"It's good to see you again, Li Suyin," Ling Qi greeted her friend brightly as they met among the crowd heading to the earliest of the Elders freely given lessons. Ling Qi thought it would be wise to attend every Elder's lesson at least once, to show respect and see what knowledge was on offer.
Her friend smiled back at her a touch nervously. Li Suyin had begun to grow her powder blue hair out again, and it now reached her shoulders. She shapeless smock she had taken to wearing in her workshop had been replaced with a gown of pale green silk with gold trim. Only the geometrically patterned eyepatch she wore remained the same. "You as well Ling Qi," she greeted politely. "Congratulations on placing so highly in the tournament."
"I could say the same to you," Ling Qi said cheerfully, glancing around at the other disciples, most looked to be only a bit older than them, but there were a scattering of people who looked a bit older as well. In as much as cultivators bore the marks of early aging anyway. "Where do I put my order in for one of your talismans anyway?"
Li Suyin's expression grew bashful. "A-ah, well I should have the first production batch done in a month or so? I will be sure to give you one then."
Ling Qi opened her mouth to protest but a pointed look from her one eyed friend made her close it again. She supposed she didn't have any right to complain about charity. Li Suyin blanched then, her face growing pale. Her reaction was mirrored in a rippling wave through the crowd.
"Good Morning Ling Qi," her friend, Bai Meizhen's voice reached her ears, and Ling Qi turned to find her best friend moving through a wide gap in the crowd, with the same smooth, gliding grace that she always had. Her golden-slit pupiled eyes moved disinterestedly over the disciples gathered before focusing on Ling Qi. "I hope your move has found you well."
"The ceiling is a little low," Ling Qi grumbled, to which Meizhen responded with a raised eyebrow. The pale girl was a full head shorter than her after all. "But I am satisfied, for now," she added cheekily.
"Good morning Miss Bai," Li Suyin greeted timidly from beside her, determined to be polite even while struggling under Bai Meizhen's heavy aura of terror.
Bai Meizhen glanced at her, and gave a shallow nod. "Good Morning," she replied, not unkindly, but with clear disinterest. "Ling Qi, is Cai Renxiang not attending this lecture?"
"She remains busy," Ling Qi replied apologetically. "I will be taking notes for her though," she added, holding up the lacquered case of writing utensils provided for the task.
Meizhen's lips quirked up slightly, and even Li Suyin gave a nervous laugh. "I had wondered when it was that you had decided to be a scholar," Meizhen said dryly.
Ling Qi laughed in reply as they resumed walking toward the lecture area, chatting with her friends. Well chatting with Meizhen, Li Suyin still seemed too nervous to speak up. It was nice. Could she have imagined a year ago that she could walk around with a straight back, and her head held high in a crowd like this?
Putting aside her musings the Elder's venue of choice was no lecture hall. Rather the path lead her and the other disciples into an expansive stone grotto, with a softly bubbling pool at its rear, lit by innumerable softly glowing balls of light scattered across the artfully shaped ceiling. The grotto had clearly never been touched by an artisan's chisel, but it was also clearly shaped artificially all the same. Regular sloping stone benches rose from the mossy ground in concentric half- circles radiating out from the pool at the center, broken here and there by lanes for passage.
Ling Qi and Bai Meizhen took seats near the center, while Li Suyin parted from them with a hurried bow to seat herself nearer the front. Seating herself, Ling Qi was glad that her borrowed writing case unfolded into a tray that could be laid across the lap, as the benches offered no writing surface.
She spent a few more minutes of idle chat with Meizhen as the rest of the disciples filtered in, but soon enough she fell silent as she felt the pressure of a great presence from the center of the room.
The light dimmed, and luminous mist rose from the bubbling pool at the grotto's center, quickly resolving into the shape of a man. The figure that resolved itself from the mist was ancient… and a little unsettling.
The Elder, clad in plain silver robes without ornamentation, was more visibly old than any cultivator Ling Qi had ever seen. His wispy, snow white hair spilled down to his shoulders, matching the long, carefully groomed beard that hung to his waist . His face was a labyrinth of wrinkles, and his eyes had the milky cast of a man blind with age… although a luminous amber light burned in his pupils regardless.
Most unsettlingly, he seemed… not all there, at regular intervals, slow pulses of light traveled through his form, outlining his bones in radiance while his flesh seemed to fade into mist. It felt like she was looking at a ghost.
"Forget one foot in the grave, that guy is already lying down,"Sixiang laughed in her head, drawing a hurried mental shush from Ling Qi, who knew if the Elder could hear her.
