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Forge of Destiny(Xianxia Quest)

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When I said Ling Qi has had a big impact, it's true it's not precisely how fast she progressed, though she has progressed abnormally quickly. As has been mentioned, it was the fact she blitzed from being a clanless commoner that hadn't even awakened yet to become sufficiently powerful that most people would lump her in with the monsters- conventionally, if a commoner progresses quickly, it's because they have support from a lay cultivator clan, just one that hasn't managed to get a noble title yet. Not to mention that our mother isn't the only person who will be scratching their heads as to how we gained ducal-level connections so quickly. Conventionally, commoners getting involved in ducal affairs get stomped down. Instead, note how in many ways we have been treated not entirely dissimilarly to a noble-born cultivator of our cultivation level.
 
sstabeler said:
When I said Ling Qi has had a big impact, it's true it's not precisely how fast she progressed, though she has progressed abnormally quickly. As has been mentioned, it was the fact she blitzed from being a clanless commoner that hadn't even awakened yet to become sufficiently powerful that most people would lump her in with the monsters- conventionally, if a commoner progresses quickly, it's because they have support from a lay cultivator clan, just one that hasn't managed to get a noble title yet. Not to mention that our mother isn't the only person who will be scratching their heads as to how we gained ducal-level connections so quickly. Conventionally, commoners getting involved in ducal affairs get stomped down. Instead, note how in many ways we have been treated not entirely dissimilarly to a noble-born cultivator of our cultivation level.
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If this was the only sect in the empire, perhaps you'd be right. But it's not. It's not even the only great sect in the province. There are likely a dozen commoner cultivators at sects right now just as talented as Ling Qi. Heck, we know one of them, remember Ji Rong?

And even if Ling Qi is the best of these MoI recruited talented commoners (this year), she still isn't somehow special enough to have the kind of effect you're proposing. As we've seen with the examples of some of the more ambitious and successful inner sect members, Ling Qi is advancing at the level of roughly a talented count level scion, and is still a mere green level cultivator. Ling Qi, though talented and enjoying a lot of success so far in the quest, is a small fish in the very large pond that is the empire. Most of her personal worth is merely her progress speaks to great potential. I'm sure most of the clan heads personally have seen someone very much like Ling Qi, a rising star who seemed to have boundless potential, simply die before ever realizing it, or burning out in green or cyan. She is by no means so unusual or important enough to shift attitudes like you're thinking of.
 
sstabeler said:
When I said Ling Qi has had a big impact, it's true it's not precisely how fast she progressed, though she has progressed abnormally quickly. As has been mentioned, it was the fact she blitzed from being a clanless commoner that hadn't even awakened yet to become sufficiently powerful that most people would lump her in with the monsters- conventionally, if a commoner progresses quickly, it's because they have support from a lay cultivator clan, just one that hasn't managed to get a noble title yet. Not to mention that our mother isn't the only person who will be scratching their heads as to how we gained ducal-level connections so quickly. Conventionally, commoners getting involved in ducal affairs get stomped down. Instead, note how in many ways we have been treated not entirely dissimilarly to a noble-born cultivator of our cultivation level.
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We are not a monster and most people would not lump us with them.

We aren't even the commoner that did the best in our year, that palm goes to Li Suyin who placed significantly higher despite being a production track. For reminder, production tracks are considered inferior to combat track and production tracks need time and ressources significantly more than combat track which is why they are most often second years.
 
Alectai said:
Yeah, there's no honorifics, it's just full name or last name.
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There is no (almost*-)mandatory honorifics, but (as people who read Xianxia will notice) there are commonly used honorifics and wide range of titles that often are mandatory.

*Or just mandatory. IIRC in Japanese lack of honorific is honorific - two of them even depending on context.

This work mostly doesn't use them though.
 
Diomedon said:
If this was the only sect in the empire, perhaps you'd be right. But it's not. It's not even the only great sect in the province. There are likely a dozen commoner cultivators at sects right now just as talented as Ling Qi. Heck, we know one of them, remember Ji Rong?

