EternalObserver
eYe Gaze baCk
- Location
- The Void
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Threads Of Destiny(Eastern Fantasy, Sequel to Forge of Destiny)
- Thread starter yrsillar
- Start date
- Original Users' Choice!
Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
- Location
- United States of America
Nani?!!? The heck....
Yeah no dude sorry but your way late.
LQ actually LIKES cai rexiang and wouldnt want to fuck her over like that.
Secondly you reallly really should reread the story if you dont understand it's an EMPIRE setting and regardless of what LQ chose there would be politics and political choices and chains.
Lq doesnt desire FREEDOM she desires freedom of choice, and she chose to go on this path becuase it's a way into power, and for her to change things .
People have def kept in mind what LQ would choose IC and theres a large large group of people who care about narrative choices. We all want for it to be a good story as well , so Yrs can succeed and we all can enjoy it.
Theres no way LQ could have just "went on adventures and had a grand ol time" in this setting. It doesnt work like that .
Also it seems you've failed to realise LQ is still growing and learning about her own biases , her lack of knowledge, her internal struggles. And what she wants in life. And right now she wants to be in this hurricane of political change and history in the making . Not just cus material benefit but becuase LQ is not a girl that rest on her laurels
I mean, short term, maybe - if we stack SCS and LFWT as our two stealth arts and they aren't excessively redundent with each other.
Long term though? Once SCS drops off we'll want a second stealth art again.
- Location
- California
This is a very good argument for not going with Cai if you value Ling Qi having a perfectly consistent character arc. I think the reason we went with Cai is that we valued other things more. It wasn't just the material benefits, there were benefits to the story as well. We can far more easily affect the events of the world as Cai's vassal then if we simply stayed in the sect, especially with the upcoming war. I personally greatly enjoy stories where the main character can have significant effects on the world stage, although I understand if you're not looking for such things in this story.
If you value a consistent character arc though, your strategy is not a good idea. Even if yrsillar tried to make it work, it would likely be the most awkward character development in the series so far, simply due to how drastic the change is. Ling Qi's decision to join CRX, even if it wasn't a perfect example of character development, could be justified fairly easily. It would be a lot harder to justify this.
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> Glances at most recent update
WellOk.jpg
> Glances at how even being Renxiangs vassal doesnt stop them from going after her
WellOk.jpg
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Well, obviosly some interaction with the political side is inevitable unless Ling Qi wants to drop her friends too, which would be stupid.
But I did not see it specified anywhere in the main story (if it was specified in the rules I apolgize, as I said I'm a reader, I don't care for the game rules that much) that the goal of the story is for Ling Qi to become the emperor (or something less exagerated), or at least not by talking her way into it. You have to consider that if she becomes strong enough some time into the far future, she could just do all that stuff without asking anyone's permission.
But anyway, if your opinion represents what most other people here agree with, there is nothing more for me to say.
I didn't post to argue further, but I do believe you might be doing yrsillar a disservice in terms of the prospects of the story on RoyalRoad and other sites like that.
- Location
- The Maple Syrup Mountains
I wasn't here for the Cai vote (and what I'm told was a debate of truly epic scale) so I can't really speak to the thought process about it, but I have a few comments apart from that:Hello,
This is my first time posting here and I would first like to say that I'm a total noob at this type of quest, so I apologize if some of what I'm going to say is not quite right in the context of the quest, or if parts have been said before in one way or another. This is also not exactly the right timing for this post considering the events happening right now in the story, but I just got caught up and I feel like I need to post this.
I came across this quest after reading Forge of Destiny on RoyalRoad and then finishing the previous quest here.
My perspective is primarily as a reader and not as a "player" in the quest.
The main point of this post is to express my frustration with the way the story has been progressing recently and perhaps give some ideas how this can possibly be fixed, assuming there is a majority of people here who would agree with my points.
Let me start by saying that even though this is the first quest like this one that I've even read, let alone participated in, I do understand that one of the primary (if not the most important) goals of the quest is to make the main character grow as quickly as possible and get as strong as possible.
