Yanmei achieved Cyan by the age of 22
Ling Qi, even after the setback in cultivation, is well set for achieving Cyan by 20.
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.
Ling Qi, even after the setback in cultivation, is well set for achieving Cyan by 20.
- Location
- India
- Pronouns
- He/His
How old is LQ now? I have completely lost track.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
South of 18, I think. I'd have to check but I want to say 16-17 or thereabouts?
- Location
- FR
- Pronouns
- He/Him
She's 17 by now, we calculated that her bday was during week 37/ month 10 of the year
Edit: the wiki folks realized it could be anytime between week 37 and week 42, so in the 6 weeks between the start of month 10 and mid-point of month 11
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Absolutely, I think Ling Qi, and Ji Rong even more so, are at worst as talented as Meizhen and Liling. We're almost certainly more talented than Renxiang, since we even managed to catch up to her for a bit.
We haven't really caught up to her. And it's...sort of impossible to unless we manage to jump three stages above her. Renxiang managed to fight Liling to a stand still during Redux despite being Peak Yellow and Liling being fully Green. There is more to things that raw cultivation.
Pair this with the fact that Liling and Meizhen's responsibilities boil down to "get stronger," while Renxiang was literally saddled with running a proto government, wining and dining inner sect cultivators, jumping literally across the country to fight a bunch of bandits, going on a massive walk trip to foreign lands, handling a very delicate diplomatic summit, and yet she's STILL just a stage below them can make the argument that she would be their equal. (Though Meizhen is getting Ambassadorial Responsibilities)
I'm not sure I agree with this part. Renxiangs way has some pretty significan leadership and administration aspects, and a big chunk of the third realm is testing and refining your insights as much as possible before they solidify going into cyan.
I'd argue that putting her ideals and views to the test in a wide variety of circumstances was at worst a net zero, if not a boon for her cultivation.
Abby Normal
High Clerk of the Ymaryn
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Time for Qiyi to meet Auntie Suyin and get her necro-goth phase started
Between the self-reinforcing echo-chamber of Qiyi, Hanyi, and Suyin, Qi is gonna be horrified at what her fashion style will develop(devolve) into, and helpless too stop it.Time for Qiyi to meet Auntie Suyin and get her necro-goth phase started
Shenhua: Why can't you be more like that trendsetting fashionista of a retainer you have, my daughter?
Abby Normal
High Clerk of the Ymaryn
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Shenhua, of course, is talking to Liming there
- Location
- somewhere over there.
- Pronouns
- They/It
I think different Ways might inherently grow at different rates, even for equally talented and funded cultivators. I'd imagine something based around administration and Doing Things Correctly would lend itself to a steady and deliberate pace (which might even be part of why Shenhua keeps pushing her so hard) while Liling definitely seems like more of a move fast and break stuff sort of cultivator.
- Location
- Space between realms
- Pronouns
- He
I think that the challenges would've existed regardless, but my theory was always that due to the "Fitting," Shenhua needed to instigate stuff so that RXN wouldn't be "dilly-dallying" in the lower realms.
Tribulations Unending and all that.
And Suyin learning Qi named her gown spirit "Qi's clothes"Time for Qiyi to meet Auntie Suyin and get her necro-goth phase started
- Location
- somewhere over there.
- Pronouns
- They/It
Sure, I'm just saying that I think it's especially important for the way CRX has. Administration could get dangerously ivory tower, but the constant need to address problems outside her direct control has pushed her to be more about the intersection of idealism/perfectionism and reality.
Perhaps most importantly, she doesn't treat any challenges to her ideal systems as inherently bad, which is a big thing for the girl who once said that she couldn't afford to love her infant sister because family is the root of all corruption.
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- Location
- somewhere over there.
- Pronouns
- They/It
Which I think is fairly different from the orthodox draconic idea of how to address conflicts. I'm fairly sure the Sage's mom would just say that you need a bigger hammer to force everyone into the roles you've prescribed for them, and not having the raw power to make that possible is a skill issue.
I'm sure that in practice even in the peaks there a bit of concession to reality and meeting the world where it is instead of where you want it to be, but I seriously doubt the ability to do so is seen as a virtue. More an admission that you aren't cool enough to reject that reality and substitute your own.
PowerLeca
Rapidly aging
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Time for Qiyi to meet Auntie Suyin and get her necro-goth phase started
Yessss! Suyin has a young impressionable dress to impress.
