Words of Creation: Book 10 of Painting the Mists Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Author’s Note and Acknowledgments

  Dedication

  Previously in Painting the Mists

  Prologue

  Chapter 1: Arrival

  Chapter 2: Names

  Chapter 3: Weapon

  Chapter 4: Rainwater

  Chapter 5: Questing

  Chapter 6: Birds of a Feather

  Chapter 7: Slavers

  Chapter 8: Mi Fei

  Chapter 9: Dripping Blade Prefecture

  Chapter 10: Influence

  Chapter 11: Nostalgia

  Chapter 12: Strength

  Chapter 13: A Dish Best Served Warm

  Chapter 14: Fellingwood, City of Demons

  Chapter 15: Worthless

  Chapter 16: Daoist Shadow Snake

  Chapter 17: Rapid Turtle Clan

  Chapter 18: Raging Waves of the Inky Sea

  Chapter 19: The Great Equalizer

  Chapter 20: White Paper Ban

  Chapter 21: Lady White

  Chapter 22: Kingfisher Trials

  Chapter 23: Ruined City

  Chapter 24: Searing Sands of the Sacred Desert

  Chapter 25: Azure Sword Formation

  Chapter 26: Raid

  Chapter 27: Choice

  Chapter 28: Hall of Heavenly Fate

  Chapter 29: One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

  Chapter 30: Mission

  Chapter 31: Rifts

  Chapter 32: Escape

  Chapter 33: Source

  Chapter 34: Golden Dragon’s Music Box

  Chapter 35: Loose Ends

  Epilogue

  A Note to Readers

  About the Author

  The Cultivation Systems

  Words of Creation

  Book 10 of Painting the Mists

  by Patrick G. Laplante

  Copyright © 2020 by Patrick G. Laplante

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the copyright owner except for the use of brief quotations in a book. Requests for permission should be addressed to the publisher.

  Words of Creation is a work of fiction. Names, organizations, places, and incidents portrayed in this novella are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual, events, locales, or persons is purely coincidental.

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

  Published by: Patrick G. Laplante

  First edition, 2020

  ISBN: 978-1-989578-16-2

  Other Painting the Mists books:

  Clear Sky

  Blood Moon

  Light in the Darkness

  Pure Jade

  Corrupted Crimson

  Kindling

  Shifting Tides

  Shattered Lands

  Edge of Oblivion

  Words of Creation

  Crown of the Starry Skies (forthcoming)

  Author’s Note and Acknowledgments

  It’s Christmas time again. A wonderful time to publish a book. Not because it’s a good time to sell (the competition is stiff) but because of the fond memories I have of reading. Every winter holiday, I make a habit of reading much more than is healthy. And, of course, make time for family. As time allows.

  I like to think that things are looking better now than they were six months ago. COVID vaccines are on the way, and people are learning to cope with the situation. Yes, much damage has been done to our society, and yes, many will need to rebuild, but I no longer see the panic there once was. The disease is now a known quantity. Things will improve. Eventually.

  It’s been a good year for writing. Just yesterday, I finished the first draft of Book 1. It still needs a couple more self-edits, but I think I’m setting myself up for a good next year. We’re not even halfway done with our journey, and I plan on making each book and each arc more exciting than the last. Book 10 sets up the eight books that come after it, because groupings of nine is how I roll.

  Once again, I’d like to thank my wife, Xing Wen, for encouraging me on my journey. I’d like to thank my parents for my love of reading. I’d like to thank my brothers and sisters for their company while growing up, even Denis, whom I would fight for books every Christmas.

  I’d like to thank this book’s beta readers: Aljoscha Volk, Drew Kennedy, John Wilson, and Peter Zandvliet. Your feedback was quick and on point. Many thanks, naturally, go to Crystal Watanabe for her continued editing of the series. Thank you to Samuel Alves for the wonderful cover. This one was complicated, and I hope the idea was conveyed.

  Last, but not least, thank you to my readers. I write to tell people stories, and a story is worth nothing if it isn’t shared. I hope you enjoy reading this book as much as I enjoyed writing it.

  Cheers,

  Patrick G. Laplante

  To the talented. Yes, that means you. Don’t be afraid to share your gifts.

  Previously in Painting the Mists

  Cha Ming’s mission is complete, and Bastion lies in ruins. He has dealt a great blow to the Southern Alliance, but at what cost? Thousands of innocents are dead, and Cha Ming has lost his sight. An early war has broken out, and he and Feng Ming fly to the Eastern Desert to prevent the first wave of the invasion.

  In Gold Leaf City, Hong Xin has been captured by the Wang family. Wang Jun now serves darker forces, whose goal is nothing short of the collapse of the Golden Kingdom and provide a springboard to the Southern Alliance. To that end, he paralyzes trade throughout the entire Northern Alliance.

  Meanwhile, Huxian has entered a sealed dimension to overcome the Candle Dragon’s inheritance trial. The tests are deadly, and he could very well lose his life, but he knows he cannot defeat the Taotie without its rewards.

