"You know, I have to ask, what brought this on?" Sixiang asked curiously.
Ling Qi was silent as she stared down at her dress, lying spread out on the bed. The silk seemed to ripple under the light, the intricate patterns stitched along the hems shifting and dancing subtly.
Standing here, wearing mundane silks, Ling Qi felt deeply uncomfortable. Contrary to what some rumors said, she did change out of her clothes at times. She still bathed, she still set the dress aside when going to sleep, though that was rare. Sometimes on particularly lazy days she would even wear her sleeping shift into the meditation room.
This would be the first time she had gone out without it in a long time though.
"I don't think I can cultivate Wind Thief well while wearing this," Ling Qi said, still looking down at the dress. "At least… not at first."
She felt pressure, as if Sixiang was resting their chin on her shoulder and leaning against her back. "I don't think talisman's interfere with cultivation, even ones like that."
"The dress won't interfere, but I think my mindset will," Ling Qi said thoughtfully. "It's too safe."
Sixiang was silent for a moment. "You don't think you'll be able get the full lessons of the art if you're feeling safe?"
"That's why I'm going off alone too," Ling Qi said. "If you could, I'd like you to stay dormant or cultivate internally yourself, while I'm doing this.."
"...Ling Qi, are you planning to do something crazy?" Sixiang asked warily.
"I'm not planning too," Ling Qi said lightly.
They sighed. "...Just stay safe crazy girl, we still have dance lessons to do."
"Wouldn't miss it for the world," Ling Qi laughed.
Sixiang faded, and she was left alone.
Except, that wasn't really true, was it?
Ling Qi reached down and traced her fingers along the folds of her gown. The silk was cool, and the energies infusing it thrummed at her touch. "I'll be back soon, okay?" She said quietly.
And then she was gone, a shadow passing through the door.
She had to go before she could change her mind.
***
She left things behind one by one as she traveled north, into the depths of the forest which surrounded the Sect. One by one, meridians that thrummed with energy went still and quiescant. For the first time in over a year, she let the layered protection of her arts go silent.
It was nerve wracking. Her senses felt dull and muted, and her limbs felt too heavy and light all at once. The faint sounds of the forest beasts and the rustling of leaves raised the hairs on her neck. For the first time in many months, Ling Qi felt the faintest thrill of fear at the thought of traversing the woods. She felt small and weak and vulnerable, and it made her stomach clench.
But she wasn't a mortal anymore.
She leapt, and sailed meters through the air, to land on a branch which did not bend under her weight. She ran and rough bark, stones and thorns tore at her mundane clothing, but her flesh was inviolate. The darkness did not impede her eyes, and the cold chill of the night did not touch her. The mist that curled in the roots rose to her call, and trailed after the ragged hem of her dress like noblewoman's train.
She had changed, and the things she wore, the arts she practiced, were only the outermost difference. When she arrived at the moon drenched tower where sometimes lunatic revelers danced, she did not strain as she lifted the boulder which had fallen across the entrance. Ascending the crumbling stairs, she did not need an art to hear the echoes of revelry gone.
The tower was empty tonight, there was no gibbous moon hanging above, but only a thin grinning crescent, half hidden behind the clouds. But even if the dusty stones were quiet, the air was thick with moonlight. A single jump carried her twelve meters into the air, to alight upon the splintered end of a long petrified rafter, a second carried her to the highest point of the crumbling tower, and her bare feet came to rest on broken stone.
There, for a moment, Ling Qi stood still, and looked out over the darkened canopy over the forest and the twinkling night sky above. She looked down at her hands, flexing her fingers. Gone were the little scars and calluses of a hard life. Her skin was as smooth as the most sheltered of courtesans. She was not a beauty, but there were none save her mother who would connect the ragged and desperate child of Tonghou to the Immortal who stood here now.
Ling Qi could not call herself a thief anymore. She was a musician, a sister, and a soldier. She was a burgeoning diplomat, taking the first shaky steps into intrigue. She had abandoned her apathy, and chosen to believe that the idea of an improving world was not a childish fantasy.
"I've left a lot of your lessons behind," Ling Qi said to the empty sky. There were many things from those cruel years that she had put behind her, and though she retained some, others she had rejected, one by one. "Total freedom is a lie," she said softly.
The moon twinkled overhead, silent.
