Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Author's Note and Acknowledgments
Prologue
Chapter 1: True North Country
Chapter 2: Journey into the Deep
Chapter 3: Haijing City
Chapter 4: Through Will Alone
Chapter 5: Unfamiliar Home
Chapter 6: Remnants of Red Dust
Chapter 7: Marginalized
Chapter 8: First, Master the Elements
Chapter 9: Shark Bait
Chapter 10: Interference
Chapter 11: A Special Flame
Chapter 12: Transcendent Tribulation
Chapter 13: Sea God Royal Family
Chapter 14: Red Dust of the Mortal World
Chapter 15: Changing the World
Chapter 16: A Night to Remember
Chapter 17: Pushing Past the Peak
Chapter 18: Creation and Destruction
Interlude: Shifting Tides
Chapter 19: Market of Souls
Chapter 20: Destiny’s Strings
Chapter 21: Bounce
Chapter 22: The Scarcest Resource
Chapter 23: Heaven Ascension
Chapter 24: Transcendent Ocean
Chapter 25: Sea God’s Puzzle
Chapter 26: Sea God’s Inheritance
Chapter 27: Frustration
Chapter 28: Changes in Haijing
Interlude: Tides of War
Chapter 29: Progress
Chapter 30: Elation
Chapter 31: Challenge
Chapter 32: Reality
Chapter 33: Support
Chapter 34: Crossing Swords
Chapter 35: The Stillness of Time
Epilogue: The Taotie Rises
A Note to Readers
Further Reading
The Cultivation Systems
About the Author
Shifting Tides
Book 7 of Painting the Mists
by Patrick G. Laplante
Copyright © 2019 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.
Shifting Tides 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, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-989578-04-9
Other Painting the Mists books:
Clear Sky
Blood Moon
Light in the Darkness
Pure Jade
Corrupted Crimson
Kindling
Shifting Tides
Shattered Lands (forthcoming)
Violet Fate Duology:
Violet Heart
Converging Fate (forthcoming)
Dedication
To my wife. No road is too long when in the right company.
Author’s Note and Acknowledgments
It’s December as I write this. The weather in Beijing, though cold, is far from unbearable. My writing continues to go well, and I can dedicate increasing amounts of time to it, having recently reduced my regular workload. Life is good, and it’s about to get better: Soon my wife and I will be traveling to Canada to for our wedding reception, having been legally married in China a couple of months ago. I’ll be taking a three-week vacation from writing during that time.
The more I write, the more I see things that I would have done differently had I known better. Some of these things cannot be fixed. Others, though they can be, shouldn’t be. I think it’s high time, however, that I fix one important thing: choice. Not for me, but for you, the reader.
Writing is a journey. Like any other profession, it’s easy to find mistakes in retrospect. One that I noticed when writing an author’s note for Violet Heart, the book before this one, was that I tended to frame my books for the reader. On a whim, I deleted it. I realized that I often fall into the habit of explaining what my books are about in advance, before even delivering the story.
This now strikes me as wrong on many different levels. For one, if I need to explain anything outside my story, it wasn’t delivered properly, like a joke you need to explain after the fact. For another, everyone interprets a book differently. By explaining my intent up front, I take that away. I take away an important train of thought from the reader: What was the author trying to convey? That, and it makes my writing sound preachy. So from now on, I won’t be doing that. I’ll be keeping my author’s notes short, if I chose to leave them in at all, and merging them with the Acknowledgments.
For this book, a special thank-you goes out to my wife, Xing Wen. We’ve been legally married here in China and will be holding our wedding reception in late December. Please wish us luck in the upcoming year. I’d also like to thank my parents and hers, my brothers, and my sister, who continue to support us.
I’d like to thank this book’s beta readers: Dave Yeung, Aljoscha Volk, and Drew Kennedy. They helped me flesh out some parts of the story that were lacking and spotting many mistakes that I, as the auther, can easily miss.
Thank you to all my friends once again. We’ve kept in touch since moving to China, which has been a tremendous pillar of emotional support.
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.
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.
That’s all for today, as I don’t want to keep you away from Cha Ming, the others, and their story. I hope you enjoy reading this book as much as I enjoyed writing it.
Cheers,
Patrick
Prologue
Icy puddles cracked as Zhou Li walked on the hard clay road. It wasn’t hard because it was dry but because of the rain from the night before. It was November—yes, that was the month’s name—in the season called “autumn.” A house burned in the distance, and many tendrils of smoke spewed out from cracks in its distorted walls. There were no screams, nor sounds of alarm. The inhabitants were dead, and their neighbors fast asleep.
He could faintly see the starry sky through the billowing clouds of smoke. The country skies, unpolluted by light and smog, revealed a vivid picture of swirling lights. Through his seer’s eyes, he could see certain trails, certain signs; paths that he must walk but others he mustn’t travel. But watching through the smoke wasn’t perfect. And so he stepped up above the smoke, and then higher. He appeared on the edge of the stratosphere, where he looked back at Earth in contempt. It was an insignificant planet in an unnaturally
