- Location
- some computer lab
[X] The situation between Zeqing and Hanyi is deteriorating. You have mastered her lessons and her art. The time for a tribulation is here, and perhaps it can solve the terrible situation forming before your eyes.
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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.
'Reshape your Meridians' is not the same as 'make new Arts'.
Arts are channeled through Meridians, but a given Meridian can be utilized by different Arts. Not simultaneously, it takes time to switch between Arts, but they can be. Meridians do not use Arts and do not care which Art is using them.
Any given Art is channeled through the Meridians dedicated to it. In this way, Meridians function as equipment slots.
Reshaping your Meridians strikes me as being something like changing which 'type' they are by adjusting an Arm meridian into, say, a Head meridian - changing the 'shape' of the Meridian. Another way of putting it would be to change the type of Art the Meridian can equip.
As compared to 'increasing efficiency', which is when we reduce the number of Meridians an Art requires to be equipped.
The lecture said that Green Three is when we can start to 'tinker' with Arts by adjusting a keyword. The tutorial on the front page extends that by saying that a Keyword altered in this manner can't be further adjusted until Green Five.
Your other quote mentions that 'the pattern imitation of lower realms will not avail you as you approach the peak of the third Realm and beyond'.
This means that art creation and adjustment is required as we approach Green 8. Green 4 is not 'approaching' Green 8, and furthermore is smack-dab between when we can alter and 'further alter' a Keyword of an Art, and is already attached to 'reshaping Meridians', which as already described has no direct bearing on Art Modification, merely on what sort of Arts we can equip.
I would estimate that Art Creation becomes feasible starting no sooner than Green 6 and no later than Green 7, as both of those are 'approaching the peak' of Third Realm but aren't there yet, as opposed to Green 4, which is part of the 'middle' of the Third Realm.
@Neshuakadal got you the full list, but the only cultivation ranks we really use in conversation are Early/Appraisal/Foundation for Green or Bronze 1/2/3 respectively. Anything else will typically be referred to by number, because remembering all eight ranks is way too much trouble.
Quoting it once again.
It's the shape of the channel that determine the effect of the art. Shaping meridians is therefore creating arts, at least if you are not following a previously existing shape (an art).
It's something that can be seen in when we want to change to a sideboard art. It take a few minutes to reshape the meridian into the new art.
Moreover the lecture tell this can start from the fourth level (threshold) onward (unlike adjustement which is available from stage 3 onward). (Not gonna quote that one again).
Arkeus
Crazy cat guy
- Location
- France
Threshold is already used by characters in the story, so we'll use it too, especially if our plans to get foundation by turn 5 succeeds (those plans being a bit sketchy without finding super pills). Framing is something we'll almost certainly get to within the quest, but likely not useful as a point of reference for a while.
OTOH, it would be really nice if @yrsillar did put cultivation levels in the tutorials.
Meridians = Equipment Slots.
Arts = Equipment.
How does changing a slot adjust the equipment? It doesn't. Equipment is a separate and distinct thing from the slots used to equip it. A Sword is a Sword, and it remains a Sword, even if you have swap your right arm for a second left arm, or your leg for a third eye, or an ear for a third arm - none of those change or make a sword, but you require different tools to make the most of your new anatomy.
In much the same way, reshaping a Meridian from being an 'Arm' meridian to a 'Head' meridian is not the same as making an Art that shoots lightning from your eyes, though maybe you need that new Head meridian (formerly an Arm meridian) to equip the new Art.
An Art is distinct from the Meridians that it is equipped within. Even when an Art is condensed, it can still be removed, and later re-equipped - at the same condensed number of Meridians.
What you are saying is that the equivalent of swapping an arm for a leg (reshaping Meridians) is the same as making a sword from scratch (Creating an Art).
Which is a false equivalency. They are not the same.
Art are pattern modeled in the meridians. If they were simply equipement one could easily use an art then reuse the meridians of that art instantly afterward for another art.
