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Threads Of Destiny(Eastern Fantasy, Sequel to Forge of Destiny)

Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
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It seems legit to me. The hard part is not finding the Dragon, according to Xiulan, it's attracting one:
yrsillar said:
Do you know how much time I have spent, how many things I have tried, attempting to entice one?
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And we know that Ji Rong is both a Heaven cultivator and highly talented. Talent attracts the attention of spirits, you just have to look at Ling Qi's own record to see that.
 
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[X] Take care of her tutoring session with Bai Xiao Fen, to ensure her time afterward was free.

The gates are open; the votes must flow.

I want to see Ling Qi flex her teaching muscles.
 
Neshuakadal said:
If someone we don't know about got a heavenly dragon would that be a problem? We know from LanLan that it is somewhat well known how to approach heavenly dragons. Sure heavenly dragons may be rare but if Lanlan, someone from a viscount clan, is able to attempt to get one then it makes sense that almost anyone is able to try. If anyone is able to try then anyone might be able to get it. We don't really know what happened behind the GM screen but if Ji Rong rolled to see what spirit beast he would get and got a crit then is there any room to complain? Just because something is unlikely to happen doesn't mean it never happens.
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Indeed. I doubt anyone would be complaining if Xiulan got a heavenly dragon.
 
[X] Take care of her tutoring session with Bai Xiao Fen, to ensure her time afterward was free.

This choice reads to me as whether we speak with Liao Zhu and later get the choice to tutor Xiao Fen or we take Xiao Fen now and are able to choose something other than Liao Zhu another time. Basically, do we want to talk to Liao Zhu now or do something else later. We will still see him a short bit for the scout corps too.

I personally don't care for Liao Zhu, he's interesting enough for a tertiary character but other than being a Moon cultivator and offering admittedly nice insight on killing he isn't really related to us in a way I think will pay off narratively in the future. Xiao Fen however is both fun and ties into our connection to the Bai Clan. Maybe we're better off spending a chapter in the latter part of the turn on something that comes up then? But I'm very much not sure about this since that insight Liao Zhu will offer is probably going to be exactly what we need to resolve Ling Qi's conscience.
 
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[X] Seek out Liao Zhu, there were things she wanted to get out of her mind, and she thought her senior brother might have useful insights.

Liao probably has a better idea how to reconcile killing with justice than Bai "KILLING FOR MY LADY WOULD BE AN HONOR" Fen Fen
 
[X] Seek out Liao Zhu, there were things she wanted to get out of her mind, and she thought her senior brother might have useful insights.

This seems more narrative appropriate than the other option given Ling Qi's issues with the outcome of the mission.
 
[X] Seek out Liao Zhu, there were things she wanted to get out of her mind, and she thought her senior brother might have useful insights.

Choosing this one for now since it's pertains to both Moon quest and killing. Might be best to talk to our resident Bloody assassin

@yrsillar ya seen my art yet? it's in the same page as the latest update.

Also, Ji Ring has a dragon......I wonder where he got that from?
 
[X] Seek out Liao Zhu, there were things she wanted to get out of her mind, and she thought her senior brother might have useful insights.
 
Yes yes anytime someone ling qi does t like has good fortune it's bad writing and rubberbanding. Glad we got that out of the way.

It's almost like to advance through green explicitly requires rare encounters and insights and such
 
Didn't Ji Rong find an arts package in the Outer Sect that basically formed his core arts? Considering spirits often sponsor high-talent cultivators, it might have been a heavenly dragon that left the arts there and this is a continuation of that relationship (similar to our relationship to the Moon).
 
yrsillar said:
Yes yes anytime someone ling qi does t like has good fortune it's bad writing and rubberbanding. Glad we got that out of the way.

It's almost like to advance through green explicitly requires rare encounters and insights and such
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Maybe a "throwaway" line could be added about "there being heavenly dragons near the sect" to an earlier update?
 
[X] Seek out Liao Zhu, there were things she wanted to get out of her mind, and she thought her senior brother might have useful insights.
 
[X] Seek out Liao Zhu, there were things she wanted to get out of her mind, and she thought her senior brother might have useful insights.

I feel this dragon thing is more about coming across as a poor attempt to try and build Ji Rong up as a still relevant rival and foil to us, even though he almost never seems to do anything on screen.

For someone seemingly built up to be Ling Qi's foil, he's kinda been a real let down so far, seeing as after all this time we've only actually talked to him twice so far. Heck, the guy gets more screen-time in omakes than the actual story. One pre-fight chat and a brief archive bump-in doesn't make for an interesting character.

