Forge of Destiny(Xianxia Quest)

In the end, Sun Liling's surrender to Cai Renxiang was both satisfying and not, Ling Qi thought. She and the rest of the council stood behind Cai in orderly ranks, with a number of enforcers spread out further behind them. Overall it was a big ostentatious display of strength, and Ling Qi had a feeling that some poor low ranked grunts were probably pulling double duty to make up for their superiors absence.

Cai stood at their head, with Guangli by her side as the Princesses significantly smaller procession approached. Sun Liling had only two individuals with her, Lu Feng and Kang Zihao. Sun Liling was dressed more femininely for once, wearing a clingy green dress worked with floral embroidery. Unlike most gowns Ling Qi had seen here, the sleeves were not long and billowy, nor did the hem trail behind her.

Kang Zihao had cropped his hair short and acquired a suit of polished armor from somewhere, with breastplate, bracers and greaves forged from pale white steel. He had also, Ling Qi noted sourly, reached Bronze, if only recently, going by the slightly erratic feel to his qi. Lu Feng on the other hand still wore plain dark red robes, with only thick leather bracers as a concession to defense. He was fully in the late second realm now as well.

Cai Renxiang watched the three of them approach silently, no trace of the victorious smile that had touched her expression in the council meeting present on her face. Sun Liling and the two boys with her came to a stop a respectful distance away, giving every appearance of not noticing Cai's train or the 'audience' of other Outer Sect disciples observing from a safe distance.

...Which was apparently a good hundred meters away. Ling Qi supposed that was fair.

"Princess Sun, I have received your missive, and agreed to offer you truce in order to speak," Ling Qi refocused her attention as Cai Renxiang began to speak. "You have my assurances of safety until the cessation of negotiations." Ling Qi supposed putting on a show even though the terms were already decided was part of the deal.

"You are too generous, Lady Cai," Sun Liling replied, her usual drawl mostly absent as she as she offered a short, but visible bow. It was… bizarre, seeing the redhead acting formally. "I was in error to doubt your abilities." Ling Qi glanced at Meizhen, who looked exceptionally pleased at what she was witnessing. Well, relatively, she still maintained her emotionless and solemn expression. Ling Qi could see the signs.

"I was unproven at the time. I can understand your doubt," Cai replied generously. "Princess Sun, you too have acquitted yourself well."

"But not well enough," Sun Liling replied, and Ling Qi liked to imagine she could hear the gritted teeth behind that statement. "I have come here today to offer my concession. Though our conflict was not a simple duel. I hope you will accept my surrender," she could definitely hear the bitter anger in the redheads voice now.

Ling Qi tuned out a bit as they began to bandy terms back and forth, looking over her fellow council members and their audience. There was a lot of whispering and meaningful looks going around in the observers, but mostly she saw weary resignation as they looked upon Cai and her supporters. It looked like the time of open conflict really was ending.

+100 Yellow Spirit Stones

The amount of spirit stones Liling paid in reparations was enough to make her atrophied sense of greed flinch, and even her part of it was more wealth than she had ever had in her possession at once, even including the influx of funds from Yan Renshu's base. She… might have to start looking into what could be ordered from crafters outside the Sect. Especially once she broke through.

Which is where her thoughts turned as the ceremony broke up. Her only other important appointment this week was meeting Zeqing, and the ice spirits response to her agreement had put their meeting five days from now, so she had time to begin.

Once she had made sure Zhengui had plenty of food, and made it known to her friends what she was doing,she retreated into her houses meditation room, behind a firmly locked and formation barred door, and closed her eyes to meditate.


Breaking through began much like normal cultivation, with the gathering of energies within ones dantian and the cycling of those energies throughout the channels of ones spirit. The difference was one of magnitude. Reaching the peak of a realm meant finding the limit of energy which ones spirit could sustain, and attempting to cultivate further felt much like trying to stretch a muscle too far. That metaphor did not quite match the feeling of painful… stretching that breaking through brought on, but it was the closest one she could think of.

Perhaps it would be more accurate to liken it to trying to fit into a too small gown, but Ling Qi didn't like the implications of that one. Still, the feeling of her spirit straining against the confines of the second realm was unpleasant to say the least It was thus immensely satisfying to feel something of the barrier inside of her give way.


