Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Author’s Note and Acknowledgments:
Previously in Painting the Mists
Prologue
Chapter 1: The Perfect Number
Chapter 2: The Favor
Chapter 3: Shadow Fate Redemption
Chapter 4: Initiation
Chapter 5: Pai Xiao
Chapter 6: Reaping
Chapter 7: Culling
Chapter 8: Icy Heart Pavilion
Chapter 9: Between Light and Darkness
Chapter 10: Land of Dusk Eternal
Chapter 11: Life
Chapter 12: Weapon Focus
Chapter 13: Offer
Interlude: Threat
Chapter 14: Shadow Fate Investiture
Chapter 15: Bastion
Chapter 16: Standing Out
Chapter 17: Goals
Chapter 18: Opportunity
Chapter 19: Progress
Chapter 20: Impossible
Chapter 21: Land of Shadows Remembered
Chapter 22: Shattered Lands
Chapter 23: Fissures
Chapter 24: Exploration
Chapter 25: Myriad Truths
Chapter 26: Leyline of Gold
Interlude: Unstoppable
Chapter 27: Return
Chapter 28: The Vault
Chapter 29: Change
Chapter 30: Land of Time Forgotten
Chapter 31: Justification
Chapter 32: Life
Chapter 33: Complications
Chapter 34: Full Circle
Chapter 35: Leaving
Epilogue
A Note to Readers
Further Reading
The Cultivation Systems
About the Author
Shattered Lands
Book 8 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.
Shattered Lands is a work of fiction. Names, organizations, places, and incidents portrayed in this novel 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 Editing and Interior Design by: Crystal Watanabe Cover Illustration and Design by: Samuel Alves First edition, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-989578-11-7
Other Painting the Mists Books:
Clear Sky
Blood Moon
Light in the Darkness Pure Jade
Corrupted Crimson
Kindling
Shattered Lands
Edge of Oblivion (forthcoming)
Violet Fate Duology:
Violet Heart
Converging Fate (forthcoming)
Dedication
To those who are scared. We live in difficult times,
and I wish you all the strength you need to carry on.
Author’s Note and Acknowledgments
The world feels much less safe than it used to a few months back. In January, we were celebrating the Chinese portion of our wedding. A few weeks later, full lockdown. As many of you may know, I live in Beijing, China, and when COVID-19 started getting out of hand, it was all hands on deck.
I won’t preach on best practices, as many tend to do these days. No doubt, you’ve seen hundreds of articles by now on self protection and social distancing. I won’t criticize either; propagating blame serves nothing; it causes chaos when stability is what the world needs now more than ever.
What I will do, however, is tell you that there’s light at the end of the tunnel. Nearly two months ago we were afraid to go outside. In fact, we couldn’t go outside, even with face masks on. When we returned to Beijing, from Shenyang, where we’d been visiting for Chinese New Year, we quarantined ourselves as everyone was required. We measured our temperature every day while reading ever-depressing news. People were dying, and many more were getting sick. Wuhan was sealed off, isolated from the rest of the world to give it what it needed most: time.
Let’s fast-forward two months. Now, people walk on the streets. They still wear facemasks—you’ll get scolded by the police if you don’t—but more than grocery stores are open. You can go shopping, though every shop has a maximum occupancy. Restaurants now accept sit-down customers, but not many at once, especially not at the same table. But life is starting back up again. People who worked from home now go back to the office one day out of two, and some schools are even resuming classes. Everyone fought together to contain the spread, and the fruits of their labor are finally showing.
I suspect that such scenes will play themselves out globally as governments and individuals come to grips with the pandemic. For now, everyone is suffering, but that suffering is what will usher in a new normal. There’s hope for the future and hope for a vaccine. This difficult stage in our lives is only temporary, and at the very least, those of us who make it through will have a few good stories to tell their children and grandchildren.
Now, enough about viruses. I wrote a book, and I’m sure you’re eager to get on with it. I finished it a little later than I expected due to a combination of weddings and virus lockdown and a half dozen other reasons you don’t care about. And at 152,000 words, it’s my longest yet. I sincerely hope you enjoy Cha Ming’s adventure in Southern lands.
I try to improve with every book, and this time is no different. New to this edition is a recap from the last book. Readers have been asking for me to include one for months now, so I thought it only fair to indulge them. If you like reading summaries, enjoy. And if you don’t, feel free to skip it. It’s all the same to me, as my only request from you as you read this book is that you enjoy it.
Before moving on, however, I’d like to start off with some words of thanks. Thank you to my wife, Xing Wen; two wedding receptions later, we’ve dotted all our i’s and crossed all our t’s. Thank you to my parents, my brothers, my sisters, and wedding guests for making it a great event—for make no mistake, my personal happiness is directly corelated with the quality of the books I write.
I’d like to thank this book’s beta readers: Dave Yeung, Aljoscha Volk, Drew Kennedy, John Wilson, and Ardash. Your feedback was a great help in improving the story.