I mean, he had great potential as a rival and all, but this lack of use outside fights or exploration of his character (in the story, not OoC I mean) compared to most of the other characters present in both quests makes him fall kinda flat, ya know?
 
Kingofbooks said:
For someone seemingly built up to be Ling Qi's foil, he's kinda been a real let down so far, seeing as after all this time we've only actually talked to him twice so far. Heck, the guy gets more screen-time in omakes than the actual story. One pre-fight chat and a brief archive bump-in doesn't make for an interesting character
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See, I don't think he is our foil. Not really. He could be, but isn't.

The problem lies in the players obsessing over him due to memes more than anything else.
 
Thor's Twin said:
Furthermore, the natural cycle of the world can be strictly applied to spirit beasts. They grow stronger from consuming their competition, from successfully hunting and consuming the energies within their prey. The world has a brutal cycle for an ecosystem which the spirit beasts are perfectly capable of using to their advantage. Humans, on the other hand, are outside of that cycle.
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Thor's Twin said:
In that way, spirit beasts and humans are in different groups, one is part of the cycle while another is outside of it. And to kill something inside of the cycle is to simply keep the cycle going, to either leave the core behind for others to consume or to prepare and consume it yourself (or die trying to consume it leaving your corpse for others to profit off of).
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Thus is our course made clear: We must hunt down, kill and eat the filthy subhuman, Su Ling. :p
 
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yrsillar said:
Though I find myself more irritated that her little lapdog managed to contract a Heavenly Dragon.
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To be honest, I've sort of been expecting this.

Look, we joke that JR is sort of the stereotypical xianxia protagonist: rough, hates nobles (even if he acts in surprisingly similar fashion), edgy as fuck background, stupidly high talent and luck.

But when we learned one of the elements was "Heaven", I suspected he'd have it. Even more when it turned out to be lightning.

When we learned the Sage Emperor made heavy use of it, and the Imperial Throne is to this day on Heavenly Peaks, guarded by the Sage's own Heavenly Dragon?

Yeah.

He has been screaming "Sage Emperor expy" to me, so not terribly surprised, and I don't particularly mind.

Beyond the jealousy, that is :V
 
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Erebeal said:
Someone can't handle dealing with the bullshit Meizhen and Xiulan have to put up with :p

Tbh, I'm far more concerned about named characters in general doing too well like Suyin and Su Ling and Han Fang etc. But for some reason people try to defend that. Probably because they don't threaten our specialness.
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Erebeal said:
Indeed. I doubt anyone would be complaining if Xiulan got a heavenly dragon.
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People sure would, and that's basically the issue right here. You are taking it as "can't handle dealing the bulshit that Meizhen and Xiulan have to put up with", completely dismissing both the narrative concerns over having a classic Xianxia protagonist archetype having classic Xianxia Protagonist luck in the story, and the narrative concerns over people instory considering this incredible luck but the issue about it being reliable incredible luck.

There is a reason I complain when Ling Qi gets too many hand outs, or that I am firm believe that out of Liling/Meizhen/CRX, one should stall in green for 30 years and another in cyan for their whole life.

Trying to pass it off as being threatened by lack of specialness is frustrating because the specialness of Ling Qi is a problem in itself, but at least it's treated as an outlier. Having designated rivals (Or Xiulan, or GG, or Han Jian, or Suyin) having the same kind of outlier luck as reliable thing just break down the story and becomes a wank fest.

Something like what happened to Xiulan where she not only get a more minor power up than Ling Qi getting Songseeker but also is crippled for like if exactly the kind of story that shows what people with above average luck have to pay and risk for marginal benefits. That's good. Having every author pet character breaking the setting, however, is not good.
yrsillar said:
Yes yes anytime someone ling qi does t like has good fortune it's bad writing and rubberbanding. Glad we got that out of the way.

It's almost like to advance through green explicitly requires rare encounters and insights and such
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It's almost like even extremely talented people who takes extreme risks tend to not advance through green, but author pets do without any issues.

And yes, Ling Qi ridiculousness also gets complained about.
Erebeal said:
See, I don't think he is our foil. Not really. He could be, but isn't.

The problem lies in the players obsessing over him due to memes more than anything else.
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It's not the players who brings him up anymore. It's the writers and co writers.
 
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Killer_Whale said:
Maybe a "throwaway" line could be added about "there being heavenly dragons near the sect" to an earlier update?
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I dont see why that needs any foreshadowing whatsoever. There are obviously a lot of different spirits and spirit beasts around and it isnt like Ling Qi cares all that much for Ji Rong, so we dont really need that much build up for him.


