Guys.
Hanyi is technically Zhengui's aunt now.
And Ling Qi isn't just a teenage single mom, her kid's dad is in prison.
Ayayay, what will the neighbours say?
"He is My child, whatever his origins or secrets, whatever his choices," Ling Qi snapped back. "I have been there since the day he cracked his shell, kept him fed and in safety when he was weak, cared for him and helped his cultivation day by day."
She took a shuddering breath. "Your absence is not your fault, and I am deeply sorry for it. But I will not take such accusations to my face without complaint, no matter how mighty you be. So I call him my brother for comfort? I'm barely even a grown woman. Don't tell me I am lying just because of that!"
"....Sister," Zhen hissed.
"....Gui has always known what you meant." he said. "Kohatu is wrong. Gui is glad to learn where his Green comes from, Gui is glad to know you, but Sister…. Mother is alive and with Zhengui. I will not hear these mean things you say."
"I understand your sense of betrayal, but it was not Horizon Blade who turned on your Master Swordsong," Ling Qi said. "And you…"
"Are. Dead," Kohatu said.
The words hung in the air dull and uncompromising.
"Yes," Ling Qi said quietly. "I don't need to lie to you either. I brought my Zhengui here, to better know his origin, that he might connect with something I cannot give him… but just the same, you cannot give what I do. Even you know that you are only a ghost of spite, clinging on to haunt those who betrayed you."
Zhen's head hung. "It is true. I, Zhen would like to talk for a long time… but I cannot stay here, Kohatu knows this. I have told you of my home, Miss Snowblossom is waiting, my humans are waiting, Grandmother and littlest sister and Hanyi will be waiting."
"Gui IS your child too, Kohatu. Gui thinks there is no conflict in this. But, Gui's mother is Big Sister. Gui is very sorry that he could not know Kohatu-who-lived."
"...And I, Zhen, would still speak with Atamai-who-is," his other half hissed softly.
Ling Qi's shoulders tensed. THAT she did not know how to arrange, or even if she could.
Kohatu's eyes grew dull, cloudy cataracts spreading in black. Ling Qi winced as she felt the burning core of green which labored under the caking dust of this place dulled and fluctuated.
"It. is. TrUe. I am a shade, I am. Kohatu's hate. I. remember. Good things. Only to sharpen pain. ResoLVe. Too pErsisT.
PerSiSt
PERSIST"
The word echoed in the liminal, thrumming in the dust choked air, a mantra repeated for centuries, and the core of what this beast had been.
"I am. MistaKen. I must be mistakEn. I caN only truSt my childS judgment, these wOrds," Kohatu's voice was a miserable rumble, sinking low enough to be barely audible, more vibration than sound. "YeS. I coUld only hUrt."
Ling Qi lowered her head as the violence stirring faded away, the frantic energy which the old shade had spoken with fading to melancholy.
"Zhengui cannot stay, but he is glad he came, glad to meet Kohatu. To hear of Islands under ruin and the Everstorm, to listen to Kohatu's words of the the Green, and of life persisting. These will help help Zhengui grow, help him find and seek, help him become. For this, the young King is thankful to the one who gave his shell form."
It was strange, Zhengui was not one for long speeches, even Zhen in his way was more direct and short spoken, but it seemed that, with everything, he had many things to say.
A shudder, a pulse of energy rippled under graying verdant scales.
"It. Has. Been. Good. Good. Remembering with liTTle rage. Good thinking of a future. A dream, within a dream," Kohatu said, her snout rose bringing her head level with them, only bare meters away.
"For what it is worth, hear these words listen and hold them," Ling Qi said. "The one who entrusted me with this treasure was the one you call Atamai. I will not break that trust either."
Kohatu's gaze pressed down on her, and the shade let out a rattling breath. "Clever. Atamai. Yes. I did. Not listen.Master. Did not listen."
"I. Should. This time."
Eyes drifted shut, and for a long moment there was silence
"Human. Not-ArggGent."
Those eyes snapped open, a slice of sizzling emerald green cutting through their blackness
"Fragile. Too fragile. I sEe the fires still scorching, you. Were. almost. Burned away. Where would. That. treasure. Be then."
Ling Qi lowered her head. "I did, and I do not regret it. I cannot live my life as if I were glass."
Kohatu's snort tore at her hair. "No. fool. hUman. Do not live like glass. Be Better. Be tougher."
