It made me think, is it possible to have a spirit beast corpse immortal.
Since you can do some necromancy fun as long as you don't touch humain, this could be a way to test this without getting ministered.
Or perhaps justified for some kind of exprcism ? (Binding an evil spirit to clean it)
Well, since a small animal has appeared in the story again, which does not yet understand human names and speech, then I think we need a bonus chapter similar to this one.
Today would be the day! [Heaven-Struck-Sparks] fluttered ahead and above, holding a delicious treat just out of reach. It smoldered so sweetly, the aroma (...)
www.royalroad.com
I also wonder if our three advanced insights are enough for spirits and animals to start calling us by our "proto-name", and not by several different epithets, as was the case with the spirit of the stream at the Hanyi festival (Headwater's Maiden and Maiden of Night Skies)?
Hm, well it was mentioned in a Sect Promotional but the Xuan's Great Sect/ University, is a vast cushion topped structure that the Living Isles Serpent Head rests on while sleeping.
That is extremely brilliant. I thought it was built ON the head like a hat, but a pillow is just amazing.
Wonder how they keep the pillow suitably fluffed.
Shenhua doesn't spend every minute in her court, and often she will just position a lesser Simulcrae on the throne, one with less pressure and harsh enforcement of her laws. This allows for some degree of normal court stuff, but ES' nobility is by imperial standards notably bold and direct in how it interacts compared to the courts in other provinces.
Huh, lower cultivation forks not being as bound to their Law is interesting. Almost like they're more independent images of their origin than part of the whole.
Ah my bad. Yes There are probably three Ling clans of note I'm thinking, ncluding you. One in the north and one in the east. As the character is not a flattering one I think they'd both have somewhat troubled and sordid histories themselves. Say the one in the east backed the Chu over their immediate liege lords when all that went down, and the one in the north is a celestial peaks exile clan
Yes the death of Sovereigns disturbs the dream too, though the length of the lingering effect is much more tied to how people react to and think about it... and some other metaphysical elements. It can definitely effect those connected to the Sovereign especially if they had a fairly externalized domain bound up in other people.
So...The Crucible of Progress slew a manifestation of Xenophobic Tradition on the site of a new practices and customs relating to progress and Xenophilia.
Is the Horned Lord in fact horned, or does he have antlers:
Yeah its just a bit of nomenclature oddness. Real answer I wasn;t thinking of the proper differences when I named them, in story answer assume that it was a bit of early translation confusion that stuck around in modern parlance.
So this divide exists, note Lin Hai's companion calling SUyin 'nightkin'
basically most foxes are associated with either the Dawn Sun or the grinning moon, with axtra grouping of the most malicious foxes being associated with the nightmare aspect of dreaming or just a general unmoored and malevolent attitutde.
all fox spirits originate as pure spirits though, mythologically speaking having become embodied at varying times in prehistory going by local legend
It was noted that the beaver boss tried it and failed.
Sun Shao also did it on screen when the Bai murder team came for him.
Su Ling broke through to Green during an attack on her workshop.
It can happen and work.
Its just that if it happens and you fail, you're mega screwed.
And obviously, choices made in haste because someone is trying to kill you can leave lasting flaws in your cultivation.
"The answer is not known by imperial scholars but a pre imperial ascension is one of the suspected possibilities, it is also theorized that the different relationship that people tend to have with those two species contributes to their retention of cultivation abilities, animals raised solely for meat are the worst effected for example and degenerate quickly under domestication. This is the leading and most accepted theory. Observation of cats in places where they're becoming more common companions and pets is the current research field among academics."
The image of someone's Law change being, "I really like dogs, it's mean that they can't cultivate higher too..." is honestly kinda comfy.
Those wilderness spots are all their lairs of a 6+ grade spirit unbonded to anyone yeah
I can't share too many details because I need to leave some limbo space for if I want to use them later.
The one is Meng lands is the primary place of power for the Emerald Dancer/Mourner though.
The Ith who said they could have maybe taken Shenhua:
As for the captured ith's assertion do keep in mind that she was the paraded prisoner of her conquerers and pride would demand that she say they could have fought and maybe won you know?
the ith are just as susceptable to rationalizations as any human is.
its easier to tell yourself you could have won, but you chose to surrender to spare your population.