Seeing them as equipement is a false equivalency. They are not the same. One can very well lose a sword and use a new one instantly afterward, while the same is not true for arts.
Art are not distinct from their meridians otherwise you wouldn't need a few minutes to swap an art for another. An art and another can be close pattern wise (which explain why changing a meridian attuned to an art can be done relatively swiftly), but a meridian attuned to an art has a different shape than that same meridian attuned to another art.
Varder
Tired Cultist
- Location
- Hell
A sword is an equipment. To use it in battle you need to carry it from your home. So you do it with your hand. If you want to use a spear you can't do it immediately since it's at home. And you need another hand to carry both at the same time.
So Ling Qi was changing the shape of her meridians since the beginning? Yet it is never mentioned in the text and now is explicitly called something only for green 4 and higher.
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Do you not understand what an analogy is? Arts are analogous to equipment - equivalent to equipment - similar to equipment. Not identical, but roughly similar to. In fact arts being 'equipped' has been the standard way it is referred to since the beginning of FoD:
'Aligned' = element
'Attunement' = art 'equipped'
These are in reference to Cultivation Arts.
and another one.
Nothing about the 'shape' of a Meridian, however.
From all of these, we get the words used in relation to Meridians:
-Attunement: The Art that is using that Meridian / the Art that Meridian is being used to equip.
-Alignment: The element or set of elements the Art attuned to the Meridian is associated with (water, wind, dark, music, wood, etc).
-Shape: No references to the 'shape' of a Meridian exist, other than the one referencing 'reshaping' a Meridian in the Elder Lecture, and that we can do this 'no sooner than' Green Four (Threshold). This means that the Shape of a Meridian must be distinct from the Attunement of a Meridian, as we've been changing the Attunement of our Meridians for a long while, while changing the Shape is not yet an option
We don't know what a Meridian's 'shape' actually means. You clearly do, but you have no evidence of that - no real proof other than one quote that you're twisting to shape your desires, because it says nothing about Arts, just Meridians, and you are making assumptions - and I feel the need to inform you that making assumptions makes an 'ass' out of 'you' and 'me'. So please don't. If you really must find out, ask rather than creating spurious arguments backed up by nothing more than your own personal insistence that something be so.
Therefore, the 'shape' of a Meridian must be something else. My supposition that 'reshaping' a Meridian is about changing the 'type' of Meridian (from Arm to Head, for example) is just that - a supposition. I have no proof, but I do know what it isn't, and have evidence for that.
Arts and Meridians are intertwined, yes, in the same way that you can't use a Sword without an Arm to wield it you can't use an Art without the Meridians required to Attune it, but they are not the same. In the same way that an Arm is required to use a Sword, an Arm Meridian is required to use an Arm Art - but just like that Arm can use an Axe instead of a Sword, the Arm Meridian can be attuned to a different Arm Art.
However, unlike a Sword, it is much harder to forcibly 'unequip' someone else's Art(s), to the point that it hasn't ever come up.
As far as Art Creation is concerned, we have one reference in FoD:
So hypothetically we can create an Art in Green Three (Foundation). It would be 'an accomplishment', and more probably more easily and effectively done as we improve our Domain and advance through Green.
As such, 'Art Alteration' is the sort of 'baby steps' thing that we can plausibly accomplish in the near future (even though we likely won't have the time), and two bouts of 'Art Alteration' done to the same Art requires us to be 'at least' Green Five, putting plausible Art Creation at no sooner than Green Six.
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Turn 3: Arc 4-1 Winter's Muse
Zeqing's home had never seemed so dark, Ling Qi thought nervously.
For once, no one had come to greet her when she arrived on the mountaintop. There was only the wind and the dancing snowflakes. Her mentors home huddled darkly on its foundations, like an image from an old tale. It's shutters were closed and shadow lay deeply under its eaves, despite the bright noonday sun shining overhead.
...And it was so very cold. Ling Qi shivered, rubbing her arms as she approached, footsteps light atop the snowy field.
