Behind her, a great shadow formed as Zhengui emerged back into the world, solidifying in a matter of moments. Zhengui stomped his feet as he grew solid, hunkering down in preparation for combat, even as his serpentine half reared up and hissed, sparks and embers dancing in the heat warped air around his flickering tongue. Hanyi Emerged perched on the jutting outer edge of his shell, one leg crossed over the other.
That was smooth enough that I suspect they practiced coming out with a cool pose.
it?" Ling Qi said seriously, glancing back over her shoulder. "Listen to him, alright?"
For a moment, Zhengui looked slightly mutinous. "Big Sister, why can't go we with you?" Gui complained.
"Cause she's gonna be flying," Hanyi replied in exasperation. "Don't be such a big baby, we gotta make sure it doesn't look at her after all."
Zhen hissed irritably, flicking his tongue toward Xuan Shi. "Hmph. I, Zhen will keep Sister safe, Foolish Gui and Xuan Shi had better not hold us back."
Xuan Shi took his head slowly, expression hidden by the rim of his hat. Flicking his voluminous sleeve a little flock of octogonal clay tiles sprang out to buzz around him like circling insects. "A force to withstand legions stands here. Shame would fall upon us all if thy sister were to come to harm here honored cousin."
Ling Qi shot him an amused look even as her cloak flapped in a phantom wind and her feet left the ground. It wasn't often that she heard the odd boy express pride.Though from what she could sense of his flaring aura, it was not unfounded.
"Still not your cousin," Gui grumbled under his breath. "But I won't let Big Sister down!"
...man, just what the heck is making Xuan Shi so displeasing to Zhengui?
With, that, she rose into the air, and flickered, vanishing into the shadows to reappear meters away, climbing toward the height of the statues head. Behind her, she heard Hanyi voice rise in song, and a flare of ochre light. Looking back, she saw Xuan Shi stepping forward, the ring of his staff pointed forward, and the clanging of the hanging rings echoed throughout the temple. Something shimmered in the air before him, and she felt his qi distort, spreading to engulf both Zhengui and Hanyi. For a moment, Ling Qi almost felt as if she could see the forbidding walls of a mighty fortress in the contours of the air around them.
AoE buff, Earth edition. I wonder how well it stacks with Thousand Ring Fortress. Would be amusing to test it some day
Then The Statue took another earth shaking step forward, and eight arms punched out as one. A kaleidoscope of light and elemental qi poured out, eight twisting streamers that curved around and through each other as they spiralled in a downward arc toward the ones she had left behind. In the moment before it struck, Zhengui's shell flared with viridian light, and thick roots rose from the ground, splintering tiles of stone.
The air rocked as the eightfold attack struck home with a thunderous crash, but as Ling Qi soared past the statue to circle behind it. When the smoke cleared, Xuan Shi and Zhengui both stood wholly unharmed. Ling Qi shook her head, they would be fine. She just had to focus on her task.
0 damage icons floating up :3
The array that animated the statue was immensely complex, far beyond her ability to fully comprehend. Yet, as thunder and lightning boomed, and massive fists crashed down upon unyielding roots and walls of stone, Ling Qi focused her attention on the smaller parts. The whole of the array was beyond her, but individual components perhaps could be deciphered. Ling Qi darted under a blazing limb made entirely of lightning, following the spiralling line of the array that powered the things many arms, there in a space less than a handspan wide between it's shoulder blades, she found the densest array yet.
Ling Qi raised her flute to her lips, and let cold flow through her channels. She played the Hoarfrost refrain, and felt satisfaction as stone turned brittle and crumbled under the weight of the wintery verse, For a moment, the construct faltered, but then before her very eyes, as if time were reversing itself, falling pebbles rose and shattered stone became whole, leaving the statue and the array just as it was before her attack. The clinging frozen qi that should have suffused it, continuing the damage was purged as if it had never been. The statue began to turn, seeking to confront the stinging fly at its back then, but a single massive root speared upward and curled around it's stone limbs, forcing it face forward as a barrage of struck in hail-like patter, striking deliberately at points where Ling Qi had recalled seeing perception arrays.
Ling Qi darted away in the moment that gave her, a frown on her face as she studied the statue again through four points of view. Destroying that array should have at least shut down the power to it's extra limbs. What had she missed, why had it restored itself like that, she had not sensed a technique activating, or even another array.
Why?
Ling Qi let more moon qi flood into her eyes, until she could see the faint silver light they cast shimmering on the statues broad back. Yet still, she could not see what had caused the regeneration. Perhaps… ah, the limbs themselves were the back up. She could see the characters connecting them, if she wanted to disable the main array, she would have to break the secondary chains that fed into the limbs first. Satisfied, Ling Qi struck again, and the dazzling arm of raw lightning sputtered and died. Again she sang, and the crashing thunder qi fell silent… for barely a moment. Ling Qi's eyes widened as both of the limbs she had disabled burst back to life, the damage she had dealt erased in an instant!
Thats a very nifty design, a self-restoring formation robot with auto dispels.
Not enough Formation skill to crack it immediately though.
Xuan Shi would have been faster, but he'd have greater difficulty reaching the formations to study.