And even if Ling Qi is the best of these MoI recruited talented commoners (this year), she still isn't somehow special enough to have the kind of effect you're proposing. As we've seen with the examples of some of the more ambitious and successful inner sect members, Ling Qi is advancing at the level of roughly a talented count level scion, and is still a mere green level cultivator. Ling Qi, though talented and enjoying a lot of success so far in the quest, is a small fish in the very large pond that is the empire. Most of her personal worth is merely her progress speaks to great potential. I'm sure most of the clan heads personally have seen someone very much like Ling Qi, a rising star who seemed to have boundless potential, simply die before ever realizing it, or burning out in green or cyan. She is by no means so unusual or important enough to shift attitudes like you're thinking of.
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I don't entirely agree. You're right that LQ isn't particularly special in raw power. I even acknowledged that, if you read what I said. However, while you aren't wrong that there are likely to be dozens of potential LQs at sects across the Empire, that's kind of my point. Previously, Ji Rong was a good example of what tended to happen- as backed up by what the Sect Advisor said about new clans typically either getting absorbed by another clan (which technically will probably happen sooner or later with the South Emerald Seas Ling Clan, since I get the feeling women usually join their husband's clan except with special circumstances like the Zheng that probably don't apply. Since there isn't a male member of the Clan...) or pissing off too many other clans. LQ is unique in that she broke the mould to actually pull off forging the beginnings of alliances on much more equal terms than a commoner would normally be able to get. For instance, remember we rejected Gu Tai's suit? and what happened when our mother rejected one of the Liu? the usual reaction would have been closer to what happened to our mother. Or when we rejected Meizhen when she kissed us, for that matter. That, since she did feel hurt, would usually have resulted in a feud with the Bai. (which is what our mother was referring to when she expressed concern about us having difficulties with a Bai) Or Renxiang would probably not have tolerated as many questions as we asked before agreeing vassalage, for that matter.

To use Ji Rong as an example, he is undoubtedly talented. He might even be Talent 7 or even 8 to our 6. However, his success is owed in the main to hitching himself to Sun Lilling. Wheras our success was mostly our own efforts. Plus, another difference is that Cai Renxiang approached us about vassalage while Ji Rong had to approach Sun Lilling, I suspect. That is another difference. Usually common-born cultivators need to prove why ducal heirs should bother allowing them to be a vassal. With us, Cai Renxiang had to persuade us.

Edit- to make it clearer, I'm not entirely taking about empire-wide politics here. Basically, in the political wargame that is the Sect to high nobility, common cultivators, to be blunt, are pawns. However, LQ was originally considered a pawn that turned out to be a valuable asset. That was my real point. Yes, it's not going to cause the nobility to treat commoners as they would fellow nobles. However, at least in the Argent Peak Sect, they're going to be wondering if that mouse of a common-born cultivator is another LQ in the making. THAT was my point. Yes, LQ would be as powerful as a count-level scion. However, from a common-born cultivator, that's a nasty shock. Count-level scions are usually the advisors of ducal-level scions, while common-born cultivators are usually beneath the notice of ducal-level cultivators.
 
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You're missing the point and focusing on the common part.
Talented commoners with a strong work ethic are common. Not every year, but often enough that you can glance over there and spot Renshu and more lining up through the ages.

What makes Ling Qi unique is the very special type of airheadedness and stubborn resolve to befriend the Bai, Han and Gu scions not even knowing the pit of knives she's walking over a tightrope on, and then aligning with Cai and dragging her higher status friends with her. Which is what caused a whole bunch of cascading failures. She's remarkable as a catalyst, but her level of talent and work ethic is nothing new to the Empire, basically every clan above Violet more or less started similarly to begin with.

This is what then let her as a talented, backingless commoner, to enjoy the fruits of a Ducal scion's generosity, and to wind up on the winning team through dragging teams that didn't even want to play together into a big pile.
This is why Ji Rong on the other hand is distinctly behind even with Ducal sponsorship and higher Talent.
 
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Let me know if its off topic, but can anyone recommend any other good Xianxia things to read? I didnt even know the genre before this story but now im interested.