"Are you sure about this?" Sixiang asked, their voice drifting on the wind. "I know she's your teacher and all but you're...no one is welcome here right now, can't you feel it?"
"I can feel it," Ling Qi replied quietly, approaching the door. "But I know my lessons aren't complete either."
"Ling Qi… this isn't like that dream, or messing around in the forest you know?" Sixiang said, the wind falling silent as their voice returned to her thoughts. "I know I joke a lot… but you could die here. Did you even tell anyone what you were doing?"
Ling Qi opened her mouth, but ended up looking at the ground rather than replying. She had told Cai Renxiang That she would be secluding herself in cultivation for a day or two, but there was no reason to worry or frighten everyone else. She had already chosen to approach Zeqing again, even knowing the spirit was dangerous right now. "The way things are right now is partially my fault," she finally said. "It's only right that I help resolve it. I don't want to…"
Sixiang didn't answer with words, but memories of her childhood drifted up, of stolen blankets, too slow allies. "No, that's not right," Ling Qi shook her head. "I'm still that person. I'm still selfish and afraid," the dream had proven that. The old her remained, just under the skin.
"But Zeqing is my teacher. I couldn't have gotten to where I am without her. I won't leave her, or her daughter like this," she finished, determination filling her voice. "...There have to be things more valuable than safety."
She felt Sixiang's mental sigh, followed by the assurance of support, settling like a warm blanket around her shoulders. With that, Ling Qi hesitate no more as she took the last steps toward the darkened doorway, and rapped her knuckles on the frame.
For a moment, there was no reply, but then, ever so slowly the door opened, the drawn out creak as it drifted ajar raising the hairs on her neck. There was no more invitation than that, but Ling Qi knew that if Zeqing did not want her here, then she could not have forced the door even with all her strength. Taking a deep breath she stepped inside, squinting into the unnatural darkness that shrouded even her vision. It was unsettling. How long had it been since she had last stood in the dark like this?
The door snapped shut behind her, cutting off the last rectangle of light, but Ling Qi remained composed. "Master Zeqing, your student has come to greet you," she said, speaking formally, unable to see, she simply made the appropriate bow without turning. A cold breeze was her only answer, but as she straightened up, the darkness lightened a fraction, and she saw ahead of her a sitting room, where her mentor waited before a hearth that guttered with heatless green flame.
Zeqing floated before the heart, the empty lower half of her gown folded as if she were seated, meditating upon an invisible seat. The spirit's head was lowered her silver hair hiding her face. Ling Qi approached cautiously, until she stood within the circle of firelight, trying to ignore the uneasy feeling that she stood in an empty void, from which there was no escape or exit. "Master…"
"I am surprised to see you so soon, are you really so eager?" Zeqing asked, her voice cold and distant. She still did not look up.
"I do not want to leave my mentor in pain," Ling Qi replied honestly. "...Where is Hanyi?"
Zeqing let out a small huff of amusement at her hesitant words. "Safe, I left her with her Father, while I centered myself." Zeqing paused then, finally raising her head to look at Ling Qi. She almost flinched at the sight of the hairline fracture running from Zeqing's chin all the way up to her temple. It was as if her face was a porcelain mask, and Ling Qi could not quite find the courage to look into the darkness that lay behind it. "You have never met my husband, have you?"
"No," Ling Qi answered reluctantly, a sinking feeling telling her that she was not going to like this.
Zeqing gestured with an empty sleeve, and to their right a patch of darkness grew light. Through it, Ling Qi saw into a room, it's shadowed walls stacked with toys, shaped from ice and snow and rock. In the center, she saw Hanyi seated at a table, face screwed up in concentration as she copied messily the characters from a second sheet. As she finished the last brushstroke, she looked up, an excited gleam in her eyes and said something Ling Qi could not hear to the larger figure beside her.
