Per Yrs the single biggest stumbling block is the three advanced insights, so I'm guessing people who make it to G7 get a lot more attention.
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 Qingge and the Dream Horse 6
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Ling Qingge and the Dream Horse, Gallop 6: Different Voices And Different Songs
Ling Qingge did not get far, nor did she intend to. After a moment's thought she decided to visit with Lightning, and then find one of the training grounds and camp out there. It would leave her available if need be, and it'd allow her to test how much the mistress of the house was going to respect her decision. Ling Qi could no doubt track her down, because she wasn't going to try to sneak and hide. Perhaps she would not see Ling Qingge as a weak child to be coddled as if she were not a cultivator in her own right.
She knew she was taking it worse than she should, but was there anything more outrageous than to meet yourself and find that yourself seems to be… so different? And yet so similar? Older and…
So she enjoyed her time with Lightning and then pitched a tent in a training area with some trees, something that could also pass for a park. It was beautiful out there, one of those gardens that sought to be otherworldly and yet thankfully failed. Because the world was wider and stranger than people thought, and so to be truly otherworldly would be to be dull and as lame as a horse ridden badly, limping along without anything worth noting.
She set up a tent, one of the basic sorts, assembling it into passability easily enough, and deciding to go with dried trail rations for the moment. She didn't need to eat that often, of course, but she liked to have a routine, and so it was her way to more often eat a little bit every day rather than what some Cultivators she knew did. They waited as long as they could and then feasted as if there was nothing they loved more than food, and then they were gone for a while. But some nuts, some dried berries, dried meats as well… it was all the body needed, at least all it needed on a night like this.
It really was a fine summer night, and so she spent at least a few of the hours that she'd have been sleeping if she was mortal just staring up at the stars in the sky. They really were something, she thought, aware of how cliched the thought was. But it was an honest thought, and so she allowed it. When she slept, the little she was required to--and a little more than she had to--she dreamed of nothing more than sights and sounds, of the pattern and weave of the world, the smell of flowers and grass, and further on the breeze other scents that a mortal would not be able to smell.
The world was this majesty and also the dung that was everywhere, the sweat and labor, the tired bones of horses pushed too hard, the sunken faces of mortals speeding towards death… and of course, Immortals are not actually immortal.
There was a lot to think of, but that was not at all the same as having many answers.
In fact it was the opposite.
She just thought and thought, and eventually slept and when she did, dozing more than she had to, she saw things. She wasn't sure what they were, but they were… flashes. Flashes she shouldn't have, because they did not quite fit. It was as if they were another person's dreams, dreams of the texture of scratchy sheets, of the smell of far too much perfume, of a thousand little scents just like that which couldn't ever quite become something coherent, let alone something she could understand.
She woke up a little groggy, which she knew was just her remembering immortality. She wasn't actually groggy, it was just that her mind was used to being groggy after weird dreams, and so it was that she could shake off this false grogginess in just a moment and notice that someone was standing outside the tent.
She checked to see that her hair was in decent condition, using a horse-brush to try to get it in something like a semblance of control. Then she evaluated the odds and knew…
Yes.
When she opened her tent, she found herself staring at Ling Qi.
"Good morning," Ling Qi said, and behind her was skipping the ice spirit girl, a frozen girl peering at her curiously. "This is the training ground that I usually use, and so I… thought I'd ask if you wanted to exchange pointers and talk about Cultivation?"
She had a carefully controlled voice, but she heard the note of actual eagerness and curiosity, the bit of tone that indicated that Ling Qi had reasons to be here. Ling Qingge rubbed her eyes for a moment, quickly waking up.
"Were you sleeping? Why?" Ling Qi asked.
"There's value in the motions, and I usually like what I dream," Ling Qingge said, though from the wrinkle of Ling Qi's nose at that--she certainly seems like the sort that does not forget mortal needs, perhaps, but is happy to be mostly past them--she should have told the other story, the one that was almost true, about her hand-crafted Cultivation Art. "It's why I also eat regularly, if not that much." She could really treat herself, and that too would fit her cultivation art, but it felt like a choice that'd leave her too vulnerable.
"I suppose… so, what do you say?"
"Let's make it a game then. We show and talk about three Arts each. If they're not Arts we can use on someone friendly, we can talk about them… but the important part is, we talk about what they've taught us. We're Greens, we don't have to pretend that the only purpose of an Art is to provide us with a weapon to wield."
"I could do that," Ling Qi said with a nod. "Exchanging insights into the world, as well? To share our Ways?"
"Of course. Though I warn you, my Arts are eclectic, as I had to gather them where I could, and it is only recently that I've begun to pull them together." She'd taken what she'd gotten, driven by her own absurd luck, and yet somehow it had wound up with something she could use. Something that was her. This was its own sort of luck, because she'd known plenty of people who rooted in the trash heap of Cultivation Arts, taking whatever came their way and whatever they fancied, and finding their growth stalling out as they had to face the fact that a Way could be shallow but it had to exist.
