Year 45 Month 12 Arc 4-2
"I was thinking that we could go for a walk on the lakefront, out toward the falls."
Xuan Shi went still as stone, hand frozen in the midst of tracing the connecting line which bound the entry arrays to those embedded in the inner walls. "Miss Ling…"
"I've said Ling Qi is fine many times," She said quietly."I did mean what I said back in the hospital."
"Too forward! You dare…"
"Peace Xuanji," Xuan Shi said, holding up his hand. "This one would be pleased to accompany thee."
"I am glad," Ling Qi said. "There are some ideas on cultivation, and discoveries that have been on my mind, and I can think of no one better to debate them with."
He tilted his head, Xuanji turned up her beak, glaring at Ling Qi with a gimlet eye.
"A practical matter?"
"Between the two of us, can you think of a better method for bettering our understanding of each other?"
He frowned, returning to his examination. "Miss Ling is not a woman who cherishes frippery and ceremony."
"I might have invited you to the library if ours had anything but Lady Cai's legal texts and copies of the great classics in it," Ling Qi said dryly.
He snorted, smiling behind his collar. "Indeed."
"Father, you cannot be entertaining this."
"This one has no hounds upon his tail, neither do thee. Child, thy wishes were to see the hills and the lord of the garden as well, no?"
Xuanji puffed out her feathers but did not argue.
"I can't decide if you dorks are cute or awkward, dancing around like there's spiders on the floor," Sixiang said, hands on their hips.
Ling Qi glowered at them. She was seriously trying here. Sixiang smirked and stuck out their tongue. "I know Zhengui should be walking his route through the farms today," Ling Qi offered.
"This one is warmed by the rays of they concern, but limits of propriety lie but a claws breadth from they feet," Xuan Shi said, slightly chiding as he resumed circling the room
"I apologize for my rude words," the hen said stiffly. To her credit she kept most of the reluctance out of her voice."
"Am gonna bully that Kongyou a bit for messing around I think," Sixiang drawled, voice silent to all but her.
"Be nice Sixiang, or at least be civil about it."
"Hah I've been learning! Definitely be reaaaaaal civil."
She should probably be concerned about that but Kongyou was literally a manifestation of joy found in the tragedy of others, so it was hard to be sympathetic.
"Well, it's settled then. I accept the apology. What are your initial thoughts on the installation, Xuan Shi?"
"Primary inefficiencies lie deep within qi recycling arrays, siphoning moving air over thrumming stone, for this…"
Ling Qi settled in to listen and watch him work.
She kept their path from the main work areas, not out of any disgust, but simply because her presence would disrupt everyone too much. They strolled toward the rising mist and the pounding sound of falling water on a street frequented mainly by messengers too and from the manor and the sluice works which kept the water in controlled pathways..
"This one attempted to instill the virtues of cultivation in his charge…. The roots have taken, but the spread is more virulent than the gardener might hope," Xuan Shi acknowledged, lowering his head.
"She's a good girl," Ling Qi said, as they passed by the last of the completed buildings, out here there were mainly the foundations for further construction, the drainage and the canals. The sound dampening arrays had not yet been fully placed and so the thunder of the falls would have rendered this conversation difficult for a mortal.
"This one's curiosity spreads, as the rising reflection upon the shore. What cultivation would be so well suited to mine ears?"
Ling Qi hummed thoughtfully. "Stories. Of all cultivators I know, you are the only one with a deep fascination for narrative…. I've been finding my contemplations falling that way more and more lately."
He was silent, hands clasped behind his back as they reached the lakeside, looking out over the rippling ring of water radiating out from the falls behind them.
"If it's not presumptuous… I wouldn't mind if we had this conversation in your own tongue, if you feel you could express better. Language isn't really a barrier for me anymore."
The Xuan, as one of the oldest clans in the Empire, had their own dialect and language… it was the reason they spoke with such a cadence in the main imperial tongue. Most of the provinces had as well once, but the isolation of the Xuan's islands had left there's far more intact.
He considered her thoughtfully. When he spoke next, the actual sounds were foreign, flatter and sharper than the flow of the imperial language.
"One is rarely called to speak/sing in the way of the waves beyond the slumbering isles. But it is tiring, the southern tongue is too flowing/quick for one's thoughts to keep up well one finds."
"The blood of the Living Isle presupposes one to pondering and thoughtfulness I suppose," Ling Qi said, stopping by his side at the shore, her feet making no impression in the dark mud, whereas his sank heavy into the earth.