(I just hope the high quality of the quest doesnt make any other story seem bad :) )
 
veekie said:
You're missing the point and focusing on the common part.
Talented commoners with a strong work ethic are common. Not every year, but often enough that you can glance over there and spot Renshu and more lining up through the ages.

What makes Ling Qi unique is the very special type of airheadedness and stubborn resolve to befriend the Bai, Han and Gu scions not even knowing the pit of knives she's walking over a tightrope on, and then aligning with Cai and dragging her higher status friends with her. Which is what caused a whole bunch of cascading failures. She's remarkable as a catalyst, but her level of talent and work ethic is nothing new to the Empire, basically every clan above Violet more or less started similarly to begin with.

This is what then let her as a talented, backingless commoner, to enjoy the fruits of a Ducal scion's generosity, and to wind up on the winning team through dragging teams that didn't even want to play together into a big pile.
This is why Ji Rong on the other hand is distinctly behind even with Ducal sponsorship and higher Talent.
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Ji Rong is not really distinctly behind. Like, he is behind, but a lot of him being behind can be attributed to sheer bad luck (Yan Renshu having been confirmed to be the one behind the false-ling qi doll makes one think the same happened to Ji Rong), and there is a good argument that he will more than catch up in the next couple months. Our big advantage over him right now is moon patron, but Xin sort of hinted that it's not impossible he himself was poached by someone else.

I don't know that Ling Qi is really special compared to what there often is. If she is, however, what makes her special is... 2 heiress and 2 other ducal scions being in her year in the sect and her lucking out into being in the middle of the mess with just the right amount of patronage to get advantage of it (thanks moon). Even then, where Ling Qi is currently is probably not something noteworthy at all for a commoner. What is noteworthy is us being a direct vassal of a Ducal heir that needs loyal vassals, which is basically "this only ever happen when a new ducal house takes over".

Incidentally, this might also be the position that Ji Rong himself might end up in.
 
sstabeler said:
Wheras our success was mostly our own efforts.
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There is a lot wrong with your post, but I'm just going to zero in on this. This is false. If Ji Rong can be said to have the support of Sun Liling, Ling Qi clearly enjoyed the support of Bai Meizhen, both political (all the breathing room Ling Qi had early quest was because people assumed she was already claimed by Meizhen), and material (remember the free tea usage we got, along with the occult/political/etiquette lessons (the occult lessons in particular are what helped in Zhou's second test, an absolutely crucial thing to Ling Qi's success), and sparring (which I'm sure benefited Ling Qi far more than it did Meizhen for most of the year), etc?).

You attribute this success to Ling Qi, but her accomplishment is reaching out, which was difficult for her, particularly with the whole fear aura thing. However, everything else is literally Meizhen. And more importantly, the outside perception of the situation is going to assume Meizhen contributed even more to Ling Qi's success than her already considerable contributions because (unlike the audience) they were not privy to the exact details of the interactions.
 
Diomedon said:
However, everything else is literally Meizhen.
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While I agree with the spirit of your comment, I disagree with this. Bai may have provided significant help, sure, but the accomplishment is still LQ's. Many people fail to properly utilise presented opportunities and the fact that LQ latched onto hers with all her stubborness and thread's ability to min-max time is what allowed her to skyrocket.
 
So, I think that people are really minimizing Ling Qi's specialness in regards to this setting. While she is by no means unique, which is evident by Ji Rong being in the same Sect as her, she is most likely in a much smaller class of people then it might first appear.

Assuming for the sake of argument that there are 10 commoners in our Sect who are just as talented, if not more so, than Ling Qi, as well as being just as dedicated to cultivation. Then we can assume that the Production track competition also had about 200 participants for the Argent Sect Tournament. The last assumption would be that the Argent Sect is representative of the Empire as a whole regarding the ratio between talented dedicated commoners and the scions of noble lines.

These three assumptions lead to a result that Ling Qi is a member of a class that makes up 2.5% of cultivators. Hardly unique, but decidedly rare and might be characterized as special. Now, while all of these assumptions have some grounding in reality, I personally believe that the first one is a bit high. There are probably less than 10 commoner born cultivators in the Argent Sect who are as talented and dedicated, if not more so, than Ling Qi.

