Threads Of Destiny(Eastern Fantasy, Sequel to Forge of Destiny)
- Thread starter yrsillar
- Start date
- Original Users' Choice!
Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
[X] Give the promise, there is surely enough to explore among the eaves (Removes certain decisions from consideration in the upcoming arc, pleases Shu Yue)
- Location
- UK
[X] Give the promise, there is surely enough to explore among the eaves (Removes certain decisions from consideration in the upcoming arc, pleases Shu Yue)
EternalObserver
eYe Gaze baCk
- Location
- The Void
[X] Give the promise, there is surely enough to explore among the eaves (Removes certain decisions from consideration in the upcoming arc, pleases Shu Yue)
PowerLeca
Rapidly aging
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I'm curious about this bit!
We've had our inheritance from Zequing for a while now, and there's a few easily noticeable changes from it:
- Our presence is chilly
- We tolerate and even heavily prefer cold things
- ???
The qi that we picked up seems to be heavily darkness. Maybe there are other aspects of it, but changes will probably be based off of darkness.
What kinds of personality changes might we expect from more darkness qi picked up from uncle skelly cultivation?
- nihilism?
- insatiable want?
- inky shadow casting?
Would finding a Light art to cultivate help balance the element some? CRX might be able to recommend something?
Darkness is linked with wanting/not having things, so Greed, Lust, Gluttony, Ambition.
I don't think trying to fix Want through Light works. Light we've seen is more about ideals and inspiration, the two would compound, not negate.
Ling Qi's approach for managing Want is to anchor it in her community and family. Thats her Wood and Music side.
Su Ling's Desperation
- Location
- France
- Pronouns
- She/They
I think we already had aspects of darkness because it was associated with our ice and we picked some arts that use it? The insatiable want part has always been important to our character.
So I think we need to look beyond just generic Qi nature and at the specifics of the guy we picked it up from. Darkness in general, we already know how to deal with.
Pretty sure the darkness movement arts she has got obtained around the same time she got all the stuff from the moon spirit in the test really early on, before she even met Zeqing and got into all the ice arts. It's pretty baseline for her, which makes sense given how much it fit her early characterization. She's moved away from her early wind characterization and her desire for freedom from everything, but that darkness of loneliness and desire is still pretty integral to her. But just because it's familiar, doesn't mean it's a good thing to emphasize. Any trait taken to extremes becomes unhealthy, so we definitely do need to tread cautiously. And it's probably a good idea to look into this guy if we possibly can and find out specifics, yeah. Maybe that guy we found all the stuff we're auctioning off with will be around and we can ask him if any of the hints uncle skelly dropped are familiar to him? He seemed pretty knowledgeable.
- Location
- France
- Pronouns
- She/They
I'm not saying it's good, I'm saying it's a bad we already have experience mitigating, and if it's just a question of amount of darkness, we'll probably manage.
It's if it's more insidious or complex that we need to worry and find new methods to deal with it.
The sort of story that Huisheng evokes generally has bad stuff happen when all the stories have been told.
Indeed its entirely possible that Huisheng ate the original Weilu prisoner after a similar process, with the Arch-Heretic mostly going along with it because they had no reason to believe they would escape and at least this way someone would be able to tell the stories in the future.
Indeed its entirely possible that Huisheng ate the original Weilu prisoner after a similar process, with the Arch-Heretic mostly going along with it because they had no reason to believe they would escape and at least this way someone would be able to tell the stories in the future.
- Location
- The Space Between
The ArchHeretic, Breaker of Ways. Does killing someone break their Way? I know that Imperial Cultivation is sort of like embodying a set of Ideas more and more. So how much of a Way survives when a person is killed? Isn't that what we can see in the persistent warped regions where major cultivators fell? Isn't that part of the core issue with The Twilight King? He's dead but his Way is still active?
I think it'd be funny if one of the ways he honed his craft was as a disposer of bodies. One of those jobs traditionally pushed to the outskirts of society, but with enough contact with religious entities that he could develop beliefs similar enough to the dominant religion to be called Heresy rather than an alternate religion entirely. Combing through the detritus and breaking down the Ways of those that had already died, he'd be well trained in dismembering the Ways of those still living wouldn't he? Plus, with the knowledge of how the Way persists after death he could have crafted something like the Huisheng we see today. Better than a zombie cultivator, it'd be a "cultivator's Spirit". Not the cultivator, but something else that takes their place in animating their Way.
