The Verdict of Falling Ink
By @john1208
An ordinary morning grinding ink at his late master's ruined shrine shatters when thugs from the Iron-Blood Faction arrive to evict Teng Rui. Once a hot-tempered sword prodigy, his meridians were destroyed by the fiery body-refining tyrant Zhuo Kuang. With his sword path dead, Teng Rui retaliates the only way left: writing the character for 'Weight' in the air. The resulting pressure physically crushes the enforcers into the dirt. But this unorthodox Dao of Calligraphy harbors a cruel secret - it uses the cultivator's own soul as an inkwell. With exactly ten thousand strokes remaining before his existence turns to ash, Teng Rui embarks on a cold, calculated path of revenge. Aided by his fiercely loyal best friend Guo Tai - who hides a dark demonic lineage - and narrated in alternating chapters with Cai Yilan, his former rival and the sect's most brilliant sword maiden who slowly falls for him, Teng Rui plans to systematically dismantle his oppressors. When his simple paper crane outflies Zhuo Kuang's legendary sun-chasing beast, the arrogant martial world is left utterly baffled. Can Teng Rui execute the tyrant and rewrite the sect's corrupt laws before his final brushstroke drains his life away?
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Canvas of the Peaceful Scholar
By @john1208
I never wanted to be a cultivator. While the rest of Azure Scroll Manor obsessed over martial dominance, I just wanted to paint the morning mist. My greatest ambition was simply presenting a landscape scroll at the grand engagement banquet connecting our sect to Kuang Zongtu, a fiery body-refining tyrant who terrifies the mortal realm. But when Kuang Zongtu’s legendary mythical beast, the Crimson-Scaled Hou, threatened to trample the banquet guests, my pacifist heart couldn't just watch. I casually tossed a folded paper crane from my sketchpad. To everyone’s sheer disbelief, my little crane effortlessly outmaneuvered the roaring behemoth, and my spilled ink dragged the tyrant and his beast straight into my canvas, trapping them as permanent scenery. Now, I am the reluctant protector of a sect that reveres me. Yet, my extreme kindness blinds me to a darker truth. My wise, kindly master, Yue Fengmian, has been smiling a little too warmly at my newfound abilities. If my brush can create pocket dimensions, what happens when I realize the very mentor teaching me to hold it is the one orchestrating our total destruction?
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