Ling Qi tossed the scroll in her hands aside and sighed, rubbing her forehead as she squeezed her eyes shut.
"Oi, oi, your boss put a lot of work into this ya know," Sixiang teased, snatching it out of the air.
"I was going to catch it on the wind and deflect it to land on the roof still," Ling Qi groused, glaring at them out of the corner of her eye.
"Were you really…?" They drawled, propping themselves up on one elbow, Sixiang pulled the scroll in toward their face and squinted, almost going crosseyed. "...Dang, boss lady has some dense handwriting."
"Only when she's writing for herself or to me," Ling Qi grumbled, stretching her arms overhead. Up here on the roof of the manor, the breeze was cool and crisp, much more comfortable than the humid warmth which accumulated on the streets where so many bodies passed. It was strange even on the second trip, to look up and see only a vast dome of green rather than a starry sky. But even more than that, the strangest thing about Xiangmen was the fact that even at night, it wasn't really dark.
Lights glittered from countless lanterns, torches and floating faerie lights, even without a single spark of sunlight, the Cloud district of Xiangmen glowed at night only a little dimmer than it was during the day.
"With everyone else, she uses much a much fancier hand. 'It's the expected presentation, maximizing efficiency in this case harms the soft factors in communication' she says."
It was worse because she of all people knew Renxiang was right and approved of her liege taking it into account.
Of course, she was Renxiang's friend as well as retainer, so the heiress would be more 'natural' when corresponding with her. Even if it meant a scroll so dense it was nearly black inside encoded with layered information she she could only even read because of her more advanced senses.
She should have never made the mistake of glancing at Renxiang's personal notes and asking after it when she first returned to Shenglu. Now that Renxiang knew she could read it there was no escape!
"Cept that she'd stop if you asked her," Sixiang said dryly.
"I would never be defeated so easily," Ling Qi sniffed.
Besides, even if it made her head buzz and her eyes water after awhile, it was an amusing little thing to share with Renxiang.
She'd get her back later after all, even if her liege was becoming annoyingly resilient to her tricks. However, Ling Qi would not allow herself to be stymied for long!
Besides, the first scroll, the cultivation pill and elixir catalogue for Xiangmen's cloud district had been fascinating. She worried she might have overspent a little… but even without the privileged access of a patron there were many many more options available for her cultivation level.
"I hope I don't have to drag your butt out of the meditation room while we're in the biggest concentration of art and artists in the Emerald Seas," Sixiang warned."If I have to dump a bucket of water over your head I will, and there
will be glitter."
She wrinkled her nose in disgust. "I haven't overdone my cultivation enhancer intake since I was first realm Sixiang. Honestly, I'm not that bad. Besides its not as if going out on the town doesn't benefit my cultivation too."
Sixiang gave her an exasperated look, she smiled impishly. She reached out and snatched the scroll back, winding it back up with a simple flick of her wrist. "Anyway! I don't need to read all of this tonight. What say we take a walk?"
"You won't hear me complaining," Sixiang said brightly, reaching out to her. She took the muses hand and pulled them to their feet, before the both of them leapt down from the manor roof to the path outside, earning a few startled looks from their house guards, though thankfully most of these were from Renxiang's permanent detail, so they were used to such things.
"Going out to review nighttime conditions in the city," she said lightly. "Please take any messages for me at my return."
One of the men at the manor gates thumped a fist against his chest, and they were off, strolling down the branch trunkward, where the lights were at their brightest.
"Whatcha got in mind?" Sixiang asked brightly, trotting to keep up with her longer stride. It was still strange to think of Sixiang as having an actual physical presence, but even the pressure on palm wasn;t wholly ethereal anymore, for all that it masked the sensation of porcelaine and wood beneath the visible 'skin'.
"Well that's the fun part. I have no idea. Its been too long since I've let the wind take me, don;t you think?" Ling Qi said cheerfully. She was proud of her work, and happy with her recovery, but… she'd not really had a chance to just wander in awhile.
"Hah! Now that's what I'm talking about," Sixiang said, making a show of shading their eyes and peering into the distance. "Hoh, I wonder where we'll end up…"
Ling Qi hummed to herself. "Hm, I'll choose the first turn, you choose the second, adn we alternate until we find something interesting?"
"Sounds good!"
The first intersection they came too was an unassuming T, two smaller summer manors facing each other across the road and a larger branch estate blocking the way directly forward, lined with hedges of brightly colored bush, there was nothing to really distinguish one choice from the other.
The breeze kicked up, tugging at her hair, blowing… left?
Left it was.