[PERSIST]
Life coursing through deep black earth, as burning rain fell. Trunks bending and swaying, leaves waving and tearing under catacylsmic wind and rain. Splinter. Break. Shatter. Die.
Persist.
Green shoots rising from splintered stump, three die, one devoured, one uprooted, starving in the shade. Fourth grows, rises, armors in bark and pumps with verdant sap. Break again. Die again.
Persist.
From broken fifth rises sixth. Seventh. Eighth. Ninth. Refusal of ruin.
Persist.
Roots sunk deep. Roots spread far. A hundred trunks, ten thousand leaves, a million shoots. Cataclysm roars, the deafening storm at the end of a world. The earth bucks and heaves, spitting the blood of broken continents. Shattered, burned and broken. Roots remain. Will remains. Trunks, leaves and shoots will rise.
Persist
+4 XP to Persistence Concept
Persistence III->IV
Come Wrath. Come Ruin. Break shape and body a hundred times. So long as will remains you have not reached the end
The jungle heat, the conflagration of the earth or the sky, they were not her. But it resonated all the same. She had seen the trees clinging to frozen mountains, on peaks so cold the air felt like razors in ones lungs. They too sunk their roots deep, so deep into rock and gravel and ice. Old iron evergreen, sundered by frozen air, buried in countless tons of snow.
Persist.
Scatter new needles, come the sun, push new trunk from frozen earth. A scrawny, starving child, inelegant and ugly, bleeding fingernails clawing at the frozen dirt, dragging a broken limb into the safe shadows at the alley mouth.
Limited child, not reconciling the green and the cold. She was not the unruffled lake, though she found some value in its depths, the supremacy of formlessness and essence over flesh. She was, in the end, nothing so elegant. A stubborn thing who could only…
Persist.
Ling Qi sucked in a sharp breath as her eyelids fluttered and her senses returned to the present, and place where she stood.
"Ah…. Zhengui sees so much more clearly what Kohatu was saying now," her little brother murmured in wonder beneath her, his fires ebbing lower causing them to begin drifting lazily downward.
Ling Qi rested a hand over her stomach. The burning, the feeling she had carried with her since the end of the summit, of the smoldering sparks of a sovereign's fire and the spiritual ash it left behind clogging her meridians. She felt as if she could breath without trouble for the first time in months, her qi flowed without obstruction, and only a few small twinges of pain remained from a single ruddy spark of sovereign fire flickering angrily in the bottom of her dantian.
Crucible Charred 4->Crucible Charred 1
The after effect of carrying the Sovereign of Steel and Flame into the dream to do battle. You are in most ways healed, but a spark of perditions flame lingers, bringing pain at odd moments.
Ling Qi bowed low, even as cautiously felt at the… knot of sensations and memories in the back of her mind, left there by Kohatu's utterance. What she had seen and felt was only the surface of what she had been given. An art. Or at least that was the shape her mind made of it, peeling apart the many many layers of meaning embedded in Kohatu's notion of persistence. "Thank you for bestowing your wisdom."
Kohatu's gaze was hard. "Needed. Sister-mother of my chIld. ToO frAgile. And he must learn too. KnOw. CaNnot grow alone."
"Gui will never grow alone," he promised. "But…"
"I. CanNot."
Her voice brought them pause, verdant green burned, and Ling Qi saw the blackness rising, clouding out the crescent of emerald in Kohatu's eyes.
"AnGgerR rises. hAte rises. I canNot be free. I am sPIte. Thank you for good memory, good talk. I wiLl try not to lose it. BuT you must gO."
Zhengui looked terribly upset, with both of his faces. "Is there, nothing I, Zhen can do for Kohatu? You should not have too…"
She let out a bitter burst of laughter, but there was fondness in it too. "PeRhaps. AtaMai might still me. FreE me. No others, not even yoU, child of rUIn."
"...Okay," Gui said quietly. "Goodbye Kohatu. But Gui will not forget. Sister will not forget. Please remember. You do not have to fight for this anymore."
She stilled, and the dream shook as she whipped her head around, and tore into the side of the canyon, sending them spiralling upward on the plume of dust as she resumed burrowing.
All but fleeing.
"She could not afford to believe you. No, her rage could not allow her to stay and listen to such words," Ling Qi said quietly.
"I understand," Zhen said, without any of is usual flourish. The jets of flame emerging from his shell roared, and they began to soar up and away, letting Ling Qi observe the way that the canyon of Kohatu's passage had been closing, vanishing behind her, layers of buildings crawling and shifting back together as if they had never been parted.