Many thanks to Crystal Watanabe for her excellent support while editing my novel. My writing continues to improve with her help, so I’m glad to have her on board. Thank you to Samuel Alves for the great cover, and for finally fulfilling a long-time wish of having all of Painting the Mist’s covers match again.
Last, but not least, thank you to my readers. I write to tell stories to people, 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
Previously in Painting the Mists
To fix his core, Cha Ming travels to Haijing City, the underwater capital of the Sea God Empire with Huxian and his four disciples. By joining Haijing Academy, he swiftly climbs up the ranks to the peak of mortal alchemy. He finances his journey by discovering Grandmist flames, a mysterious alchemical flame capable of creating Grandmist pill seals.
With the help of Sun Wukong, he attempts to forge a Nirvana Pill, a transcendent item that can heal his core. He succeeds in crafting the pil
l but fails to protect it from the plane’s pill tribulation. Defeated, he is forced to pursue a new path through runic alchemy, leaving his fated opponent, Zhou Li, to plot and scheme freely with the upper echelons of the city.
Earlier in his journey to Haijing, Cha Ming had befriended the crown princess of the Sea God Empire, Gong Shuren. To spite Zhou Li, who’d gone out of his way to destroy the Water Source Marrow Huxian and friends had discovered, Cha Ming participates in the legendary Sea God Trials. Little does he know that this is a trap. Due to his two soul-bound treasures, the Clear Sky Brush and the Space-Time Camera, the trial’s difficulty increases exponentially. Zhou Li and his favored candidate for emperor manage to squeeze out a narrow victory and claim the Sea God’s Crown.
Cold and defeated, his core still broken, Cha Ming is ready to give up. Fortunately, Huxian discovers the secret of the Sea God Trials: the Sea God Clock Tower. With his help, Gong Shuren begins attuning the artifact, which is a step up above the Sea God’s Crown.
Time waits for no one, however. While she is busy attuning the artifact, Zhou Li instigates a war between Haijing City and the Northern Alliance using a combination of clever manipulation, fiendish sharks, and an armada of battleships from the South. Desperate to defuse the situation, Cha Ming rallies the scholars in Haijing, allies of his disciples, remnants of the city guard, and friends of Huxian. They arrive too late to prevent conflict but just in time to stop a total rout. Gong Shuren arrives just in time, wielding the Sea God Clock Tower to execute the Southern Alliance’s forces as well as the traitorous ministers of her brother, the emperor. Disaster is prevented, but much blood is shed.
In Gold Leaf City, Hong Xin stabilizes her power as the new Red Dust Mistress. In so doing, she discovers a terrible secret: The Red Dust Pavilion was involved in an illegal and despicable scheme to harvest souls for the Spirit Temple. A faction in the city uses evidence of this wrongdoing to blackmail her and her sisters into indentured servitude.
To make matters worse, Hong Xin and the Red Dust Pavilion are forced to kill and capture their former members, important agents of the Spirit Temple. Cornered, with angry Spectral Assassins breathing down her neck, Hong Xin goes to Wang Jun for help. Together, they are able to extract secrets from their captured members, facilitating a heist that they use to counter-blackmail their oppressors.
Wang Jun, riding on the coattails of his victory in the Song Kingdom, comes home to a less-than-pleasant reception. He is given the title of auditor general of the Wang family. Part and parcel with his role is a noncompete with his brother, whom he must outearn to win the family leadership. Desperate and willing to try anything, he starts an industrial revolution by endowing all non-cultivators in the North with qi-cultivation capabilities. By heavily leveraging his position in this growing market, he gains significant ground on his brother’s assets.
Unfortunately, his duties as auditor general uncover a dark secret of the Wang family. His brother, Wang Ling, has been secretly enriching himself through illegal soul trade with the Spirit Temple. Frustrated by both the ethics of the situation and the potential legal ramifications if discovered, he reveals this to the family patriarch, Wang Wuling, but it turns out he’s known all along. Angry and dejected, Wang Jun helps the Red Dust Mistress, the disguised Hong Xin, to deal a dreadful blow to the Spirit Temple. In their fight, he discovers her true identity, a silver lining to the otherwise depressing situation.
Cha Ming has left Haijing and is journeying southeast from Beihai to Gold Leaf City. Hong Xin, having finally freed her sisters, turns her attention to rebuilding the Red Dust Pavilion. Demoralized by the state of his family, Wang Jun decides he can no longer play an honest game with them. West of the Song Kingdom, a calamity awakens.
Prologue
All was quiet around a dark pit, carefully wedged beneath two demonic mountains far away from human eyes. There were no birds flying above, and no rustling of tree leaves in the gentle wind. For there was no wind here; the light breeze that normally blew through these mountains was stagnant. It lost all momentum the moment it reached the darkness and lingered around the pit, where something breathed. It was a continuous breath, always inhaling and never exhaling. The sides of the pit crumbled away little by little with each passing second.
A horn poked out from the pit as a creature—black and humanoid, yet walking on all fours—pulled itself out. It had been resting, for eating was hungry work. Days ago, he had successfully devoured the nearest mile of spirit woods. It had taken him until now to convert the vital demonic energy into something useful.