Perhaps that's another way that the ArchHeretic is similar to the religion that cast him as ArchHeretic, the idea to allow a Spirit to animate the Way of the deceased. It'd make those dream spirits that were play-acting as Weilu very interesting, as well as the echo of the White Lord of the Forest very interesting as well. Crafting a "Mask" for the spirits to wear. Sounds similar to how Shenhua has crafted a "mask" of her own face hmmm? I think this starts to tie it all together, but it's still missing multiple pieces. Like wtf are the Shishigui and which Imperial landmark (if any) are their Holy Lands?
I think it'd be funny if one of the ways he honed his craft was as a disposer of bodies. One of those jobs traditionally pushed to the outskirts of society, but with enough contact with religious entities that he could develop beliefs similar enough to the dominant religion to be called Heresy rather than an alternate religion entirely. Combing through the detritus and breaking down the Ways of those that had already died, he'd be well trained in dismembering the Ways of those still living wouldn't he? Plus, with the knowledge of how the Way persists after death he could have crafted something like the Huisheng we see today. Better than a zombie cultivator, it'd be a "cultivator's Spirit". Not the cultivator, but something else that takes their place in animating their Way.
Perhaps that's another way that the ArchHeretic is similar to the religion that cast him as ArchHeretic, the idea to allow a Spirit to animate the Way of the deceased. It'd make those dream spirits that were play-acting as Weilu very interesting, as well as the echo of the White Lord of the Forest very interesting as well. Crafting a "Mask" for the spirits to wear. Sounds similar to how Shenhua has crafted a "mask" of her own face hmmm? I think this starts to tie it all together, but it's still missing multiple pieces. Like wtf are the Shishigui and which Imperial landmark (if any) are their Holy Lands?
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Turn 14: Arc 4-6
"I think that is an easy promise to make for now," said Ling Qi. "Even I need to space out my tribulations a little."
She glanced down at her still-broken arm. It would be usable (if sore) by the time they arrived, but she wasn't eager to dive into another pit of horrors.
"You will stick to risking your mind over your body, then." Shu Yue surmised.
Ling Qi gave a tight smile. "The revels of the dreaming moon are risky, but it's a different kind of risk."
"Yes, it is." the older cultivator mused. "I told you to be ambitious, but patience is a part of that."
"It's a little hard to think of patience right now," said Ling Qi dryly.
"It always is." said Shu Yue idly, turning away. "Even when you begin to think of years as you do months, and decades as years."
Suddenly Shu Yue was gone, vanished between eye blinks as if they had never been. Or, at least, they appeared to be gone. And wasn't that a fun thought? Would she make people think the same someday?
"Pretty sure you already do, in certain circles," drawled Sixiang, their chin resting on her shoulder. It would have been an awkward position if the rest of their body was materialized.
"That doesn't count," Ling Qi chuckled, doing her best to hide her continued unease. She turned away from the carriage, making her way out from where it was held. In the end, she thought, what had changed from yesterday? Nothing. She still needed to aim for the top. She still needed to support Renxiang, and she still believed that Renxiang would do good as a Duchess.
She still needed to make a good impression and make plenty of stones for her clan. She still needed to ensure the Empire, or at least the province, didn't end up fighting any more wars than were absolutely necessary. None of her immediate problems had changed. The heavens were still far away.
But she would reach them, one day. It should have been obvious that she wouldn't find peace there.
The approach to Xiangmen was a strange and wondrous thing. For Ling Qi's entire life, both on the streets of Tonghou and in the Sect, the dark vertical line on the northern horizon was as much a fact of life as the movement of the sun and moon. There was always some faint awareness that it was the distant capital of the province - Xiangmen, the Heavenly Pillar.
The road took them north, and the dark line on the horizon grew. First a hazy shape, then a solid pillar stretching into the sky, with a top shrouded by what seemed like permanent clouds. But these were not clouds - they were leaves. Less than halfway to the capital, it seemed to loom higher than the mountains of the Wall where they came from. It seemed impossible that they could still be so far away from Xiangmen.