"I understand. I was similar," Ling Qi admitted. "I had to learn what I could, pick out what worked, and figure out later how it all… fit into me. Fit into the strong foundation for my Way."
"Well then, here's something I just started learning late last year, but that I think will be a key Art for me. It's called Beast King's Savage--"
"Dirge," Ling Qi said, her eyes wide. "I know it too."
Ling Qingge gaped at her, considering the girl before her once more, this time in a very different way. It said something that this was an Art they shared. "So you've contemplated the similarities between man and beast, whether spirit or otherwise?" she asked, curiously.
"To an extent, but it is also about failings. Each of the Beasts stood alone, fought and in their flaws fell before Tsu as the roots of Xiangman protected the innocent. Even the Wolf God had flaws that led to his fall, and the Impetuous Eagle and--"
"I see," Ling Qingge said, thinking of it. The story told that way made sense, but at the time she'd thought of how many Lords were no different than one of the Beasts, and how many Beasts were no different than one of the Lords, and how if one closed their eyes, when they opened would they look from Beast to Lord, and from Lord to Beast, and then from Beast to Lord again, and find it impossible to say which was which.
But also, the drives, the desires and flaws of these beasts could not hide that their strengths too were familiar. "So you've focused more on combining their efforts? Finding ways to use these songs, these abilities, in conjunction?"
"Yes," Ling Qi said, "I can show it to you." She seemed shocked, as if she had not expected this connection.
Ling Qi had been just a little bit like her. She'd worked as hard as she could to get rewards, from the trainers of physical and spiritual cultivation (different people, because there was a rotation, because it was often enough not a popular duty), the latter of whom Ling Qingge had managed to hold onto and the former which she'd had an easy enough time of. She listened to stories, and watched the differences in their Constructs with curiosity and confusion. Obviously, Ling Qi's was a little more advanced, but there were also just… a lot of ways where small differences turned into large differences for how it worked. This led to Ling Qi talking about her moon-aligned cultivation art, something that made Ling Qingge decide that she might as well use that as her second.
"So it has worked out as a Cultivation Art," Ling Qingge said, encouragingly. The third art would have to be something a little more active, since it wasn't like either of them could show off a Cultivation Art like that. Indeed, you could say that they themselves were the art, the result, the… but it was easy to get too abstract. In the end, one could only get so abstract before you started to forget the reality that was the flesh and blood, the physicality of life itself even at its most spiritual. It was about finding a balance, even if she often leaned too far towards the Yang than the Yin.
"Yes, it has," Ling Qi said firmly. "All three of them managed to work together."
One of them raised questions, questions that seemed to come back to Ling Qi having spent some time on the streets, though she did not talk too much about it, and seemed pained even by the mention of it. This felt like it was something not to press in, and she was not the sort to find a point of soreness and press it until they started to scream. What sort of person would do that?
"My own Cultivation Art that I made is different. I took inspiration from old stories. It's almost like a set of rules," she said. Every Cultivation Art came with assumptions as to how to cultivate, but these were almost how to live. "To balance Yin and Yang, to remember the body and the spirit. It's why I dream, why I try to eat regularly even if I don't eat much. I need to remind myself always that humans are beasts of a sort." She smiled as she said it, "For better or worse, all humans are born made of meat, with instincts and drives, with a life-cycle that even the greatest Cultivator cannot entirely escape. Nor should they want to. The old decays, the young is born--"
"Winter comes, and then spring, the seasons unending," Ling Qi said.
"Exactly. So I Cultivate as I live, and live as I Cultivate. There is no room for a contradiction. There's no room for hypocrisy, and there's no room for running away from the world." It was a sort of way to ground herself. She'd felt so much, been so lost, that a part of her had imagined becoming a hermit after she escaped. Drinking her humiliation and eating her rice, and letting the years and decades hide her. Cultivators did that, waited out the bad times even if it involved stalling out, even if it involved slow grinding progress.
Sometimes it even worked. Not often.
"I understand," Ling Qi said, and Ling Qingge thought she did.
So after the summons and the Cultivation Art, Ling Qingge knew that her last one would have to be spectacular. So she started by talking about her time in that first year, because that's where this came from. This was her Personal Art, the thing that had seen her through a dozen fights and battles, some of them to the death.
"Obviously, they looked down on me at the Sect, at first. Everyone assumed that as a He I was either just preparing to be a servant of the Liu or looking to be someone else's maid," Ling Qingge admitted, having settled in across from Ling Qi.