Kingofbooks said:
[X] Seek out Liao Zhu, there were things she wanted to get out of her mind, and she thought her senior brother might have useful insights.

I feel this dragon thing is more about coming across as a poor attempt to try and build Ji Rong up as a still relevant rival and foil to us, even though he almost never seems to do anything on screen.

For someone seemingly built up to be Ling Qi's foil, he's kinda been a real let down so far, seeing as after all this time we've only actually talked to him twice so far. Heck, the guy gets more screen-time in omakes than the actual story. One pre-fight chat and a brief archive bump-in doesn't make for an interesting character.

I mean, he had great potential as a rival and all, but this lack of use outside fights or exploration of his character (in the story, not OoC I mean) compared to most of the other characters present in both quests makes him fall kinda flat, ya know?
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well, the thing is that in-character Ling Qi has basically no reason to advance any kind of relationship with him. Some people might want to friend him because they feel he is a 'shonen protagonist', but that can really only happen if he abandons the Sun camp and gets over his grudges regarding Xuan Shi, CRX and GG and I dont see that happening.
 
To be honest.

I'd agree for the most part that this is stretching plausibility... Except that our peer group are innately a bunch of freaks of nature?

Like, that right there is the real nonsense. A bunch of "Maybe a handful of these a generation" lunatics showed up all in the same place all at once thanks to the political bullshit. (Cai Renxiang would have been here regardless I think. Bai Meizhen was sent here because Sun machinations were getting a bunch of their scions sent to Great Sects, and the Argent Sect happened to be the one where the Sun's play to keep the boot down happened to be Sun Liling), and they're all feeding off of each other for challenges and competition where one of these showing up instead would result in them quickly outcompeting everyone else and find themselves coasting for a while until the real world asserts itself again.

Like, even Ling Qi wouldn't have gotten anywhere if she didn't have Bai Meizhen as a patron in those early days. It would have been Cai Renxiang and Ji Rong, and without the ridiculous pressure, the latter might not have done whatever he did to give such offense, which might have had Ji Rong be the one she pulled in instead.

Ji Rong doesn't need to have a major focus because the world doesn't revolve around us. He's doing his own things to try and compete, and we don't find out about them because we don't actually bother paying attention to him as a standard operating procedure? Same thing with the other ducals and freaks of our peer group.
 
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Arkeus said:
People sure would, and that's basically the issue right here. You are taking it as "can't handle dealing the bulshit that Meizhen and Xiulan have to put up with", completely dismissing both the narrative concerns over having a classic Xianxia protagonist archetype having classic Xianxia Protagonist luck in the story, and the narrative concerns over people instory considering this incredible luck but the issue about it being reliable incredible luck.

There is a reason I complain when Ling Qi gets too many hand outs, or that I am firm believe that out of Liling/Meizhen/CRX, one should stall in green for 30 years and another in cyan for their whole life.

Trying to pass it off as being threatened by lack of specialness is frustrating because the specialness of Ling Qi is a problem in itself, but at least it's treated as an outlier. Having designated rivals (Or Xiulan, or GG, or Han Jian, or Suyin) having the same kind of outlier luck as reliable thing just break down the story and becomes a wank fest.

Something like what happened to Xiulan where she not only get a more minor power up than Ling Qi getting Songseeker but also is crippled for like if exactly the kind of story that shows what people with above average luck have to pay and risk for marginal benefits. That's good. Having every author pet character breaking the setting, however, is not good.
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Alright, let's go over this: Why shouldn't the extremely talented and driven commoners attract the attention of spirits? Given just how many benefits said spirits can get from providing them patronage? And why should the talented scions of the most powerful families in the Empire, heirs or potential heirs of lines that produce Whites regularly, stall?

If you can answer this questions I'll be impressed.
Alectai said:
To be honest.

I'd agree for the most part that this is stretching plausibility... Except that our peer group are innately a bunch of freaks of nature?

Like, that right there is the real nonsense. A bunch of "Maybe a handful of these a generation" lunatics showed up all in the same place all at once thanks to the political bullshit, and they're all feeding off of each other for challenges and competition where one of these showing up instead would result in them quickly outcompeting everyone else and find themselves coasting for a while until the real world asserts itself again.
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No shit our peer group is crazy. We don't call them 'The Monsters' only for the lulz. The Ducals got shoved into the same sect for political reasons, which is obvious when you think about it.
 
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