Year 45 Month 12 Arc 1-1 Persist
The tall, thin trees in this grove did not provide much shade. Loosely scattered around the stony hill, gone dry and brown with the oncoming chill of winter, they stretched like skeletal fingers into the grey and heavy sky adorned by bushy clumps of bright green needles that stood defiant against the cold. They were scraggly, rough pillars, bent and twisted, bark bleach from years of rough weather in places.
The trunks were vibrant with verdant qi. Despite the signs of breakage, despite the signs of stumps and the fertile earth that whispered of fallen and rotted logs, many of these trunks had persisted for centuries on end, enduring wind and lightning and slashing sleet, rampaging beast and fire. Sitting here quietly on the needle strewn dirt, she could hear their long, slow whispers, so easy to miss under the brighter louder noise of more active beings.
It was not the crushing pressure of Snowblossom lake pouring a millenia worth of data into her head, uncaring and unknowing that her mortal flesh was still too fragile. It was more akin to sitting by a circle of old grandfather's as they spoke low and slow of days long gone past. You could hear much, learn much, if you had the time to stop and listen.
Even if a great deal of it was long, rambling complaints about the impertinence of nesting birds and complaints about changing weather patterns.
But even that wasn't why she was truly here, because centuries old trunks were only the beginning. Among them were more than a few which spanned only decades and years, stripling saplings and low shrubs, shoots rising from the ground, all infused with the same spark of qi. She had, at first, thought it to be a matter of relation, seeds scattered growing near to their parents.
In a way it was. But it in other ways not.
Because under her feet was a vast and sprawling web of green and verdant qi spreading throughout the hill and beyond, sinking through the thin gravelly earth to dig into the bedrock, to tap into the heat of the earthveins below.
Every trunk from youngest to oldest was a growth of these roots.
And the roots remembered as far back as Snowblossom herself, their ancient, distant whispers dreams of an age when a vast glacier filled the land, when winter never left, when strange beasts and spirits clashed and roared atop millennial icepack.
They remembered countless fallen, broken trunks, they remembered eons of hibernation stubborn conservation of the last spark of life needed to push up from the snow when at last the wan sun showed his face again. Contraction and growth, a life unending for longer than the Emperors had sat atop the Dragon Throne.
Persistence in its purest form.
There was a reason she had found herself attracted to this subtle, quite place of power in the wake of their dream, why her long thoughtful walk with Zhengui around the periphery had ended here.
She'd have to let Cai Renxiang know it was here soon. A calm low intensity place of wood qi would be a good place for their lower cultivators to meditate in. It's qi was too thin to be of much benefit to her current cultivation.
It was strange to think that something so old could have so little power.
But that too was a lesson she could understand. One did not have to be a Sovereign to endure ones passing flames.
Though…
Her qi pulsed out into the earth, echoing through the network of roots, bouncing through ever deeper, depper channels. Perhaps power was not defined by how loud you roared your name to the heavens either. Such resilience followed from a deep well, not easily depleted…
Sister.
Big Sister Miss horizon chaser is calling.
She raised her head, eyes drifting open. Zhengui's voice was distant and tiny in her ears. But she heard it clearly. Xia Lin was calling for her then? They must have met something on the patrol worth a bit of exercise then.
Armor! Transform!
No, not yet. She chided her dress as she rose into the sky, darting past the top of the grumbling spruce tree with a careful swerve to avoid her passage shaking too many needles loose.
It didn't stop them grumbling, but she liked to think it was a little fond. Once she had left their canopy behind, her dress flared, the wind howled, and she tore off toward the distant feeling of Xia Lin and Zhengui's qi. They were off near the early logging camp, and she could see smoke rising into the air and the faintest flicker of heat distortion? A fire in the forest? There hadn't been any lightning. She wondered where that had come from.
She descended, watching the flames dance with a critical eye. Zhenguis roots had woven a barrier, cutting off the path of the fires toward the camp site and the road, but in all other directions, the way was blocked only by scattered groups of their soldiers, sweating heavily with exertion wearing armor and clothing meant for these cold climes. They formed small knots of resistance, each group with a single cultivator whose qi could bend toward a snuffing element, whether it was scattered water summoned from the still moist air or earth to smother, or even fire to control.
It was not a truly ruinous fire. The air was cold and wet, the wood and grass saturated in that same moisture, the flames guttered red and orange, billowing heat licking at trunks and mostly burning at the brush.
Yes, she could see why Xia Lin would use this as an exercise. Particularly as the wildfire spirits born from the sparking flames hurled themselves with reckless abandon at their soldiers, cackling with wild abandon as they sought to spread with the single minded madness only such a spirit could have.