On the other hand, I do believe that the story itself is just as important, and for me - much more so.
Saying this, and I hope this doesn't insult anyone involved, I feel like the people who have been part of the majority on certain decisions, have been making straight up terrible choices based on trying to get the most "benefit" for Ling Qi, rather than basing the choice on what actually makes sense for her character based on her personality traits and the story as a whole.
The main bad decision in my mind, which has been leading to worse and worse developments in the story, has been the decision to become Cai Renxiang's vassal. The story as a whole started out great in the first quest and then somewhere towards the end of that quest and the majority of the current one, has been rapidly going downhill for me in terms of enjoyment, and I think it's all because of that.
The problem is that by being involved with Cai Renxiang, this will just lead to more and more politicking and less and less actual fun adventures and interesting situations. I don't know about you guys, but if I wanted to read about boring crap like politics I'd go read a newspaper, not a cultivation xianxia story... I also don't understand why people like to overcomplicate stories with this kind of stuff, when they were already great to begin with without all that.
As a further argument of why this doesn't even make sense in the context of the story, one of the absolute core traits of Ling Qi's personality has been (or at least was in the beginning) her desire to have freedom of choice. Now, I know some of you have previously argued that her choice to become Renxiang's retainer is an expression of that freedom and it makes sense why she would want to move away from the struggle and uncertainty she has always had in her life by directly attaching herself to someone powerful.
However, and I say this as a person who also has this personality trait where freedom of choice is one of the most important things for me, I can tell you that someone who thinks this way would absolutely never, under any circumstance, place themselves in a subordinate relationship where they aren't allowed to deny an order from their superior and also aren't allowed to quit. This basically takes away all freedom of choice in the context of that relationship, assuming the goals don't always align (which let's be real, they won't). For Ling Qi this would be the equivalent of being a slave, and it just makes no sense that she would ever agree to put herself in that situation.
Now, since it's already too late to change the initial decision, and the story has already been moving in this direction for a while, the question is whether there is any way to change the direction, assuming the majority opinion has changed since then.
Obviously, if the majority of people still believe the way the story is currently going is the right way, then this story is simply no longer for me and I'll leave it at that.
I do urge people to not only think of the material benefits for Ling Qi though, because if you consider it, if she doesn't entangle herself with politics, then there is really not that much reason why she needs to grow super quickly in her cultivation. You can't convince me that there's no way she can't just do her own thing and ignore all the nobles without them aggressively going after her. Some perhaps would have personal grudges depending on her actions (like maybe a little thievery here and there), but that can be dealt with on her own. She is already strong enough to take care of her family and it's not like she will stop if she doesn't have excessive resources. Who knows, if she goes exploring and adventuring, it might actually end up being better than being gifted things. Of course, her life would be less secure and probably more of a struggle, but hasn't this always been the case before? Why would she be afraid of that?
Now, even though I have never really participated in a similar quest before, I'll give you my shot at how it may be possible to change the future direction of the story, while at the same time (I believe) this will make for a much more interesting story in the current quest as well.
Firstly, my main idea for detaching Ling Qi from the vassaldom would be to "fail" at achieving the necessary sect rank at the end of the period Cai Shenhua gave Ling Qi, and have her force Cai Renxiang to drop Ling Qi as a retainer (might have to fail pretty spectacularly). If Ling Qi also manages to distance her relationship (at least on a professional level) from Cai Renxiang before that, it's likely Renxiang won't fight her mother too much on that point. She might be able to do that by becoming seemingly more and more mediocre over time, and making small mistakes here and there just enough to frustrate Renxiang.
Obviously, doing this openly would be extremely dangerous since if Cai Shenhua catches wind that Ling Qi is doing this on purpuse, she mind just end up killing her. It is also likely that Cai Renxiang will see this plan coming and simply force Ling Qi to do her best.
So, this has to be done in a way that's not obvious.