***
She gone out with Sixiang once before like this, back then she'd thought the nightlife of Xiangmen impossibly vibrant, but returning now, her senses told her so much more. Nevermind the intricate web of security which underlaid it all-Xiangmen was a fortress of unimaginable strength. Veins of power older than the empire powered formations both ancient and cutting edge, of a potency would leave her feel like a gnat dancing among a spiders web if she spent too much time dwelling on it.
There was so much connected to that network, woven through it, binding and separating, doors and walls in infinite number. There bubbles of occlusion like droplets of water on the web reflecting her sight rather receiving it, the homes and manors and ministry buildings, cut off and in their own demesne's but then there were the streets, where cultivators far more potent than she walked or glided and drifted in thronging numbers as if they were merely the upper crust of a mortal town, and not the exalted immortals of story and myth.
Of course, she knew better than to think of cultivators like this.
She drifted along the edge of a crowd in one of the rounded city squares that existed where smaller branches split off from the main length, watching a handful of cyan cultivators drifting by overhead, singing and dancing, raising sloshing cups of some kind of grain alcohol and shouting at each other while third realms thronged below, around a huge alchemical set up which filled the plaza, surrounding a keg as big as a house.
The red faced brewer guffawed loudly over the sound of the chanted off key drinking songs around him and through a lever on a contraption of glass and spinning gears and steam and she felt the potent earth and fire qi infused into the liquid in the giant keg erupt in potency, the loud bubbling from within erupting as hazy amber colored drink began to pour over the top on waves of froth.
And the crowd around surged forward empty cups thrust out to catch the bounty, with what was missed running down into the grates and pipes of the mobile alchemists lab in the center of the square.
"C'moooooon, you know you want to go for it, you can even fly! Get in on the topside instead of the crowd!" Sixiang chuckled, poking her in the side. They were perched up on an awning overlooking the square.
"I don't know, I'm not sure that's really my kind of drink," Ling Qi said, eyeing the stuff from a distance. The simple smell of it made her head feel warm, and her thoughts a bit fuzzy.
"Then at least get me a cup," Sixiang said, turning to her with a pleading look.
"...Can you actually drink things with that body?" Ling Qi wondered.
"Of course I can," Sixiang sniffed. "What kinda hack do you think our girl Suyin is? Solid stuffs harder but I can totally drink like this!"
Ling Qi sighed, rolled her eyes, snatched the notably
large ceramic mug they'd acquired somewhere out of Sixiangs hand, and sprung off the awning, spiralling up into the hazy air of the square, above the stamping feet and singing voices. It felt really strange… honestly, she thought she might actually be more intoxicated by radiating joy, contentment and released stress billowing thick in the air here as all the masks of etiquette came down.
She move past a spinning couple, a pair of men locked arm in arm, the polished metal of their souls sheathed and wrapped in the comfort of comradery, for just a little while they were more men than blades again. She skimmed the top of the frothing barrel drawing shouts of mock rage from the two of them as the white froth at the top of the barrel parted under the wind at her tail scattering over the crowd while she filled Sixiang's mug.
She flew a wide lazy circle back, shaking her head to relieve the burning sensation in her eyes, and alighted back on their awning, beside Sixiang, who awaited her standing, bouncing on the balls of their feet.
"Oh, gimme gimme! I've always wanted to try some good material world drink," Sixiang cackled, taking the cup from her hands excitedly. They inhaled deeply and the colors in their hair flickered wildly, strobing across the spectrum hypnotically. "Oof, thats got some body!"
"I'll take your word for it," Ling Qi chuckled.
They grinned. "Bottoms up!"
She watched her friend toss back the drink, a trickle spilling over the chin. She really did have to admire how realistic the illusion of their throat moving with each swallow was. A moment after that thought flitted through her head, Sixiang stiffened and shuddered, their entire visible self frizzing and losing definition for a moment, details wobbling and turning incoherent in a cloud of multicolored light around their constructed frame.
"W-whoah, forget body, I feel like I just got clocked in the jaw by gramps," Sixiang said, wobbling on their feet, she caught them under the arm while their illusion resserted itself, though she noted it was still a little fuzzy at the edges.
"You might note most of the third realms are
sipping," Ling Qi said dryly.
"Feh, that's loser talk, and Sixiang ain't no loser, just ah… Huh, gimme a second to process that," They huffed, squeezing their eyes shut, and the definition of their clothes firmed back up, taking back the texture of cloth rather than just smeared color.
…Honestly, she was a little tempted to take just a sip.
There was something really inviting to this wildness. In the wild festivities whee the veil of what was acceptable and not had been lifted so far… How much of Xiangmen that was never revealed spilled freely into the streets today…
Moons she was curious, she wanted to see…
[ ] The motion, the forward rush, the old foundations grinding down to sand.
[ ] The want, the revealed desire, the yearning darkness of the city of glittering light
