Frankly, I don't see where you're going with this.
I think we have different interpretations in this matter. Let me try to elaborate on mine.
Problem:
-Ling Qi neglects her family for cultivation
--Ling Qi gives freely when its money and its a rounding error in her budget. She's never given anything actually valuable like time.
--She visits at night for a variety of reasons, including avoiding meeting people, prioritizing her cultivator social links, and her spirit social links. And also because she doesn't sleep anyway why not visit at night when none of the important cultivators are doing much with her?
--She gives them little information about events, and does not consult them about events in her life.
I don't agree with the basic premise of Ling Qi neglecting her family. Ling Qi did make an effort to reestablish contact and reached out, writing Qingge, bring her to the Sect town and further making irregular, ill-timed visits to her. That's not ideal, of course but things could be worse. (And are worse for any of our Peers from what we know, and are also worse for any college student living in a different city in RL)
Now, it's true that Ling Qi wants to bring some degree of 'family' into her Way. I agree with that, but how much is entirely open to discussion. I believe we already do a *lot* for our family and are keeping good contact with them. Qingge's SL with us just reached level 4. That's pretty, pretty good. That's what the current Status Quo is. It's not neglect.
Ling Qi also decided, and followed through, to give her family more information and consult them more from now on. That is not related to this vote, at all. It's done history.
We're starting to address things by meeting our family and revealing the truth of things, but a strained family relationship is not something you fix with the equivalent of a weekend at the amusement park.
Our strained family life presents itself as SL 4. Which is the level of the highest SL's we have. That's pretty good in my book.
We did work on the strained family relationship since we started writing Qingge. How much effort or not that involved isn't really practical to track with AP since that system didn't exist before.
The 1 AP is the equivalent to committing to having dinner at home everyday together. We're shifting our schedule because if we're visiting our family in the day, when we can actually interact, we have to shuffle our cultivator social obligations to when they can actually interfere with our cultivating schedule.
We've spent less time with our whole family added together than with Suyin or Xiulan.
Arguable. We get the highlights of Ling Qi's life, not every second of it. It's entirely possible that you are correct, though. I certainly spend more time with my friends and peers than with my family. I hope that does not make me into a bad daughter. ^^+ So I don't see the problem with a teenager spending not the majority of their time with their family.
This is similar to the Bloody Moon Trial IMO:
1) We picked an approach
2) We made headway towards the approach
3) The final step requires potentially taking a loss to our cultivation, so we hesitate and back off from commitment.
3.1) Which winds up with us getting nothing and losing something.
3.1) is fear mongering. What are we supposed to lose her from not choosing family? Qingge's SL won't suddenly degrade just because of it.
The rest is a possible, if harsh interpretation. My counter point would be that a balanced approach and not committing to everything absolutely is an entirely plausible approach to developing your Way, too. Not everything that touches your Way or can in some way connected to your Way needs to be pursued with the fury of a 1000 suns, else you suffer losses.
The narrative matters. Ling Qi says her ideals are to be strong enough to carry her friends and family with her as she ascends. But has she ever been willing to take a loss to do so?
The examples are numerous. Ling Qi agreed to let Meizhen pass the Trial, without having any idea about getting Zenghui as a reward, for example.
Furthermore, you point out that Ling Qi ideals are to be strong enough to carry her friends and family. Well, strength is gained by Cultivating. So, Ling Qi deciding to cultivate more to be able to carry her friends and family is entirely in character with her, under this interpretation.