To get this started, Ling Qi has to first start seeing the problems with where the vassaldom will lead her. I believe she already has started seeing some signs that her choice might've been a mistake. She does not like the social events Cai Renxiang is forcing on her and she also has problems with some other aspects of what will be expected of her (like marriage, playing diplomat, etc).
It would probably be fairly easy to get Ling Qi to realize she has to stop this before it goes too far.
At that point, she needs to make a plan that would make sense and be secretive enough that no one will find out. In order to do that, one idea I can come up with would be to start building Ling Qi's relationship with Bao Qingling soonish, so that by the time she figures out that she needs to escape the vassaldom, she may be close enough to Bao Qingling for her to share her secret method of hiding her cultivation. How the relationship could be built to that point would also be difficult, but maybe going with options that include Suyin and Bao Qingling until some relationship starts forming might be the way.
At that point, Ling Qi can slowly start to "fall behind" on her cultivation and then start incorporating small failures over the course of her work with Renxiang.
She could also lose a duel or two on purpose by choosing opponents that are seemingly within her range to defeat but are still stronger than her.
Eventually, she won't have a high enough rank at the end and also will no longer seem as capable in the eyes of Renxiang (and eventually Shenhua), as she does now.
That was it for my wall of text. I hope some of the above made sense and people would consider it.
- Ling Qi is already a vassal of Cai Renxiang, and I don't think that's going to go away. That is, if we fail her expectations I think we're more likely to be relegated to some border fief without much value than to be released from vassalage. This might not change anything, but it's worth noting.
- Ling Qi as a person is not an underachiever. While she probably would only chafe at intentionally throwing a match or two for the sake of her goals, I find it unlikely she'd ever settle for being a random Baroness on the border. The Cai route is a path to great power and influence and I can't really see Ling Qi giving that up unless it's to pursue a path with even greater potential rewards.
- Holding your continued readership hostage when you talk about the future of the story... well, it's honest, but I can't say it doesn't leave a bad taste in my mouth. You don't seem to be saying it in a malicious way, but it's still a rather adversarial tactic that probably causes more harm than good to the discussion.
- I trust yrsillar to write interesting stuff, no matter what path we take. Even if we do end up on a path with a ton of repetitive generic politics work, I imagine yrsillar would show us that once or twice and then, once we get the context, shift to keeping it mostly in the background unless something comes up. He wants to write interesting stories as much as we want to read interesting stories, after all.
- Location
- United States
[] The ethereal green lights of the Grinning Moon.
I may have missed a pretty big detail somewhere along the way, but I have never seen any indication in the actual story that Ling Qi actually wants to be a noble. So why would she care about being merely a Baroness (at least for the moment)?
But apart from that, as I said, I haven't really gone super indepth into the worldbuilding outside of what's in the main story, so if the result would be what you are saying it would be (aka there's no chance the vassaldom is getting dropped at this point), then I agree it would be a stupid decision to try.
And don't get me wrong, I think yrsillar is actually a great writer, if I didn't think so I wouldn't have read the story to begin with. I'm actually very unlikely to stop reading based on just this (even though I may have expressed it that way), but I wouldn't enjoy it as much. I know this is just one opinion, but I doubt I'm the only one who feels that way (at least from the people who started reading on RR).
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- Location
- United States
[X] The ethereal green lights of the Grinning Moon.
He can speak well enough for himself on that front.
Criticism is welcome, but I think youre laboring under a few misunderstandings of the setting that are affecting your enjoyment. The first and most important is that, for all that Ling Qi is the protagonist, the world is not her oyster.
Theres a great deal of inequality and danger even in Imperial lands, and fear of those things is what drove Ling Qi to desire freedom, even to the point of hardship and self sabotage. She's never going to be Empress, because while she is special...
She isn't that special
- Location
- Space
As I understood it the main reason for the Cai decision was that every increment of personal power majorly decreases the extent to which people can constrain your options or push you around. That being said, I'm sympathetic if that side of it isn't working for you.Hello,
This is my first time posting here and I would first like to say that I'm a total noob at this type of quest, so I apologize if some of what I'm going to say is not quite right in the context of the quest, or if parts have been said before in one way or another. This is also not exactly the right timing for this post considering the events happening right now in the story, but I just got caught up and I feel like I need to post this.