"Living only for yourself is empty and childish, and only the mighty and the foolish can pretend that it offers anything but misery and destruction," Ling Qi said thoughtfully. "Such a life is the life of a rabid beast."
Ling Qi held out her hand and watched the play of moonlight, filtered by the clouds on her skin. "But it isn't wrong to do things for yourself. Some chains should be broken, some rules are wrong. It isn't wrong to want to fly, as long as you remember your landing."
There was a charge in the air, an attention that she could feel, beating down on her mind. "It isn't wrong to steal the wind from its vault, to let it out into the world."
Beneath her, the ground, the forest and the Sect dropped away. She stood now on a promontory of crumbling stone, over a ravine miles deep, its bottom hidden even to her eyes. It was a fall even she could not survive. Below were the Gods, cruel and greedy, with all the riches and wonders of the world in their vaults.
And she was just one girl, so very small in the end. What madness could possess her, to think that she could defy the gods so?
Ling Qi smiled to herself, and stepped out into the open air.
The wind screamed in her ears as she plunged downward, and Ling Qi's heart pounded with it. The walls of the ravine blurred by, and the cold stone below beckoned. This was a dream, but dreams were real enough in their way.
The Grinning moon was many things, it rejected constraints, all constraints, this she refused. It loved cleverness and tricks, and this she accepted. She recalled vaguely a text she had read last year, claiming that the Grinning Moon was not the patron of criminals, but clever investigators. She had found it odd at the time, but she now knew it was not wrong.
The Grinning Moon did not care about goals, it did not care about motivations. Perhaps it's manifestations and avatars did, but the moon did not. The Grinning Moon was a thing of action and movement. Call it a heist or a sting, a casing or an investigation, the moon cared not. It only cared that you acted, that you sought to live and run and fly, to match your mind against others and come out on top.
As the ground approached, solid and inviolate, Ling Qi came to understand the core virtue of the Grinning Moon. That which underlaid all the rest.
Self Assurance.
Ling Qi looked at the approaching ground, and felt dormant meridians churn to life. The howl of the wind transformed into her laughter, and the shadows of the ravine closed in as a welcoming embrace.
She looked at the ground, and decided that she wasn't falling anymore.
Yet she could not defy the Law of Earth, anymore than any infant could defy the Law of their mother. But what parent did not know the mischief which a child could get up to, before the Law could be enforced?
Ling Qi became the wind and the shadow, and her momentum changed. She shot through the air, parallel to the ground, at a speed fit to strip a mortal's flesh from their bones. As the wind, she cared not. Feet and toes grew solid for one moment as her slowed descent carried her down into the depths of the ravine. There, her feet skipped across stone, and muscles filled with the force of hurricane flexed, granting her flight for a few more glorious moments.
She passed into the winding tunnels of the gods vaults, a mere whisper and laughing breeze. There she passed the halls of the gods, where they lounged in great coiled masses of muscle and umber scales, lying redolent before the great and never ending feast of meat and wine laid out at their feet. Power and luxury both beyond comprehension, treated with lax contempt.
But their own might was their undoing, and Ling Qi became one of the numberless and faceless slaves who served the meal. A mere mote of dust, under the notice of the mighty. So vast was their excess, that none noted the disappearance of even the most potent wine, nor the fleeting shadow that had once been a servant.
In the halls were innumerable defenses, mighty runes carved into stone to bar the entrance of foes and thieves alike. Alas for pride, that none deigned notice the movements of a mouse, designed as they were to fend off the machinations of gods. Beyond them at last, lay the vault of winds.
How mighty the door, how glittering the gems, all the riches of the deep earth on display. How impenetrable and secure, ten thousand locks bound by ten thousand spirits!
How neglected the beauty, dust dimming the fire of the earth's riches. How lax, the care, locks rusted and spirits disquieted by disuse. How foolish the gatekeeper, who accepted a bowl of most potent wine from a humble servant, a gift from his masters!
Within lay a simple bag of golden hide, bulging with the pressure of the winds, and as her deft fingers undid the ties, the first to emerge was…
[] The tempestuous northern wind, bringer of storms (Enhances speed and initiative effects of art)
[] The warm western wind, herald of spring (enhances Avoid effects of art)
[] The cold south wind, which cut to the bone (enhances offensive aspects of art)
[] the gentle eastern wind, unnoticed by all (enhances stealth effects of art)