She had asked for a chance to practice her new art, if Xia Lin found one.
Descending from above the flames, she exhaled, the heated air making her gown and hair billow. Along with her breath she cycled the rich, verdant wood qi which now ran through a meridian along her spine.
Distant Paradise Resilience.
Her qi spread like a drifting shower of soft leaves over the battlefield and wear it went, men and women straightened up, the scent of clear fresh pine overwhelmed ash and smoke, and faint green light.
A man on the northern side of the firebreaks was caught out of position as a half dozen giggling flame fairies crawled and leapt and floated over the earthen rampart. He cut two from the air, little gusts of wind kicking the sparks of severed fairies away from him. But the third detonated in an eruption of flame before he could raise his guard.
She heard and felt his scream as the searing heat washed over his skin, and even down his throat. Viridian light flared and the flames clinging to his clothes guttered out, the shape of woven roots glittering in the shell of light that solidified around him as he was dragged back from the rampart by his comrades.
Ling Qi felt a trifling little prickle on her skin, a small drop of qi burning away
The weave of green over the soldier's body broke apart into drifting motes. There was not a mark on his flesh.
"I am here. The flames cannot harm you, though I cannot protect you from pain," she said, her voice clear in every set of ears.
"If Baroness Ling has arrived, then begin the second stage of the operation, shrink containment, achieve reduction, prioritize prevention of crown burning," Xia Lin's voice unlike hers crackled and buzzed artificially, carried on the power of a simple amplification talisman. "Follow the procedures from your drills."
Ling Qi observed them snapping into action, they were not exactly well polished even to her eyes, but she could tell they had been seriously drilled. The wave of pinpricks that had washed over her along with the first prickled like goosebumps on her skin and she felt the tiny draw on her qi grow as they began to advance among the fires.
Her technique drew all the harm which they could have taken unto herself. Dream and Wood. Persistence, perception and community. She shouldered what those frailer could not. But though her immense well of qi absorbed the harm, the pain of their choices was their own to suffer.
She could be a foundation to lean on, but not the final arbiter of their lives. Such was the technique she had put together from her own self and fragments of Kohatu's memories of absolute persistence.
"Where did this fire come from?" she asked absently, remaining there floating above the core of the raging flames. This time she spoke not to everyone, but just to Zhengui and Xia Lin.
"One of the groups testing and laying the groundwork to begin mining caused a deviation in the earthveins," Xia Lin's voice replied in her ear despite the distance
"Gui warned miss Chaser and she brought the people. But we did not arrive before the flame-air went boom!"
"Well it is not so bad if it stays like this. I, Zhen see that this place is much overgrown, a little burning is not bad."
She nodded absently, looking down, at them moving in, coordinating with each other. She spotted Xia Lin's shining armor among them, where the conflagration was at its worst, calmly keeping command. Heat and prickling needles washed over her here and there, but overall the men were not growing sloppy under the aegis of her technique.
And the small hurts of red realms fighting through peer spirits could hardly dent the qi cycling through her channels. The technique was certainly flawed still in this initial state, but it was a foundation to build on, to form the foundation of her thoughts on how best to protect.
Like the roots she meditated over she could not save every sprout and trunk, it was probably beyond her to try, but with her will, she could support and keep alive many who might otherwise perish, in the pursuit of the distant dream which they now pursued.
A dream even she could not yet see in full.
The trunks were vibrant with verdant qi. Despite the signs of breakage, despite the signs of stumps and the fertile earth that whispered of fallen and rotted logs, many of these trunks had persisted for centuries on end, enduring wind and lightning and slashing sleet, rampaging beast and fire. Sitting here quietly on the needle strewn dirt, she could hear their long, slow whispers, so easy to miss under the brighter louder noise of more active beings.
It was not the crushing pressure of Snowblossom lake pouring a millenia worth of data into her head, uncaring and unknowing that her mortal flesh was still too fragile. It was more akin to sitting by a circle of old grandfather's as they spoke low and slow of days long gone past. You could hear much, learn much, if you had the time to stop and listen.
Even if a great deal of it was long, rambling complaints about the impertinence of nesting birds and complaints about changing weather patterns.
But even that wasn't why she was truly here, because centuries old trunks were only the beginning. Among them were more than a few which spanned only decades and years, stripling saplings and low shrubs, shoots rising from the ground, all infused with the same spark of qi. She had, at first, thought it to be a matter of relation, seeds scattered growing near to their parents.
In a way it was. But it in other ways not.