It's Nidavellr, thats their holy land, the pillar of the world that was scarred and made cold, as it were.
we'll get to more on this i the last section when Dzintara shares
It is strongest amongst the high nobility, the ones who don't actually interact with mortals much, the closer you get to ground level the more daily banality of evil type corruption exists. It's strongest among the peaks and the Zheng, probably the weakest in the emerald seas and alabaster sands.
If say a member of the Mu killed a mortal in a fit of rage:
It'd be fairly ugly and cut off most of that persons social connections since no one would want to associate with them, punishment would have been purely clan internal, post MoI it'd be rather nasty fines and house arrest with a side of public shaming.
and before you ask ththis is most down to the Empire not really having an organized prison system that is meant to hold people long term.
Hm, I'd say that for all of their cutthroat ruthlessness there are the fewest cultural barriers to meritocratic advancement? Like nepo-babies are absolutely despised and scorned, and this applies all the way up to the Jin themselves?
of course all the material reasons for why they stay the best anyway still apply.
hmmmm, they're also probably the ones who push the hardest on innovation in formation craft and the development of arrays that work uiversally.
She would be of the line of the Supreme Dragon God, who was their patriarch back in the before times at least in the area that is currently the Empire. Dragon God of Order for a more personal title.
Moon ascended who aren't tied to one of the phases:
There are not in imperial understanding, all higher moon spirits are tied into one phase or another though more minor spirits may simply be undifferentiated moon spirits. This goes for ascended as well. Though obviously there are l;egends about the origin of moon phases so at some point new ones were probably created, though this would have to have been in prehistorical periods
Unity of blades tied into an older, deeper law and is fairly strong for it. It is pretty well settled across the empire, and resonates in the wall too. After all its not exactly alien to Cloud Tribe thinking. The White sky probably feels it a bit too.
There are no Xi successor clans, because the Hui made sure to extinguish anyone that could claim that legitimacy early on in their reign
So yes, in response to 2 Unity of Blades is heavily rooted all across the empire through diffusion and practice
the older law is essentially just the concept of conflict, baked in during the creation of the world. Huisheng is just being flowery about it
so yes, but only as much as everyone does
I was referring to the older law here, unity of blades is... fairly new to the ith, though the ones you're fighting are most familiar
It is different, I would say the Pure One was not the founder but a major disciple of him I'd think more akin to a boddhisatva. For more specific differences please wait until I can do a little more research on Buddhism.
Empire gender relations. We already know the Lakes and Rivers are both on the more matriarchal scale:
Alabaster Sands leans patriarchal, as does the Emerald Seas. The Golden Fields operates more along the lines of a strict division of gendered expectations without one necessarily being 'over' the other.
The Savage Seas or the Xuan at least tend to have similar gender presentations for men and women visually (Wrapped up, clokaks and big hats and all) and this attitude largely extends to other expectations as well aside from a special reverence for someone who is currently bearing a child.
Western Territories don't give a shit so long as you can fight. Celestial Peaks:
They are very Patriarchal, but the occasional empress isn;t looked at askance and An basically broke every competing powerblock that mght have gainsaid him.... and Xiang is no slouch at political matters either.
Some sexist people are horrified that a woman is going to be in charge for a long time and giving the youngsters all kinds of ideas.
Ling Qi favourite food:
She eats much more rarely than she drinks. If you asked her, her favorite food would probably be her mothers plum dumplings, though that is mostly sentiment
lol
Ling Qi basically only eats out of politeness or when she is at home with her family.
it is a general worldwide soft cap for humans, beasts can have different lifespans even longer ones but tend to slip further and further into torpor beyond that point
Well Chain Breaker is specifically the name of her sword. But generally names and concepts form the monikers and titles, they might even be gained from external sources if the cultivator resonates with them, like 'radiant tyrant' Basically names are often the things that higher cultivators project at each other while actual Words are often more private or obscured.
yes
Generally people see The Tyrant Progress, Radiant Tyrant, Builder and breaker of Thrones, etc. (edited)
Even Shenhua doesn't necessarily slam the REVOLUTION stamp into every face that beholds her. It takes some examination.