"One of my best friends assumed at first that I was trying to become her maid, and even after because she was a Ducal Scion people assumed I was her subordinate," Ling Qi said.
"A Ducal Scion? Which one?" Ling Qingge asked.
"Bai Meizhen," Ling Qi said, and for a moment Ling Qingge gaped, before she laughed.
"Why not? Snakes are cool animals, and people are people, as long as no horses get bit," Ling Qingge said. "What is she like?"
"She's intense. She's away now, but we're good friends," Ling Qi said.
And Ling Qingge got a solid assurance there that told her that it wasn't anything other than that, despite the stories that dogged them. She considered it and grinned, because she definitely couldn't match that, but she was not going to back down, not even to her "daughter."
"I don't have as many friends in high places as you seem to have, but I did meet a few people. Leng Mei's a good friend, she's a one of the common Cultivators, and… I'll admit, most of them just resented me, but some of them were cool." She frowned and said, "Have you ever seen a crab bucket?"
"In a dream, perhaps," Ling Qi said, and Qingge could tell when someone was trying to be mysterious on purpose.
"Well, Xuan Shun, a Xuan who was looking for a Xuanwu rumored to be at the Sect, well, he was a good sort. We fucked a few times--"
Okay, more like a dozen or two times. She'd eventually had to cut him free, because what if he caught feelings? He'd have the power, even if he wasn't main-branch, to do something, to put her in his power if he was going for a marriage…
Ling Qi's face shriveled up, and she looked briefly disgusted despite her attempts to hide otherwise.
"But after one of the times, he told me about how mortal crabs would grab each other while trying to climb out of the bucket, and so they couldn't get away, any of them. That's what it was like, for too many of them: people resented me for climbing, both those above and those below and those level with me in progress in Cultivation. So part of how I proved myself was… to make sure I struck with thunder and lightning itself, and the bow always called to me, if not as much as a horse did, and so I tried to adjust Arts to better fit the fact that while they had to be done anywhere, some things were best done on horseback."
You made choices, and as much as it hurt, sometimes some of those had to involve narrowing your options.
"I like being strong, I like," Ling Qingge said. "Not being pigeonholed, as I'd first thought I might do, into someone who merely supports others, as important as it is to help others. So I created this art."
She drew her bow, seemingly from nowhere, and felt the dance, the song, and everything begin. Muscles honed from years of exercise and cultivation, herself in an attack."
Once there was a girl whose heart was the weather: stormy one moment and sunny the next, who dreamed of adventures and far-off places, who rode horses as one must ride the wind itself. She went to a land she thought would be of wonders, a land where mortality was banished, replaced by the climb ever-upward.
(The first piece of the art was simple enough, turning a single arrow into a swarm or doing the opposite with an attack, narrowing it down, making one into many, and many into one, an offensive and defensive trick that allowed one to understand this reality: that you are, always, more and less alone than you think.)
One there was a girl who lived in the cold, and warmed herself by stolen furs, standing outside the great gates of the world wailing like a dying cat, and could not seem to dream of more than that. Yet she went to a land of wonder and mystery, of revelry and grace and danger, and one day she a Dream made flesh.
(It was no longer her most powerful Art, Ling Qi admitted, but why would Ling Qingge have cared, because it was beautiful and strange, the true 'fairy dreamland' and yet one that knew what it was. The whirl of colors and persons, the party that surrounded her, made her for a moment feel truly seen and truly part of a crowd… she did not entirely like it, but nor did she dislike it. She laughed, and listened into the faux-conversation, and found herself easily sliding over to Ling Qi.)
Once there was a girl who found the land of wonders was not a land of wanderers, and with each friend she made, she lost two. And yet she began to see that in the vagaries of the world, a thousand different perspectives could arrive at the same wrong answer, and one perspective may arrive at a dozen right answers. That though there is no fate, there is chance, and that as a well-aimed arrow followed another, so too could the scorn of her peers. And so she was alone, and yet she was free.
(Another simple part of the art to her. She could hit multiple targets at once, firing the arrows in that split moment of decision, or hit a target from a half-dozen angles as she moved, or indeed the thundering strike of the arrows from the first part of her Art could then serve as a guiding rod for the slings and arrows of the world. Trouble came not in single spies, but in battalions, and yet if she could return the volley, then that was something.)
Once there was a girl all awhirl, who went to parties and did not know how not to offend, and had to learn how to revel as she never had to learn how to rebel. She was a troublesome guest, a friend to the high, a few of the low, and none of those between. Yet she learned the games in time, the whirl of diplomacy, until as smooth as could be, she seemed natural-born to this life.
(The next part was not so easy to learn, but Ling Qingge took a deep breath, and let herself be whirled away, and because Ling Qi meant no harm she danced with a gentleman all of ash and smoke, and a young man who resembled nothing more than starlight made flesh, and because she did not fear Ling Qi, she did not fear being bound further and further into the party… not for now.)