Now, he hungered. The ravenous pit inside him was empty and needed to be filled. He looked around, scanning east and west, looking for something, anything that moved. Not even the wind did. Everything he’d missed in his first pass had run away, forsaking their birth land rather than facing certain death.
Which way should he go? How fast should he travel? These basic instincts were in their infancy, nudging him slightly to the northwest. There, a mountain stood strong, its powerful beasts keeping watch on him, hiding among the deep-rooted trees reeking of demonic qi.
The creature walked, slowly but surely, his footsteps leaving only a dull thump behind. He breathed in as he walked, consuming the thin demonic qi that leaked off the demonic mountain. It powered his initial-purification fiend body just enough to bring it to a group of pines, whose inhabitants ignorantly chattered away as it placed its clawed hand on the sappy red bark. The color where it touched faded, and the tree cracked. The squirrels and birds, initially indignant at his presence, began dying. Only the smartest among them flew to another tree branch.
One tree, many lives. Two trees, many more. Two became three, and three became many. One by one, a carpet of darkness expanded around him, swallowing lesser spirit beasts in his wake. A boar charged toward it, cutting deep into his body before ultimately being swallowed by him. Birds followed suit, plunging at him as directed by the sovereign of the mountain. For they would never stoop so low as to challenge him, weak as he was. A mistake, he knew. Demons often made mistakes like these when dealing with his kind.
Wave after wave of demons swarmed toward him, and though the swarm didn’t harm him, it slowed him greatly. Annoyed, he fought back. In response, the waves increased in intensity, and before long, he could take it no longer. He dissociated into nothingness, leaving behind only a black stain on the forest floor. All stood still.
A mountain lion, the sovereign of the mountain, let out a sigh of relief from her perch in a nearby tree. She had been watching the dark creature, praying to her ancestors that it didn’t head her way. The creature felt ancient and terrible. And worse, she knew nothing about it. It was weak, so it wouldn’t be honorable to face off against him. Yet that weakness conflicted with the sense of danger it gave her. It was a rare moral dilemma, a question of honor that couldn’t be ignored.
Fortunately, all was well now. Her minions had destroyed it in roughly thirty seconds, and there would be peace once again. Or would there be? Her eyes narrowed as a cluster of black stains, remnants of the creature, merged together in a puddle of black ooze. It writhed violently, black horns poking out and stabbing creatures that had moved back into their homes. Endless moments passed as an arm poked out, then another, then two legs. A large horn sprouted on its forehead, and its eyes, blacker than the deepest shadows, opened.
The creature lashed out, horns shooting out from its back in every direction. Tiny tentacles of blackness touched the nearby forest dwellers, draining their life in an instant. The mountain lion called out orders, rallying her lords to the cause. They ran from their dwellings, and on her orders, slayed the foul beast once again. It only took thirty-one seconds to down their fierce opponent.
Only a single black stain remained, but the sovereign dared not trust it. Like clockwork, it wriggled and reformed, coalescing into the fearsome creature from before. The lords pounced again, and they defeated it easily. This time, it took thirty-two seconds.
Far in th
e Southern lands, a man lay dying. The infected wound on his side sent pain lancing through his entire body with every breath. It was a welcome pain, for it told him he hadn’t yet passed. Anything was better than what awaited him, even the agonizing seconds before his demise.
It served him right, he supposed. He never should have left. Things might have been different then. At the very least, he wouldn’t have been killed like a common criminal. Death would have come for him anyway, but through it, he might have gained something greater: immortality.
Only the Spirit Temple could grant immortality, and even then, only to the worthy. He was a true believer. Life was unfair, the temple taught, and as such, it was full of suffering. The only way to transcend it was to embrace the suffering, embrace the regret of a life wasted. Only then could one become an evil spirit, free from the fleshly woes and carnal desires of the living.
Unfortunately for him, it took strength to do that. Not of body, but of spirit. As an acolyte of the Spirit Temple, he’d been pitted against the others like gu in a jar, killing each other until only the most poisonous remained. He’d thought himself strong, but a few days in, he’d been relieved of that notion.
He’d left the Spirit Temple that same day. Out the front door, no questions asked. The Temple didn’t punish deserters in the flesh but in the spirit. They simply waited till the parting, when shackled souls returned to their origins. There, they became fodder for true remnants, true believers with strong spirits and a need for vengeance. They were the core of the spectral community, the assassins that roamed the lands and the watchers that saw through all. They were the shepherds that consumed souls and saved the few members of the flock they could.
Spirits, what possessed me to steal that sword? he thought, the pain preventing his mind from wandering further. The wound on his side had festered, and black lines radiated outward from it, poisoning the rest of his body. Stealing the sword had seemed like a good idea; it had been right out in the open where anyone could take it. Unfortunately, someone had spotted him, and during the brief tussle with the merchant’s guards, he’d suffered a shallow cut to his side. The merchant must have also been a believer, for who else would arm their guards with poisoned weapons? The wound had festered that same night.
Shattered Lands: Book 8 of Painting the Mists Page 1