I came across this quest after reading Forge of Destiny on RoyalRoad and then finishing the previous quest here.
My perspective is primarily as a reader and not as a "player" in the quest.
The main point of this post is to express my frustration with the way the story has been progressing recently and perhaps give some ideas how this can possibly be fixed, assuming there is a majority of people here who would agree with my points.
Let me start by saying that even though this is the first quest like this one that I've even read, let alone participated in, I do understand that one of the primary (if not the most important) goals of the quest is to make the main character grow as quickly as possible and get as strong as possible.
On the other hand, I do believe that the story itself is just as important, and for me - much more so.
Saying this, and I hope this doesn't insult anyone involved, I feel like the people who have been part of the majority on certain decisions, have been making straight up terrible choices based on trying to get the most "benefit" for Ling Qi, rather than basing the choice on what actually makes sense for her character based on her personality traits and the story as a whole.
The main bad decision in my mind, which has been leading to worse and worse developments in the story, has been the decision to become Cai Renxiang's vassal. The story as a whole started out great in the first quest and then somewhere towards the end of that quest and the majority of the current one, has been rapidly going downhill for me in terms of enjoyment, and I think it's all because of that.
The problem is that by being involved with Cai Renxiang, this will just lead to more and more politicking and less and less actual fun adventures and interesting situations. I don't know about you guys, but if I wanted to read about boring crap like politics I'd go read a newspaper, not a cultivation xianxia story... I also don't understand why people like to overcomplicate stories with this kind of stuff, when they were already great to begin with without all that.
As a further argument of why this doesn't even make sense in the context of the story, one of the absolute core traits of Ling Qi's personality has been (or at least was in the beginning) her desire to have freedom of choice. Now, I know some of you have previously argued that her choice to become Renxiang's retainer is an expression of that freedom and it makes sense why she would want to move away from the struggle and uncertainty she has always had in her life by directly attaching herself to someone powerful.
However, and I say this as a person who also has this personality trait where freedom of choice is one of the most important things for me, I can tell you that someone who thinks this way would absolutely never, under any circumstance, place themselves in a subordinate relationship where they aren't allowed to deny an order from their superior and also aren't allowed to quit. This basically takes away all freedom of choice in the context of that relationship, assuming the goals don't always align (which let's be real, they won't). For Ling Qi this would be the equivalent of being a slave, and it just makes no sense that she would ever agree to put herself in that situation.
Now, since it's already too late to change the initial decision, and the story has already been moving in this direction for a while, the question is whether there is any way to change the direction, assuming the majority opinion has changed since then.
Obviously, if the majority of people still believe the way the story is currently going is the right way, then this story is simply no longer for me and I'll leave it at that.
I do urge people to not only think of the material benefits for Ling Qi though, because if you consider it, if she doesn't entangle herself with politics, then there is really not that much reason why she needs to grow super quickly in her cultivation. You can't convince me that there's no way she can't just do her own thing and ignore all the nobles without them aggressively going after her. Some perhaps would have personal grudges depending on her actions (like maybe a little thievery here and there
Now, even though I have never really participated in a similar quest before, I'll give you my shot at how it may be possible to change the future direction of the story, while at the same time (I believe) this will make for a much more interesting story in the current quest as well.
Firstly, my main idea for detaching Ling Qi from the vassaldom would be to "fail" at achieving the necessary sect rank at the end of the period Cai Shenhua gave Ling Qi, and have her force Cai Renxiang to drop Ling Qi as a retainer (might have to fail pretty spectacularly). If Ling Qi also manages to distance her relationship (at least on a professional level) from Cai Renxiang before that, it's likely Renxiang won't fight her mother too much on that point. She might be able to do that by becoming seemingly more and more mediocre over time, and making small mistakes here and there just enough to frustrate Renxiang.