Once there was a girl who was not alone anymore. She carried the LIghtning with her, and she knew that she could bring the thunder, and that the very air itself shouted out a story that she was still as free as she was before, even after all the years, even after all she'd almost lost, and it told the power of the world, and the blows themselves, to go free. To turn aside, if they willed, to dissolve and melt into air.
(She could not show it, but she could describe it, the way it was in many ways the anti-teamwork finishing move, which broke down the bonds of all of the advantages Cultivation could give to allies, and even seemed to unravel attacks, to miss or go at random, all of it meant to prove a point and yet also be a weapon against bandits. In the end, even when you are not alone, it can be far too easy to forget that you are yourself, and your spirits are themselves. So break down the barriers, and at the end of it come to something free… or at least try.)
"I need to go now, I actually have to talk to my liege about… all of this," Ling Qingge's newest friend said.
"Oh, your liege? I was wondering… why are you all so far out here? You're a retainer of a noble? It'd have to be a Viscount, right?" she asked. "Or the scion of a Count?" She tried to figure out where it was, but she had to admit that while she had all the training in the nobility, she interacted with them more as people than as a complex series of houses.
"Cai Renxiang," Ling Qi said, and Ling Qingge stared. And stared.
And then began laughing. "I really am in a future," she declared.
"Yes, could you try with… Mother? She wants to see you," Ling Qi said.
"Oh, very well," Ling Qingge said doubtfully, while also considering that the probably only (for everyone knew that she had a lover and no doubt had only had a child for dynastic purposes) daughter of the Duchess was apparently within walking distance of her.
The sole heir of the newest Ducal family controlling Emerald Seas.
It was enough to make Ling Qingge shiver in uncertainty, though she saved it until after Ling Qi left. Being so close to power gave her the willies.
'
A/N: This one fought me, but I hope it turned out alright. Tagging @yrsillar
Ling Qingge did not get far, nor did she intend to. After a moment's thought she decided to visit with Lightning, and then find one of the training grounds and camp out there. It would leave her available if need be, and it'd allow her to test how much the mistress of the house was going to respect her decision. Ling Qi could no doubt track her down, because she wasn't going to try to sneak and hide. Perhaps she would not see Ling Qingge as a weak child to be coddled as if she were not a cultivator in her own right.
She knew she was taking it worse than she should, but was there anything more outrageous than to meet yourself and find that yourself seems to be… so different? And yet so similar? Older and…
So she enjoyed her time with Lightning and then pitched a tent in a training area with some trees, something that could also pass for a park. It was beautiful out there, one of those gardens that sought to be otherworldly and yet thankfully failed. Because the world was wider and stranger than people thought, and so to be truly otherworldly would be to be dull and as lame as a horse ridden badly, limping along without anything worth noting.
She set up a tent, one of the basic sorts, assembling it into passability easily enough, and deciding to go with dried trail rations for the moment. She didn't need to eat that often, of course, but she liked to have a routine, and so it was her way to more often eat a little bit every day rather than what some Cultivators she knew did. They waited as long as they could and then feasted as if there was nothing they loved more than food, and then they were gone for a while. But some nuts, some dried berries, dried meats as well… it was all the body needed, at least all it needed on a night like this.
It really was a fine summer night, and so she spent at least a few of the hours that she'd have been sleeping if she was mortal just staring up at the stars in the sky. They really were something, she thought, aware of how cliched the thought was. But it was an honest thought, and so she allowed it. When she slept, the little she was required to--and a little more than she had to--she dreamed of nothing more than sights and sounds, of the pattern and weave of the world, the smell of flowers and grass, and further on the breeze other scents that a mortal would not be able to smell.
The world was this majesty and also the dung that was everywhere, the sweat and labor, the tired bones of horses pushed too hard, the sunken faces of mortals speeding towards death… and of course, Immortals are not actually immortal.
There was a lot to think of, but that was not at all the same as having many answers.
In fact it was the opposite.
She just thought and thought, and eventually slept and when she did, dozing more than she had to, she saw things. She wasn't sure what they were, but they were… flashes. Flashes she shouldn't have, because they did not quite fit. It was as if they were another person's dreams, dreams of the texture of scratchy sheets, of the smell of far too much perfume, of a thousand little scents just like that which couldn't ever quite become something coherent, let alone something she could understand.
She woke up a little groggy, which she knew was just her remembering immortality. She wasn't actually groggy, it was just that her mind was used to being groggy after weird dreams, and so it was that she could shake off this false grogginess in just a moment and notice that someone was standing outside the tent.
She checked to see that her hair was in decent condition, using a horse-brush to try to get it in something like a semblance of control. Then she evaluated the odds and knew…
Yes.
