ThatGit

The Toll-Road to Immortality - Chapter 12

This one was a bit of a struggle. Getting dialog to flow and sound just right is hard. Huge shout out to UncookedLegumes/Beans on discord for helping me refine/edit it. Probably would have sat on it for another day or two tweaking this and that without his input.

“Do you like it?” Gwen asked in a small voice. “I’ve never tried growing midnight glory befo...

The Toll-Road to Immortality - Chapter 11

This chapter was starting to spiral into something a little excessive so I ended up cutting it in half at what I think is a fun stopping point ;p

Enjoy!

Calvin was tending to his private herb garden when the formation around his villa notified him that there was an unknown cultivator waiting at his gate. The formation was not sensitive en...

The Toll-Road to Immortality - Chapter 10

Though it was deep into the night when he returned to his garden villa, Calvin rose well before dawn as was his habit. A few hours of sleep were more than enough to reinvigorate his mind and body and he’d long since found that he preferred early mornings on days he chose to sleep at all. 

The world was simpler in the early hours of the morning, peaceful. Streets were quiet, nightti...

The Toll-Road to Immortality - Interlude 1

This interlude is meant to go after Chapter 9 and boy was I excited for y'all to see it. I had a great time writing this chapter, and hope you all enjoy reading it!

Athena Ergane, Eleventh among Equals, hung in the vast expanse of unreality her people had named the Ninth Great Sea like an alabaster statue. A delicate-looking fractal tiara of blue crystal like branc...

The Toll-Road to Immortality - Chapter 9

“I’ll let the two of you get to know each other.”

Ariadne slipped away, only to stop a scant few feet away at a nearby table and engage Garrion and his half-brother in conversation. Calvin looked down at Yue Gwey, meeting the younger girl’s eyes, and then both simultaneously glanced towards Ariadne out of the corner of their eyes.

She was certainly acting like she was deep i...

The Toll-Road to Immortality - Chapter 8

There was a celebratory mood on the air as Calvin made his way through Outer Village, a palpable sense of shared relief that made everything seem just a little bit lighter and brighter, if even just for one evening. The streets were crowded with disciples, rivers of dark blue robes interspersed with the occasional flash of bright color where a disciple had chosen to accentuate their sect robe w...

The Toll-Road to Immortality - Chapter 7

Calvin did not sleep that night, and doubted many disciples who’d progressed far enough in their cultivation to go without sleep for a night did either. Instead he spent the night puttering around his home, meditating in short intervals, and occasionally nervously pressing his sect token against the bronze disk sitting on his kitchen table to confirm that yes, he definitely had more than enou...

The Toll-Road to Immortality - Chapter 6

So it turned out that he had something of a stalker, a concept that left him feeling both somewhat concerned and oddly flattered. Gwen had met with Uncle no less than four times in the past two years, each time exchanging spiritual herbs and simple alchemical products for a combination of connecting her with potential tutors and information about him, particularly his likes, dislikes, and habit...

The Toll-Road to Immortality - Chapter 5

The Outer Disciple’s Market Hall of Mortal Needs and Delights, typically shortened to just the Mortal Hall unless you were filling out official forms, was one of the largest yet plainest buildings in the Outer Village. Situated away from the main roads with their shops selling cultivation resources and luxuries, the building looked like it wouldn’t be out of place in any small town in the p...

The Toll-Road to Immortality - Chapter 4

A great wheel spun behind Calvin’s eyes, incomprehensibly vast and turning so quickly its outer surface was little more than a blur. Calvin could just barely make out endless rows of symbols as they flashed by, occasional fragments of names and meanings appearing in his thoughts in a headache-inducing flurry. Eventually it began to slow, and as did it also seemed to grow nearer, filling his v...

The Toll-Road to Immortality - Chapter 3

Happy Thanksgiving to anyone who celebrates!

The room that Calvin called his meditation room was not the chamber that whoever had designed—or perhaps decorated—the Garden Villa had originally designated for that purpose. That was a small room off the main bedroom in the corner of the building, with two large windows opening out onto the field, a clear view of ...

The Toll-Road to Immortality - Chapter 2

It took another two hours to reach the front of the line, but they didn’t feel nearly as long as the hours before had. As much as the rigors of cultivation trained a cultivator to sit motionless for long hours at a time while maintaining constant focus and awareness, it didn’t make doing so any less boring. Calvin generally enjoyed cultivating, even the terribly tedious, repetitive parts. S...

The Toll-Road to Immortality - Chapter 1

Hello! If you spend any time in my discord, you may be aware that my muse has decided to almost exclusively focus on xianxia lately. I spent some time trying to work through it writing drips and drabbles (spoiler alert: it didn't work), but then November rolled around and I figured that maybe NaNoWriMo was a good opportunity to get it out of my system by working with it instead of again...