It mainly follows an orderly progression of one into the other, but sometimes the lengths will vary a bit or the new or guiding moon will hang in the sky for a long time. This is generuinely considered sdistressing and a bad time all around usually with people searching for a cause
the causes end up mostly being things people can;t find though reactions to celestial events beyond their ken.
It will never recover to where it would have been if she started earlier, but the quality may improve with time
She should live about the usual time for her realm but she'll always have more trouble advancing or breaking through
They don't need propping up. Rather its that they don't have a strong cultural identity seperate from the Imperial one the way other provinces do. They might be proud of their place in the heirarchy but they don't seem themselves as seperate from it the way the old dukes do
They actually see themselves fully as imperials first and Sands second merely as a subgrouping of the first.
Xuan and Jin rivalry and what Xuan would do if they saw Jin attack a trading partner:
They've had minor scrapes and skirmishes throughout the ages, never rising to outright war but both sides are pretty wary of each other. The Xuan would probably be fairly upset but they also wouldn;t attack the Jin raiders. But then the Xuan's main trading buddies aren't the Jin's punching bags but rather people they can reach with their superior long range shipping abilities.
Jin comfort themselves by saying they are better sailors, faster and more maneuverable them Xuan Wu could ever be. its not even wrong really.
Sects are the primary places of learning and sharing. The answer is as it was for most of our history... It didn'y knowledge would generally only be circulated in small select cliques and if anything broke the master apprentice chain the knowledge was simply lost. People like the Zheng who spread the secrets of steelmaking were considered crazy buffoons by their contemporaries(or quitely applauded for attacking their rivals the Bai's powerbase in an unassailable way)
Its starting to sluggishly shift in the modern era, Xiang's programs demand that discoveries made with imperial funding have their results copied for the imperial archive, sects are somewhat state institutions and thus share more etc. but its early days yet
yes nothing official though experts in the same field often have contact with each other and bicker through the mail
She (Karthak note: Suyin) still has it, the Sect are stubborn that way, but they've politely requested that she take on 'assistants' some of whom have more advanced cultivation then her. She is of course well compensated for her teachings and has rights to some part of any profits they make off their work for a certain period.
They have suspicions but were never able to point definitve proof at anyone. It was quite upsetting for sure.
pretty much what it says on the tin, assassin cultivators cultivated from childhood to be 'empty' and thus good fire and forget weapons.
Yes, dstiny cycle is very exact. It is mostly based on a lunar calender as the phases have been in place for basically all of recorded history.
a month is a full cycle of phases
They were the earliest ones, He and Ji's kingdoms solidified some centuries or millenia later, also the Bai and the Zheng were founding members of Qin's empire.
Tsu on the other hand was the father of agriculture, and couldn;t exactly be relegated to a minor role if people wanted their crops to grow properly.
Where the Sage Rapist would have gone next if jungle dickrot hadn't gotten him:
If he got through the jungle intact,probably digesting for a few decades, then either plowing into the proto-princes or heading east yeah
maybe eating the xuan as a side gig, but he didn't particularly care about them
They are their greater selves, just like Sixiang is a piece of the dancer and the nightmare. They are also their own persons. Great spirits have a variety of ways of manifesting some fragment of themselves like this.
Even the reveller is fairly limited in what he can actually do mind. Most of what he does is play pranks teach lessons and occasionally give warnings and prophecies. He's mostly bound by the same rules and is his himself only a fragment of the stone apes full conciousness
Yes its basically a completely political matter though practically speaking Lin Hai spent a lot of time at court so there were material reasons not to elevate him to a higher administrative position too
Strife of Twin Emperors length and the "rightful"claimant and his family:
The whole period lasted roughly a thousand years, but there were peaceful-ish stretches that went for a long time before one side or the other geared up for another big campaign
He just died of regular old core degradation in the courts of the Bai and one of his sons was put up in his place
It is unknown, Bai killed them when they were no longer useful is a popular interpretation though
the end of the period is mired in hearsay fog of history and mythmaking
Shang's faction caused the Celestial Dragon to act and obliterate almost every living thing in the capital including corpse immortal Shang Tsung and his sons
or at least thats how the story goes
general telling says he was about to get pushed out of the capital, so he elected to destroy the palace complex instead, dong zhuo style, and this triggered dragon momma
essentially yes, more of an automatic function like swatting something buzzing around you while you sleep
Oof.
uh, Bai boys are G6 if I recall right... I think Quan and Xuan Shi are G5, probably closing on 6 gan is G4. Ji Rong is 5. I believe Meng Dan is 6. Jin Tae is G3
Did Xiangmen really stop protecting Hui or was it propaganda.