This truly was a place of forgetfulness, wasn't it? A place for things buried and lost. Staying here too long…. It would wear away even the living. "I can just bring us back across," Ling Qi said.
"Gui would like to fly a little while longer."
She lowered her head, and didn't offer again. Her mind wandered, back the the imprisoned tortoise, back to the Argent Peak Sect. her first home. It was never a perfect, shining place in her memories, how could it be? But this was another layer of tarnish. What could possibly bring such a thing about?
Maybe she should talk to Xuan Shi, perhaps he might be able to speak with Elder Lang's sword more. Gain detail on another piece of this puzzle.
Was there another reason the Elder's grave was like that then? Such a sad, out of the way place, without honors or recognition?
She sighed. The times involved just didn't line up, and it didn't help that Kohatu's memories were obviously warped and unclear. "I'm glad you could learn what you did, though I wish there were more for you. Zhengui, earlier, I did not mean… too…"
"Zhengui will not accept anyone saying that he is not Big Sister's child."
"...You are, and I am still sorry it took me so long to say it."
"Zhengui has always known…. But… he is happy saying Little Brother and Big Sister. Changing now would be weird, and Hanyi would be dumb about it."
"I suppose so," she chuckled, collapsing back into the seat grown for her with a groan, just letting her hair be pulled at by the wind of their passage. The layered city was shrinking behind them, and the infinite trees beckoned.
She felt the Patriarch's attention on her. A crackling electricity on her neck. Should she be worried about the Sect?
No. It was funny her own actions had blunted any shame that could come from this coming out. In the past the only shame they would suffer was for harboring a barbarian at all. Now even that would be blunted.
The world could move in strange ways.
You are a walker of dreams, shallow and deep. You easily skate the surface near the waking world, and may cautiously swim in deeper places. Guests are safe on the paths you walk, and only the active dangers of the ever shifting liminal threaten you while your strength remains. You can step across short distances with impunity, scattering shades of possibility as you go, skimming the surface as an expert, and truly long range steps are within your grasp, if the task is urgent enough to warrrant the risk.
Zhengui Bond Increases to 6!
AN: And here we are at arc end, still got a little wrap up and set up to go, but lets go ahead and get the turns fief vote in here.
Persistence huh? Interesting. Persisting beyond what is acceptable, not unbent, not unbroken, but unbowed through it all. Maybe it is this mixed with spite/obsession that produces corpse immortals and shades.
[ ] Plan: Inevitability of Grains
-[ ] Hamlet Grainary
-[ ] Fishing Boat Construction
Gets us two more Permanent Pops and +10 Happiness, which'll give us an awful lot more Manpower.
That being said, we can trade Boat for Theatre Foundations too I guess. That's good for more Happiness and also increases the odds of getting that coveted CultPop
EDIT: Actually, do we get to roll to see if we got a CultPop now?
[ ] Plan: Inevitability of Grains
-[ ] Hamlet Grainary
-[ ] Fishing Boat Construction
Gets us two more Permanent Pops and +10 Happiness, which'll give us an awful lot more Manpower.
That being said, we can trade Boat for Theatre Foundations too I guess. That's good for more Happiness and also increases the odds of getting that coveted CultPop
EDIT: Actually, do we get to roll to see if we got a CultPop now?
Note the Grainary doesn't give +10 Happiness, but +5 it's adding on.
So that plan would give us .5 agri per manpower on fishing, +3 Happiness, +5 Admin and +2 Permanant Manpower. Note Hapiness is now 110 - base manpower so every permant manpower we get it goes down by 1.
Note the Grainary doesn't give +10 Happiness, but +5 it's adding on.
So that plan would give us +3 Hapiness, +5 Admin and +2 Permanant Manpower. Note Hapiness is now 110 - base manpower so every permant manpower we get it goes down by 1.
Mmm, project-wise my first priority is to get Theatre of Frost up and running as we go into winter and also so we can get it done before we leave for Xiangmen next next turn. Improving our rolls on getting cultivators would be good too.
Priorities beyond that are probably granary and boats. We should probably be thinking about what projects we want to have done while we're here, and what can be done well offscreen because we'll be away for two months there.
Ling Qi bowed low, even as cautiously felt at the… knot of sensations and memories in the back of her mind, left there by Kohatu's utterance. What she had seen and felt was only the surface of what she had been given. An art. Or at least that was the shape her mind made of it, peeling apart the many many layers of meaning embedded in Kohatu's notion of persistence. "Thank you for bestowing your wisdom."
