Threads Of Destiny(Eastern Fantasy, Sequel to Forge of Destiny)
- Thread starter yrsillar
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Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
There is a difference between what is and what should be. Ling Qi's conception of Power is and always has been about what is. the acknowledgement that things like this can and do happen. But he conception of Choice, like her conception of Community or Communication, is aspirational, about how the world should be and in what manner she will use her own Power to make it different.
Ling Qi will never make the world perfect, nor ever believe she can, and that's probably for the best as she in fact cannot, but she can make it better, reduce the degree to which things like this happen, and her Concepts and Insights absolutely have existing ways to interact with this situation and say 'that is unacceptable' and 'I will make that happen less'.
- Location
- Chicago
- Pronouns
- She/They
Yes. I'm conceptualizing 'what should be' as 'good' when I talk about it. It applies to choice, community, and use of power as well.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Right, and I'm saying that this is already covered by her existing concepts in combination, at least largely.
There is a Way that refuses to compromise with gray areas and moral complexity, that scours away prevarication and delusion under a light that reveals Truth, that destroys delusion, that knows with absolute certainty what is Right and what is Wrong, a harmony of searing perfection, a new world carved from the shreds of nightmare with the blade of certainty and a rage so pure it transcends anger and becomes an axiomatic principle.
I really want to know how Shu Yue got involved with Cai Shenhua is what I'm saying. They do have a certain similarity, a two sides of the same coin thing going on that mirrors Cai Renxiang and Ling Qi. I wonder what kinds of Insights Shu Yue has garnered by studying the grudge at the heart of Cai Shenhua.
I really want to know how Shu Yue got involved with Cai Shenhua is what I'm saying. They do have a certain similarity, a two sides of the same coin thing going on that mirrors Cai Renxiang and Ling Qi. I wonder what kinds of Insights Shu Yue has garnered by studying the grudge at the heart of Cai Shenhua.
Shu Yue met Shenhua when she scoured Xiangmen of the Hui's filth.
Threads Of Destiny(Eastern Fantasy, Sequel to Forge of Destiny) Original - Users' Choice!
First Quest, Forge of Destiny, here Ling Qi stood at the edge of the grass grown cliff and...
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This was justice.
They had gone to the star, and knelt. She had thanked them for their hard work, praised them for their devotion to justice. She had chided them for focusing too much on destruction. She had rewarded them with a new face and a new name, woven from moonlight and hope, and made them her disciple.
I think that came up in the interlude chapter about abused children in the roots. That seemed to me to be Shu Yue's backstory.
edit: ninja'd
Shu Yue really went easy on Ling Qi for her first lesson on grudges. If they wanted to toss her in the deep end they'd have made her experience their own beginning.
Once, there was a child, who lived in the roots of the great world tree. In the wondrous city of dreams, ruled by the lord of heavenly lies, they lived in base reality, in dirt and muck and blood. They lived in the dark, in chains of coin and paper. Owned they were, used they were. In the lowest roots there was only cruelty and the laughter of petty little gods. Once, there was a child, but unlike the countless others, they heard the dark, and the dark heard them.
They welcomed it, they loved it, and in the dark there was no more pain. They fed it blood, they fed it memory, they fed it their face, and in return they were given power. The first pleasure in their life was the feeling of a brightly colored man's throat breaking under their fingers. O how the man's fists had once hurt, O how useless they were flailing against the child now. They took the color, they took the light, and both the faceless child and the dark hungered for more. This thought the child, was justice.
There was no time in the dark, no light in the roots to track the days. In the beginning they were drawn to little flesh peddlers, like the colorful man before. They learned to stalk, to skulk, wrapped in the dark, fed from fear and paranoia. They studied, they searched, and picked off the men one by one, drop by drop. The colorful men hid, they babbled, they cried, and they died. The child's fingers found their throats every time. There was no mercy for the children, the men, or the women, why should there be mercy for monsters? This was justice.
Year 45, Month 13 Arc 5-3
"...Wanting to possess someone always looks ugly, doesn't it?"
Ling Qi didn't know about that. She couldn't deny the validity of that black clawing feeling which scratched at her thoughts from the mind of the woman she immersed in. Too real, too deep. It felt like it could drown her, just as easily as the void of gray, that yawning depression nearly had. Shu Yue had been right, even here at the start of it, she'd been unprepared. She had thought she had an inkling of what this hate could be, from her encounters with Yan Renshu. His poisoning of her little brother, that awful attack he had helped the ith plan on that town…
It wasn't the same at all. Those were anger, indignation, and perhaps other things. What she had never felt before was real, enduring hate.