They saw the first of the roots more than two hundred kilometers from the base of the city. A high winding ridge with a gentle slope, covered in greenery, vibrant fields, and clusters of pastoral manors. The road bent to remain in its' shadow. The canopy consumed the sky, a vast dome of green, with impossibly-high branches measured in sizes used only for cities. They should have been in total darkness, and yet the sun shone through the waving leaves as if wholly unobstructed. Only the trunk cast a shadow, a visibly moving wall of darkness that passed over the road with the movement of the sun.
The trunk was wider than any mountainside Ling Qi had ever seen. It was so absurdly massive that it seemed flat rather than curved, hundreds of kilometers across. A city sprawled among the gnarled roots, built into what seemed like mossy hills and low mountains, teeming with more people than the entire city of Tonghou, and she knew it was just one outer district of the metropolis built into the tree itself.
The air was suffused with qi, a dense, thick mix of wood and earth, and Ling Qi did not think it was a coincidence that the people she saw seemed healthier, stood straighter, walked with more energy than those of Tonghou or even the Argent Sect village. She could not even describe what she felt from the tree itself. Even kilometers distant, it was a beacon of power unmatched by anything she had ever seen.
"How in the world is anything built into it?" Ling Qi found herself whispering, leaning out the window as the carriage rolled along the well-paved road. She craned her neck to look up and up, eyeing the seemingly tiny 'windows' she could see carved into the upper trunk, paths and roads winding around the outside seemingly cut into the bark. "C-could even your mother cut the bark?"
"The Temple of the Pillars intercedes between the citizens and Xiangmen," Gan Guangli said, peering out the other window. "They know the sacred songs and chants which will coax the tree to shape its bark and wood into streets and buildings, or to remove those no longer needed."
"The sitting duke is the head of the temple, and engages when more serious adjustments to infrastructure are needed, such as the construction of new districts," said Cai Renxiang calmly. Of them, she alone made no effort to look out at their approach. "It is one of the quirks of Xiangmen that the buildings in lower and middle Xiangmen are largely indestructible, requiring no maintenance."
"I guess that would make it easier to save resources," Ling Qi responded absently, still craning her neck up. Even if she channeled qi into her eyes, she could see nothing of the upper city she knew to be built into the branches. "I couldn't imagine even the worst storm or flood shaking something inside, either. No wonder the city is so huge."
"Xiangmen is truly blessed. Its' abundance is unmatched and the ills of the world outside are far away. It is a testament to ancestral misconduct that it is anything but a paradise," said Cai Renxiang quietly.
Ling Qi gave a small nod, still goggling a little at what she was seeing.
"Big Sister, I feel really small," Zhengui murmured in her mind. "I don't like it."
"Of course you feel small dummy, this thing's humongous!" Hanyi exclaimed. "...it kinda gives me a headache and a tummyache at the same time."
"We're just visiting. Think of it as a learning experience." she thought comfortingly. "You'll be growing a lot too, Zhengui."
Out loud, she said. "So, I'll be going to the Meng manor first?"
"Yes," agreed Cai Renxiang. "I will be busy with many greetings, but you should focus on your mercantile business here. I trust you to acquire a good deal."
"I will have our Lady's side." said Gan Guangli.
The carriage rolled on, and soon the trunk consumed the entire horizon. The road rose, twisting along the path of one of the half buried roots. The gates of the city proper were not the usual metal, stone, or jade, but painted wood from Xiangmen itself. They revealed a yawning road that split in the cavernous interior, one going up and the other going down. The interior was lit by globules of dried amber set regularly in the walls and ceiling, glowing inside with vibrant masses of sun qi that lit up the shadowed interior as bright as a fine day.
Even then, despite their favored status in the traffic and the speed of the carriage, it took more than six hours to complete the circuitous journey through the trunk and into the upper city. The lights inside waned with the setting sun that shone through the carved-out windows, which had looked so tiny outside but seemed cavernous up close.
