Stone Soul (Path of the Thunderbird Book 2) Read online

  Table of Contents

  Summary

  Shadow Alley Press Mailing List

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-one

  Chapter Forty-two

  Chapter Forty-three

  Chapter Forty-four

  Chapter Forty-five

  Chapter Forty-six

  Chapter Forty-seven

  Chapter Forty-eight

  Chapter Forty-nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-one

  Chapter Fifty-two

  Chapter Fifty-three

  Epilogue

  Thanks, Reviews, and Free Stuff

  Books, Mailing List, and Reviews

  End Note

  Books by Shadow Alley Press

  GameLit and Wuxia on Facebook

  Copyright

  About the Author

  About the Publisher

  Summary

  A MURDERED WARRIOR artist transported to a strange land. A condemned princess fighting for her life. A hidden enemy pulling the strings of fate.

  Yesterday, Ji Yu Raijin died to save his betrothed. Today, he awakens in a strange land of deadly demon beasts, weaker than he’s ever been. Without his overpowered lifeforce, Raijin will have to start again from the bottom while he searches his past for what went wrong.

  Hunted for murders she didn’t commit, disgraced princess Shyong San Koida must find a weapon that even someone with a crippled lifeforce can use to defend herself. A drunken master and a tribe of hulking savages hold the key, but Koida will have to survive the brutal training and complete a series of deadly trials before her pursuers catch up to her.

  While the warrior artist and the princess fight to survive, an immortal evil conspires with their earthly enemies to destroy them both.

  Stone Soul is the second book in the Path of the Thunderbird series and is perfect for fans of wuxia, xanxia, cultivation novels, demon beasts, and all styles of martial arts. Stone Soul is written by eden Hudson, enthusiastic but terrible martial arts student and best-selling sci-fi and fantasy author of Rogue Dungeon and Jubal Van Zandt.

  Shadow Alley Press Mailing List

  WANT TO KEEP UP WITH all of our great books? Then visit Shadow Alley Press and subscribe to our mailing list!

  Prologue

  LAND OF IMMORTALS

  The Land of Immortals? Raijin looked into the empty eyeholes in the ghostly blue woman’s head. Through them, he watched the indigo waterfall behind her churning the water in the shallow pool. The ripple and flow stuttered strangely, plagued by stops and skips.

  The woman laughed and held out one pale blue hand to him. Raijin reached for it, the attempt like lifting a millstone from a pool of mud. The very air seemed to suck his arm down. His own flesh was rendered in bluish charcoal smears just a shade darker than the rocks and trees surrounding the water, and he moved in the same halting skips as the waterfall, as if he were only seeing glimpses of the motion.

  The woman watched him struggle, clearly amused. “Are you truly so weak, Thunderer?”

  Shaking her head, she made up the distance between their hands without a hint of the clumsy pauses and pulled Raijin easily to his feet. He stifled a wince as pain shot through the ribs along his right side, broken by that huge red beast.

  “Remind me never to die in the mortal world.” The ghostly woman studied him. “You must have fallen all the way back to a Tier 0.”

  Though the air in this place was thick, like wet smoke, Raijin’s lungs struggled to pull in enough to stop his head from spinning. It felt as if a dozen huge stones had been piled on his chest. Every breath was a great exertion. Unable to force words from his mouth, he gave the woman a halting, graceless bow of thanks.

  “Will we treat each other so formally now?” she asked. “Fine.” She bowed to him with grand, sweeping gestures. “Misuru, Raijin. Raijin, Misuru. We are pleased to make one another’s acquaintance again.”

  Raijin took a deep lungful of air, the heady incense of this place curling in his sinuses, and forced the question from his throat.

  “H-how...” The word hissed over his vocal cords, less spoken than breathed.

  “How do I know we’re pleased to meet each other, or how do I know your name? Or how did I defeat the akane?” Misuru gestured over one pale blue shoulder toward the fleshy red beast she had tossed around like a scrap of cloth. As she did, the creature disintegrated and blew away, the red smoke of its remains stuttering and pausing in intricate eddies and curls against the blue background of the landscape. “Don’t you remember anything?”

  “K-Koida.” Sweat beaded on his temples from the effort it took to speak.

  The woman—Misuru—nodded. “The Dark Dragon. You remember that you have to kill her before she destroys the mortal realm for good.”

  Raijin shook his head in protest. He had saved both Koida and the world this time. He’d followed the correct variation as closely as he could. She should be safe, and the world should as well.

  But then, if he had truly succeeded, he should also be dead.

  “Why...am I...here?” Forcing the words out required full body concentration, as if he were dredging each one up from the soles of his feet. By the time he finished, he was shaking with exhaustion. He dropped to one knee.

  Misuru flopped onto the grass before him, folding her legs beneath her. “When I first saw you, I assumed it was because you had defeated her and were returning home victorious. Given your demotion, however, I think we can safely assume that you’ve been defeated and were sent back to grow stronger for your next battle.”

