The girl gave her a considering look from behind her veil, and then sighed, sending the cloth hanging over her face fluttering. "I would appreciate it. The personal matter which I have mentioned to you several times has come up."
So we have the opportunity to meet Cousin Tai! I do hope he meets Ling Qi's aesthetic standards. Otherwise, it would just be an embarrassment all around, if Ling Qi immediately rejects him for being insufficiently beefy.
Though, presumably why Xiulan brought it up now is because the minors of previous weeks -- the town shopping excursion -- was actually an excuse to introduce Ling Qi and Gu Tai together without alerting Ling Qi. With several weeks passing by without a hint of interest on Ling Qi's part, Xiulan must have decided bluntness was required.
If that's so, then I expect Gu Tai to be an Inner Sect student, well into the 3rd Realms. There's no reason why Xiulan couldn't bring Gu Tai to Ling Qi on the mountain if he was still in the Outer Sect.
"Mm, well it is not as if you could be expected to push through even the passive resistance of a strong beast," Xiulan said idly, twirling a strand of hair on her unburned finger. "Han Jian, perhaps more active scouting might be effective?"
Gotta admit, I literally laughed out loud. Gu Xiulan is
such a
bitch! It's nice to see her own comparative failures hasn't dampened her spirits!
Though Ling Qi wondered when precisely she had gotten used to being clean.
Thus Ling Qi moves farther away from her roots. I wonder if, at Green and beyond, when she has truly become an adult, any of her survivor's mindset will survive the transition?
"As things are, once you have mastered Falling Stars… I would suggest looking into mid and close range variants, water or pure wind. One who tries to do all things will only find themselves drowning in mediocrity."
Hahaha, Zhong Peng recommends Ling Qi abandon Heaven and focus on her actual elemental suite! I think pure wind is best, on a narrative level, as archery is really an expression of her inborn talent, of which wind -- not water -- is also an expression. However, on a mechanical level, multi-element arts gets the benefits of two [element] pills, so they're trained faster. (... I hope breakthrough into 3rd Realm advances Ling Qi's wind talent into further success reductions for pure wind arts... )
Though, if we absolutely must retain Heaven, I do hope the successor art chosen uses the Star element. Ling Qi has some understanding of stellar qi through her cultivation of EPC, so the element spread contracts, a little.
The early form of the Sects physical enhancement and movement arts, combining the flexibility of wind with the sudden force of thunder. Fills the user with the strength of the great seasonal squalls which beat down upon the Wall year after year.
So Argent Storm is physical offense/defense
and movement. So what's Heaven/Earth? We have confirmation that the Sect Head creates the arts and also bound a Heaven-aligned spirit beast, he should have a Heaven foundational art.
On Argent Storm itself, it's further focused on physical combat and passively gives the user burst speed. Keeping the assumption the Argent arts were made to combat the Cloud Trives, the melee physical focus indicates physical melee is what the Cloud Tribes use predominantly, and the lack of major speed emphasis indicates the Cloud Tribes also only use passive speed boosts instead of techniques.
With just the current 3 Argent arts known, the suite suggests a Hero unit duking it out, with several incidental supports on the sideline for multi-attack penalties. In comparison to my previous speculation, this suite acknowledges the Empire's numerical superiority while also bending to the fact that the cultivation pyramid exists -- as an enemy rises in cultivation, the number of people on your side that can even stand against them falls. Thus, the Argent arts may assume the typical combat scenario is one hero (with sidekicks!) against another hero, locked in physical melee combat.
What is lacking, as far as I can tell, is spiritual offense and ranged combat. This absence may be evidence that the Cloud Tribes have great spiritual and ranged defense of their own -- this would be in keeping with the dominance of the Khans: the warriors give rise to the Khans, who can no-sell both their own spiritual shamans and ranged warriors. Thus, attempting to attack at ranged or with spiritual may be clashing against defenses honed through conflict with their own people before they even reach the Empire, and therefore spiritual offense and ranged combat is ineffective.
...The aphorism "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" still applies though, Maybe if we go above and beyond on the favors for Fu Xiang, he'll give us the last Argent art?