That being said, what I believe makes Ling Qi different from the rest of the talented commoners is the position that she has wiggled herself into, intentionally or not. She has become the retainer to the heir of a duchy, friends with a scion of the Bai, acquainted with a scion of the Xuan (and received a personal invitation to visit their lands sometime by the Twin Admirals), and introduced to a scion of the Guo.

Not to mention that she has been introduced and made acquaintances with members of two count clans in the Emerald Sea (The Bao and the Luo), as well as being friends with a member of a viscount and maquis clan in the Golden Fields.

Anyone looking at the connections that Ling Qi has made could easily assume that Ling Qi has become a political animal. A person who came up from being a street rat to a member who could influence and take part in the extremely important political maneuverings of the Empire. From a person who nobody important knew existed to a pawn on the board of high stakes politics.

Even if her ability to cultivate and her drive to do so were not rare, then Ling Qi's apparent ability to forge connections with powerful players and become a part of the game of politics certainly is.
 
Yeah it's not super rare for a poor kid to get into Oxford. It's IS rare for a poor kid to get into oxford, immediately make friends with a kid of an oil magnate, some industrial heirs, and then start working for the Duke of Cambridge
 
Thor's Twin said:
So, I think that people are really minimizing Ling Qi's specialness in regards to this setting. While she is by no means unique, which is evident by Ji Rong being in the same Sect as her, she is most likely in a much smaller class of people then it might first appear.

Assuming for the sake of argument that there are 10 commoners in our Sect who are just as talented, if not more so, than Ling Qi, as well as being just as dedicated to cultivation. Then we can assume that the Production track competition also had about 200 participants for the Argent Sect Tournament. The last assumption would be that the Argent Sect is representative of the Empire as a whole regarding the ratio between talented dedicated commoners and the scions of noble lines.

These three assumptions lead to a result that Ling Qi is a member of a class that makes up 2.5% of cultivators. Hardly unique, but decidedly rare and might be characterized as special. Now, while all of these assumptions have some grounding in reality, I personally believe that the first one is a bit high. There are probably less than 10 commoner born cultivators in the Argent Sect who are as talented and dedicated, if not more so, than Ling Qi.

That being said, what I believe makes Ling Qi different from the rest of the talented commoners is the position that she has wiggled herself into, intentionally or not. She has become the retainer to the heir of a duchy, friends with a scion of the Bai, acquainted with a scion of the Xuan (and received a personal invitation to visit their lands sometime by the Twin Admirals), and introduced to a scion of the Guo.

Not to mention that she has been introduced and made acquaintances with members of two count clans in the Emerald Sea (The Bao and the Luo), as well as being friends with a member of a viscount and maquis clan in the Golden Fields.

Anyone looking at the connections that Ling Qi has made could easily assume that Ling Qi has become a political animal. A person who came up from being a street rat to a member who could influence and take part in the extremely important political maneuverings of the Empire. From a person who nobody important knew existed to a pawn on the board of high stakes politics.

Even if her ability to cultivate and her drive to do so were not rare, then Ling Qi's apparent ability to forge connections with powerful players and become a part of the game of politics certainly is.
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Yes, no one is arguing that Ling Qi has not been wildly successful. This entire line of argumentation arose out pointing out how the claim that Ling Qi has been so amazingly successful and is so special that the culture of the empire would already be changing its attitudes in response to her is wrong by about an order of magnitude or two of overstating her importance and success.
 
Yeah though, LQ is the Exception that proves why these sorts of programs are done.

Or she will be if/when she hits Indigo or above.
 
I'm sure this has been answered before, but how fundamental are the color names of the cultivation stages?

We know that not everyone uses the color names: Bai Meizhen said she was in the second stage of Sin-shedding though she used the standard, Imperial color/metal nomenclature thereafter.

So are the color names entirely arbitrary? Is a green spirit stone literally green, or are those more arbitrary names?
 