When they emerged at last from the trunk, onto a branch as wide as the great highway that lead into the city, Ling Qi found she could not see the ground below - only the fluffy white tops of clouds and the grey of immense distance between them. They had come to the Cloudspires. Here, though their foundations were grown from the tree, the immense extravagance and wealth of the wealthiest peoples of the provinces were on display. Vast complexes of crystal and jade, either impossibly delicate or looming with brooding weight depending on their owners sensibilities. Every street seemed like a scene from some mad art competition, each building seemingly competing with the others for attention. There were no mortals here, only cultivators - the air was too thin for anyone else. It was cold and brisk in her lungs like the air on the highest peaks in the Wall.
Soon, they arrived at the 'small' Cai mansion they would be staying in for the duration of the auction. Compared to the other Cloudspire buildings it was very austere, being a traditional two-story manse with surrounding gardens, but the roof tiles were gleaming white jade and sections of the interior were built from qi-reactive wood - which could change its' pigments at command, allowing for spontaneous murals (or even moving scenes) from a cultivator's memory.
Ling Qi suspected paneling even one small room with it would cost her entire savings.
It had apparently been the second home of a former deputy minister of commerce, who had been executed for embezzlement and trafficking of human reagents. His clan had been stripped of legal status as nobles, and thus the right to own property in the Upper City. Now it stood empty with little furnishing and quite a lot of dust, which probably explained why the place still felt vaguely sick to Ling Qi's senses. She didn't think she'd be spending much time here, at least until new impressions had some time to set in.
Ling Qi left it behind to walk along the wide boulevard that led to the home for visiting Meng dignitaries. It would have been easy to simply walk and get lost among the vibrant streets, filled with chattering cultivators. She saw theaters and concert halls, art galleries and tea houses, and many other strange establishments. Who needed a whole hall just for dancing, or reading poetry? Some of it looked suspiciously... vulgar, but no one seemed to pay it any mind and there were no red lanterns up.
Instead she tried to stay focused, advancing toward the mist-wrapped Meng estates. The streets of the Cloudspires were all a little misty, but it grew thicker as she approached, glittering with the light passing through and shrouding the serene grounds. Ponds filled hollows in the branch around the estate and soft green grass grew under her feet, creating a quiet garden of darkly-colored flowers and softly-running water that encircled the Meng household's delicate crystal spires.
She suspected it would have been easy to get lost among the ponds, even for her - the air tingled with familiar qi, not so different from her own mist, but thankfully she was invited.
At an archway made of woven living vines and flowers, Meng Dan met her, his customary smile firmly in place. "Welcome, Lady Ling. Xiangmen is quite a weighty place, isn't it?"
"It is," responded Ling Qi. Really, she sympathized with Hanyi, it was like her first years' tournament all over again, surrounded with so much ambient qi that she felt a headache coming on. "May I come in?"
"Of course, we have much to discuss."
AN: This section got a bit long so I had to split it, will be a vote on the next one
She glanced down at her still-broken arm. It would be usable (if sore) by the time they arrived, but she wasn't eager to dive into another pit of horrors.
"You will stick to risking your mind over your body, then." Shu Yue surmised.
Ling Qi gave a tight smile. "The revels of the dreaming moon are risky, but it's a different kind of risk."
"Yes, it is." the older cultivator mused. "I told you to be ambitious, but patience is a part of that."
"It's a little hard to think of patience right now," said Ling Qi dryly.
"It always is." said Shu Yue idly, turning away. "Even when you begin to think of years as you do months, and decades as years."
Suddenly Shu Yue was gone, vanished between eye blinks as if they had never been. Or, at least, they appeared to be gone. And wasn't that a fun thought? Would she make people think the same someday?
"Pretty sure you already do, in certain circles," drawled Sixiang, their chin resting on her shoulder. It would have been an awkward position if the rest of their body was materialized.
"That doesn't count," Ling Qi chuckled, doing her best to hide her continued unease. She turned away from the carriage, making her way out from where it was held. In the end, she thought, what had changed from yesterday? Nothing. She still needed to aim for the top. She still needed to support Renxiang, and she still believed that Renxiang would do good as a Duchess.
She still needed to make a good impression and make plenty of stones for her clan. She still needed to ensure the Empire, or at least the province, didn't end up fighting any more wars than were absolutely necessary. None of her immediate problems had changed. The heavens were still far away.
But she would reach them, one day. It should have been obvious that she wouldn't find peace there.