  “Demotion?”

  “It doesn’t get any lower than Tier 0, Thunderer. You might as well still be mortal.” She tapped her chin with one pale blue finger. “Do you remember that name? Thunderer? Your first life? What about the Ascension? You couldn’t forget that.”

  “Apologies,” Raijin stopped her. “I...don’t...”

  “Nothing?” Her eyeless holes opened wider. “Not even the Treachery?”

  “Please...” He faltered for a moment, both to catch his breath and to search for an appropriate address. Since they’d met, she had spoken to him in a familiar but neutral tone, giving no hint at her station or their relationship. He switched to a respectful familiar tone to be safe. “Please, great immortal sister. Begin as if your lowly brother knows nothing—” He gulped down a painful lungful of air, h
is head pounding. “—and must have even the simplest information explained to him like a child.”

  “You’re lucky you found Misuru, Thunderer. The other immortals are not so forgiving of weakness as I.” She sighed. “Perhaps you had better tell me what you do remember.”

  Chapter One

  PRESENT

  Shyong Liu Yoichi paced his study, his sharp purple eyes glaring down at a coffin of ice.

  The many facets and angles distorted the body frozen inside, but Yoichi knew the face of his enemy. The Ji Yu chieftain had nearly upset the intricate plans Yoichi and his mother had been carefully piecing together over the years.

  Nearly.

  Yoichi had had to take matters into his own hands. His mother hadn’t been happy about that either, but he doubted she actually had the capacity to feel joy. He had stopped the Ji Yu chieftain from ruining all they had worked for; that was all that mattered.

  Now all that remained was to break into this wretched coffin. The chieftain’s vastly overpowered Ro was already gone, lost to the second princess, but if Yoichi could break through, he should be able to perform the Far-Stretching Taproot, one of the core techniques of the Path of the Water Lily. This would allow him to siphon the Ji Yu chieftain’s Ro from Koida and absorb it himself.

  Footsteps in the empty alchemy laboratory outside his study alerted him to his mother’s approach. It could only be her. The rest of the alchemists in the eastern tower had scurried off when their new emperor had sent them away for the night.

  From the quick, clipped pace, Yoichi could tell that his mother was irritated. He should have had the ice coffin dragged to his royal residence. He doubted she would have looked for him there, even now that Hao was dead. In the five years since he had come to court, she had never visited his private chambers, maintaining the façade that they barely knew one another. It was an arrangement he preferred.

  A gracefully aging woman in the robes of a court alchemist stepped between the wooden shelves dividing his study from the laboratory. Yoichi had never grown used to seeing his mother with locks dyed as black as night and brows smudged with charcoal. The disguise was part of her role as Sulyeon, skilled court alchemist, a part she played well enough to fool even the emperor who had been her lover when she was nothing more than a harem girl. Yoichi wondered whether his mother would let her hair return to white now.

  She bowed deeply, exposing the back of her neck.

  “Phoenix Emperor of the Rising Shyong Liu Dynasty,” she said in the tone of a minor official greeting her exalted ruler.

  Yoichi smirked. “I’m alone, Mother, unless you count this chunk of ice. But you’re more than welcome to continue talking up to me.”

  Youn Wha rose, a scowl twisting her face.

  “Have you found a way in?” she asked, switching to the familial tone of a mother to her son. An irritated mother.

  “Not yet.” Yoichi pulled back an open palm to his hip, fingers bent into claws, then slammed his fingertips into the ice coffin. Poisonous black Ro seeped from his fingertips, sliding over the surface, searching for an opening or weakness, trying to dig down like roots into soil, but the fingers of virulent black light couldn’t pierce the ice. He let the technique dissipate, his toxic Ro retreating through his pathways and back into his heartcenter. “It seems to be unbreakable.”

  “You’ve tried to melt it?”

  Yoichi rolled his eyes. As if he were a fool.

  “Over a sufficiently hot fire?” his mother insisted.

  “Fire,” he drawled. “Why did I not think of that? Here I’ve just been breathing on it.”

  “I said sufficiently hot,” she growled between her teeth.

  “Do you consider an all-consuming salt fire sufficient, esteemed Mother?”

  He felt a surge of petty vindication as she turned away, unable to find a flaw in his methods. She grunted and cupped her chin, her colorless eyes scrutinizing the ice much as he’d been doing.

  She returned to the only conclusion she seemed to come to of late: “If you had just followed my carefully wrought plan—if you hadn’t panicked and thrown away everything I’ve been working for from the day you were born—”

  “I salvaged the plan before that Ji Yu scum could tear it apart.”

  “Nonsense,” she snapped. “Hao never would have put aside conquest for peaceable negotiation. He loved the battle too deeply.”

  “You didn’t hear the old fool fawning over the alliance with that tribe of savages,” Yoichi muttered.