Excited, she pressed on, cycling her qi furiously as she pushed out against the the weakened boundary, the qi in her dantian flaring brightly in her senses. This time though, as her will and energy slammed into the barrier, it held, flexing only slightly. Immense pain struck her as she was slammed back into her body, her meditative state shattered. Her head throbbed with agony and Ling Qi blinked groggily as she felt something wet dripping from her nose and tasted copper on her lips.
She tried to sit up, only to fall back to the floor with a whimper as her dantian burned in a way it hadn't since that first night with Meizhen. Pain spread throughout her entire system of qi channels and kept her immobile for a time, breathing raggedly.

After several minutes, she at least managed to raise a trembling hand to wipe the blood trickling from her nose away. She could feel Zhengui's alarm through their connection. She was probably going to have to pay to fix the garden door.

...Maybe she would give Suyin a visit before trying that again.

---

Ling Qi shuddered as she felt the needle pierce, her skin, spreading pleasant numbness through her painfully burning channels. "You're the best Li Suyin," Ling Qi said, her voice slightly slurred by the haze of medicine clouding her thoughts.

Ling Qi lay face down on a stone table in Li Suyin's home, her chin pillowed on her arms. She was covered only in a couple of towels, something that would normally have bothered her greatly, but it was amazing how small crippling agony made those kind of concerns seem.

Li Suyin sighed as she finished placing the medicine coated needles along the curve of Ling Qi's lower spine, eyeing their placement carefully before turning away to reach for a meticulously labeled clay vial. "I cannot believe you truly suffered not even a single backlash when breaking through to second realm," she said, incredulously.

"Was easy," Ling Qi muttered, closing her eyes, bright light still hurt her eyes. "Didn't know it would hurt so much."

"It was a fairly severe backlash," Li Suyin allowed, Ling Qi heard the sound of sloshing liquid, and then felt something wet pour across her shoulders, and the scent of flowers reached her nose. Then she felt Li Suyin's dainty hands press against her shoulder blades and… That felt really good. She slumped against the table as Li Suyin massaged painfully tense muscle into submission, pushing back the bone deep pain still throbbing in her dantian. "You are lucky I was still home," she admonished.

"Sorry," Ling Qi replied, the sound of her own voice made her giggle a little. It was simply funny for some reason. Li Suyin was really good at this. She would have to never mention it though. Meizhen would probably be mad. "Books… books said it would hurt, but not how much."

"Cultivation texts do take such things for granted," Li Suyin replied with a sigh. Her amazing, magical hands were making Ling Qi sleepy though, and it was hard to focus on her words. "Next… some… numbing…"

Ling Qi sank into blissful slumber. When she awoke, she was back home in bed, with Zhengui hunkered down in her doorway, watching the door intently. She could sense Meizhen out in the living room as well.

As Zhengui noticed her awakening he practically shot to her side, his two voices babbling over each other in concern. She had to stop him from trying to climb her bed and breaking it by sliding off to wrap her arms around his stubby neck and murmur comforting words.

Despite that she didn't miss the little, meticulously labeled clay bottle on the table next to her bed. It looked like she wouldn't have to worry about bothering Li Suyin again if her breakthrough failed.

...Because she wasn't giving up.

She wasn't going to let Li Suyin keep helping her for free either. She had a whole pile of pills and elixirs that were going to shortly be useless to her when she succeeded. Why not give those to her friend?

Once she had calmed Zhengui down she set off determinedly for the Vent, she may have missed the afternoon and night, but that didn't mean she had to miss her training with Su Ling. She could cultivate back to peak and be back to breaking through by evening.

Li Suyin and Su Ling were a bit surprised to see her.

"Should you really be up already?" Her friend asked the moment she emerged from the trees. Li Suyin sat with her back against a tree, the pale manual open in her lap.

Su Ling was meditating closer to the vent, and didn;t voice her concern, simply looking her up and down before giving her a respectful nod.

"I'm fine," she replied, directing the sentiment at both Li Suyin and the spirit dematerialized in her dantian. "I just got surprised and overwhelmed for a bit there."

"Heard your turtle had to carry you," Su Ling replied dryly

Ling Qi glanced away and flushed a little. "Like I said, surprised. I am not going to stop just for that. There's only a few months until the tournament."

Li Suyin regarded her with some concern. "If you are sure, please take it easy for a bit longer though."

"That's the plan," Ling Qi replied, seating herself beside her friend. "So, what's next in the manual?"

Su Ling shook her head and returned to meditating, she had been working on her cultivation now that she was satisfied with her sword skill.