***
The approach to Xiangmen was a strange and wondrous thing. For Ling Qi's entire life, both on the streets of Tonghou and in the Sect, the dark vertical line on the northern horizon was as much a fact of life as the movement of the sun and moon. There was always some faint awareness that it was the distant capital of the province - Xiangmen, the Heavenly Pillar.
The road took them north, and the dark line on the horizon grew. First a hazy shape, then a solid pillar stretching into the sky, with a top shrouded by what seemed like permanent clouds. But these were not clouds - they were leaves. Less than halfway to the capital, it seemed to loom higher than the mountains of the Wall where they came from. It seemed impossible that they could still be so far away from Xiangmen.
They saw the first of the roots more than two hundred kilometers from the base of the city. A high winding ridge with a gentle slope, covered in greenery, vibrant fields, and clusters of pastoral manors. The road bent to remain in its' shadow. The canopy consumed the sky, a vast dome of green, with impossibly-high branches measured in sizes used only for cities. They should have been in total darkness, and yet the sun shone through the waving leaves as if wholly unobstructed. Only the trunk cast a shadow, a visibly moving wall of darkness that passed over the road with the movement of the sun.
The trunk was wider than any mountainside Ling Qi had ever seen. It was so absurdly massive that it seemed flat rather than curved, hundreds of kilometers across. A city sprawled among the gnarled roots, built into what seemed like mossy hills and low mountains, teeming with more people than the entire city of Tonghou, and she knew it was just one outer district of the metropolis built into the tree itself.
The air was suffused with qi, a dense, thick mix of wood and earth, and Ling Qi did not think it was a coincidence that the people she saw seemed healthier, stood straighter, walked with more energy than those of Tonghou or even the Argent Sect village. She could not even describe what she felt from the tree itself. Even kilometers distant, it was a beacon of power unmatched by anything she had ever seen.
"How in the world is anything built into it?" Ling Qi found herself whispering, leaning out the window as the carriage rolled along the well-paved road. She craned her neck to look up and up, eyeing the seemingly tiny 'windows' she could see carved into the upper trunk, paths and roads winding around the outside seemingly cut into the bark. "C-could even your mother cut the bark?"
"The Temple of the Pillars intercedes between the citizens and Xiangmen," Gan Guangli said, peering out the other window. "They know the sacred songs and chants which will coax the tree to shape its bark and wood into streets and buildings, or to remove those no longer needed."
"The sitting duke is the head of the temple, and engages when more serious adjustments to infrastructure are needed, such as the construction of new districts," said Cai Renxiang calmly. Of them, she alone made no effort to look out at their approach. "It is one of the quirks of Xiangmen that the buildings in lower and middle Xiangmen are largely indestructible, requiring no maintenance."
"I guess that would make it easier to save resources," Ling Qi responded absently, still craning her neck up. Even if she channeled qi into her eyes, she could see nothing of the upper city she knew to be built into the branches. "I couldn't imagine even the worst storm or flood shaking something inside, either. No wonder the city is so huge."
"Xiangmen is truly blessed. Its' abundance is unmatched and the ills of the world outside are far away. It is a testament to ancestral misconduct that it is anything but a paradise," said Cai Renxiang quietly.
Ling Qi gave a small nod, still goggling a little at what she was seeing.
"Big Sister, I feel really small," Zhengui murmured in her mind. "I don't like it."
"Of course you feel small dummy, this thing's humongous!" Hanyi exclaimed. "...it kinda gives me a headache and a tummyache at the same time."
"We're just visiting. Think of it as a learning experience." she thought comfortingly. "You'll be growing a lot too, Zhengui."
Out loud, she said. "So, I'll be going to the Meng manor first?"
"Yes," agreed Cai Renxiang. "I will be busy with many greetings, but you should focus on your mercantile business here. I trust you to acquire a good deal."
"I will have our Lady's side." said Gan Guangli.
The carriage rolled on, and soon the trunk consumed the entire horizon. The road rose, twisting along the path of one of the half buried roots. The gates of the city proper were not the usual metal, stone, or jade, but painted wood from Xiangmen itself. They revealed a yawning road that split in the cavernous interior, one going up and the other going down. The interior was lit by globules of dried amber set regularly in the walls and ceiling, glowing inside with vibrant masses of sun qi that lit up the shadowed interior as bright as a fine day.
