I rather hope Ji Rong doesn't hold a grudge; of all of the major figures that've taken Sun Liling's side, he's probably the one who has the least animus towards Ling Qi... and among Ling Qi's peers, he's probably the most likely to understand just where she's coming from, background-wise. I've often wished we took an early social action just to get his perspective on these crazy nobles and their crazy habits
I do wonder what his capture will bode... on one hand, Sun Liling is
very likely to try to break him out as her next dramatic move; she's got a limited number of heavy-hitting underlings/allies (or any underlings at all, at the moment), and leaving him to languish is probably... actually, I'm not sure the ones she has left (Leng and Zihao) will actually care; the former is solidly hers, and the latter rather disdains Ji Rong last we knew.
Heh... I wonder if he can be coaxed into switching sides if Liling doesn't rescue him. Cai Renxiang certainly is happy to acquire talent, and he does have that. He's got what looks like a crush on Liling, but such things can fade with disillusionment. If not, and if he's not rescued... huh, I do wonder how much his cultivation will suffer. Poor guy - he didn't exactly make the best of life choices, but I suspect that cultivation is all he's got.
Putting that aside a bit, I do wonder what Sun Liling will do once she exits cultivation. I rather hope she's unsuccessful at what she's going for (another breakthrough... already?? God, I hope not), but I wonder what she'll be doing now that it looks like she's not going to be able to hold together a group. This one shattered, and by the time she exits all the underlings are likely to have joined other groups that are more stable (or perhaps surrendered to Renxiang).
No-holds-barred strike on Cai Renxiang with no retreat (possibly leading to another sect sanction)? One-woman war from the shadows? An attempt at Renxiang, followed by a retreat to solo cultivation/hunting missions, followed by another when she thinks she's better prepared, rinse and repeat?
Considering that we know one of the followup archery arts is pure wind, and iirc another is wind/water I really don't see the point of more zephyr arts of the same tier. We can get more wind arts that actually move us forward in something we are quiet good at, rather than picking up additional equal tier equivalents of an art we already have.
It comes down to that I'd like Ling Qi to have some more breadth before depth. The one she chose was the movement-focused one; I'd like to add in the offense and defense in there. For that matter, the offensive one might be quite useful for a relatively short-range archery situation (see below). The defensive one might well do as Argent Storm does, but more focused on the evasion and less on the melee attacks.
Our tutor did recommend a close range pure wind (or pure water) variant. He saw how we fight, so I'm inclined to go with that recommendation.
That works too. Again, though, I feel like getting another archery art is relatively low priority for Ling Qi. After breakthrough, there's several arts that suddenly uncap (EPC, FVM, AM, SCS), and she'll also have TRF, AE, AC and AS to continue to work on (in about that priority). After that comes some more music arts, I feel - one of her guards has a soporific art, but maybe Ling Qi can hunt down some more inspirational pieces, or perhaps something more bewildering/mysterious than despairing.
After that comes perhaps some more utility arts that 'fit' the existing meridians* or the fourth Argent Art.
* So they can be swapped in on the fly to deal with a situation, then swapped back out to the normal load after. Ling Qi's currently got:
Head: Lake, Lake
Lungs: Dark, Dark, Earth, Music
Spine: Dark, Mountain, Wood, Wind, Thunder
Heart: Wind, Wind, Water, Dark, Wood, Fire
Arm: Wind, Water, Heaven, (blank)
Leg: Dark, Dark
So there's a decent amount of possibilities here. A gliding/lightening art that's pure wind and spine/arm, for example, could be used along with the dress for some serious distance, then deactivated when Ling Qi hits the ground.