Obviously, doing this openly would be extremely dangerous since if Cai Shenhua catches wind that Ling Qi is doing this on purpuse, she mind just end up killing her. It is also likely that Cai Renxiang will see this plan coming and simply force Ling Qi to do her best.
So, this has to be done in a way that's not obvious.
To get this started, Ling Qi has to first start seeing the problems with where the vassaldom will lead her. I believe she already has started seeing some signs that her choice might've been a mistake. She does not like the social events Cai Renxiang is forcing on her and she also has problems with some other aspects of what will be expected of her (like marriage, playing diplomat, etc).
It would probably be fairly easy to get Ling Qi to realize she has to stop this before it goes too far.
At that point, she needs to make a plan that would make sense and be secretive enough that no one will find out. In order to do that, one idea I can come up with would be to start building Ling Qi's relationship with Bao Qingling soonish, so that by the time she figures out that she needs to escape the vassaldom, she may be close enough to Bao Qingling for her to share her secret method of hiding her cultivation. How the relationship could be built to that point would also be difficult, but maybe going with options that include Suyin and Bao Qingling until some relationship starts forming might be the way.
At that point, Ling Qi can slowly start to "fall behind" on her cultivation and then start incorporating small failures over the course of her work with Renxiang.
She could also lose a duel or two on purpose by choosing opponents that are seemingly within her range to defeat but are still stronger than her.
Eventually, she won't have a high enough rank at the end and also will no longer seem as capable in the eyes of Renxiang (and eventually Shenhua), as she does now.
That was it for my wall of text. I hope some of the above made sense and people would consider it.
The main issues with trying to get out from under Renxiang is that Shenhua would know if she asked us to make an accounting of ourselves and that we'd still be a vassal to Shenhua even if we're not serving Renxiang directly which is an even worse position with respect to taking orders since our liege would still be able to order us to do whatever but wouldn't be as personally invested in us or as well paying. (Well, that and that both Ling Qi and a lot of us in the thread actually like Renxiang.)
Your specific tactic raises the additional issue that cultivators only have so much time at each stage before their progress slows and it's not clear exactly how much we'd be giving up by intentionally skipping out on that time.
Because the Empire wont let her escape the shackels of responsibility.
And Ling Qi is not able to be free of their rules
Essentially, she lacks the power to live life on her terms. Renxiang can help change that. Being a hobo will not.
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I had two chief reactions to this update, in no particular order:
Random cultivator: "Why does this Ling Qi get to enjoy such direct favor from Great Spirits?"
The moon: "Because her path will reach the heights necessary."
Random cultivator: "How do you know that for sure?"
The moon: "Because she enjoys such direct favor from Great Spirits."
Random cultivator: "..."
The second is that the Hill People being migratory is pretty interesting. There's been various bits of speculation over the background of Ling Qi's father at this point, but groups of travelling entertainers are a decidedly plausible dilluted fragmented continuation of the ethnic group "Who sang songs to spirits of wind and rain, and played games of riddles and wordplay with terrestrial spirits to barter for boons and cultivation.". It is in no way necessary or definitive that Ling Qi's father's lineage traces through the Hill people, merely an intriguing possibility with a new nugget of potential support.
First, Ling Qi has always had a complicated relationship between Freedom and Power. At the start, her concern was chiefly with securing Freedom from Power, but as she progressed with her cultivation, learned more, and began to have the courage and confidence to connect with others that started to change. Vitally, the nature of the Celestial Empire and its culture, and Ling Qi was discovering this, is that there is no way to escape being subordinate to someone else. Cultivators have great power and enjoy many personal freedoms, but due to the ever-looming existential threat of spirits, beasts, and barbarians cultivators are also a vital national resource whose freedoms are bound for the (theoretically) public good. The entire structure of the culture is built around leveraging cultivators as pillars of security. They're institutions, the grander they are the more others they're bound to in obligation. At the same time, around the moment of Ling Qi's decision with Cai she was pretty ignorant of anything but the broad strokes, not understanding the finer points of the ramifications of any of her available courses of action.