Alright, here's a little review of our options for the fief vote since I'm at a loss of words for the update itself.
Must-do before the Ith war
Settlement wall: not doing it is really asking for troubles
Give happiness or manpower:
We really want either, considering all the empty slots we have:
Hamlet granary: has the advantage of opening up more administration options and put us 5 admin under the threshold (125). Potentially a bit boring
Silver mine: see in detrimental right now
Fishing boats: yes please. Makes our best A source even better... potentially boring though.
Theater of frost foundation: thematically relevant since it's the start of the winter, gives happiness and boost the dice roll for cultivator manpower
Boiling Deeps Shrine Foundations: unlike the Theater of Frost, this one is a 2 months project and boost our maximum number of cultivation manpower, which is a bit of an awkward combination since we won't be able to just build it right away once we get the first one.
Snowblossom temple: pretty much the same argument as theater of frost, though even more thematically relevant since we just had a talk with her.
Other thematically relevant:
Scrimshaw carver and Chillgrasp collection are nice to have online, relatively cheap, give out minimal wealth without opening even more manpower slots to fill, and unlock intriguing stuff
Clearwater mist collector: I'd wait on until we have our first cultivator manpower for this one
Cliff roads: we have the material for a temple of sorts in the cathedral of winds, so it would be nice to be able to build it
Not needed right now:
Hamlet forestry, Field Expansion, Implement Bai clan soil studies: those can all wait until we're done upgrading the lake IMO, it's a better source of A
detrimental right now:
Silver mining, iron mining,fields expansion and saline grotto outpost. We can't afford the penalty to defense unless we're sure we have a manned settlement wall. Note the the expanded fields give us a permanent manpower, but it's not worth the defense penalty imho, and we really don't need more empty manpower slots.
For month 12, I'd like to do theater of frost and Snowblossom temple. The additional happiness should give us one more virtual manpower, and I really like the idea of locking down the spiritual infrastructure. That leaves us free hands to do granary and boats in turn 13... And that added to our happiness from month 12 would put us at 12 real manpower, plus 3 from happiness (and 10+3 right now).
[X]plan games now, bread later
-[X] Theater of Frost Foundations
-[X] Snowblossom Shrine
Looks like we're positive on Ag again. So we don't need to go into food for 2 MP. Technically.
It looks like a lot of efficiency upgrades are actually just waiting there. I think that holding off on Ag efficiency upgrades until we get more MP to fill in empty slots is probably the best. Or until we need more food to offset increased manpower.
I feel like the upgraded Hamlet Granary and Walls are the no brainers, especially if we're going to war soon-ish but I'm not sure how soonish that it. Granary is +1 MP. Walls basically ensure a bunch of bad juju goes away.
My other thoughts were one of the shrines. Theatre of Frost seems like the best one given the seasons. But Snowblossom's shrine feels important given the narrative arc we just had.
I think double 1turn shrine (Frost+Lake) this turn is best after reviewing options.
If Lady Ren wants the Granary though, I think Granary+one of the shrines is best. Probably Theatre of Frost because winter now and that part of the spirit court seems much more finicky, then Snowblossom like next turn along with Walls. Or swap the shrines.
I think whatever cultivator mat we start harvesting first (Scrimshaw, Clay, Mist) should come after the boiling deeps shrine upgrade since that looks like subsequent projects will open up for more CultMP. And which we start with should be based on probably the Ling Clan's whole schtick.
Basically can't do Saline Grotto Outpost until after Walls go up anyways. Or up towards the Cathedral of Wind, but I would go to the Cathedral first, imo. We have a gribbly up there to take care of.
Also, we should take projects that give manpower first, before using any pop drives, imo.
It probably won't be great for numerous reasons but could we double down on shrines? Personally, I'd like the granary, but doubling down on happiness upgrades would be interesting and working on them at the same time could allow for some interesting intra-shrine synergy.
[X] Food and Safety -[X] Hamlet Granary
-[X] Settlement Walls
There is not just the War, but also the Wedding. We need walls up, if everyone goes to the ceremony we will have 50 DEF, and then whether or not we have a bad event is a coin flip.
The Ling Clan moving in means defense should be paramount. I would encourage everyone to look that fief defense block again, notice how most of that rating is people present, and consider plans that include Walls, regardless of the second project.