Because under her feet was a vast and sprawling web of green and verdant qi spreading throughout the hill and beyond, sinking through the thin gravelly earth to dig into the bedrock, to tap into the heat of the earthveins below.
Every trunk from youngest to oldest was a growth of these roots.
And the roots remembered as far back as Snowblossom herself, their ancient, distant whispers dreams of an age when a vast glacier filled the land, when winter never left, when strange beasts and spirits clashed and roared atop millennial icepack.
They remembered countless fallen, broken trunks, they remembered eons of hibernation stubborn conservation of the last spark of life needed to push up from the snow when at last the wan sun showed his face again. Contraction and growth, a life unending for longer than the Emperors had sat atop the Dragon Throne.
Persistence in its purest form.
There was a reason she had found herself attracted to this subtle, quite place of power in the wake of their dream, why her long thoughtful walk with Zhengui around the periphery had ended here.
She'd have to let Cai Renxiang know it was here soon. A calm low intensity place of wood qi would be a good place for their lower cultivators to meditate in. It's qi was too thin to be of much benefit to her current cultivation.
It was strange to think that something so old could have so little power.
But that too was a lesson she could understand. One did not have to be a Sovereign to endure ones passing flames.
Though…
Her qi pulsed out into the earth, echoing through the network of roots, bouncing through ever deeper, depper channels. Perhaps power was not defined by how loud you roared your name to the heavens either. Such resilience followed from a deep well, not easily depleted…
Sister.
Big Sister Miss horizon chaser is calling.
She raised her head, eyes drifting open. Zhengui's voice was distant and tiny in her ears. But she heard it clearly. Xia Lin was calling for her then? They must have met something on the patrol worth a bit of exercise then.
Armor! Transform!
No, not yet. She chided her dress as she rose into the sky, darting past the top of the grumbling spruce tree with a careful swerve to avoid her passage shaking too many needles loose.
It didn't stop them grumbling, but she liked to think it was a little fond. Once she had left their canopy behind, her dress flared, the wind howled, and she tore off toward the distant feeling of Xia Lin and Zhengui's qi. They were off near the early logging camp, and she could see smoke rising into the air and the faintest flicker of heat distortion? A fire in the forest? There hadn't been any lightning. She wondered where that had come from.
***
She descended, watching the flames dance with a critical eye. Zhenguis roots had woven a barrier, cutting off the path of the fires toward the camp site and the road, but in all other directions, the way was blocked only by scattered groups of their soldiers, sweating heavily with exertion wearing armor and clothing meant for these cold climes. They formed small knots of resistance, each group with a single cultivator whose qi could bend toward a snuffing element, whether it was scattered water summoned from the still moist air or earth to smother, or even fire to control.
It was not a truly ruinous fire. The air was cold and wet, the wood and grass saturated in that same moisture, the flames guttered red and orange, billowing heat licking at trunks and mostly burning at the brush.
Yes, she could see why Xia Lin would use this as an exercise. Particularly as the wildfire spirits born from the sparking flames hurled themselves with reckless abandon at their soldiers, cackling with wild abandon as they sought to spread with the single minded madness only such a spirit could have.
She had asked for a chance to practice her new art, if Xia Lin found one.
Descending from above the flames, she exhaled, the heated air making her gown and hair billow. Along with her breath she cycled the rich, verdant wood qi which now ran through a meridian along her spine.
Distant Paradise Resilience.
Her qi spread like a drifting shower of soft leaves over the battlefield and wear it went, men and women straightened up, the scent of clear fresh pine overwhelmed ash and smoke, and faint green light.
A man on the northern side of the firebreaks was caught out of position as a half dozen giggling flame fairies crawled and leapt and floated over the earthen rampart. He cut two from the air, little gusts of wind kicking the sparks of severed fairies away from him. But the third detonated in an eruption of flame before he could raise his guard.
She heard and felt his scream as the searing heat washed over his skin, and even down his throat. Viridian light flared and the flames clinging to his clothes guttered out, the shape of woven roots glittering in the shell of light that solidified around him as he was dragged back from the rampart by his comrades.
Ling Qi felt a trifling little prickle on her skin, a small drop of qi burning away
The weave of green over the soldier's body broke apart into drifting motes. There was not a mark on his flesh.
"I am here. The flames cannot harm you, though I cannot protect you from pain," she said, her voice clear in every set of ears.
"If Baroness Ling has arrived, then begin the second stage of the operation, shrink containment, achieve reduction, prioritize prevention of crown burning," Xia Lin's voice unlike hers crackled and buzzed artificially, carried on the power of a simple amplification talisman. "Follow the procedures from your drills."