In the end though, Ling Qi chose Cai Renxiang, in significant if not exclusive part, in the pursuit of power with which to make her own decisions. She made her decision with the belief that the unique advantages of the offer would best enable her the resources and clout to provide for her family. It's been somewhat restrictive in unexpected ways, but surprisingly loose in others. Mostly I think because of Renxiang's peculiar outlooks.
Eidt: Uhhhh, to wrap up my introduced-then-forgotten rhetorical device, picking a position under Cai Renxiang was a way to pursue Freedom through Power. Political power! And money power!
Random cultivator: "Why does this Ling Qi get to enjoy such direct favor from Great Spirits?"
The moon: "Because her path will reach the heights necessary."
Random cultivator: "How do you know that for sure?"
The moon: "Because she enjoys such direct favor from Great Spirits."
Random cultivator: "..."
The second is that the Hill People being migratory is pretty interesting. There's been various bits of speculation over the background of Ling Qi's father at this point, but groups of travelling entertainers are a decidedly plausible dilluted fragmented continuation of the ethnic group "Who sang songs to spirits of wind and rain, and played games of riddles and wordplay with terrestrial spirits to barter for boons and cultivation.". It is in no way necessary or definitive that Ling Qi's father's lineage traces through the Hill people, merely an intriguing possibility with a new nugget of potential support.
I want to first say that I respect your sentiments here, and your confidence in expressing them. Cai vassalage wasn't my first choice, and indeed I did not vote for it. However, I think there's a few things that you're overlooking or underestimating in your analysis of Ling Qi's character.Hello,
This is my first time posting here and I would first like to say that I'm a total noob at this type of quest, so I apologize if some of what I'm going to say is not quite right in the context of the quest, or if parts have been said before in one way or another. This is also not exactly the right timing for this post considering the events happening right now in the story, but I just got caught up and I feel like I need to post this.
I came across this quest after reading Forge of Destiny on RoyalRoad and then finishing the previous quest here.
My perspective is primarily as a reader and not as a "player" in the quest.
The main point of this post is to express my frustration with the way the story has been progressing recently and perhaps give some ideas how this can possibly be fixed, assuming there is a majority of people here who would agree with my points.
Let me start by saying that even though this is the first quest like this one that I've even read, let alone participated in, I do understand that one of the primary (if not the most important) goals of the quest is to make the main character grow as quickly as possible and get as strong as possible.
On the other hand, I do believe that the story itself is just as important, and for me - much more so.
Saying this, and I hope this doesn't insult anyone involved, I feel like the people who have been part of the majority on certain decisions, have been making straight up terrible choices based on trying to get the most "benefit" for Ling Qi, rather than basing the choice on what actually makes sense for her character based on her personality traits and the story as a whole.
The main bad decision in my mind, which has been leading to worse and worse developments in the story, has been the decision to become Cai Renxiang's vassal. The story as a whole started out great in the first quest and then somewhere towards the end of that quest and the majority of the current one, has been rapidly going downhill for me in terms of enjoyment, and I think it's all because of that.
The problem is that by being involved with Cai Renxiang, this will just lead to more and more politicking and less and less actual fun adventures and interesting situations. I don't know about you guys, but if I wanted to read about boring crap like politics I'd go read a newspaper, not a cultivation xianxia story... I also don't understand why people like to overcomplicate stories with this kind of stuff, when they were already great to begin with without all that.
As a further argument of why this doesn't even make sense in the context of the story, one of the absolute core traits of Ling Qi's personality has been (or at least was in the beginning) her desire to have freedom of choice. Now, I know some of you have previously argued that her choice to become Renxiang's retainer is an expression of that freedom and it makes sense why she would want to move away from the struggle and uncertainty she has always had in her life by directly attaching herself to someone powerful.