"True. It is the sounds, the lack of spacing. Less unique shapes, less exactness in the form of phrase and conjugation. Emphasis on tone, when one's voice comes flat and still by instinct. Ling Qi, you ask after stories. One accepts you have recanted your words, but whence this? Fiction is still not your love still."
"It is not, but I have come to see the lines are not so sharp. Fiction is… still fundamentally a thing of the message, of conveying the author's thoughts, the same as a courtly poem, striving to tell the reader of the beauty or tragedy or other feeling which lies in the writer's heart."
"One sees a truth in this. Ling Qi has chosen the path of a speaker. This is also the path of a storyteller. Fact is important, but if one cannot convince those who listen to the truth of it, then it is but dross, sinking into the abyssal black. The archives of the deep speak of this in our histories, the Hermit King was oft troubled by this, the light hold which dry and cold fact has upon the human mind."
"Well, isn't that disheartening, knowing my trial has been gnawed on for ten thousand years and counting by better scholars than I," Ling Qi chuckled.
"Great strides may seem to come in fitful bursts, but they are the work of ages, countless labors piled up until one may finally make the leap unto heavens unreachable by the ancestors."
"I think I see that," Ling Qi said thoughtfully. "Even should you reject the past, you are still reacting to it?"
"One exists in connection to what is and what was before, this is inescapable. How this relates to fiction lies in examination. Storytelling is the way of passing knowledge, before ink and page and jade."
"So fiction is an offshoot or… no, an outgrowth, of rendering events and values into narratives for expression," Ling Qi pondered. They continued along the lakeside, leaving the calmer waters behind, the waves made by the pounding impact of the falls lapped at their feet, though it touched neither of them, the mist was thick around them now as well, cool and shadowy despite the sun high in the sky.
She could see it, there was only a subtle difference between memorializing a desired virtue or cultural affect through the lens of past events, and crafting those events from the ground up. Meaning and lesson could even attenuate, becoming secondary to merely telling a story, the way some legends grew to be more about the legend itself than any meaning their ancestors might have meant in it.
It was such a tangled thing to think about.
"You're still too practical in many ways. It amuses/provokes thought. The Lady Cai and Ling Qi are very similar, except in aesthetics."
She shot him an affronted look. "I respect my lady deeply of course, but I am not so dour as all of that."
He merely raised an eyebrow. The thunder of the falls was deafening now, as they stood practically under it, the pressure and the wet touching neither of them. "Yet you seek a reason, a hard and fast purpose, in all things. One does not think of these things always, in creation. To one who dreams, is it not enough to want to capture the distant unknown shore, the tale dreamt of in late hours?"
She pursed her lips. She couldn't fully deny that. Her first instinct was to search for purpose and meaning in a story, what its author was trying to say. And there was purpose, even if the speaker, the writer did not think of it.
Not all purposes needed to be grand. She gestured, and a slice of the mist cleared away. A slice of distant sky could be glimpsed, distorted by the shadow left by the Clearwater Mist, here at the center of the falls.
"Fascinating," Xuan Shi said, eyeing the whorls in the qi which thinned the material in just the right way that the cycling water vapor transformed at dawn and dusk.
"I thought you might like this place. It is an awful pain trying to arrange any collection though, mortal boats can't come so far under the falls," Ling Qi mused.
Their own feet were on the water's surface now after all.
"Again. It is not a bad thing, what I say, the drive that seeks purpose and forward motion in all things captivates. It is heard in every song you compose of yourself," Xuan Shi said idly.
Ling Qi hummed appreciatively. "I suppose I take your point. Like Lady Cai, I can be very results focused."
He nodded sagely. "And this I ponder is part of the wind which carries your wings so high. To my eyes, you soar unshackled by doubts."
"Hardly," Ling Qi said, smiling wanly. "I question and doubt quite a lot. I just don't let that stop me… You can't let that stop you, when you're scrabbling at the bottom. Choose now, Do now, Tomorrow may not come."
It wasn't how she liked to live anymore, but she would be lying if it wasn't still there at the root of things.
"It is not only that, I look on you and see certainty of purpose, and bravery unending. That is what marks the cover of the tale of Ling Qi."
She laughed. "Well, I hope it's a tale you know the shape of behind that cover, I've not hidden it. You though, we've talked many times now, and I always catch hints, but the cover remains firmly shut."
He cocked his head, listening.
"Would you tell me the story of Xuan Shi?"
