I like the mechanical tweaks. SNR having an A rank tech while Wind Thief doesn't has no particular bearing on which one is better. Since A rank techs are pricey, it's just differentiation, which you expect to see between arts.
As for changes to WWS, I'm a fan. The Cold damage did tell a fitting narrative for Ling Qi as a whole, but it made less sense in the context of the art itself; the change offers a more thematically consistent(and stronger) effect in terms of Wind Thief the art. The wording now seems to imply the teleport isn't strictly conditioned on being attacked, even if it's still the primary purpose, which is a welcome bit of flexibility. I'm not entirely sure it wasn't already working this way, but it's nice to have it more obvious. The ally buff being additional instead of a substituted function is also nice because it avoids the pitfall of self-interest and helping allies being in conflict, which could have echoed some of Ling Qi's hangups on sacrifice uncomfortably.
If there's one change I could make to it, it would be to reduce the range of the ally buff from 100m to something more modest. That's a fairly large area still, equivalent to many of our dedicated Heart/Lung arts, and
this art is spine/leg which doesn't support competitive area effects. The fact that the art plays around with space and distance, and the short-lived nature of the boost does excuse this to some extent.
There's also probably more general changes with how the system handles ranges incoming, so no point tinkering until after. But in general, I'd consider this the one area of the tech to keep an eye on and consider reining in post-changes.
[X] The self is a story, and memory is the teller of tales.
Voting! And you know what, I like it. This. It reminds me of some things Xin/Hidden Moon said to us, the insight we gained from Harmony of the Dancing Wind, and Ling Qi's meditations while cultivating Winter Hearth Resounding.
"Never shy from your own experiences. They are the most precious secrets of all, because it is from them that you are built," Xin added solemnly.
-
"There is no secret logic behind the world, no meaning or thought that guides it from above," Xin said absently. "Though it is at its most obvious with cultivators, each of you shapes the world with your actions and thoughts, echoing and refracting from the ripples of others actions. Great Spirits are merely the greatest of these ripples."
-
"Remember the small moments, the little secrets that you create each day," The Hidden Moon added quietly. "See and study the world before your eyes, and do not fail to account for the little details when building your models, nor come to rely on them overmuch. The future can only be predicted, never read."
Ling Qi had long decided that she would not stop walking the path forward. Even when obstacles presented themselves. Even when things grew difficult. She had decided that on some matters there could be no compromise or retreat, that small endings were both acceptable and inevitable. But she did not want to be alone again.
The words and emotions of her family stung, and the pain in her dantian, that grinding feeling of something broken was real.
She needed to race forward without slowing.
She did not want to be alone.
Her melody faltered as her breath hitched, a sharp pain traveling up her spine. The distress arose from her, but its source was elsewhere. It came from the faint strands that stretched back into the house, away over the hills, where Zhengui rested and Hanyi composed. It came from up in the mountains, where her friends resided.
In moving forward blindly, she hurt others. Through others, she hurt herself. By hurting herself, she had slowed down. This thought circled in her mind, chasing its own tail. She half expected Sixiang to comment, but the moon spirit was silent, respecting her need for introspection.
There was something to that thought, Ling Qi mused, even if it did not soothe the pain in her spirit. It wasn't an answer, just an observation. It was a good one though, she thought. Yes, it might not solve her current problem, but if she wished to avoid further wounds in the future then she could not afford to let her vision be so narrow.
Insight Slotted: Even walking alone, footfalls echo beyond your hearing
Ling Qi could feel the thousand small flames that the arts musing spoke of, each one a hearth in the dark, a small circle of warmth against the cold that lay ever outside. Some were bright, some were dim, some were subtly broken in ways that she could not begin to put into words with only this distant observation.
They were each real, they were each important to those within their light. They were still not hers. Her hearth was below her, in the slow stirring of the morning staff, and her mother rising, preparing to cultivate in the garden. It lay on the distant mountains of the inner sect, in scattered embers, and far, far away in a desert she had never seen.
Even knowing, feeling the reality of those other lights, they did not warm her as this one did. She suspected that they never would. She had come to believe in Cai Renxiang, but it was still a selfish thing. She wanted her family to live in a province that was like what the heiress envisioned.
However, she did not think that this was wrong. The circles were not separate. She saw her mother quietly greet a woman of similar age, trading quiet words in the pre dawn light. In turn, she could feel a strand of connection from the other woman to the houses in the outer village. Her mother's circle of warmth was not hers, and her mother's friend in turn had her own, but there was intersection there.
That, Ling Qi thought, was probably what Cai Renxiang meant when she spoke of patterns and structures, the intersection of a thousand, thousand lights, all suspended in the cold. That was where comfort and companionship and society arose. Shatter those connections, let them degrade and rot as they did in the streets of Tonghou, and the cold came in, as surely as it would through a broken window or an ill sealed roof.
Even if she couldn't care about hearths other than her own, she could see the value in them, the value in not forgetting them, and even in letting them share her hearth for a time, however brief. It was only to everyone's ill that fires were allowed to go out in the cold after all.
I tend to agree with others who point to the potential for understanding others with this insight. It's not just about Ling Qi herself. It's a lens through which to view people in general, and to make sense of their own views on who and what they are. Everyone is the story they tell themselves based on their experience, and these stories flow into and between everyone else's, overlapping just like the warmth from each person's personal hearth.
The fundamental truth of this insight is that there's
more to people than is immediately obvious, even to themselves. I think that's a valuable lesson for Ling Qi, who has had a tendency to do herself no favors by lumping people into comfortable boxes, including herself. To borrow a quote from Dreaming Moon, "Humans weave their own strings, forge their own chains, and build their own cages," and the habit of reductive insight into others is a limiting chain on Ling Qi's perspective that we have an opportunity to break, or at least loosen, right now.
Especially paired with the WHR thoughts and the Harmony insight, I see this insight as helping appreciate where even enemies are coming from. Which doesn't mean siding or even sympathizing them necessarily, but should mean not being blindsided quite so easily. Future encounters with alien spirits like the fung-eye collective, traditional enemies like the Cloud Nomads, or even unforgivable foes like Ji Rong can take on deeper dimensions with a look to the narratives they hold as true about themselves and their circumstances.