She had never had the luxury, or so she told herself. But then… her tormentors had never really had faces in her mind. You couldn't hate the cold, or the feeling of your empty stomach twisting in a knot. Well you could, but not like this. She had never hated a person like this, not even the man who had… driven her away from her mother in fear.
No, she was far too much a frightened and cowering rat at heart to hate so deeply.
"Qi, I will thump you. You do not get to call yourself a coward."
"Then don't talk about being ugly. That's the last thing you could ever be, Sixiang,"
"It is though… the fact I even thought that kinda thing, even with gramps juicing up my darker side… it was gross. I don't want to lock you up or lock you down. I want to fly with you…
…But its not so easy for humans is it? There was no happy end where Ming Xia gets her guy and he gets his job, and everyone skips off. Feeling's aint enough, one way or other, down in the Real."
Sixiang was right of course… Maybe with a better man Ming Xia could have found something happy, a man willing to live in mediocrity to marry a former prostitute… but would the woman Ling Qi was immersed in fall for such a man in the first place?
Ling Qi didn't think she would. The same traits that attracted her were the same ones that made this outcome… inevitable, in the world that was. She didn't believe even the ministries under the Duchess were really free of this kind of thing. Family was the core. You sought advantage for your family, even if your family was just yourself. She… she could see the core of Renxiang's point about the roots of corruption here. A Wei Jun today might be able to rise a little further… but he'd have to tie himself to someone higher eventually.
For Ming Xia… the only happiness might have been a life alone, growing up to replace the Madam she now hated with this hideous, all consuming hate.
…That was the worst part, being inside of her head, yet retaining perspective. Under the same conditions, she was dully certain that the same thing would have played out under Ming Xia's authority were the players of the game swapped around.
That was the twisted nature of the structure, and it molded every person who lived within it.
The first person Ming Xia killed was an an accident. Down in the deep roots where even the plain clothes she had worn out to market were rich things, merely for being clean and new. On edge, hungry, tired, still stewing in the hate that brought her here…
Still in this haze of half formed plans and physical discomfort, she had stopped to rest, to push away the feeling of her growling stomach. A man had tapped on her shoulder. She spun, slapped him out of instinct. He was a mortal man, she was a cultivator, even if one of only the meanest strength. Something cracked in his jaw, his head bounced off the side of building and something broke.
He collapsed like a puppet with his strings cut, and she had fled.
It had panicked her in the moment, but… after, in shadowed and sheltered mud of an alleyway where she set down to rest… it tantalized.
Strength. Power. Her subconcious wove a leer onto the indistinct blur that was the dead man's face in her memory, cobbled together a menacing intent. She would have a victim, a helpless pig again. But this time, she had been able to act.
Ling Qi could never know, she could perceive more than Ming Xia, but she still could not see what was outside of the womans senses. But Ming Xia was not a paragon of strength at first realm, she would have been barely stronger than a fit mortal man.
…She had glimpsed wispy gray and wrinkles. And heard the clatter and splash of a breaking bowl full of something warm. The building Ming Xia had been leaned against, cradling her stomach, was an eatery.
But even her meager cultivation had made it so that she was not again the victim.
In the end. What had been done to her was done because she was weak.
They were going to pay. They were going to pay. Theyweregoingtopay.
They would pay. Whispered her dreams.
Blood so sweet, spilled in the dust. A sacrifice, without intention. She was better than the dust, better than the cruelty done. She was a jewel, not a sow. She only needed make it so.
You are so much greater. We hear you. You feel you. Your ambitions whisper to us in the dark. So. So. worthy. But… won't you give us, just a little blood, just one more drop. One more, O Jewel.
Voices like buzzing wasps and whispering wings in the dark, the tittering of nightmare fairies.
"...Yeah, we were pretty thick in the air here back then… Honestly kinda amazing things held together as good as they did, with us wriggling our fingers in to claw apart every crack."
Ling Qi was silent, following the slow spiral of maddening emotion as Ming Xia worked herself up to follow the whispers in her dreams, for want of any other way to gain strength.
"It is fascinating, how people break apart. I like it, poking, prodding, seeing what gets 'em unsettled, what gets 'em mad, what makes the face they present to the world come apart. Even back when I was just flitting around the Sect," Sixiang said whistfully.
"I don't think this lot are half as restrained."
Sixiang… really had been trying to keep things the same as before, hadn't they? Ling Qi thought wistfully. But they really weren't. They couldn't be.
"I just want to smile and laugh with you again. I'm fine being the fun friend, the party guy or gal. Its not like those are lies."