It is a matter of observed fact that the upper cities defenses shut down toward the end of the battle. All powering down completely without being destroyed. Witnesses agree that it seemed like the tree stopped providing power.
Early thread sect rumours about Meizhen fucking up Kang Zihao:
He was most damaged in spirit, in the sense that he was sulking and depressed and probably having night terrors. Nothing Meizhen did was beyond the sects ability to heal
so yeah hearsay and rumors
Insofar as there are any actual legal barriers they will tend to explicitly carve out actual noble familys as exempt and focus on pushing out spirit bloods like Su Ling who just kind of... crop up
But generally it really isn;t much in the way of ink on paper discrimination, just social pressure and bias
Mu are the first Dynasty that isn't spirit-blooded. The relevant records on the first dynasty have been lost, but the second descended from the Purifying Sun.
Are there Horus Heresy Space Marine Legion-esque fancy elite forces (Justaerin, advance!) in every province:
Thats because Games workshop would very much like you to buy lots of models and paints
But generally I think there would be some kind of elite house guard type unit for most dukes
They will all surely have very shiny regalia and fancy names, indeed many counts might have small units of the same type. The thing about full ducal musters is... most places have not done that in literal millenia, so it might actually look more haphazard than you would think!
Generally speaking the duke keeps some sort of core professional force which the muster of their vassals are meant to fit into at various levels of muster, with the ducal forces splitting to form the command core of larger army units, in theory at least.
Probably not, those are expensive to maintain you know? Also not actually great for everyday soldiering
But I'd expect there to probably be at least two or three 'super elite' military orders or formation in each province at least
The Red Pythons use a lot of more physically direct arts, they're the ones who make up the bulk of the Bai's army so wood and earth flavored defensive arts, water arts based on pressure and force, generally a lot of stuff that works for heavy cultivator labor as well.
He generally sticks too natives but has occasionally been known to fuck with extremely rude visitors.
The first Bai Zheng war kicked off that way in the olden pre empire days.
It involved a the sister of the reigning white serpent queen on a cultivation journey, a mudpit and a game of dice.
and yeah the bulk of the fighting was in the peaks.
You can choose a certain degree which elements of your patron to lean into Wind/grinning goes toward the carefree trickster with no ties archetype, whereas dark/grinning is much more ah... greedy
These are not instant changes though if you lean in toward one you will almost certainly take up more arts in that vein as you go along, and shift yourself more and more toward the personality type the qi forms emphasise
ye, it isn't a straightjacket, you have room to maneuver.
Dreaming is well... dream, but in the imperial eight probably leans toward wind and heaven, its the yangiest moon
hidden is probably water and lake primarily
Well Heaven is lightning, but under the chinese eight elements system, lightning represents inspiration and intelligence. Its the 'divine spark' in that way. So dreaming lightning would be like an artist who always has a hundred ideas and only maybe half of them get to paper,
or like an inventor or alchemist always pushing the edge of possibility
Hm, I'd say you can go the furthest with 'banal' evil, the stuff you don't write stories about. If you stick to the small stuff, corruption and other ugly little things you can get pretty far. If you instead go the idiot evil route like outright starving big sections of your populous or doing nasty human reagent shit, you're gonna get dope slapped by a monkey pretty fast.
If the Lu were taken seriously immediately and if the Twilight King could have been stopped:
Once the Lu seriously called for aid the response was pretty quick. They made sure they were taken seriously, even if they waited too long to do so
If he had been caught out right at the beginning... probably. It still would have been real ugly, but it would have been rogue white cultivator ugly, not oh godnuke it, nuke it with sunfire ugly.
Life tends to multiply everything considereed Yang, for good and bad, Death vice versa with Yin. So Life cultivators grow increasingly active, impatient and pushy while death cultivators tend to grow very reactive patient and quiet. This generally reads as a dulling and muting. MoI agents tend to become very cold and professional regardless of how they started for example.