When she opened her tent, she found herself staring at Ling Qi.
"Good morning," Ling Qi said, and behind her was skipping the ice spirit girl, a frozen girl peering at her curiously. "This is the training ground that I usually use, and so I… thought I'd ask if you wanted to exchange pointers and talk about Cultivation?"
She had a carefully controlled voice, but she heard the note of actual eagerness and curiosity, the bit of tone that indicated that Ling Qi had reasons to be here. Ling Qingge rubbed her eyes for a moment, quickly waking up.
"Were you sleeping? Why?" Ling Qi asked.
"There's value in the motions, and I usually like what I dream," Ling Qingge said, though from the wrinkle of Ling Qi's nose at that--she certainly seems like the sort that does not forget mortal needs, perhaps, but is happy to be mostly past them--she should have told the other story, the one that was almost true, about her hand-crafted Cultivation Art. "It's why I also eat regularly, if not that much." She could really treat herself, and that too would fit her cultivation art, but it felt like a choice that'd leave her too vulnerable.
"I suppose… so, what do you say?"
"Let's make it a game then. We show and talk about three Arts each. If they're not Arts we can use on someone friendly, we can talk about them… but the important part is, we talk about what they've taught us. We're Greens, we don't have to pretend that the only purpose of an Art is to provide us with a weapon to wield."
"I could do that," Ling Qi said with a nod. "Exchanging insights into the world, as well? To share our Ways?"
"Of course. Though I warn you, my Arts are eclectic, as I had to gather them where I could, and it is only recently that I've begun to pull them together." She'd taken what she'd gotten, driven by her own absurd luck, and yet somehow it had wound up with something she could use. Something that was her. This was its own sort of luck, because she'd known plenty of people who rooted in the trash heap of Cultivation Arts, taking whatever came their way and whatever they fancied, and finding their growth stalling out as they had to face the fact that a Way could be shallow but it had to exist.
"I understand. I was similar," Ling Qi admitted. "I had to learn what I could, pick out what worked, and figure out later how it all… fit into me. Fit into the strong foundation for my Way."
"Well then, here's something I just started learning late last year, but that I think will be a key Art for me. It's called Beast King's Savage--"
"Dirge," Ling Qi said, her eyes wide. "I know it too."
Ling Qingge gaped at her, considering the girl before her once more, this time in a very different way. It said something that this was an Art they shared. "So you've contemplated the similarities between man and beast, whether spirit or otherwise?" she asked, curiously.
"To an extent, but it is also about failings. Each of the Beasts stood alone, fought and in their flaws fell before Tsu as the roots of Xiangman protected the innocent. Even the Wolf God had flaws that led to his fall, and the Impetuous Eagle and--"
"I see," Ling Qingge said, thinking of it. The story told that way made sense, but at the time she'd thought of how many Lords were no different than one of the Beasts, and how many Beasts were no different than one of the Lords, and how if one closed their eyes, when they opened would they look from Beast to Lord, and from Lord to Beast, and then from Beast to Lord again, and find it impossible to say which was which.
But also, the drives, the desires and flaws of these beasts could not hide that their strengths too were familiar. "So you've focused more on combining their efforts? Finding ways to use these songs, these abilities, in conjunction?"
"Yes," Ling Qi said, "I can show it to you." She seemed shocked, as if she had not expected this connection.
Ling Qi had been just a little bit like her. She'd worked as hard as she could to get rewards, from the trainers of physical and spiritual cultivation (different people, because there was a rotation, because it was often enough not a popular duty), the latter of whom Ling Qingge had managed to hold onto and the former which she'd had an easy enough time of. She listened to stories, and watched the differences in their Constructs with curiosity and confusion. Obviously, Ling Qi's was a little more advanced, but there were also just… a lot of ways where small differences turned into large differences for how it worked. This led to Ling Qi talking about her moon-aligned cultivation art, something that made Ling Qingge decide that she might as well use that as her second.
"So it has worked out as a Cultivation Art," Ling Qingge said, encouragingly. The third art would have to be something a little more active, since it wasn't like either of them could show off a Cultivation Art like that. Indeed, you could say that they themselves were the art, the result, the… but it was easy to get too abstract. In the end, one could only get so abstract before you started to forget the reality that was the flesh and blood, the physicality of life itself even at its most spiritual. It was about finding a balance, even if she often leaned too far towards the Yang than the Yin.
"Yes, it has," Ling Qi said firmly. "All three of them managed to work together."
One of them raised questions, questions that seemed to come back to Ling Qi having spent some time on the streets, though she did not talk too much about it, and seemed pained even by the mention of it. This felt like it was something not to press in, and she was not the sort to find a point of soreness and press it until they started to scream. What sort of person would do that?
