The Bad Apothecary

Release plans:

• As a serial on Royal Road – Dec 18 2025
  Find it here.
• In print and ebook – Jan 26th 2026

Blurb:

Diwu stumbles into the capital half-dead—wounded by something no healer can cure. Nestled in her flesh is a strange pathogen carrying corruption, the antithesis of the Natural Order.

Desperate, she trades freedom for survival and falls into the grip of the Hierarchy—a ruthless organization that keeps power in check by any means necessary. Their offer: treatment in exchange for loyalty.

Her first assignment entangles her with Nex Teres, a battle-hardened cultivator with no interest in playing agent. But the Hierarchy doesn’t ask—it coerces. Bound by duty and circumstance, they’re sent to a lawless outpost where Diwu was first infected—and where the name of a long-dead legend has surfaced: the Bad Apothecary.

Writing sample: here.

Book 2

Preliminary Blurb:

Diwu and Nex return to Central City, where they must integrate into the Hierarchy. Following orders and completing assignments and meeting their new team members. While Diwu conceals the dangerous changes stirring within her—fearing the Hierarchy’s reaction, if they knew—a series of events unfolds and promises trouble.

Several bodies, similar to ones found in Stone Sky City appear, raising many questions. Then a devastating strike tears through one of Quy’s most powerful Houses, using an extraordinary weapon unlike anything the agents ever faced. The attack drags the Hierarchy into a conflict it would rather avoid, and somehow the bodies are tied to it.

Do the strange deaths trace back to someone from Diwu and Nex’s past? And what secrets does the weapon that was used hold? While grappling with finding the culprits Diwu has a more personal problem to solve: How to become extraordinary.

[Cover to be revealed]