All qi types effect you in some ways, but generally to lesser extents because life and death are very... pure everything else has some degree of mixing and mutability. Sun and Moon are defined and filtered through their aspects which is where their effects come in
As for the most dangerous qi to embody... I honestly think Life
They do have spirit beasts often sea creatures, but not crabs specifically. There current projects are more around trying to push into the field Shenhua showed was possible and rediscover the secrets of island ships while working on artificial item spirits
Yes, this. Mortal animals have increasingly emerged in the modern area in more tame places, particularly under domestication. Horses and Dogs are a particular exception, and its theorized to be because the humans who keep them often raise them as companions rather than purely resources, though there is a lot of debate and plenty of other theories.
Yes, the Bai explicitly contracted for that because they would not allow even the possibility of an outsider invited into their inner sanctums getting to be part of another group again.
Haha, He the glorious did ascend, he became an aspect of the Zenith Sun, Radiant Glory Everlasting, which softened the imperial aspect a good deal by adding civilization friendly aspects like glory and honor to the more primal fight forever core.
the Mu founder did ascend but their law isn't recorded outside the Mu's own histories. and may be spoilery
The Great father is the Father Sky, or what Imperials call the Nameless father, yes
The rest is... probably spoiler-ish, since info on the cloud stuff is likely to come up in the course of the main story
If a White foreign version of the King of Explorers showed up in Xuan territory and asked for a tour of the Empire:
They'd be very very cautious welcomed in the Xuan lands and carefully advised not to go into the interior or if they must allow the Xuan to try and talk to someone. Otherwise you're going to meet increasing resistance and rejection without a lot of binding oaths on your behavior and agreement from the throne.
A single rogue White Can be put down.
Probably see the Ministry act, followed by a general call of imperial muster to whichever duke is being affected, followed by reinforcements from the peaks.
It'd be a hell of an issue, and there would definitely be a lot of restrictions and rules on place.
It would, but please understand the Imperial Throne would not be able to back down in the face of a single foreign sovereign and be seen as letting them do as they please. If they did they would lose all legitimacy and the empire would shatter, because the bedrock of the empire is that the throne can look at individual white cultivators and tell them to stay in their lane.
Ah, alright. Just wanted to be clear an escort of Xuan Elders and probably a pack of ministry handlers would probably be enough for a sort of guided tour of specific places
and it would require some sign off in each province. Probably be extremely tense but they might be able to see some major cities and landmarks that way?
Turns out the Mu bias against spirit-blooded isn't primarily because of them being owl-incels:
Yeah its largely developed from geopolitical divides. Their most persistently difficult vassals are the old spirit blood clans, who are not as beholden to the Imperial familys control of spirit stones
They are pretty solid and work better... for them at high levels but nothing matches the sheer consistency of spirit stones
Nah they do not, only the Imperial house has good access to anything cyan or above, you get a tiny trickle of high end stones in other ducal lands, but even that is beholden to regulation and taxation from the throne
Generally its based on cultivation materials, as valued in currency the dukes send a huge supply of the things needed to make medicines and talismans to the peaks which lets them build some really crazy infrastructure
The amount owed is measured in 'dollars' though the imperial seat will often request specific things to fill that value
in the same way that an ancient society would see taxes weighted and paid in grains or some such
Human to spirit is possible. No one has observed or recorded a spirit becoming a human. Though of course this falls into the ultra mega banned fields of research so who knows?
There is some study of the passive effects of GS's but info on sublimes tends to be jealously guarded by their clans
So... when I give you info on them its generally stuff that would only be known by the clans high archivists
She's surprisingly not big on ceremony just using the standard forms. Tea is her personal hobby so its all in the brewing and tasting for her. Her favorite teas are the exclusive blends brewed in Xiangmen, and she prefers to take them without any additives, only the natural flavor of the leaves, but she likes darker and more bitter blends the most.
It was noted that the beaver boss tried it and failed.
Sun Shao also did it on screen when the Bai murder team came for him.
Su Ling broke through to Green during an attack on her workshop.
It can happen and work.
Its just that if it happens and you fail, you're mega screwed.
And obviously, choices made in haste because someone is trying to kill you can leave lasting flaws in your cultivation.