The Elder had appeared from the mist seated in a lotus position, hovering a few centimeters above the surface of the water, and for a long minute, he regarded the gathered disciples in silence, stern, heavily wrinkled features giving way to a skeletal rictus before fading back in, only for the cycle to repeat.
"I am Elder Hua Heng," The Elder's voice was dry and scratchy, as if from long disuse, and echoed as if rising from the bottom of a deep hole. "My final years are upon me. I have chosen to spend them spreading knowledge to new generations, be grateful," he spoke bluntly but not in a clipped tone, despite the scratchiness of his voice he had the cadence of a professional lecturer.
"You will not speak while I am lecturing, nor interrupt in any way," he continued without pause. "There will be a time allotted for questions at the end of the session. Am I understood?"
The chorus of confirmation from the disciples seemed satisfactory to Elder Heng.
"Then allow me to begin the lecture on advanced qi theory," he began smoothly as the last voices fell silent. "You are, each and every one of you a cultivator who has either reached the third realm or will in the near future. A significant number of you will even achieve the fourth, or perhaps higher realms. As such, it is important to ground yourself in the deeper lore of how qi functions. The simple pattern imitation of lower realms will not avail you as you advance toward the peak of the third realm and beyond," Ling Qi carefully transcribed his every word, her brush flying across the page with a speed and grace that would have been impossible for her mere months ago.
"The first piece of knowledge that you must scribe into your mind is that qi is fundamental to all things," As the ghostly man spoke, ribbons of water rose from the water beneath him, twining around his seated form in an intricate display of control. "It is the clay from which we were shaped by the hands of Those Who Were, and it is the true form of all things. The earth and the sky are composed of qi, as is the flame and the heavenly bolt."
The mist and the waters shaped themselves above and around the Elder, shaping a scene of two indistinct but titanic figures locked in battle with innumerable things of terrible shape. "However, this world is impure. Stained by the blood and essence of those who sought our destruction ere the world was born, it is riddled with toxin and corruption. Age, disease, all the maladies of the mortal condition are born from this impurity. The art of cultivation then, is expelling ever more of this impurity, until the body and soul are fully cleansed," his scratchy voice rang out over the silent grotto as the shapes in the water and mist faded, splashing back into the pool.
"It is a task beyond the vast majority of us," He continued dryly, gesturing to himself. "All things in this world are composed of qi and impurities, and straining out the whole of the latter is a task only the most talented may ever accomplish."
Ling Qi nodded along as she copied down his words, it had not been laid out clearly to her, but she had picked up the gist of this.
"This truth then, leads to our subject matter proper. Arts are exercises and patterns of qi which bring about certain effects. Once created and refined, they may be copied by the less talented or powerful to shape the world according to the method of the arts creator. This is accomplished by expelling qi through the shaped channels carved by your efforts through the morass of corruption which separates the soul from the physical world. The exact shape of the channel and numerous other factors determine the effect., but also limit the number of patterns a cultivator is capable of making use of," Elder Heng continued. "Over time, carving new channels becomes nearly impossible, while the complexity of the patterns needed for powerful arts continues to rise."
Ling Qi had worried over this quite a bit, as she grew better at puzzling out the requirements for her arts.
"However, the patterns used in arts are just that, structures designed to create an effect. In the third realm, a cultivator has the potency of spirit to shape these flows more directly, and personalize them for greater efficiency. In the end, no pattern made by another will match one cultivated and tailored to oneself in that regard. The focus of my lectures then, will be in giving you the tools to do so for yourselves, going forward," he raised one hand, ina gesture for them to pause. "However. It is unwise to attempt to reshape your meridians before the Threshold Stage of Green Soul. Until you reach this level, do not attempt direct manipulation of meridians. Until that time, satisfy yourself with simply making your arts more efficient."
Ling Qi leaned forward eagerly as the Elder continued to speak, launching into an explanation on the meditative exercises one could perform to discover and refine the inefficiencies in an art one practiced.
Efficiency Upgrades Unlocked for next turn.
Arts which have two or more meridians of the same type may now be made more efficient by combining two of it's meridians of the same category. This type of cultivation is considered a meridian roll and requires a number of successes equal to five times the number of meridians used for the art. However each efficiency upgrade past the first increases the successes required by 20. Only arts which are mastered may be made more efficient.
More advanced forms may be unlocked later
After the lesson, Ling Qi must decide what to do next.
[] Visit Gu Xiulan, she did not see her at the lesson.
[] Visit Li Suyin's workshop, if she will allow it. Ling Qi was curious about her project.
[] Cai Renxiang was not expecting her back until later, but Ling Qi could check in on her.