"My own Cultivation Art that I made is different. I took inspiration from old stories. It's almost like a set of rules," she said. Every Cultivation Art came with assumptions as to how to cultivate, but these were almost how to live. "To balance Yin and Yang, to remember the body and the spirit. It's why I dream, why I try to eat regularly even if I don't eat much. I need to remind myself always that humans are beasts of a sort." She smiled as she said it, "For better or worse, all humans are born made of meat, with instincts and drives, with a life-cycle that even the greatest Cultivator cannot entirely escape. Nor should they want to. The old decays, the young is born--"
"Winter comes, and then spring, the seasons unending," Ling Qi said.
"Exactly. So I Cultivate as I live, and live as I Cultivate. There is no room for a contradiction. There's no room for hypocrisy, and there's no room for running away from the world." It was a sort of way to ground herself. She'd felt so much, been so lost, that a part of her had imagined becoming a hermit after she escaped. Drinking her humiliation and eating her rice, and letting the years and decades hide her. Cultivators did that, waited out the bad times even if it involved stalling out, even if it involved slow grinding progress.
Sometimes it even worked. Not often.
"I understand," Ling Qi said, and Ling Qingge thought she did.
So after the summons and the Cultivation Art, Ling Qingge knew that her last one would have to be spectacular. So she started by talking about her time in that first year, because that's where this came from. This was her Personal Art, the thing that had seen her through a dozen fights and battles, some of them to the death.
"Obviously, they looked down on me at the Sect, at first. Everyone assumed that as a He I was either just preparing to be a servant of the Liu or looking to be someone else's maid," Ling Qingge admitted, having settled in across from Ling Qi.
"One of my best friends assumed at first that I was trying to become her maid, and even after because she was a Ducal Scion people assumed I was her subordinate," Ling Qi said.
"A Ducal Scion? Which one?" Ling Qingge asked.
"Bai Meizhen," Ling Qi said, and for a moment Ling Qingge gaped, before she laughed.
"Why not? Snakes are cool animals, and people are people, as long as no horses get bit," Ling Qingge said. "What is she like?"
"She's intense. She's away now, but we're good friends," Ling Qi said.
And Ling Qingge got a solid assurance there that told her that it wasn't anything other than that, despite the stories that dogged them. She considered it and grinned, because she definitely couldn't match that, but she was not going to back down, not even to her "daughter."
"I don't have as many friends in high places as you seem to have, but I did meet a few people. Leng Mei's a good friend, she's a one of the common Cultivators, and… I'll admit, most of them just resented me, but some of them were cool." She frowned and said, "Have you ever seen a crab bucket?"
"In a dream, perhaps," Ling Qi said, and Qingge could tell when someone was trying to be mysterious on purpose.
"Well, Xuan Shun, a Xuan who was looking for a Xuanwu rumored to be at the Sect, well, he was a good sort. We fucked a few times--"
Okay, more like a dozen or two times. She'd eventually had to cut him free, because what if he caught feelings? He'd have the power, even if he wasn't main-branch, to do something, to put her in his power if he was going for a marriage…
Ling Qi's face shriveled up, and she looked briefly disgusted despite her attempts to hide otherwise.
"But after one of the times, he told me about how mortal crabs would grab each other while trying to climb out of the bucket, and so they couldn't get away, any of them. That's what it was like, for too many of them: people resented me for climbing, both those above and those below and those level with me in progress in Cultivation. So part of how I proved myself was… to make sure I struck with thunder and lightning itself, and the bow always called to me, if not as much as a horse did, and so I tried to adjust Arts to better fit the fact that while they had to be done anywhere, some things were best done on horseback."
You made choices, and as much as it hurt, sometimes some of those had to involve narrowing your options.
"I like being strong, I like," Ling Qingge said. "Not being pigeonholed, as I'd first thought I might do, into someone who merely supports others, as important as it is to help others. So I created this art."
She drew her bow, seemingly from nowhere, and felt the dance, the song, and everything begin. Muscles honed from years of exercise and cultivation, herself in an attack."
Once there was a girl whose heart was the weather: stormy one moment and sunny the next, who dreamed of adventures and far-off places, who rode horses as one must ride the wind itself. She went to a land she thought would be of wonders, a land where mortality was banished, replaced by the climb ever-upward.
(The first piece of the art was simple enough, turning a single arrow into a swarm or doing the opposite with an attack, narrowing it down, making one into many, and many into one, an offensive and defensive trick that allowed one to understand this reality: that you are, always, more and less alone than you think.)
One there was a girl who lived in the cold, and warmed herself by stolen furs, standing outside the great gates of the world wailing like a dying cat, and could not seem to dream of more than that. Yet she went to a land of wonder and mystery, of revelry and grace and danger, and one day she a Dream made flesh.