Wasn't the order of events for Su Ling more:
-Goes into seclusion
-Has partial breakthrough
-Gets interrupted by scrubs who weren't prepared for even a partial Green
-Tosses them down the mountain and goes back to finishing her breakthrough?
And even Sun Shao broke through just as the Bai were arriving rather than 'mid fight,' though I guess you could argue they at least hit him with their opening move with the venom rain before he broke through IIRC.
He generally sticks too natives but has occasionally been known to fuck with extremely rude visitors.
The first Bai Zheng war kicked off that way in the olden pre empire days.
It involved a the sister of the reigning white serpent queen on a cultivation journey, a mudpit and a game of dice.
and yeah the bulk of the fighting was in the peaks.
"Their enmity runs deeper than history," Cai Renxiang replied slowly. "They have been rivals since the day that Bai Xiao Lin slew Zheng Fu from ambush at Jinyu Pass."
The third Jewel Emperor is a little more contentious, second dynasty. The first of the second dynasty. He's the one who ultimately put Imperial governance back together again after the strife of the twin emperors.
Yeah, Delum is just like Shao. He fights Family, but his Family is an abstract, faceless ideal. Nice to see that Ling Qi gas learned this lesson, since we only know about Shao out of context.
This would in part be preparation for the inevitability that not all Ling are going to be musicians, and any resolution to the conflict with the Cloud Nomads is going to be centuries down the line meaning loses are an unfortunate fact of life be they from battle, or simply the scrutiny of the Duchess making founding members of the Ling more inclined to undertake tribulations much less breakthrough attempts to Cyan.
Honestly, I hope we don't have a clan full of musicians. A clan full of artists is better. Expression is more than just music. You can communicate with song, dance, writing, poetry, painting, crafting, fighting, etc. As long as something is sincerely done and allows one to express themselves, I think it's fair game for future Ling.
Do we know why the Duchess made an alliance with the Bai? It's not to deal with internal enemies, since that would be a loss of face, nor even help against barbarians (she's already refused that).
My best guess is that the alliance is aimed straight at the Peaks. The Bai have good reason to expect that they would support the Sun in a Sun/Bai conflict, as they did before. And for Cai Shenhua - well, how long can a REVOLUTION cultivator accept to be ruled over by an Empress? I suspect that right now Diao Linqin is helping her stay grounded and focused on less dangerous revolutions, like gay marriage, but at some point she's bound to need to overthrow some tradition that the Imperial Throne enforce, and then fun times are ahead. I suspect that's what the Cai/Bai alliance is preparing for.
I hope Dress-chan isn't too traumatized by this incident, as we're going to have trouble if she gets reluctant to go into battle. Even a cultivator as mighty as Ling Qi can probably still be inconvenienced by a wedgie.
Do we know why the Duchess made an alliance with the Bai? It's not to deal with internal enemies, since that would be a loss of face, nor even help against barbarians (she's already refused that).
My guess is for money. The Emerald Seas is a resource production duchy, it produces more raw resources than it does finished goods. This is fine as long as you have a buyer, for example the Xuan love Emerald Seas wood. However, the Bai have had closed borders for a very long time, the Golden Fields is not safe to travel through, and the peaks and Jing tax everything to hell.
By opening up the Bai there is a straight shot through the river systems to the Xuan, the primary buyer for Emerald Seas wood, but it also opens up the Bai themselves as a market and their coffers are very deep indeed.
In a battle of equal cultivators it comes down to their ways. But what system decides that truth and revolution beats out lies?
Is there some form of fundamental conceptual physics running in the background? Or does it come out to who has more gas in the tank. Could the one that advocated lies just mulch the truth cultivator with enough qi or higher cultivation tier equivalent?
Okay, but he adopted the first Zheng, he's almost literally grandfathered in.
I'm just trying to understand how these two explanations of the beginning of the Bai/Zheng conflict fit together. I'm not saying that Black Viper killed the same person who humiliated her White Serpent, just wondering if it was done in retaliation.
In a battle of equal cultivators it comes down to their ways. But what system decides that truth and revolution beats out lies?
Is there some form of fundamental conceptual physics running in the background? Or does it come out to who has more gas in the tank. Could the one that advocated lies just mulch the truth cultivator with enough qi or higher cultivation tier equivalent?
