It was difficult, because in the end, Ling Qi was acting off instinct as much as anything else. She knew, after that encounter with Su Ling's mother that her current skills were simply not enough. She needed to further master dreamwalking, and yet, it was hard to say what would do that. It wasn't like physical cultivation or even a defined art. It was as much a sort of self hypnosis as anything else. What aspect of the dreaming realm would both grant her practice, and also not risk a catastrophic encounter?
In the end, Ling Qi could only think of one option, and soon she made her way back into the city. Not to the theater, for the specific location was never important, and there were many. And beside, her compass did not lead there. It instead brought her to a narrow building jammed between two larger venues, it was comparatively rickety, it's paint a little scuffed. She and Sixiang entered, and found themselves in a cozy little lounge lit by dim lantern and candlelight, where a small number of patrons sat around the tables drinking middling tea. She recognized workers from the apiary, household servants, and even a noble two of higher class dressing down like she was, but with less skill at concealing their aura.
They were all listening to recited poetry, first from a young man with slicked back hair and a shaky voice, trying too hard but earnest for it, then from a woman with wide and wild eyes and a breathy voice, rambling of sights seen in tea leaves and between eye blinks, and then another and another, each one a bit odd. Unseen by the proprietor and the staff, she and Sixiang settled in within the furthest booth in the back corner, and letting the amateurish but heartfelt readings wash over, Ling Qi breathed in, not the air, but the atmosphere. This place, so tiny and irrelevant, but nonetheless sincere.
When she opened her eyes, Ling Qi found herself suspended on a bed of bubbles. The slick, slightly moist surfaces bent and deformed under her weight but did not pop. She saw them all around her, single glistening bubbles drifting up and up through the soft green air, in other places the bubbles came together in congeries of spheres images drifting by on their surfaces as they swam like clouds through this infinite verdant sky. Some were no bigger than marbles, other bubbles were the size of houses gently bobbing and deforming under their own weight.
Sitting up, the air felt thick, like she was underwater, but breath came easily, and soon Ling Qi found the island of bubbles she had appeared on drifting away as she bobbed and swam in the currents themselves.
"Wow this place is busy!" Sixiang exclaimed, and Ling Qi craned her neck to see them. Sixiang appeared here as a drifting raft of tiny coin sized bubbles gathered around a core of some three or four larger ones which seemed to merge and split at random.
"Are these all your kind?" Ling Qi called up to them, looking around her with a bit of wonder.
"No, not all of them, if you really look you should be able to tell us from the human dreams," Sixiang called back. Their form shifted, contracted, and with a wet pop, became their more usual manifestation, though their gown was made of shiny bubbles.
Ling Qi shot Sixiang a look, and the muse stuck their tongue out. The bubbles shimmered, becoming opaque in their iridescence.
That done, she found herself looking around. "It's strange, I kind of thought Xiangmen itself would manifest more clearly no matter how i approached-"
Ling Qi blinked, staring out into the distance, where a faint shimmer of light caused her to realize the truth. All of this, the emerald colored air/water, the clouds of rising bubbles, all of it existed inside another bubble of dream too large to really perceive.
"Yeah, that's the one. I don't honestly think we'll get much from that," Sixiang said. "On the other hand, that."
Ling Qi followed where Sixiang pointed, and Ling Qi realized it was the sources of the faint breeze that seemed to blow, carrying the bubbles on its current. It rose from below, vanishing beyond the limits of her sight a rising vortex of shimmering spheres whirling and flying, spinning off new clouds that flung off into the distance and slowly came to float more sedately. And it rose too beyond sight, a whirling twister of dreams and ideas.
Ling Qi focused open it, willing herself to drift closer, to feel and hear and see.
Sing and weave and forge O makers, O breakers. Cast off the brute shackles of Must Be, the blinders of Today, and dream the shape of paradise
It wasn't the crushing power of a cultivators power, but something all encompassing, It permeated this space, filled it totally, if this whole space was Xiangmen, then it ran through it all as sap or blood. Instinctually Ling Qi threw up her arms in defense but it was no attack, no, it was more…
The Wise have abandoned us, the Strong have failed us, no Honor or God or King will save us.
There is only the Dream and the Dreamers.
…More of a heartbeat. Or a breath. It was not a pressure or a weight, it was not external. It simply was. As omnipresent as air, or the earth beneath her feet. Yet despite that it felt… new and fragile, compared to the immutable greenery which surrounded all.
She saw a cluster of bubbles drifting by, no larger than a hand, a glimmer of a man surrounded paper, covered in scribblings and blueprints, holding his head in his hands. Another, a woman dressed in flashing finery, a strained smile, a bored audience. Another, a man deep in his cups, eyes bleary and bloodshot, stinking of alcohol and despair. The wind blew, filmy surfaces trembled, bubbles popped.
…Fragile.
Only the Dream may unite. Only Dream may provide succor.
There will be One who is Many, and it will be beautiful.