(It was no longer her most powerful Art, Ling Qi admitted, but why would Ling Qingge have cared, because it was beautiful and strange, the true 'fairy dreamland' and yet one that knew what it was. The whirl of colors and persons, the party that surrounded her, made her for a moment feel truly seen and truly part of a crowd… she did not entirely like it, but nor did she dislike it. She laughed, and listened into the faux-conversation, and found herself easily sliding over to Ling Qi.)
Once there was a girl who found the land of wonders was not a land of wanderers, and with each friend she made, she lost two. And yet she began to see that in the vagaries of the world, a thousand different perspectives could arrive at the same wrong answer, and one perspective may arrive at a dozen right answers. That though there is no fate, there is chance, and that as a well-aimed arrow followed another, so too could the scorn of her peers. And so she was alone, and yet she was free.
(Another simple part of the art to her. She could hit multiple targets at once, firing the arrows in that split moment of decision, or hit a target from a half-dozen angles as she moved, or indeed the thundering strike of the arrows from the first part of her Art could then serve as a guiding rod for the slings and arrows of the world. Trouble came not in single spies, but in battalions, and yet if she could return the volley, then that was something.)
Once there was a girl all awhirl, who went to parties and did not know how not to offend, and had to learn how to revel as she never had to learn how to rebel. She was a troublesome guest, a friend to the high, a few of the low, and none of those between. Yet she learned the games in time, the whirl of diplomacy, until as smooth as could be, she seemed natural-born to this life.
(The next part was not so easy to learn, but Ling Qingge took a deep breath, and let herself be whirled away, and because Ling Qi meant no harm she danced with a gentleman all of ash and smoke, and a young man who resembled nothing more than starlight made flesh, and because she did not fear Ling Qi, she did not fear being bound further and further into the party… not for now.)
Once there was a girl who was not alone anymore. She carried the LIghtning with her, and she knew that she could bring the thunder, and that the very air itself shouted out a story that she was still as free as she was before, even after all the years, even after all she'd almost lost, and it told the power of the world, and the blows themselves, to go free. To turn aside, if they willed, to dissolve and melt into air.
(She could not show it, but she could describe it, the way it was in many ways the anti-teamwork finishing move, which broke down the bonds of all of the advantages Cultivation could give to allies, and even seemed to unravel attacks, to miss or go at random, all of it meant to prove a point and yet also be a weapon against bandits. In the end, even when you are not alone, it can be far too easy to forget that you are yourself, and your spirits are themselves. So break down the barriers, and at the end of it come to something free… or at least try.)
Once there was a girl who was no longer alone, facing a girl who was not alone either, and yet seemed to reject so much of what she was. They smiled, and both speaking of a world far beyond what they'd ever dreamed of, and yet less than what they now thought it should be, they saw that though theirs were different ways, theirs were similar hearts, and not because of blood.
"I need to go now, I actually have to talk to my liege about… all of this," Ling Qingge's newest friend said.
"Oh, your liege? I was wondering… why are you all so far out here? You're a retainer of a noble? It'd have to be a Viscount, right?" she asked. "Or the scion of a Count?" She tried to figure out where it was, but she had to admit that while she had all the training in the nobility, she interacted with them more as people than as a complex series of houses.
"Cai Renxiang," Ling Qi said, and Ling Qingge stared. And stared.
And then began laughing. "I really am in a future," she declared.
"Yes, could you try with… Mother? She wants to see you," Ling Qi said.
"Oh, very well," Ling Qingge said doubtfully, while also considering that the probably only (for everyone knew that she had a lover and no doubt had only had a child for dynastic purposes) daughter of the Duchess was apparently within walking distance of her.
The sole heir of the newest Ducal family controlling Emerald Seas.
It was enough to make Ling Qingge shiver in uncertainty, though she saved it until after Ling Qi left. Being so close to power gave her the willies.
'
A/N: This one fought me, but I hope it turned out alright. Tagging @yrsillar
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- Location
- Third planet from the star named Sol
- Pronouns
- He/They
Karthak, just so you know, the bot won't tally your vote if it's not on a new line.[X] More Drugs Is Good Drugs
[X] More Drugs Is Good Drugs
[X] More Drugs Is Good Drugs
Electrochemistry
- Location
- Somewhere
Couldn't resist making another Disco Elysium meme, now that we have our precious drugs once more. The "game art" is kind of ass but it's the best I could get out of free, online AI tools.
- Location
- America
Can't. Getting to cyan takes genuine crazy behavior to reach the required insights and a ton of support from family/sect money, and it's stated before that people "normally" reach it around their later years.
Picking who will become cyan is so hard that most families solve the issue by just having a ton of kids and hoping it works itself out.
- Location
- Chicago
- Pronouns
- She/They
I really like this quote.