But they weren't all of the truth either.
The actions were almost predictable, or so Ling Qi told herself. She didn't want to distance herself too much, knowing it went against the point of the exercise.
But being in Ming Xia's head felt like bathing in Meizhen's venom. Like a constant itching and burning on her skin. She almost wanted the grey to come back, if only to wash away this acidic black that inverted even the most innocuous happy thought into further spite.
It was worse than the puppet threads she had dreamed under her skin in the Nightmare's trial, because no one else was pulling them. There was only herself, and the driving dragging spite that would never let her feel happy again.
[ ] Endure. Remain as far immersed as you can while remaining whole. Until the end.
[ ] A step back. See, feel, experience the driving force of a life ending grudge. You are not Shu Yue, and should not try to be.
AN: meant to do this past bit in two parts, so the remainder here is a shorty. One more should finish up this arc for us.
Ling Qi didn't know about that. She couldn't deny the validity of that black clawing feeling which scratched at her thoughts from the mind of the woman she immersed in. Too real, too deep. It felt like it could drown her, just as easily as the void of gray, that yawning depression nearly had. Shu Yue had been right, even here at the start of it, she'd been unprepared. She had thought she had an inkling of what this hate could be, from her encounters with Yan Renshu. His poisoning of her little brother, that awful attack he had helped the ith plan on that town…
It wasn't the same at all. Those were anger, indignation, and perhaps other things. What she had never felt before was real, enduring hate.
She had never had the luxury, or so she told herself. But then… her tormentors had never really had faces in her mind. You couldn't hate the cold, or the feeling of your empty stomach twisting in a knot. Well you could, but not like this. She had never hated a person like this, not even the man who had… driven her away from her mother in fear.
No, she was far too much a frightened and cowering rat at heart to hate so deeply.
"Qi, I will thump you. You do not get to call yourself a coward."
"Then don't talk about being ugly. That's the last thing you could ever be, Sixiang,"
"It is though… the fact I even thought that kinda thing, even with gramps juicing up my darker side… it was gross. I don't want to lock you up or lock you down. I want to fly with you…
…But its not so easy for humans is it? There was no happy end where Ming Xia gets her guy and he gets his job, and everyone skips off. Feeling's aint enough, one way or other, down in the Real."
Sixiang was right of course… Maybe with a better man Ming Xia could have found something happy, a man willing to live in mediocrity to marry a former prostitute… but would the woman Ling Qi was immersed in fall for such a man in the first place?
Ling Qi didn't think she would. The same traits that attracted her were the same ones that made this outcome… inevitable, in the world that was. She didn't believe even the ministries under the Duchess were really free of this kind of thing. Family was the core. You sought advantage for your family, even if your family was just yourself. She… she could see the core of Renxiang's point about the roots of corruption here. A Wei Jun today might be able to rise a little further… but he'd have to tie himself to someone higher eventually.
For Ming Xia… the only happiness might have been a life alone, growing up to replace the Madam she now hated with this hideous, all consuming hate.
…That was the worst part, being inside of her head, yet retaining perspective. Under the same conditions, she was dully certain that the same thing would have played out under Ming Xia's authority were the players of the game swapped around.
That was the twisted nature of the structure, and it molded every person who lived within it.
The first person Ming Xia killed was an an accident. Down in the deep roots where even the plain clothes she had worn out to market were rich things, merely for being clean and new. On edge, hungry, tired, still stewing in the hate that brought her here…
Still in this haze of half formed plans and physical discomfort, she had stopped to rest, to push away the feeling of her growling stomach. A man had tapped on her shoulder. She spun, slapped him out of instinct. He was a mortal man, she was a cultivator, even if one of only the meanest strength. Something cracked in his jaw, his head bounced off the side of building and something broke.
He collapsed like a puppet with his strings cut, and she had fled.
It had panicked her in the moment, but… after, in shadowed and sheltered mud of an alleyway where she set down to rest… it tantalized.
Strength. Power. Her subconcious wove a leer onto the indistinct blur that was the dead man's face in her memory, cobbled together a menacing intent. She would have a victim, a helpless pig again. But this time, she had been able to act.
Ling Qi could never know, she could perceive more than Ming Xia, but she still could not see what was outside of the womans senses. But Ming Xia was not a paragon of strength at first realm, she would have been barely stronger than a fit mortal man.
…She had glimpsed wispy gray and wrinkles. And heard the clatter and splash of a breaking bowl full of something warm. The building Ming Xia had been leaned against, cradling her stomach, was an eatery.
But even her meager cultivation had made it so that she was not again the victim.