  Feng Ming and Cha Ming arrive in the Eastern Desert as the enemy attacks the Windswept Canyon. To repel the invaders, Cha Ming seeks the aid of demons. He discovers that the winds have been disrupted by a man called the Fiend Whisperer. The canyon is saved, but only barely.

  Feng Ming and Jiao Ming remain to coordinate Northern defenses. This leaves only Cha Ming and Silverwing to rescue Mr. Mountain in Taishan. The demonic residents of the peaceful village are being converted to fiendish demons via a dark miasma. They defend Mr. Mountain as he grasps the essence of what it is to be a mountain, but the village is lost in the process. Cha Ming gains enlightenment on death.

  To make matters worse, their struggle was only a prelude to something worse. The Taotie, which they’d thought sealed away by the Southern Alliance, has somehow been domesticated by Cha Ming’s long-time enemy, Zhou Li. It can’t be stopped, only delayed.

  Worried for Huxian’s friend Gua, Cha Ming journeys to the Evergreen Battlefield. He meets with his apprentice, Jin Huang, an influential poison master in the Evergreen Kingdom. With Gua’s help, they buy time for an evacuation.

  In Gold Leaf City, Wang Jun has been busy sowing dissent and rebellion. Using the Wang family’s superior finances and massive war chest, not only has he crippled the North, he has recruited fearsome allies. To further his goals, he binds the three strongest mercenary forces to the Wang family’s will. He also convinces Bai Ling, the new mistress of the Red Dust Pavilion, to join their cause.


  The Spirit Temple and the Wang family marches against the Golden Kingdom, and even the Wang family’s transcendent is involved. Cha Ming rushes to Gold Leaf City. Upon arriving, Cha Ming discovers that the long-disappeared Hong Xin is alive and understands Wang Jun’s motivations. He chooses to trust his friend, and in turn, Wang Jun reveals his covert strategy. Through trickery and deceit, they win a decisive victory against the Spirit Temple and enemies of the North.

  The Southern forces are crushed, and the Spirit Temple’s shepherd is destroyed. The Obsidian Syndicate’s transcendent is slain, and Cha Ming personally dispatches the Wang family ancestor. Unfortunately, neither he nor Wang Jun can stop a cruel reality: Hong Xin’s life is bound to Wang Jun’s brother, who perished in the conflict. She is doomed to die.

  In that moment, Cha Ming discovers the essence of Samsara. He merges the Devil-Sealing, Demon-Subduing, and Spirit-Banishing scriptures into his own personal technique, the Eyes of Truth. He uses Samsara to pull back Hong Xin’s soul from the Yellow River. Hong Xin is saved, though her cultivation is crippled.

  Battles intensify on all fronts. Wang Jun pledges the Wang family’s remaining wealth and mercenaries to the war effort and ends the trade war in the North, restoring the broken Northern Alliance. Cha Ming’s disciples set out to rally their allies. Meanwhile, Cha Ming himself goes back to a place he’d long since put behind him—the Silverwing Mountain Range. There, he discovers a treasure that has been building for over ten thousand years, a combined project by three Heavenly Emperors. He uses his Eyes of Truth and all three of his sealing scriptures to forge his Clear Sky Staff into a new treasure—the Tri-Sealing Pillars.

  Cha Ming journeys to the battlefield, where his apprentices, as well as all of Huxian’s friends, have converged. The World Tree is threatened, and the North must protect it. The Spirit Temple, the Obsidian Syndicate, and the Southern Alliance’s elite forces have arrived. The Northern Alliance, under Feng Ming and Wang Jun’s leadership, face off against the enemy marshal. The inquisitors and chaplains of the Church of Justice join with the courtesans of the Red Dust Pavilion and the Buddhist Monks of the World Tree Monastery, while the Alabaster Group’s angels faces off against the Obsidian Syndicate’s devilish forces and vassal cults. Demons battle fiends. But this is all a backdrop to the true battle, something taking place on another plane of reality. Cha Ming faces off against Zhou Li in a game of Angels and Devils, and every move they make can change the course of the battle.

  They fight, and as they do, they gain strength. Before long, they are stronger than they have ever been. Zhou Li reveals his trump card—he is both a devil and an evil spirit. By sacrificing territory and many of his own forces, he traps himself with the World Tree and unleashes a terrible blow using karma-destroying sin flames. Cha Ming is unable to overcome the barrier, even with his Tri-Sealing Pillars. The Southern Alliance loses the battle, but the World Tree is no more.

  Victory seems close at hand, but evil never rests. During their battle, the Taotie overcomes its bindings and condenses his initiation mark. The inhabitants of the Ling Nan Plane must defeat it before it can consume the plane’s ley lines. Huxian appears in the nick of time, having reversed time to perfectly complete his own space-time initiation mark. He brings with him the power of two inheritances: the Candle Dragon’s Time-Torching Eyes, and the Void Phoenix’s Moon-Eclipsing Wings.

  Still, the situation is grim. Cha Ming and Gong Lan go to the Greenwind Pavilion to find answers. Huxian and his friends gather the greatest demons on the plane through thuggery and bribery. Wang Jun and Feng Ming recruit forces from both the North and the South to prevent their mutual destruction. With Zi Long’s help, the former Sea God Emperor, the Sea God’s herald, convinces them to come to the continent’s aid. The Ling Nan Plane’s allied forces stall for time as Cha Ming, Huxian, and friends attempt something truly dangerous: simultaneously transcending and using their joint calamity to fight the Taotie.