Though her instincts screamed at her not to do it, Ling Qi could not help but follow the young spirits gaze. Though her eyes saw a handsome man with ice pale skin and a bookish air smiling softly at his daughter, her other senses saw beneath the facade. It was a hideous mannequin of ice, blood and bone. A single terrified eye stared out at her from an iced over socket, pleading for escape and release. Ling Qi shuddered, her stomach churning as she felt the reality of the… thing that Zeqing called her husband, the bones of it were made wholly of the spirit's power, but there were enough pieces, crudely stitched into its frame that she could feel the shape of the man it had been.
The worst of it was, there was still a spark of life and awareness in those broken fragments of a soul.
"Even her time with him has turned to lessons," Zeqing sighed, resting her chin in a hand of clear ice. She glanced briefly at Ling Qi. "Hanyi sees only her father as he should have been, but I felt that you could handle the truth."
"...Why," Ling Qi asked, swallowing the bile that wanted to rise in her throat, dragging her eyes away from the horrible thing.
"Would any answer satisfy you?" Zeqing asked absently. "Would spinning a tale of his perfidy give you satisfaction?"
Ling Qi grimaced. "...Maybe," she admitted. "People can be terrible."
Zeqing let out a small laugh. "Such honesty," she mused. "Very well. Once, a small clan ruled this patch of land, though I and my predecessors had been here far longer. My husband was one of three brothers, in contention for the seat of the clan's heir. My husband was a scholar and a wanderer at heart, and so he discovered me."
Ling Qi studiously avoided looking at the subject of their conversation, but nodded anyway. She already had a feeling where this is going.
Zeqing turned her empty white eyes upon Ling Qi with a knowing look. "Indeed, be aware that I had long been alone, Imperial claims in this region are recent, and I, we were subjects of reverence and placation. The Imperial… method of interacting with spirits was quite new to me," she said with a sigh. "...and he did have such a skilled tongue."
Zeqing shook her head and after a beat of silence, she continued. "He sought to bind me of course, power such as mine would have been a boon to his claim. He returned to this mountain again and again to woo me, and in the end, even convinced me to bear his child, as proof of our love, and so that I would never be lonely again."
Ling Qi's eyes shifted to Hanyi, and she thought of what she knew of history…"She isn't that old is she?"
"I kept her within me for the longest time. I was bitter, yet not willing to destroy a part of myself. We get ahead of ourselves however. For the better part of a decade did he continue to visit me, and in doing so changed me," Zeqing explained wistfully, gazing at the broken, spiritually bleeding thing in the other room. "I am a spirit of darkness, of desire and covetousness. I am the cold that saps the life from a man's bones, yet allows him to drift into his final sleep feeling naught but pleasant warmth. Yet for the first time, I came to feel more than a base desire and hunger for warmth, and from the qi I took from him were born the emotions that come so easily to your kind. I fell in love, and agreed to join my essence to his, and create new life."
"It was a transgressive thing, not done in all of the memories of my past selves. I am a creature of endings, not beginnings after all," her mentor finished with a bitter laugh.
"What happened, in the end?" Ling Qi asked, looking down. She already knew the answer, at least in the broad strokes.
"It was a ploy, and his ability to avoid my sight was not as good as he believed," Zeqing replied clinically. "A life that bound us together would have made for an unbreakable binding even for me, with his techniques. He would then have been free to take a human wife as well, as is your people's custom." She gave a faint shrug. "Instead, when he returned the next time, I devoured him, body and soul, and refused to allow him his End."
Ling Qi finally looked back up, meeting the things single staring eye that plead for the mercy of release into death and shuddered. She...could she say that he had deserved that?
[] She could, the man had made his choices and here they led. She only worried that holding on to him like this hurt Zeqing and Hanyi.
[] It is justified, but hasn't it gone on long enough? It could not be helpful to Zeqing or her daughter
[] No, a death could be deserved, but not this torment. This shouldn't go on, it was harmful to Zeqing and Hanyi as well.
Two hour moratorium
For once, no one had come to greet her when she arrived on the mountaintop. There was only the wind and the dancing snowflakes. Her mentors home huddled darkly on its foundations, like an image from an old tale. It's shutters were closed and shadow lay deeply under its eaves, despite the bright noonday sun shining overhead.