However, and I say this as a person who also has this personality trait where freedom of choice is one of the most important things for me, I can tell you that someone who thinks this way would absolutely never, under any circumstance, place themselves in a subordinate relationship where they aren't allowed to deny an order from their superior and also aren't allowed to quit. This basically takes away all freedom of choice in the context of that relationship, assuming the goals don't always align (which let's be real, they won't). For Ling Qi this would be the equivalent of being a slave, and it just makes no sense that she would ever agree to put herself in that situation.
Now, since it's already too late to change the initial decision, and the story has already been moving in this direction for a while, the question is whether there is any way to change the direction, assuming the majority opinion has changed since then.
Obviously, if the majority of people still believe the way the story is currently going is the right way, then this story is simply no longer for me and I'll leave it at that.
I do urge people to not only think of the material benefits for Ling Qi though, because if you consider it, if she doesn't entangle herself with politics, then there is really not that much reason why she needs to grow super quickly in her cultivation. You can't convince me that there's no way she can't just do her own thing and ignore all the nobles without them aggressively going after her. Some perhaps would have personal grudges depending on her actions (like maybe a little thievery here and there
Now, even though I have never really participated in a similar quest before, I'll give you my shot at how it may be possible to change the future direction of the story, while at the same time (I believe) this will make for a much more interesting story in the current quest as well.
Firstly, my main idea for detaching Ling Qi from the vassaldom would be to "fail" at achieving the necessary sect rank at the end of the period Cai Shenhua gave Ling Qi, and have her force Cai Renxiang to drop Ling Qi as a retainer (might have to fail pretty spectacularly). If Ling Qi also manages to distance her relationship (at least on a professional level) from Cai Renxiang before that, it's likely Renxiang won't fight her mother too much on that point. She might be able to do that by becoming seemingly more and more mediocre over time, and making small mistakes here and there just enough to frustrate Renxiang.
Obviously, doing this openly would be extremely dangerous since if Cai Shenhua catches wind that Ling Qi is doing this on purpuse, she mind just end up killing her. It is also likely that Cai Renxiang will see this plan coming and simply force Ling Qi to do her best.
So, this has to be done in a way that's not obvious.
To get this started, Ling Qi has to first start seeing the problems with where the vassaldom will lead her. I believe she already has started seeing some signs that her choice might've been a mistake. She does not like the social events Cai Renxiang is forcing on her and she also has problems with some other aspects of what will be expected of her (like marriage, playing diplomat, etc).
It would probably be fairly easy to get Ling Qi to realize she has to stop this before it goes too far.
At that point, she needs to make a plan that would make sense and be secretive enough that no one will find out. In order to do that, one idea I can come up with would be to start building Ling Qi's relationship with Bao Qingling soonish, so that by the time she figures out that she needs to escape the vassaldom, she may be close enough to Bao Qingling for her to share her secret method of hiding her cultivation. How the relationship could be built to that point would also be difficult, but maybe going with options that include Suyin and Bao Qingling until some relationship starts forming might be the way.
At that point, Ling Qi can slowly start to "fall behind" on her cultivation and then start incorporating small failures over the course of her work with Renxiang.
She could also lose a duel or two on purpose by choosing opponents that are seemingly within her range to defeat but are still stronger than her.
Eventually, she won't have a high enough rank at the end and also will no longer seem as capable in the eyes of Renxiang (and eventually Shenhua), as she does now.
That was it for my wall of text. I hope some of the above made sense and people would consider it.
First, Ling Qi has always had a complicated relationship between Freedom and Power. At the start, her concern was chiefly with securing Freedom from Power, but as she progressed with her cultivation, learned more, and began to have the courage and confidence to connect with others that started to change. Vitally, the nature of the Celestial Empire and its culture, and Ling Qi was discovering this, is that there is no way to escape being subordinate to someone else. Cultivators have great power and enjoy many personal freedoms, but due to the ever-looming existential threat of spirits, beasts, and barbarians cultivators are also a vital national resource whose freedoms are bound for the (theoretically) public good. The entire structure of the culture is built around leveraging cultivators as pillars of security. They're institutions, the grander they are the more others they're bound to in obligation. At the same time, around the moment of Ling Qi's decision with Cai she was pretty ignorant of anything but the broad strokes, not understanding the finer points of the ramifications of any of her available courses of action.