Ling Qi looked upon the vortex at the center of it all, so much closer now, she circled in its currents. She had not moved an inch, but with her focus, she had grown near all the same.
Sickness ran through it, a black rot at the very edge of her vision below, and bubbles gray and black, slick like tar and oil, mixing with those still clean as they spiraled upward.
There was a light in there within the vortex, concealed beyond sight, brilliant and stark. For now it kept the rot at bay, but it was so bright, so wonderfully, terribly bright. So bright it might consume everything unchecked.
Flock now, little dreamers, fly and sing amongst the pillars of the Palace of One.
Ling Qi sucked in a breath. "It's a wonder that it's still here."
"The ones who ascend, they can't disappear so quickly, especially not right where they ascended," Sixiang said quietly, circling her like smoke as if any moment that hidden light could lance out and destroy her.
When cultivator reached the peak of the eighth and final realm, and ascended yet again, they ceased to exist in the mortal world, writing the law they had built in their lives into the fabric of the world. The Palace of One was one such Law, though the great spirits worship was forbidden. It had once been the first Matriarch of the Hui clan after all, who had overseen their rise to the Ducal palace.
It was the last thing that remained of them, it seemed. It remained, when all else was gone.It did not even seem so terrible really, where had things gone so wrong?
Ling Qi shook her head, and reached out, taking hold of Sixiang's hand. "Come on."
"Hm, where are we going, I'd have thought you'd want to poke around more," they said, letting themselves be pulled along as Ling Qi drifted away from the central vortex.
"Maybe later," Ling Qi said. "I don't think its a good idea to always focus on big things."
"Huh, who are you and what'd you do with my Ling Qi?" Sixiang laughed.
Ling Qi rolled her eyes and they came to the shore of a dense isle of iridescent bubbles on which to stand, drifting in the wider current. "Oh hah, I do listen to you sometimes you know."
"I can't really say that's a great idea," Sixiang chuckled, crouching beside her, looking onto into the curve of a large bubble poking through the packed surface, viewing a balding old old man in a workshop, surrounded by half painted images and landscapes, already muttering to himself as he started anew on blank canvas.
"I'd say it's a coinflip," Ling Qi jabbed back.
"Aw you're sweet," Sixiang chuckled.
They walked, or rather, floated for a time, drifting along this island made of a thousand thousand dreams, of artists and craftsmen both failed and successful. More of the former than the latter certainly. It was strange and a little sad, seeing so many people striving and failing again and again.
…She really was lucky.
"You shouldn't pity them. That's rude you know?" Sixiang said idly. "People pouring their soul into stuff, even if nobody else notices or cares, there's some worth just in having the opportunity to do it, you know?"
"I suppose," Ling Qi said as they drifted away from the first isle. "...It really is something, you don't get to dream of accomplishing something great or making something beautiful when you're scrabbling to survive."
"And just look at 'em all, reaching for something new," Sixiang said, looking off into the distance. "Maybe there's a million who'll never make their names known, but hey, there might be one that changes the world."
Ling Qi was silent for a little bit. Abundance bred creation, innovation. Those left in want might be clever in their way striving for survival, but in the end they could only do the same thing day after day, because hunger was never far away. Xiangmen was a place so rich, so abundant, that there could be this many people, this many dreams, all at once, all aching to make themselves real.
She thought back to her journey with the moon spirits and the Grinning Avatar, so impressed with merely the crowds of Tonghou. Even that was improvement over peoples scrabbling desperately under the cruel hungers of bloated beasts.
…But she still thought Renxiang was right. This wasn't good enough.
The rot remained, seeping up from old wounds and new wounds alike.
She followed after Sixiang, the muse darting among the eddies and islands where the bubbles gathered, together they watched plays yet unwritten, comedies and tragedies and dramas life wrought loud on the stage.
They listened to poets and singers, masterful and not. They glimpsed new designs in the minds of craftsmen, of formationcraft which might relieve hard labor, or refine an art, assist a worker or replace him whole. They saw in the art of Xiangmen a city still coming to terms with vanished chains, unsure and young, cynical and old all in one.
It was a bubbling cauldron of creation, and Ling Qi wondered if any could know what would emerge from it, in the end.
"That's the wrong way to think of it," Sixiang said, observing the vortex from the side of the drifting isle they had alit upon. "You think too much about endings, and sure nothing lasts forever, but until this old tree withers at the end of the world, the Dreams won't stop."
"You're right," Ling Qi said quietly. "I only hope the ugly ones don't come to dominate. I don't much like nightmares."
"You and me both," Sixiang said, sliding an arm round her shoulder. "They're dull is what they are. Drab all the way through."
Ling Qi laughed under her breath and simply relaxed, the auction would begin tomorrow, and they would have to turn in soon. She would seek the Dreaming Moon's revel tomorrow night, but for now, this was fine.
Creation Advances to I
Abundance abets creation.