...And it was so very cold. Ling Qi shivered, rubbing her arms as she approached, footsteps light atop the snowy field.
"Are you sure about this?" Sixiang asked, their voice drifting on the wind. "I know she's your teacher and all but you're...no one is welcome here right now, can't you feel it?"
"I can feel it," Ling Qi replied quietly, approaching the door. "But I know my lessons aren't complete either."
"Ling Qi… this isn't like that dream, or messing around in the forest you know?" Sixiang said, the wind falling silent as their voice returned to her thoughts. "I know I joke a lot… but you could die here. Did you even tell anyone what you were doing?"
Ling Qi opened her mouth, but ended up looking at the ground rather than replying. She had told Cai Renxiang That she would be secluding herself in cultivation for a day or two, but there was no reason to worry or frighten everyone else. She had already chosen to approach Zeqing again, even knowing the spirit was dangerous right now. "The way things are right now is partially my fault," she finally said. "It's only right that I help resolve it. I don't want to…"
Sixiang didn't answer with words, but memories of her childhood drifted up, of stolen blankets, too slow allies. "No, that's not right," Ling Qi shook her head. "I'm still that person. I'm still selfish and afraid," the dream had proven that. The old her remained, just under the skin.
"But Zeqing is my teacher. I couldn't have gotten to where I am without her. I won't leave her, or her daughter like this," she finished, determination filling her voice. "...There have to be things more valuable than safety."
She felt Sixiang's mental sigh, followed by the assurance of support, settling like a warm blanket around her shoulders. With that, Ling Qi hesitate no more as she took the last steps toward the darkened doorway, and rapped her knuckles on the frame.
For a moment, there was no reply, but then, ever so slowly the door opened, the drawn out creak as it drifted ajar raising the hairs on her neck. There was no more invitation than that, but Ling Qi knew that if Zeqing did not want her here, then she could not have forced the door even with all her strength. Taking a deep breath she stepped inside, squinting into the unnatural darkness that shrouded even her vision. It was unsettling. How long had it been since she had last stood in the dark like this?
The door snapped shut behind her, cutting off the last rectangle of light, but Ling Qi remained composed. "Master Zeqing, your student has come to greet you," she said, speaking formally, unable to see, she simply made the appropriate bow without turning. A cold breeze was her only answer, but as she straightened up, the darkness lightened a fraction, and she saw ahead of her a sitting room, where her mentor waited before a hearth that guttered with heatless green flame.
Zeqing floated before the heart, the empty lower half of her gown folded as if she were seated, meditating upon an invisible seat. The spirit's head was lowered her silver hair hiding her face. Ling Qi approached cautiously, until she stood within the circle of firelight, trying to ignore the uneasy feeling that she stood in an empty void, from which there was no escape or exit. "Master…"
"I am surprised to see you so soon, are you really so eager?" Zeqing asked, her voice cold and distant. She still did not look up.
"I do not want to leave my mentor in pain," Ling Qi replied honestly. "...Where is Hanyi?"
Zeqing let out a small huff of amusement at her hesitant words. "Safe, I left her with her Father, while I centered myself." Zeqing paused then, finally raising her head to look at Ling Qi. She almost flinched at the sight of the hairline fracture running from Zeqing's chin all the way up to her temple. It was as if her face was a porcelain mask, and Ling Qi could not quite find the courage to look into the darkness that lay behind it. "You have never met my husband, have you?"
"No," Ling Qi answered reluctantly, a sinking feeling telling her that she was not going to like this.
Zeqing gestured with an empty sleeve, and to their right a patch of darkness grew light. Through it, Ling Qi saw into a room, it's shadowed walls stacked with toys, shaped from ice and snow and rock. In the center, she saw Hanyi seated at a table, face screwed up in concentration as she copied messily the characters from a second sheet. As she finished the last brushstroke, she looked up, an excited gleam in her eyes and said something Ling Qi could not hear to the larger figure beside her.
