Remove ads

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

Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
Reader mode
Hmmm.....those murals that Meng Dan is investigating...

Yrsillar said:
The walls drew her attention more, painted on them were a pair of murals, they seemed to depict a stylized battle. Tracing the scene with her eyes, it seemed to depict a kind of story. At the beginning ill equipped folk were pressed by strange enemies, it was a bit difficult to tell what they were meant to be, with masses of different shapes, some like beasts, some like humans, some that Ling Qi thought might be dragons of a sort. They all had the same eyes though, deep and black, standing out from pale skins and hides.

As the story progressed, she saw the ill equipped people joined by a depiction of what she took for a mighty ice spirit, paired with a figure of blazing sunlight driving back foes with wind and ice and light. The ice and snow flowed into the image of a mighty host clad in strong armaments, with female figures soaring above, and men in white robes among the soldiers, radiating sunlight. On the other side then, showed what Ling Qi thought was meant to be a series of fortresses or great walls of ice and iron crewed by proud soldiers. All under a sky of shifting color, it showed battles with the black eyed foes, ending at last in a great wall of flame that roared from the earth, burning the last of the enemies to ash.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

The history enscribed on those murals interests me and is likely to give us additional insights into our hosts, their history, and their beliefs. It should also build on our understanding of their priesthoods and the spirits/gods they've devoted themselves to.
 
Last edited:
[X] To the dining hall, to find Meng Dan
[X] Toward the stairs, where she could feel Cai Renxiang
 
query said:
"We ritualistically sacrifice our flesh to empower ourselves, how do your people rise?
"We nap with some rocks."
"..."
"Um, the rocks are expensive."
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

To be fair, expensive stones are actually a lot more prohibitive for culivation.

Anyone can self cultivate with a knife, but to get stones, you either have to be lucky enough to be born noble or to be lucky and talented enough to obtain it in other ways.

The scholarship program with the sect (which is historically a very recent invention) alleviates the problem somewhat, for the talented, but resources are still hard to come by. Especially since stealing is encouraged and nobles can get away with more in the early stages of it.

Mutilation sounds harsher, but socially, it is also fairer... anyone can try, everyone has the same options and challenges to overcome, you won't get stumped by simply not hving access to resources.
 
Last edited:
[x] Toward the barracks to find Xia Lin

Don't really care about Meng Dan, and I wanna see what these barracks look like.
 
[X] To the dining hall, to find Meng Dan

Meng Dan is our guy for processing huge amounts of information fast. Diplomats need information like a fish needs water.
 
Last edited:
[X] To the dining hall, to find Meng Dan

Sharing information with Meng Dan about what we've both learned in the previous encounters is likely going to be the most beneficial, as others have mentioned, it seems like the murals had more to do with their religious background.

The walls drew her attention more, painted on them were a pair of murals, they seemed to depict a stylized battle. Tracing the scene with her eyes, it seemed to depict a kind of story. At the beginning ill equipped folk were pressed by strange enemies, it was a bit difficult to tell what they were meant to be, with masses of different shapes, some like beasts, some like humans, some that Ling Qi thought might be dragons of a sort. They all had the same eyes though, deep and black, standing out from pale skins and hides.

As the story progressed, she saw the ill equipped people joined by a depiction of what she took for a mighty ice spirit, paired with a figure of blazing sunlight driving back foes with wind and ice and light. The ice and snow flowed into the image of a mighty host clad in strong armaments, with female figures soaring above, and men in white robes among the soldiers, radiating sunlight. On the other side then, showed what Ling Qi thought was meant to be a series of fortresses or great walls of ice and iron crewed by proud soldiers. All under a sky of shifting color, it showed battles with the black eyed foes, ending at last in a great wall of flame that roared from the earth, burning the last of the enemies to ash.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

We have the more philosophical religious background, while Meng Dan has the historical narrative. Let's put them together.
 
[X] To the dining hall, to find Meng Dan

If we leave Meng Dan on his own, we'll be calling his virtue into question! Who knows what the ice ladies will do once they find out he's unmarried!
 
[X] To the dining hall, to find Meng Dan

Curious how Meng Dan is processing all this. As our resident scholar, I want to see what he's managed to extract.
 
storryeater said:
Mutilation sounds harsher, but socially, it is also fairer... anyone can try, everyone has the same options and challenges to overcome, you won't get stumped by simply not hving access to resources.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
We also know that before the ki stone economy got started, Imperial cultivators made do with spirit pacts, which is also why we've got so many old spirit-blooded families. It was also mentioned that part of the reason for the "talent scholarship" is that talented commoners would eventually make a pact with some rando spirit and grow strong enough to become a deadly nuisance to the normies and untethered enough to the social structures to eventually become some kind of local bandit lord and require the Ministry of Integrity (IIRC) to divert some suitably high-level cultivator to hunt them down and deal with the aftermath.

[_] To the dining hall, to find Meng Dan
[X] Toward the barracks to find Xia Lin
[_] Toward the stairs, where she could feel Cai Renxiang
 
Reader mode
You must login or register to reply here.
Remove ads
Back
Top