  Cha Ming carves his poetic talismans into his core, incorporating Flow, Samsara, Energy, Matter, and Shape into one. He also breaks through to demigod, and during his double breakthrough, he gains three new abilities: Words of Creation, Words of Destruction, and Thirty-Six Heavenly Transformations. The battle is fierce, and they overcome their heavenly tribulation, which greatly exhausts the Taotie. Cha Ming seals the Taotie with his Tri-Sealing Pillars, and Huxian uses his Space-time Devouring Manifestation to deal a critical blow. Finally, Cha Ming closes the seal using its own blood as ink.

  The day is saved, the plane continues to exist. Very few of the plane’s elite forces remain. Gong Lan is dead, and Wang Jun is missing. Both the North and the South must rebuild, and Cha Ming and Huxian must leave. The survivors hold a funeral for the dead on the remnants of the World Tree Monastery. There, Cha Ming discovers a hidden spark of life. They combine their power to breathe new life to the World Tree.

  Cha Ming’s time on the plane is over. He heals Li Yin, his teacher the spirit doctor, and gives Feng Ming weapons to defend his homeland. He passes on Fuxi’s Library to his disciples, who have chosen to stay on and protect the plane. He takes Hong Xin home, fulfilling his obligations to the Hong family and eliminating his last regret. Wang Jun, who has survived unbeknownst to others, watches from the shadows. It is unknown whether they will meet again.

  Cha Ming, Huxian, and Huxian’s friends ascend together to another world, a dying world of demonic origin. Cha Ming and Huxian’s adventures on the Ling Nan Plane are over. The adventures of Daoist Clear Sky and Demon Lord Eight Directions are just beginning.

  Prologue

  Dao Lord Blackwater’s hand moved quickly and deftly, painting a white rune on a black stone with the precision of a man who’d lived for millennia. The ink was thick, white, and cloudy, and the heavy stone was the deep color of ink. The gray brush in his wrinkled hands was covered in mystical carvings, gildings, and etchings. It infused qi into the rune he painted, as well as charm that could not be replicated save by those who understood it. Dao Lord Blackwater was an artist. He knew his craft inside and out.

  The rune glowed with pale-blue light as it drank in color from the near-black water that came up to his bony ankles. It reflected off the waters of the shallow pool he stood in, a pool that stretched out several hundred kilometers in every direction. Near-spherical stones that came up to his waist poked out of the water like small bumps on a well-worn road. They spiraled outward, creating a greater pattern that was joined together through the white lines he’d painted on every one of them.

  At the center of the spiral lay a larger object, over a hundred times taller than Dao Lord Blackwater himself. It was covered in pieces of slatelike shell that seemed brittle at first but refused to break. He would know—he’d tried to do so several times. At this point, he assumed breaking through was impossible, as few on the plane were stronger than he was.

  “That ought to do it,” Dao Lord Blackwater said, nodding in satisfaction. He stowed his brush and leaped up from the pool, landing atop a shell-covered stone that was so large its round surface seemed almost flat. From within it came a glow, inky black, just like the pool surrounding it.

  “Do an old man a favor and cooperate, will you?” he said to the stone. It pulsed as though it understood him, but by now, he knew it pulsed at whatever living being touched it. Was the reaction instinctual? Was it yearning for a connection that no one had been able to give it for tens of thousands of years? Perhaps today, he would discover the answer.

  One last time, Dao Lord Blackwater thought. I’ll give it one last try before giving up. If he failed, he’d have to pass the torch on to someone more deserving. Given how long he’d been trying, he expected failure, but any chance at success was better than giving up.

  Dao Lord Blackwater took a deep breath and placed his hand on the shell-covered orb. The runes around him glowed blue, and the blue was so deep it appeared black. They radiated with a Dao he’d painstakingly stitched from law fragments he’d
gathered from across the plane, runes infused with happiness and loss and drenched in the blood of his enemies, as well as countless tears of innocent mortals.

  They stretched out the entire length of the pool in a spiral that widened ever so slightly with every coil. The three-hundred-kilometer-wide pool lit up in its entirety, both from the runes and from the lines that spread out from them, as per the dictates of the laws they represented. They wove a tapestry so fine and so detailed that they could speak to the life and death of mortals and create an entire world.

  His runic core tugged at him in his Dantian. It was a large blue-black object that glowed brightly with the law tapestry it held. It yearned to merge with the pattern and become something greater. He knew from experience, however, that a mere law tapestry wasn’t nearly enough.

  Accordingly, Dao Lord Blackwater refused the merger. Instead, he reached deep into his fused body and soul, and an inky-black projection appeared above the pattern on the water. Dao Lord Blackwater was no mere Daoist. He was not a human, but a demon. He lowered the demonic manifestation into the rune-covered sea and let the tapestry wrap it like a blanket. Laws and nature blended, creating something even greater than he could have ever imagined.