Even then, despite their favored status in the traffic and the speed of the carriage, it took more than six hours to complete the circuitous journey through the trunk and into the upper city. The lights inside waned with the setting sun that shone through the carved-out windows, which had looked so tiny outside but seemed cavernous up close.
When they emerged at last from the trunk, onto a branch as wide as the great highway that lead into the city, Ling Qi found she could not see the ground below - only the fluffy white tops of clouds and the grey of immense distance between them. They had come to the Cloudspires. Here, though their foundations were grown from the tree, the immense extravagance and wealth of the wealthiest peoples of the provinces were on display. Vast complexes of crystal and jade, either impossibly delicate or looming with brooding weight depending on their owners sensibilities. Every street seemed like a scene from some mad art competition, each building seemingly competing with the others for attention. There were no mortals here, only cultivators - the air was too thin for anyone else. It was cold and brisk in her lungs like the air on the highest peaks in the Wall.
Soon, they arrived at the 'small' Cai mansion they would be staying in for the duration of the auction. Compared to the other Cloudspire buildings it was very austere, being a traditional two-story manse with surrounding gardens, but the roof tiles were gleaming white jade and sections of the interior were built from qi-reactive wood - which could change its' pigments at command, allowing for spontaneous murals (or even moving scenes) from a cultivator's memory.
Ling Qi suspected paneling even one small room with it would cost her entire savings.
It had apparently been the second home of a former deputy minister of commerce, who had been executed for embezzlement and trafficking of human reagents. His clan had been stripped of legal status as nobles, and thus the right to own property in the Upper City. Now it stood empty with little furnishing and quite a lot of dust, which probably explained why the place still felt vaguely sick to Ling Qi's senses. She didn't think she'd be spending much time here, at least until new impressions had some time to set in.
Ling Qi left it behind to walk along the wide boulevard that led to the home for visiting Meng dignitaries. It would have been easy to simply walk and get lost among the vibrant streets, filled with chattering cultivators. She saw theaters and concert halls, art galleries and tea houses, and many other strange establishments. Who needed a whole hall just for dancing, or reading poetry? Some of it looked suspiciously... vulgar, but no one seemed to pay it any mind and there were no red lanterns up.
Instead she tried to stay focused, advancing toward the mist-wrapped Meng estates. The streets of the Cloudspires were all a little misty, but it grew thicker as she approached, glittering with the light passing through and shrouding the serene grounds. Ponds filled hollows in the branch around the estate and soft green grass grew under her feet, creating a quiet garden of darkly-colored flowers and softly-running water that encircled the Meng household's delicate crystal spires.
She suspected it would have been easy to get lost among the ponds, even for her - the air tingled with familiar qi, not so different from her own mist, but thankfully she was invited.
At an archway made of woven living vines and flowers, Meng Dan met her, his customary smile firmly in place. "Welcome, Lady Ling. Xiangmen is quite a weighty place, isn't it?"
"It is," responded Ling Qi. Really, she sympathized with Hanyi, it was like her first years' tournament all over again, surrounded with so much ambient qi that she felt a headache coming on. "May I come in?"
"Of course, we have much to discuss."
AN: This section got a bit long so I had to split it, will be a vote on the next one
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I wonder how old this Temple is? it would have to have existed in some form or another since people first started living in Xiangmen, right? Or at least since the Diviner.
- Location
- The Star Kingdom of Manticore
It does appear so.
Gotta say I'm incredibly excited for Ling Qi to continue exploring Xiangmen. The Big Tree just seems so wondrous I want to see what all the districts and people in it look like. This is an important place, the heart of the Emerald Seas, and in the future might play almost as big a role in the story as the Argent Sect and our fief. And those don't really have the history and sheer lived-in-ness of Xiangmen. I wonder if we'll get a sense of just how ancient this place is on it's Dream side.
Chlof
Her Ladyship
- Pronouns
- She/Her
A barkology, as it were.
- Location
- United States of America
Better than an Arcology! You can just ask it very nicely to grow new room for you to live in, maintenance doesn't seem to be a concern, and its branches pierce the Heavens!