Though her instincts screamed at her not to do it, Ling Qi could not help but follow the young spirits gaze. Though her eyes saw a handsome man with ice pale skin and a bookish air smiling softly at his daughter, her other senses saw beneath the facade. It was a hideous mannequin of ice, blood and bone. A single terrified eye stared out at her from an iced over socket, pleading for escape and release. Ling Qi shuddered, her stomach churning as she felt the reality of the… thing that Zeqing called her husband, the bones of it were made wholly of the spirit's power, but there were enough pieces, crudely stitched into its frame that she could feel the shape of the man it had been.
The worst of it was, there was still a spark of life and awareness in those broken fragments of a soul.
"Even her time with him has turned to lessons," Zeqing sighed, resting her chin in a hand of clear ice. She glanced briefly at Ling Qi. "Hanyi sees only her father as he should have been, but I felt that you could handle the truth."
"...Why," Ling Qi asked, swallowing the bile that wanted to rise in her throat, dragging her eyes away from the horrible thing.
"Would any answer satisfy you?" Zeqing asked absently. "Would spinning a tale of his perfidy give you satisfaction?"
Ling Qi grimaced. "...Maybe," she admitted. "People can be terrible."
Zeqing let out a small laugh. "Such honesty," she mused. "Very well. Once, a small clan ruled this patch of land, though I and my predecessors had been here far longer. My husband was one of three brothers, in contention for the seat of the clan's heir. My husband was a scholar and a wanderer at heart, and so he discovered me."
Ling Qi studiously avoided looking at the subject of their conversation, but nodded anyway. She already had a feeling where this is going.
Zeqing turned her empty white eyes upon Ling Qi with a knowing look. "Indeed, be aware that I had long been alone, Imperial claims in this region are recent, and I, we were subjects of reverence and placation. The Imperial… method of interacting with spirits was quite new to me," she said with a sigh. "...and he did have such a skilled tongue."
Zeqing shook her head and after a beat of silence, she continued. "He sought to bind me of course, power such as mine would have been a boon to his claim. He returned to this mountain again and again to woo me, and in the end, even convinced me to bear his child, as proof of our love, and so that I would never be lonely again."
Ling Qi's eyes shifted to Hanyi, and she thought of what she knew of history…"She isn't that old is she?"
"I kept her within me for the longest time. I was bitter, yet not willing to destroy a part of myself. We get ahead of ourselves however. For the better part of a decade did he continue to visit me, and in doing so changed me," Zeqing explained wistfully, gazing at the broken, spiritually bleeding thing in the other room. "I am a spirit of darkness, of desire and covetousness. I am the cold that saps the life from a man's bones, yet allows him to drift into his final sleep feeling naught but pleasant warmth. Yet for the first time, I came to feel more than a base desire and hunger for warmth, and from the qi I took from him were born the emotions that come so easily to your kind. I fell in love, and agreed to join my essence to his, and create new life."
"It was a transgressive thing, not done in all of the memories of my past selves. I am a creature of endings, not beginnings after all," her mentor finished with a bitter laugh.
"What happened, in the end?" Ling Qi asked, looking down. She already knew the answer, at least in the broad strokes.
"It was a ploy, and his ability to avoid my sight was not as good as he believed," Zeqing replied clinically. "A life that bound us together would have made for an unbreakable binding even for me, with his techniques. He would then have been free to take a human wife as well, as is your people's custom." She gave a faint shrug. "Instead, when he returned the next time, I devoured him, body and soul, and refused to allow him his End."
Ling Qi finally looked back up, meeting the things single staring eye that plead for the mercy of release into death and shuddered. She...could she say that he had deserved that?
[] She could, the man had made his choices and here they led. She only worried that holding on to him like this hurt Zeqing and Hanyi.
[] It is justified, but hasn't it gone on long enough? It could not be helpful to Zeqing or her daughter
[] No, a death could be deserved, but not this torment. This shouldn't go on, it was harmful to Zeqing and Hanyi as well.