In the end. What had been done to her was done because she was weak.
They were going to pay. They were going to pay. Theyweregoingtopay.
They would pay. Whispered her dreams.
Blood so sweet, spilled in the dust. A sacrifice, without intention. She was better than the dust, better than the cruelty done. She was a jewel, not a sow. She only needed make it so.
You are so much greater. We hear you. You feel you. Your ambitions whisper to us in the dark. So. So. worthy. But… won't you give us, just a little blood, just one more drop. One more, O Jewel.
Voices like buzzing wasps and whispering wings in the dark, the tittering of nightmare fairies.
"...Yeah, we were pretty thick in the air here back then… Honestly kinda amazing things held together as good as they did, with us wriggling our fingers in to claw apart every crack."
Ling Qi was silent, following the slow spiral of maddening emotion as Ming Xia worked herself up to follow the whispers in her dreams, for want of any other way to gain strength.
"It is fascinating, how people break apart. I like it, poking, prodding, seeing what gets 'em unsettled, what gets 'em mad, what makes the face they present to the world come apart. Even back when I was just flitting around the Sect," Sixiang said whistfully.
"I don't think this lot are half as restrained."
Sixiang… really had been trying to keep things the same as before, hadn't they? Ling Qi thought wistfully. But they really weren't. They couldn't be.
"I just want to smile and laugh with you again. I'm fine being the fun friend, the party guy or gal. Its not like those are lies."
But they weren't all of the truth either.
The actions were almost predictable, or so Ling Qi told herself. She didn't want to distance herself too much, knowing it went against the point of the exercise.
But being in Ming Xia's head felt like bathing in Meizhen's venom. Like a constant itching and burning on her skin. She almost wanted the grey to come back, if only to wash away this acidic black that inverted even the most innocuous happy thought into further spite.
It was worse than the puppet threads she had dreamed under her skin in the Nightmare's trial, because no one else was pulling them. There was only herself, and the driving dragging spite that would never let her feel happy again.
[ ] Endure. Remain as far immersed as you can while remaining whole. Until the end.
[ ] A step back. See, feel, experience the driving force of a life ending grudge. You are not Shu Yue, and should not try to be.
AN: meant to do this past bit in two parts, so the remainder here is a shorty. One more should finish up this arc for us.
For once I think we should listen to the advice we were given, Shu Yue themself doesn't want us to become them either. They want us to be better, there is a reason they don't want us to follow them exactly. It's fine to take a step back to hold onto ourselves more.
[X] A step back. See, feel, experience the driving force of a life ending grudge. You are not Shu Yue, and should not try to be.
[X] A step back. See, feel, experience the driving force of a life ending grudge. You are not Shu Yue, and should not try to be.
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NoxOfUmbra
Shadow of the night
- Location
- Colombia, South América
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
[X] A step back. See, feel, experience the driving force of a life ending grudge. You are not Shu Yue, and should not try to be.
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[ ] A step back. See, feel, experience the driving force of a life ending grudge. You are not Shu Yue, and should not try to be.
Yeah, LQ is not Shu Yue, should not Shu Yue and no one wants that. Especially not Shu Yue.
Yeah, LQ is not Shu Yue, should not Shu Yue and no one wants that. Especially not Shu Yue.
- Location
- PA
[ ] A step back. See, feel, experience the driving force of a life ending grudge. You are not Shu Yue, and should not try to be.
Drown and be lost forever
We have to hold the darkness at a remove, for as this tale demonstrates, after a point it stops being about the original hurt, and starts being about spreading it because the hurt has not healed, and it will not let you heal.
Drown and be lost forever
We have to hold the darkness at a remove, for as this tale demonstrates, after a point it stops being about the original hurt, and starts being about spreading it because the hurt has not healed, and it will not let you heal.
[ ] A step back. See, feel, experience the driving force of a life ending grudge. You are not Shu Yue, and should not try to be.
LQ's methods are not Shu Yue's.
LQ's methods are not Shu Yue's.
[X] Endure. Remain as far immersed as you can while remaining whole. Until the end.
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- Pronouns
- They/Them
Well, that's quite unfortunate. Going off the description, that guy was probably about to offer her something to eat cause she looked like she needed help and had stopped outside of a soup kitchen (or the xianxia equivalent of one anyway) though admittedly that is at least partially conjecture.
- Pronouns
- He
[X] A step back. See, feel, experience the driving force of a life ending grudge. You are not Shu Yue, and should not try to be.
- Pronouns
- Ae/Aer
[X] A step back. See, feel, experience the driving force of a life ending grudge. You are not Shu Yue, and should not try to be.