Xuan Shi went still as stone, hand frozen in the midst of tracing the connecting line which bound the entry arrays to those embedded in the inner walls. "Miss Ling…"
"I've said Ling Qi is fine many times," She said quietly."I did mean what I said back in the hospital."
"Too forward! You dare…"
"Peace Xuanji," Xuan Shi said, holding up his hand. "This one would be pleased to accompany thee."
"I am glad," Ling Qi said. "There are some ideas on cultivation, and discoveries that have been on my mind, and I can think of no one better to debate them with."
He tilted his head, Xuanji turned up her beak, glaring at Ling Qi with a gimlet eye.
"A practical matter?"
"Between the two of us, can you think of a better method for bettering our understanding of each other?"
He frowned, returning to his examination. "Miss Ling is not a woman who cherishes frippery and ceremony."
"I might have invited you to the library if ours had anything but Lady Cai's legal texts and copies of the great classics in it," Ling Qi said dryly.
He snorted, smiling behind his collar. "Indeed."
"Father, you cannot be entertaining this."
"This one has no hounds upon his tail, neither do thee. Child, thy wishes were to see the hills and the lord of the garden as well, no?"
Xuanji puffed out her feathers but did not argue.
"I can't decide if you dorks are cute or awkward, dancing around like there's spiders on the floor," Sixiang said, hands on their hips.
Ling Qi glowered at them. She was seriously trying here. Sixiang smirked and stuck out their tongue. "I know Zhengui should be walking his route through the farms today," Ling Qi offered.
"This one is warmed by the rays of they concern, but limits of propriety lie but a claws breadth from they feet," Xuan Shi said, slightly chiding as he resumed circling the room
"I apologize for my rude words," the hen said stiffly. To her credit she kept most of the reluctance out of her voice."
"Am gonna bully that Kongyou a bit for messing around I think," Sixiang drawled, voice silent to all but her.
"Be nice Sixiang, or at least be civil about it."
"Hah I've been learning! Definitely be reaaaaaal civil."
She should probably be concerned about that but Kongyou was literally a manifestation of joy found in the tragedy of others, so it was hard to be sympathetic.
"Well, it's settled then. I accept the apology. What are your initial thoughts on the installation, Xuan Shi?"
"Primary inefficiencies lie deep within qi recycling arrays, siphoning moving air over thrumming stone, for this…"
Ling Qi settled in to listen and watch him work.
***
"She certainly turned out interestingly, didn't she," Ling Qi said, smiling as they walked through the developing streets of Shenglu, the scent of fish in the air by the docks was something that had taken some getting used too, but it was just part of the background tapestry now.She kept their path from the main work areas, not out of any disgust, but simply because her presence would disrupt everyone too much. They strolled toward the rising mist and the pounding sound of falling water on a street frequented mainly by messengers too and from the manor and the sluice works which kept the water in controlled pathways..
"This one attempted to instill the virtues of cultivation in his charge…. The roots have taken, but the spread is more virulent than the gardener might hope," Xuan Shi acknowledged, lowering his head.
"She's a good girl," Ling Qi said, as they passed by the last of the completed buildings, out here there were mainly the foundations for further construction, the drainage and the canals. The sound dampening arrays had not yet been fully placed and so the thunder of the falls would have rendered this conversation difficult for a mortal.
"This one's curiosity spreads, as the rising reflection upon the shore. What cultivation would be so well suited to mine ears?"
Ling Qi hummed thoughtfully. "Stories. Of all cultivators I know, you are the only one with a deep fascination for narrative…. I've been finding my contemplations falling that way more and more lately."
He was silent, hands clasped behind his back as they reached the lakeside, looking out over the rippling ring of water radiating out from the falls behind them.
"If it's not presumptuous… I wouldn't mind if we had this conversation in your own tongue, if you feel you could express better. Language isn't really a barrier for me anymore."
The Xuan, as one of the oldest clans in the Empire, had their own dialect and language… it was the reason they spoke with such a cadence in the main imperial tongue. Most of the provinces had as well once, but the isolation of the Xuan's islands had left there's far more intact.
He considered her thoughtfully. When he spoke next, the actual sounds were foreign, flatter and sharper than the flow of the imperial language.
"One is rarely called to speak/sing in the way of the waves beyond the slumbering isles. But it is tiring, the southern tongue is too flowing/quick for one's thoughts to keep up well one finds."
"The blood of the Living Isle presupposes one to pondering and thoughtfulness I suppose," Ling Qi said, stopping by his side at the shore, her feet making no impression in the dark mud, whereas his sank heavy into the earth.