In the end though, Ling Qi chose Cai Renxiang, in significant if not exclusive part, in the pursuit of power with which to make her own decisions. She made her decision with the belief that the unique advantages of the offer would best enable her the resources and clout to provide for her family. It's been somewhat restrictive in unexpected ways, but surprisingly loose in others. Mostly I think because of Renxiang's peculiar outlooks.
Eidt: Uhhhh, to wrap up my introduced-then-forgotten rhetorical device, picking a position under Cai Renxiang was a way to pursue Freedom through Power. Political power! And money power!
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EternalObserver
eYe Gaze baCk
- Location
- The Void
*scratches head*
I don't think that's possible to be completely honest. The higher cultivation level goes, the more one has to deal with the world. You seem a path of full freedom where we can do whatever we want, but the thing is, that doesn't exist. She goes to that path, then she has to deal with the empire itself, not just Shenhua. The empire doesn't like rogue cultivators, so politicking and noble ships are inevitable. We can't avoid them.
Well ok, you and a couple of the other posters above have convinced me that I didn't have enough knowledge of the worldbuilding, in terms that there is basically no chance for her to escape serving one person or another. I dislike this type of setting though. I'm not saying the protagonist needs to be capable of anything they put their mind to, but the world itself forcing their path under the illusion of still having choices is just something that doesn't make for the type of story I like to read. If that's how it will always be, this should've probably been made clearer earlier in the story, because I feel like the initial promise of the story (in the beginning of FoD) is very different than what's actually going to be the direction in the long term.
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Oh, she doesn't have any particular attachment to nobility or rank this is true. What she wants is power and thus a secure home and protection from being shoved around.
These things just happen to correlate.
The thing is though, is that if you want power here you really need to be part of the system. The Empire is very particular about that. And this is a feudal society. You can't avoid having a boss or responsibilities. Heck, if we went Sect route we'd be in the army in a couple of years. Not much freedom there.
The advantage of being with Renxiang is that it offers great potential to gain the desired power and influence, as well as the opportunity to have a powerful boss who is also our friend and we have influence over. She also offers the opportunity to have a measure of influence over whether or not the new world is one that Ling Qi likes living in.
(there's also the more subtle thread of the way that while Ling Qi doesn't really believe in justice, she also kinda wishes she could be a better person and that the world could be a better place)
Also, I just want to add that I do not dislike Cai Renxiang's character at all, but as a friend, not a superior. This might end up happening anyway, but the only way I see this working out well is if Ling Qi starts affecting Cai Renxiang to the point the relationship doesn't feel like Cai Renxiang choosing Qi's path with her having no say in the matter, but rather her also being a friend to Qi and not just a boss, and giving her the freedom to make her own choices.
Edit: My problem really is the point that while that seems to be the intent, Renxiang isn't actually changing at all under Qi's influence thus far, or much too slowly for the development to feel satisfying and not just leave a bitter aftertaste when scenes like those in T4 arc 3 take place.
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- Location
- Staring into the void
The ethereal green lights of the Grinning Moon.
{Laughing Flight of the Wind Thief; Mobility and Stealth Art}
The pale grey lights of the Hidden Moon
{Imperturbable Starlight Mantle; Defensive Social and Defensive Combat art}
The sparkling many colored lights of the Dreaming Moon
{Trickster King's Devious Oratory; Offensive Social and Spiritual Buff/debuff Art}
{Laughing Flight of the Wind Thief; Mobility and Stealth Art}
The pale grey lights of the Hidden Moon
{Imperturbable Starlight Mantle; Defensive Social and Defensive Combat art}
The sparkling many colored lights of the Dreaming Moon
{Trickster King's Devious Oratory; Offensive Social and Spiritual Buff/debuff Art}
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