Ling Qi observed them snapping into action, they were not exactly well polished even to her eyes, but she could tell they had been seriously drilled. The wave of pinpricks that had washed over her along with the first prickled like goosebumps on her skin and she felt the tiny draw on her qi grow as they began to advance among the fires.
Her technique drew all the harm which they could have taken unto herself. Dream and Wood. Persistence, perception and community. She shouldered what those frailer could not. But though her immense well of qi absorbed the harm, the pain of their choices was their own to suffer.
She could be a foundation to lean on, but not the final arbiter of their lives. Such was the technique she had put together from her own self and fragments of Kohatu's memories of absolute persistence.
"Where did this fire come from?" she asked absently, remaining there floating above the core of the raging flames. This time she spoke not to everyone, but just to Zhengui and Xia Lin.
"One of the groups testing and laying the groundwork to begin mining caused a deviation in the earthveins," Xia Lin's voice replied in her ear despite the distance
"Gui warned miss Chaser and she brought the people. But we did not arrive before the flame-air went boom!"
"Well it is not so bad if it stays like this. I, Zhen see that this place is much overgrown, a little burning is not bad."
She nodded absently, looking down, at them moving in, coordinating with each other. She spotted Xia Lin's shining armor among them, where the conflagration was at its worst, calmly keeping command. Heat and prickling needles washed over her here and there, but overall the men were not growing sloppy under the aegis of her technique.
And the small hurts of red realms fighting through peer spirits could hardly dent the qi cycling through her channels. The technique was certainly flawed still in this initial state, but it was a foundation to build on, to form the foundation of her thoughts on how best to protect.
Like the roots she meditated over she could not save every sprout and trunk, it was probably beyond her to try, but with her will, she could support and keep alive many who might otherwise perish, in the pursuit of the distant dream which they now pursued.
A dream even she could not yet see in full.
G5
Type: Armor, Support
Duration: Scene
You tap into the resolve which joins you to your allies and the memories of roots everlasting, of life that persists through all wrath and ruin. Shrouding your allies in light and weaving roots. While active you take all damage which would harm shrouded allies through their own defenses up to G5 as qi loss. The on damage effects of techniques blocked do not effect you unless you were among the intended targets. The on damage effect of otherwise successful techniques are not blocked on the intended targets
Your own defense techniques do not reduce this. You may not lose qi greater than an individual target's total cultivation plus one from any individual instance. (Protecting an individual R1 cultivator you take a maximum of R2 potency damage as qi loss from techniques effecting them.) You may choose to include or exclude individuals in this effect.
Type: Armor, Support
Duration: Scene
You tap into the resolve which joins you to your allies and the memories of roots everlasting, of life that persists through all wrath and ruin. Shrouding your allies in light and weaving roots. While active you take all damage which would harm shrouded allies through their own defenses up to G5 as qi loss. The on damage effects of techniques blocked do not effect you unless you were among the intended targets. The on damage effect of otherwise successful techniques are not blocked on the intended targets
Your own defense techniques do not reduce this. You may not lose qi greater than an individual target's total cultivation plus one from any individual instance. (Protecting an individual R1 cultivator you take a maximum of R2 potency damage as qi loss from techniques effecting them.) You may choose to include or exclude individuals in this effect.
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- Location
- France
Are you sure you don't mean "so old" and no "so low" ?
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Your own defense techniques do not reduce this. You may not lose qi greater than an individual target's total cultivation plus one from any individual instance. (Protecting an individual R1 cultivator you take a maximum of R2 potency damage as qi loss from techniques effecting them.) You may choose to include or exclude individuals in this effect.
@yrsillar , how does this work with, like, huge overkill hits? If a G3 attack hits a dozen R1 people, is it that none of them take any damage, and Ling Qi takes R2x12 in lost Qi?
@yrsillar , how does this work with, like, huge overkill hits? If a G3 attack hits a dozen R1 people, is it that none of them take any damage, and Ling Qi takes R2x12 in lost Qi?
- Location
- Florida
I think it's cool that it doesn't stop the pain. It protects them from harm but doesn't let them become arrogant.
- Location
- The Star Kingdom of Manticore
I love that art so much. It's the piece that pulls our strategies together. Massive defense boost that uses our deep qi reserves. Fantastic
Yeah that is how it works So like a peer can't murk lq by lobbing a bomb into a mortal village since she'll only take a pinprick from protecting each one(their surroundings might be super fucked up by the attack, and bring them to more harm though.)
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