"True. It is the sounds, the lack of spacing. Less unique shapes, less exactness in the form of phrase and conjugation. Emphasis on tone, when one's voice comes flat and still by instinct. Ling Qi, you ask after stories. One accepts you have recanted your words, but whence this? Fiction is still not your love still."
"It is not, but I have come to see the lines are not so sharp. Fiction is… still fundamentally a thing of the message, of conveying the author's thoughts, the same as a courtly poem, striving to tell the reader of the beauty or tragedy or other feeling which lies in the writer's heart."
"One sees a truth in this. Ling Qi has chosen the path of a speaker. This is also the path of a storyteller. Fact is important, but if one cannot convince those who listen to the truth of it, then it is but dross, sinking into the abyssal black. The archives of the deep speak of this in our histories, the Hermit King was oft troubled by this, the light hold which dry and cold fact has upon the human mind."
"Well, isn't that disheartening, knowing my trial has been gnawed on for ten thousand years and counting by better scholars than I," Ling Qi chuckled.
"Great strides may seem to come in fitful bursts, but they are the work of ages, countless labors piled up until one may finally make the leap unto heavens unreachable by the ancestors."
"I think I see that," Ling Qi said thoughtfully. "Even should you reject the past, you are still reacting to it?"
"One exists in connection to what is and what was before, this is inescapable. How this relates to fiction lies in examination. Storytelling is the way of passing knowledge, before ink and page and jade."
"So fiction is an offshoot or… no, an outgrowth, of rendering events and values into narratives for expression," Ling Qi pondered. They continued along the lakeside, leaving the calmer waters behind, the waves made by the pounding impact of the falls lapped at their feet, though it touched neither of them, the mist was thick around them now as well, cool and shadowy despite the sun high in the sky.
She could see it, there was only a subtle difference between memorializing a desired virtue or cultural affect through the lens of past events, and crafting those events from the ground up. Meaning and lesson could even attenuate, becoming secondary to merely telling a story, the way some legends grew to be more about the legend itself than any meaning their ancestors might have meant in it.
It was such a tangled thing to think about.
"You're still too practical in many ways. It amuses/provokes thought. The Lady Cai and Ling Qi are very similar, except in aesthetics."
She shot him an affronted look. "I respect my lady deeply of course, but I am not so dour as all of that."
He merely raised an eyebrow. The thunder of the falls was deafening now, as they stood practically under it, the pressure and the wet touching neither of them. "Yet you seek a reason, a hard and fast purpose, in all things. One does not think of these things always, in creation. To one who dreams, is it not enough to want to capture the distant unknown shore, the tale dreamt of in late hours?"
She pursed her lips. She couldn't fully deny that. Her first instinct was to search for purpose and meaning in a story, what its author was trying to say. And there was purpose, even if the speaker, the writer did not think of it.
Not all purposes needed to be grand. She gestured, and a slice of the mist cleared away. A slice of distant sky could be glimpsed, distorted by the shadow left by the Clearwater Mist, here at the center of the falls.
"Fascinating," Xuan Shi said, eyeing the whorls in the qi which thinned the material in just the right way that the cycling water vapor transformed at dawn and dusk.
"I thought you might like this place. It is an awful pain trying to arrange any collection though, mortal boats can't come so far under the falls," Ling Qi mused.
Their own feet were on the water's surface now after all.
"Again. It is not a bad thing, what I say, the drive that seeks purpose and forward motion in all things captivates. It is heard in every song you compose of yourself," Xuan Shi said idly.
Ling Qi hummed appreciatively. "I suppose I take your point. Like Lady Cai, I can be very results focused."
He nodded sagely. "And this I ponder is part of the wind which carries your wings so high. To my eyes, you soar unshackled by doubts."
"Hardly," Ling Qi said, smiling wanly. "I question and doubt quite a lot. I just don't let that stop me… You can't let that stop you, when you're scrabbling at the bottom. Choose now, Do now, Tomorrow may not come."
It wasn't how she liked to live anymore, but she would be lying if it wasn't still there at the root of things.
"It is not only that, I look on you and see certainty of purpose, and bravery unending. That is what marks the cover of the tale of Ling Qi."
She laughed. "Well, I hope it's a tale you know the shape of behind that cover, I've not hidden it. You though, we've talked many times now, and I always catch hints, but the cover remains firmly shut."
He cocked his head, listening.
"Would you tell me the story of Xuan Shi?"
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