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the system is designed to keep the poor and illiterate in their place.
“Power dictates acceptability,”
Maybe you were the best test taker your tutor has ever seen! But guess what? It takes more than memorizing a few Classics to be a martial artist. “Every year we get someone like you, some country bumpkin who thinks that just because they were good at taking some test, they deserve my time and attention. Understand this, southerner. The exam proves nothing.
Damn he really clocked her ass
Lia Matas liked this
Better to get the blood out this way, she thought, all at once, rather than slowly, every month, for years. While
Rin glared up at her, blood dripping from her mouth, and smiled.
“Well, that’s because you’re a dark little peasant brat who can’t pronounce your r’s,” Jiang said breezily.
He keeps reading her to filth lol
“Well, it was a kid’s story after all,” said Kitay. “And genocide is a little depressing.”
“You want to know what happened to you during the Tournament.” Jiang cocked his head to the side. “Here is what happened: you called a god, and the god answered.”
He looked smug. “Supernatural is a word for anything that doesn’t fit your present understanding of the world.
there is power in awareness.”
It feels good to hate, doesn’t it? Up until now you’ve been storing your anger up and using it as fuel.
“You will be asked to do what I refused to do,” said the Woman. “You will be offered power beyond your imagination. But I warn you, little warrior. The price of power is pain. The Pantheon controls the fabric of the universe. To deviate from their premeditated order you must give them something in return. And for the gifts of the Phoenix, you will pay the most. The Phoenix wants suffering. The Phoenix wants blood.” “I have blood in abundance,” Rin answered. She had no idea what possessed her to say it, but she continued. “I can give the Phoenix what it desires, if the Phoenix gives me power.”
...more
A thought occurred to her. “So what happens when we die?” Jiang raised an eyebrow. “I think you can answer that.” She mulled over this for a moment. “We go back to the world of spirit. We—we leave the illusion. We wake up.” Jiang nodded. “We don’t die so much as we return to the void. We dissolve. We lose our ego. We change from being just one thing to becoming everything. Most of us, at least.”
War doesn’t determine who’s right. War determines who remains.”
They made a startlingly good team. Rin covered for Nezha’s overstretched attacks; Nezha guarded Rin’s lower corners. They were each intimately familiar with the other’s weaknesses: Rin knew Nezha was slow to bring his guard back up after missed blows; Nezha parried from above while Rin ducked in low for close-quarters attacks.
Fighting the urge to look up character art becaue thats how i keep spoiling shit for myself
“You saw what the Gatekeeper did to the east wall. His Seal is breaking, Daji. He’s a bigger threat than the Federation.”
Oh shit I didnt even make the connection til now
“How do you exist?” he asked quietly. “I thought I was the only one left.”
Well this is all going to hurt
Altan halted beside her. He glanced down at her dumbfounded expression, and he smiled. “Never seen the ocean before?”
“It is not a love story.”
Men and women had been thrown against the walls of buildings. They remained frozen there with a kind of ghastly adhesion, pinned like preserved butterflies. The intense pressure from the bombs had torn off their clothes; they hung naked like a grotesque display of the human form.
“They were buried,” he said, disgusted. “They were buried up to the waist and set upon by dogs.”
Rin saw the angle at which Venka’s arms had been twisted, and knew there was only one way they could have gotten like that.
This is the start of the part that makes people DNF apparently and idk if i am ready
Rin left Venka’s room and set off at a run. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t speak.
I feel physically ill and had to take a break and cry
He pressed his forehead against hers for a long time. She closed her eyes. She drank in the sensation of her skin against his. She seared it into her memory. “You’re so much stronger than I am,” said Altan. Then he let her go.
A great column of flame erupted from the site of Altan’s immolation.
WHAT
The Phoenix could not help what it craved; it was an agent of destruction, and it needed an avatar. Rin could give it one. Don’t, cried the ghost of Mai’rinnen Tearza. “Do it,” Rin whispered. “Your will is mine,” said the Phoenix.
Awwww shiiiiit
Few had died with such grace as Altan Trengsin. They said their goodbyes at sunrise. The entire contingent gathered on the front deck, solemn in their black robes. The ritual was no Nikara ceremony. It was a Speerly ceremony.
Pain
“They believed that their bodies were only temporary. From ash we come, and to ash we return. To the Speerlies, death was not an end but only a great reunion. Altan has left us to go home. Altan has returned to Speer.”
They were allies, now, bound by the mutual atrocities they had committed.