  She ignored this, of course, as it would have proven her wrong. “We could have continued siphoning unlimited Ro from the casualties of that endless war, then when the time was ripe, killed Hao and taken back your rightful throne.”

  “Apologies, Mother, but the time was ripe. We would have had no better opportunity to enact our plan once the youngest was married off and swept away to some remote mountain village.”

  “You have the entire Path at your disposal, and yet you fear a few hundred miles?” His mother’s charcoal-smudged brows made her eyeroll overly dramatic. “There is no place where the Water Lily does not take root.”

  Always straight to quoting the Ancient Master, as if he were straying from the Path. He was twice the devotee she had ever been.

  “Even in the heart of a second princess, Mother?”

  The heady scent of lotus blossoms filled Yoichi’s nostrils.

  That’s why I speak to you and not her, the Whisperer breathed in his ear, the soft feminine voice more sensation than sound. Youn Wha follows the Path of the Water Lily, but you, my white-haired hero, are the Water Lily.

  Oblivious to the Whisperer’s encouragement, his mother glared, her eyes glowing black as toxic Ro manifested around her in a sea of deadly waving tentacles. “If you allowed Hao’s youngest daughter to escape alive with the most powerful Ro ever known solely to prove a point, Shyong Liu Yoichi, I will send you to the afterlife myself.”

  “Of course not.” He affected a bored expression because she hated it when he used his court face with her. “If that dim-witted Ji Yu had drank from his own cup, his head would be dangling from the Executioner’s Tree, and Koida would be recovering in the Sun Palace while I led the war against the Ji Yu.” The antidote he had intended to give her was still hidden in the sleeve-pocket of his finest robes. “Ascending through marriage to Koida would have been the best way to ensure the entire empire backed me. As it is, however, the nobles who survived the feast conveniently happen to support the Rising Phoenix Emperor.”

  “By my count, those attending the wedding feast accounted for less than half of the nobility and far fewer ranking officials,” Youn Wha said, arching one smudged brow in challenge. “As long as she lives, the rest could rally behind her.”

  “The news is spreading, Mother. In a day—two at the most—every noble in the empire will believe Koida a murderess,” Yoichi said. It was a regrettable step, one that nullified the possibility of his original plan, but accusing her had been a necessary course correction. “An angry little second princess who didn’t want to be married off. She turned to poison to make a play for the throne, but the wandering hero who held the only other blood claim stopped her. The rest of the court will be all too happy to stand behind the emperor who brought her to justice.”

  “If he does bring her to justice,” his mother said, a cold thread of doubt running through her words. “On that demon beast of hers and with a day’s ride, there’s no telling how far she could have gone by now. I will not clean up this mess for you.”

  She sees a mess where there is opportunity. The Whisperer chuckled softly in his ear. You’re going to make a much better Immortal than she ever could have.

  Hiding his smile behind an appropriately dutiful expression, Yoichi executed a respectful filial bow.

  “Fear not, honored Mother and esteemed grandmaster, your son is well prepared,” he promised. “I’ve called upon the palace’s best trackers and strongest soldiers. They are to be ready to ride out with t
heir new emperor within the hour.”

  Chapter Two

  PRESENT

  Koida’s heart plummeted as Raijin grabbed her hands, his jade eyes burning holes through her. Sick loss overwhelmed her, stronger than anything she could remember ever feeling in her seventeen years.

  “No,” she whispered, trying to pull him close, to keep him. “Don’t go.”

  “Please forgive me,” he begged her.

  His long fingers slipped through her grasp, and he turned away. She reached for him, but he disappeared into the throng filling the feasting hall. Koida wove between the nobles searching for her beloved, but he was gone.

  “Murderess!” Shingti screamed. “You killed our family!”

  The first princess was no longer beautiful and human, but a solid shadow of evil hatred blurring across the feasting hall straight for Koida. The Shingti-thing chopped down nobles and officials as it went, Dual Swords glowing like burning blood, purple eyes blazing with insanity.

  Koida’s body locked in place, paralyzed with fear. A strangled moan slipped from her mouth.

  “Die, murderess!” the Shingti-thing screamed, slaughtering its way closer.

  Tears of terror spilled down Koida’s cheeks, but she stayed rooted to the spot. Shingti was going to kill her, chop her apart, and Koida couldn’t even scream for help.

  In a strangely lucid moment amidst the haze of nightmare, Koida felt the skin down the back of her neck crawl. She clawed at it, trying to scratch away whatever bug was climbing on her, but her fingers fell instead on a scaly rope of muscle about as wide as her smallest finger.

  The rope hissed.

  This time Koida did scream, bolting upright and ripping the snake from her neck. She flung it across the clearing, nearly landing it in the embers of the previous night’s fire.

  A thin adder of purest white, no longer than her hand, coiled tightly on the grass and put its back against a rock from their fire pit. The tiny serpent hissed, its mouth open wide to reveal bright blue insides and disproportionately long fangs. It tucked its blunted arrowhead skull back against its spine, ready to strike.