I loved the whole story, and the exchange of techniques in particular was epic and wrenching, but if I had to pick a favorite line or would be this.
aren't they able to cover this difference through sect points?
Good heavens, Inner Sect disciples in the upper numbers without family/spirit backing are screwed when it comes to advancement speed. So few Green stones per month.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Wait a moment, wait a moment, I have a nifty thought for my side-novel thing, looking at the inventory again.
Cloudskewer Bow: A bow shaped from molded cloud, made solid by intricate formations, it thrums with the energy of the open skies.
Cloudskewer Bow: A bow shaped from molded cloud, made solid by intricate formations, it thrums with the energy of the open skies.
Yeah from Qi's lightning arrow phase, I figured that your version of Qingge was using similar arts.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Yep, as with any interesting Green she's taken the leap from, "Arts she learned for practical purposes" to "Arts that have a deep metaphorical or metaphysical significance to one's Way, and are also very cool" as seen by how the bow Art was about the weather, thunder, lightning, all of that... but also 'about' the nature of choice and freedom and the limits of community.
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The cyan being a hard thing is not necessarily a universal constant. We know stalling out at green is common up to the viscount level since Xiulan's sisters chose that. But we have not seen any indication it is common in Ducal clans. Every ducal scion we met was supposed to hit cyan+. Even all the other white Bai that was only mentioned by name was on the cyan track.
I think in ducal clans cyan is considered the usual at least in the more powerful family lines and this is an imperial scion . Failing to achieve cyan will be a humiliation to them IMO. So there is a good chance of a female option for marriage especially since this is a negotiation between the empress and Shenhua, not the empress decreeing the marriage. Even if the empress doesn't propose a princess Shenhua might since a a child born with imperial blood from her method legitimizes the method massively.and it's a easy concession for empress
I think in ducal clans cyan is considered the usual at least in the more powerful family lines and this is an imperial scion . Failing to achieve cyan will be a humiliation to them IMO. So there is a good chance of a female option for marriage especially since this is a negotiation between the empress and Shenhua, not the empress decreeing the marriage. Even if the empress doesn't propose a princess Shenhua might since a a child born with imperial blood from her method legitimizes the method massively.and it's a easy concession for empress
Not really?
Young masters are people in training, heir (and his buddies who run the clan), Clan Head(and his buddies Elders, who do big stuff), and Patriarch (and his buddies Ancestors, who just cultivate and sit on their asses),
that is like, only 1 more layer than irl, I would say.
Winged One
Not the Simurgh
- Location
- definitely the ground
- Pronouns
- They/Them/It
I'd rather have money than quicker progress, tbh.
[X] Plan bountiful efficiency
[X] Plan bountiful efficiency
- Location
- Rivendell
[X] More Drugs Is Good Drugs
We have a cash reserve, we have a war coming up, and the amount of times we'll be able to dump money into more cultivation gains before some random crisis situation occurs is limited. Some might say that spending most of ones income on drugs is "wasteful" or "irresponsible", but imo it's the other way around: not using any opportunity we have to translate money into base cultivation to the fullest would be a terrible waste.
It's like playing Stellaris and deciding not to make more alloys because it might cost you too many minerals or not producing more research because it consumes more consumer goods. Prudent if it would break your economy otherwise, but in most cases simply too slow of an approach.
We have a cash reserve, we have a war coming up, and the amount of times we'll be able to dump money into more cultivation gains before some random crisis situation occurs is limited. Some might say that spending most of ones income on drugs is "wasteful" or "irresponsible", but imo it's the other way around: not using any opportunity we have to translate money into base cultivation to the fullest would be a terrible waste.
It's like playing Stellaris and deciding not to make more alloys because it might cost you too many minerals or not producing more research because it consumes more consumer goods. Prudent if it would break your economy otherwise, but in most cases simply too slow of an approach.
- Location
- Somewhere
[X] More Drugs Is Good Drugs
I was under the impression that there was a significant possibilty that the person responsible was another Bai (internal frictions) or Sun Shao (he has motive and we saw with the summit he can be sneaky when he needs to be and has time to plan) or possibly some other party we are unaware of (being the Bai spymistress is hardly a postion that lacks enemies after all)?
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- Location
- Somewhere
Do we know if the Empress' direct descendants also look like White Snakes, or is it just her?
Somewhat, but earning sect points takes time away from cultivating, and they are also the currency they use to purchase everything else they need or want
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Of course, many of the things you get Sect points from are things that can become adventures, that can become tribulations. So if you're willing to constantly risk your life trying to keep up and somehow don't die, then maybe you'll break even?
This is if you aren't an absurd prodigy talent that finds a backer, obviously.
This is if you aren't an absurd prodigy talent that finds a backer, obviously.