Two hour moratorium
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Ugh, we really should have met with our family first.
Theunderbolt
"Prepare for trouble..."
- Location
- USoA
Mother Nyx
Mother of Elpis
- Location
- The Kei Klub
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Hmmmmmmmm. I'm vindictive, but, I don't think Ling Qi is.
Cecylene
Eternal Idea Engine
- Location
- Massachusetts
- Pronouns
- He/They
This is everything I wanted to see from the culmination of our time learning from Zeqing and more.
[] No, a death could be deserved, but not this torment. This shouldn't go on, it was harmful to Zeqing and Hanyi as well.
We just picked up an insight about the difference between endings and Endings and how suffering and hardship for something beautiful can be worth it, I think it rather appropriate for us to balk at the kind of ceaseless and nigh-purposeless torment that Zeqing is inflicting on her "Husband".
The man was a bastard for giving Zeqing enough of himself to make her wish to Create rather than End only to prepare to backstab her into service to him, and a fool for not realizing how outclassed and outgunned he was for attempting to get someone else to bake a cake and eat it too. However not even he deserves something like this deathless servitude.
[] No, a death could be deserved, but not this torment. This shouldn't go on, it was harmful to Zeqing and Hanyi as well.
We just picked up an insight about the difference between endings and Endings and how suffering and hardship for something beautiful can be worth it, I think it rather appropriate for us to balk at the kind of ceaseless and nigh-purposeless torment that Zeqing is inflicting on her "Husband".
The man was a bastard for giving Zeqing enough of himself to make her wish to Create rather than End only to prepare to backstab her into service to him, and a fool for not realizing how outclassed and outgunned he was for attempting to get someone else to bake a cake and eat it too. However not even he deserves something like this deathless servitude.
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- Location
- Canada
Asking some hard questions there.
While this is true, I think we shouldn't understate the transgression he committed against Zeqing. He sought to bind her in a way that she did not consent to, without recourse, likely for the duration of his life.
The analogy we should use here isn't "marry a woman and then cheat on her". It is "get engaged, go on vacation to Europe, and then sell her to human smugglers".
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Alectai
Speaks Words of Wisdom... On occasion
Cripes.
I mean, he definitely reaped what he sowed here--if you're going to establish a relationship with a yanyan, then you make damn well fucking sure you're monogamous.
At the same time, is there even enough left for the continued torment to be worth the cost? I'd say no at this point.
I mean, he definitely reaped what he sowed here--if you're going to establish a relationship with a yanyan, then you make damn well fucking sure you're monogamous.
At the same time, is there even enough left for the continued torment to be worth the cost? I'd say no at this point.
*sigh*
I was never that enthusiastic about Zeqing, unlike Xin, because I held no illusions about her dark nature, which honestly is not really my thing (arts and all included) and partially because I suspected that Ling Qi would become unpleasantly entangled with all that horrifying mess sooner or later.
But, what's done is done, so let's try to save Hanyi at least.
I was never that enthusiastic about Zeqing, unlike Xin, because I held no illusions about her dark nature, which honestly is not really my thing (arts and all included) and partially because I suspected that Ling Qi would become unpleasantly entangled with all that horrifying mess sooner or later.
But, what's done is done, so let's try to save Hanyi at least.
Codex
Fantasy Addict
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Killing him would have been fine, but capturing his soul and endlessly torturing him while denying him an end is needlessly cruel and another symptom of Zeqing's problem with not letting go. We want to try to be a better person, and we denied the idea of crippling or killing Yan Renshu not that long ago. To agree that he deserved it would be going back on the path we set out for ourselves.
Alectai
Speaks Words of Wisdom... On occasion
Heck, even the torment to a certain degree is understandable.
The line to be drawn is when you've flayed the proverbial horse down to the bone and are busy now trying to grind the bones to dust, which is where we're at. It's no longer about punishment and now mostly about lashing yourself.