"Well," Li Suyin said, recovering easily from the change of subject. "The next several formations are.... Unsavory at best, so I've put them aside for the moment. The next useful one is the… Black Loam Gargant," the blue haired girl grimaced a little as she looked down at the pages, which held an illustration of a vaguely humanoid mass of bones, dirt and stone standing next to a sketched humanoid figure which barely rose to its ankle. Of course the illustration seemed to indicate that the creator was meant to ride inside it?

"...I'm not sure where we get that many bones, but that seems pretty great," Ling Qi said, studying the text around the illustration. "What's the catch?"

"The upkeep costs would be unsustainable," Li Suyin sighed. "Without the… sacrificial methods, described in the rest of the book, it would take roughly fifty yellow stones just to activate for a minute or so… I am also quite certain that it would take a third realm cultivator to control at all."

"...Let's leave that as a maybe for the tournament then," Ling Qi muttered. Would that be allowed? "Can we adapt any of the bad ones to be more useful?"

"The intervening formations require sacrifices of heartsblood and um… soul binding," Li Suyin replied uncomfortably. "The text in those sections is also irreparably damaged. I believe we could develop further advancements from our current formations though," she added hopefully. "In particular there is an advanced form of the ossuary scout formation that allows one to command a much larger number, and at need, combine them into a combatant…"

Ling Qi remembered the booming caw of the crow thing she and Su Ling had avoided, and going from the way the girls ears twitched, so did she. "That sounds good," Ling Qi replied. "I've actually been toying with some ideas for improving those by the way, I think I figured out how to improve the memory storage."

"Really? I had a few ideas, but if you could show me…" Li Suyin began excitedly, expressing a sheet of paper and pressing it into Ling Qi's hands.

She began quickly sketching out her ideas on the paper given, and soon the two girls fell to studying and improving their work. Unsavory rituals forgotten for the moment.

Ossuary Scout Formation 4/6

Together they began to fairly rapidly work out other tweaks that could make them better, and workarounds to the missing pieces in the manual for the more effective form of the formation.

Ling Qi spent most of the morning thus, with her head full of numbers as she carefully cultivated back to the peak. Her efforts to solve the puzzlebox went less well, as while between the two of them, Ling Qi was able to figure out that she could extend both the song and the timer through certain moves. The final configuration continued to escape her.

Eventually though, her friends had to depart, and after a bit of argument to get the other girl to accept a gift of raided medicines for her help, Ling Qi departed as well to continue working on her breakthrough.



Ling Qi followed the instructions on Li Suyin's medicine precisely, preparing the breakthrough chamber with the proper incenses and seating herself on a comfortable mat before taking a tiny dose of the clear, slightly viscous medicine. Almost immediately, she felt her eyelids drooping, but she did not allow herself to fall asleep.

Instead, she closed her eyes and turned her thoughts inward as she began to once again cycle her qi, letting the medicine aid her in leaving physical concerns behind.

She took it slow this time, where before she had cycled quickly and surged forward, eagerly seeking to break her limits, she now instead focused on gathering a bit more energy at a time. Each time she breathed in, taking in qi, she held it tightly in her channels, not allowing it to escape as it was naturally inclined. Slowly, she began to once again test her limits, and this time, her slow focus paid off.

There were, for lack of a better word, cracks, almost imperceptible ones, in the barrier which separated her from further cultivation. She allowed her qi to seep into them, spirit and will probing for weakness, and in what seemed like no time at all, the cracks widened, expanding until they consumed the barrier in its entirety.

Ling Qi paused for a time, her awareness of the outside world fading entirely as her world became the beat of her heart and the pulse of her qi. She floated, formless in her own thoughts as her qi pulsed and expanded, stretching toward the final limit of the second realm.

As her awareness was subsumed entirely into her pulsing qi, she found herself within a vision. In it, she sat on a high cliff overlooking a lake. Below her stretched a misty vale, silent under the light of the moon. The vale was a lively place, with a lush wood at its shore, she could see a bonfire under it's eaves, and she was sure her friends were waiting. A little village sat at the opposite shore, the tiny lights casting long shadows, and in the center of the lake sat an island, tall, narrow and mountainous, stretching high toward the clouds as if to grasp the silver moon, from it came a familiar tune.

Ling Qi found herself standing, looking over the vale, and was filled with the urge to move.

Where did she go?

[] The little village, full of little people and shadows that would keep her safe.
[] Toward the moonlit peak and its unseen players, calling her to join the serenade.
[] Into the forest, full of life and joy. She did not want to leave her friends waiting.
[] Into the sky, unfettered and free, to visit where ever she wished, at the time she wished.