the earth to once more attempt virtuous immortality through finding the Tao.
João Vene
Did I read that right, was there an inner courtyard disciple waiting for the heretic Heavenly Person to show themselves? While a whole city of mortals was slaughtered and had their roots severed and harvested? No wonder they're losing this fucking war. Also this really shouldn't be surprising after the wasteland, and yet
Morog T Tiny
I hope Tian can persuade Grandpa jun to help Liren balance her energy, more Yin to balance the Yang of her cultivation. Warby has created his own world and the one thing I desire of every chapter is that it is longer. ;-)
Pete
Ah corrosive enemies another point in favor of 1000 disposable dart supremacy!
Logrus
Did Tian just create an insanely solid connection with a noble family? He just visibly almost killed himself to save their son, yes? This little Daoist who doesn't understand political connections may have just made a noble clan his advocate for eternity.
Teach
Well. Thank god we have Grandpa to help us with the gold. I hope it’s benign…
Salthin
This story is the best expression of the Dao and daoism in any Xianxia I've ever read. You can *feel* the not-this-not-this oozing through the page as Tian fights against the serious. Kudos to you, sir.
Veridescent
Darkly amusing to think on how potential counters to this sickness could be found in a cooperative approach from known methods amongst the sects. The natural inks of the courtyard could be applied with insects or beast akin to those they cultivate to serve as living detectors ans combined with the sect system of plantings to form natural filters and purifying points for medical aid. The plague that will come from this will be potent in part because of how seperate the sects are. It is also admittedly quite interesting that the given framing of things is of mortals naturally being severed from the conceptual roots of cultivation. A more hiearchal view than that neccessarily observed in other ways which is interesting in implications of whos dao is being spoken of perspective wise. Seems quite possibly related to the current dominating celestial hiearchy(I am well aware of some of the framings out of setting given the messiness of daoisms syncretism often aligning with dominant social hiearchies locally).
Robert Mullins
Tian: "The hell I am too late! LIREN! KILL THEM ALL!" Liren internally: *Finally, a problem I am suited for.*
Ano Ano
I love fantasy medical emergency scenes. This absolutely rules.
Michael
How can I have read this entire chapter in 30 seconds?
William Johnson
Hey, that seems like a win for the orthodoxy, if a somewhat pyric one. Of course pyric victories seem to be all the orthodox cultivators are managing at the moment...
Alex
Are the Lakers the good guys in this story?
Hampus Steinvall
Yeah I know it's insane. I don't remember when I last read something this good
austin kutz
Poor kid probably just had his eardrums shattered and his brain rattled by the force of Tians yell
Cameron Bacon
god this story goes so hard
JTP
Those two are just the best! Mystery upon mystery with the purple and gold.
Steve Wright
Really hope Grandpa has the energy to give some hints on that.