I think it runs on the normal physics of the world, but very heavily influenced by the two fighting. This is why flaws in your way are so dangerous, they give people weak points to attack. Certain ways probably have natural advantages over others, like an ax cultivator being very effective against a tree cultivator, but I expected mostly comes down to how each person understands the words and a metaphors they've made themselves into, and how well their opponent is able to attack them in either a literal, rhetorical, or metaphorical weak point.
With what we just saw, the general has built herself around killing and destroying any tradition that becomes a weakness, and she was fighting against someone who held that the best path was to stick to exact tradition. That's about as close to a hard counter as you're probably going to see. Sure, Meng Delun has probably argued with progressives before, but the general is the living embodiment of the argument against him. She has more experience in that debate, while he is distracted by remembering past wrongs and warning of the dangers of new ideas.
Do we know why the Duchess made an alliance with the Bai? It's not to deal with internal enemies, since that would be a loss of face, nor even help against barbarians (she's already refused that).
Well, her explicit explanation to CRX was "a realignment was coming at some point anyway, the other original dukes aren't gonna let the Bai get kicked down much further than they already have been for fear of being the next target, by getting in before it even counts as the ground floor we get a way better deal than if we do it later."
That's not necessarily the FULL truth but given the duchess's nature that explanation is still almost certainly completely true, just potentially lacking some details.
Do we know why the Duchess made an alliance with the Bai? It's not to deal with internal enemies, since that would be a loss of face, nor even help against barbarians (she's already refused that).
My best guess is that the alliance is aimed straight at the Peaks. The Bai have good reason to expect that they would support the Sun in a Sun/Bai conflict, as they did before. And for Cai Shenhua - well, how long can a REVOLUTION cultivator accept to be ruled over by an Empress? I suspect that right now Diao Linqin is helping her stay grounded and focused on less dangerous revolutions, like gay marriage, but at some point she's bound to need to overthrow some tradition that the Imperial Throne enforce, and then fun times are ahead. I suspect that's what the Cai/Bai alliance is preparing for.
My analysis from...forever ago is that it's for Legitimacy. The Cai are three people, and have barely had a history as a cultivator family much less as a ducal family in cultivator clan terms. They are painfully the new kids on the block, and were initially leaning on the personal connection Shenhua had with the Empress (see the Empress being on the shortlist of folks who have a full Shenhua dress). However, this just casts the Cai as puppets of the throne, putting a limit on their legitimacy as actual dukes.
And then you have an unprecedented opportunity in the resurgent Bai. They haven't been suppressed enough that they'll actually be knocked out and they will recover. They've never been in such a precarious position and they never will be again in Shenhua's lifetime. So there is an opportunity to step in and help them. By stepping in and forming this alliance, the Cai are now equal alliance partners to two out of three of the oldest ducal clans, clearly showed they are not mere puppets of the Imperial throne, and in additional get the material advantages from the alliance as well. Basically, buying the Cai generations worth of legitimacy among their peers in a single move.
I think there's also another factor that has to be considered, and that is Shenhua's way.
She's building up an alliance with the Bai as they are being led now more fully by a reformist... and admittedly the reforms are somewhat lacking by certain standards.
But while her way is Revolution, it also involves and includes drastic changes, and so it probably doesn't hurt that in this case it allows her to indulge and encourage in changes from antiquated old Ways, in this case ones that are not being discarded because of a fetish for progress but because they were literally killing the Bai.
Like, She's allying with the Bai right now and Suzhen is a reformer which She'd like... but at the same time She's probably personally sympathetic to Sun Shao and overthrowing the ancient Bai despots would be pretty #Revolutionary. And even with Suzhen's reforms I don't think the Bai are going to stop triggering [Heaven is Wrong] any time soon. If ever.
Similarly, She's friends with Xiang, who's also a reformer. But overthrowing the Imperial Throne would also be pretty #Revolutionary and the Celestial Peaks probably aren't going to stop being symbols of [Heaven is Wrong] any time soon either.
And while Sun Shao might be a plucky underdog fighting against the evil despots, he also doesn't really have any kind of meaningful vision.
www.royalroad.com