Diomedon said:
Yes, no one is arguing that Ling Qi has not been wildly successful. This entire line of argumentation arose out pointing out how the claim that Ling Qi has been so amazingly successful and is so special that the culture of the empire would already be changing its attitudes in response to her is wrong by about an order of magnitude or two of overstating her importance and success.
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However, people were also making the argument that Ling Qi wasn't special, that she was just another commoner cultivator which is a common thing. And that is what my post was addressing.

We can both agree that Ling Qi isn't going to be changing Imperial culture anytime soon, either directly or indirectly, but my argument is that Ling Qi is special outside of the abnormal success she has had, and additionally that the abnormal success either makes her more special or reaffirms that she is special.
 
Cetashwayo said:
So I am overall pretty pleased with the story so far. I couldn't give much of a shit about the mechanics, but then I thankfully don't have to because I'm reading it mostly as a story right now.
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Yeah, Yrsillar had done a really good job keeping the silly number crunching out of the narrative. Unfortunately that doesn't extend to the thread in general. There were multiple times were I wanted to read the threads reactions to some cool event and was faced with a page of spreadsheet gibberish about training rolls.:p
 
I should perhaps make it clear that I never intended my post to be an argument for LQ's success to be a cultural change empire-wide, except possibly in noble houses reminding their scions headed to sects to keep an eye out for potential talent even in the common-born disciples, and perhaps to be politer to the same if they come from socially...undesirable backgrounds than they otherwise would.

However, my real point is that previously, nobles generally considered common-born cultivators not to really be worth approaching to offer help with. Remember Gu Xiulan's first reaction to us? And she's a member of a Viscount House. Even Han originally felt it was something of a charity case, IIRC. Wheras now, I suspect that in the Argent Sect, noble scions would be a little more open minded about the possibility a common-born cultivator might be worth keeping an eye on.

Basically, I see it more as nobles being more like Cai in looking for talented disciples, regardless of birth, as opposed to ignoring them as they do now.

basically, yes LQ's success isn't that different from what a hardworking Count-level scion could do. However, she didn't have the myriad advantages a Count-level scion would have. That is the point.

That, and presumably someone will wonder if this means all of the Count-level Scions have been slacking off if a commoner can do in one year what they take 3 or 4 to do.
 
At this point, I just can't wait till we get back to our regularly scheduled broadcast.

CeBrudras said:
Yeah, Yrsillar had done a really good job keeping the silly number crunching out of the narrative. Unfortunately that doesn't extend to the thread in general. There were multiple times were I wanted to read the threads reactions to some cool event and was faced with a page of spreadsheet gibberish about training rolls.:p
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but I liked those spread sheets >_>
 
sstabeler said:
However, my real point is that previously, nobles generally considered common-born cultivators not to really be worth approaching to offer help with.
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Yes, because the vast majority of them aren't that special.

As soon as we'd demonstrated our talent we started having talks about how the nobles snap up people like us. We were just largely shielded from such things because our high ranking friends had called dibs.

Hell, even Cai didn't approach us until late in the game, once our talent was well established.

Until then though there was no reason to think we'd be anything other than the normal talented commoner who gets grabbed by the Sect.
 
The distinction to make here, I think, is that the typical commoner at a sect is from a commoner family, and has already been awoken - because they're being sent to the Sect, so they had damn well better spend what resources they can in hopes of a higher payoff.

Commoners who haven't been awoken, however? They were probably pulled in by the MoI, who only bother with those of unusually high talent (6+?) who are otherwise unaffiliated (not already a member of a clan, commoner or noble).

Bai Meizhen recognized this immediately, which is why she accepted Ling Qi's presence in the first place.

I think there were one, maybe two, people brought in by the MoI to the Argent Sect for LQ's first year: Ji Rong and Ling Qi, and in an average year there might have been one - or even none, given how many Sects there are (three 'Great' Sects in the Emerald Sea alone, for example).

The lesson to take from this is that unawoken commoners entering a Great Sect are the ones to keep an eye on. Nobody is likely to learn that particular lesson who didn't already know it, however, noble biases being what they are. Perhaps that is fortunate; perhaps it isn't.
 
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