In front of her, the statue stamped its feet, and swung its fists battereing at Xuan Shi and Zhengui alike. Fists the size of small wagons crashed down on barriers of eight sided tiles and bounced away as if they struck a mountain instead, and fists that came down on Zhengui's burning shell seemed to barely touch him. Ling Qi did not miss the way that the blows made the fortress-lines traced in the air ripple, nor the way that Xuan Shi's robes wrinkled and bunched up as if he were suffering blows himself.
Thats a NICE bodyguarding art if you can just direct damage to the hardest point. Risky against superior foes though.
Hanyi stood behind them both, expression positively smug as she sang, her hands outstretched toward the statue. Ling Qi could feel the threads of her qi curled around the constructs simple 'mind', but the two who stood in front of her formed an impassable wall.
Smug :3
EPC scene perception bonus activated. Perceptiveness skill evolves.
Perceptiveness C
-Intensive Focus: B
Advanced skill born of one who focuses best on a trial directly before her eyes. The attention of one with this skill is not easily shaken off.
So Ling Qi got evolved Perception(Tunnel Vision)?
Great for cracking security or hunting prey, not so great at detecting unknown threats.
There, layered beneath the other arrays, hidden under layers of conditional triggering effects, Ling Qi saw what she was looking for, and the simplicity of it made her feel embarrassed to have missed it.
"Zhen!" she spoke in her thoughts as she flew into position. "Spit your venom at my light on the count of three!"
She saw the fiery serpent twitch in confusion as the words reached him, but it lasted barely a fraction of a second, before she saw his eyes focus on the hovering light right above the statues left ankle. Satisfied that he knew what she was doing, Ling Qi flew through the tangle of arms to reach a spot just above the nape of the statues neck, and made her count.
Burning venom and hoarfrost song struck at the same time, and for the first time, the statue seized up, and two limbs flickered out, fire and water both fading to nothingness. "Xuan Shi! Lightning here, and earth here," she shouted next, flickering wisps blurring to hover above the statues left pectoral while the second hovered over its navel.
To his credit, the short boy understood immediately, and a spike of stone slammed upward even as he spun, flinging a metal baton, still charged with a storms worth of lightning higher still. In an instant, two more limbs were gone, and the restorative functions of the primary array grew weaker still.
Definitely an Argent test.
...and a shipping test. Because nobody's going to have the elemental spread to shut down EIGHT arms on their own offensively. Even two people makes it hard, they'd either have to be Argent specialists or be exactly complementary.
And they'd have to strike simultaneously.
Still, here she found a conundrum, of the remaining elements, she had little in the way of offensive techniques to shatter their guiding arrays. She did not think that Xuan Shi had any thunder, wind, or lake arts active, nor if whatever mountain art he had could be used offensively. Perhaps he might have a talisman that could do the trick, but… she wanted to finish this herself.
He almost certainly had a talisman for each.
The hem of her cloak snapped in the wind as she soared downward, the air sparkling with droplets of frozen water as she began to hum the Aria of Spring's End. In seconds, she reached the main array, and raised her flute, calling the wintery qi of the Hoarfrost Refrain down. Frost rippled out, and once again stone cracked and splintered under supernatural cold. This time however, the recovery was not instantaneous, slowed greatly by the loss of four power sources, her technique clung to rock and artificial channels for a few crucial seconds.
Just enough time to lay her hands on either side of the great splintered crack she had made in the statues back and sing the Call to Ending. Her voice echoed loudly in the temple as she sang the wordless power of absolute cold into the world, and beneath her hands, stone exploded violently. Shards of frozen rock pattered like flakes of snow against her dress and face. The statue rocked and reeled, and its four remaining elemental arms winked out at once.
Or I suppose, Enuff Dakka with her ultimate attack.
Then Ling Qi heard a rumbling battle cry and a mighty crash as a massive weight smashed against the statues shins. Zhengui, charging forward, with his shell aglow with magmatic light, sent the statue tumbling, and over it's falling shoulder, she spied Xuan Shi standing atop his shell, seemingly unbothered by the smoke rising from his feet. His ringed staff was raised over his head horizontally. As she watched, she felt the qi around the staff distort, and very suddenly, the weapon went wholly still, even as Zhengui's forward momentum tore it from Xuan Shi's hands.
It hung there in the air, impossibly still, even as the statue fell upon it, and remained there hanging still in a cloud of dust after it had carved clean through the fallen constructs neck. For a moment, as the echoes of the statues fall faded from the temple, Ling Qi hung silently in the air, staring down at the unmoving ruin they had wrought.
Zhengui got his wish to knock over a pillar!
And the Immovable Rod trick!
"You did say to listen to him Big Sister," Gui pointed out as Zhen emerged, grumbling from the back of their shells.
"I can't believe you both left me alone!" Hanyi cried out from the other side of the broken statue. "I almost got squished you jerks!"
Ling Qi glanced at Xuan Shi, who shook his head very slightly, and flared the earthen qi that filled the channels that ran through his heart.
"But you didn't jump on when I said too," Gui said guilelessly. Churning up a whole new cloud of dust as he worked to turn around in the rubble.
"Of course I didn't you went charging at that giant thing!" Hanyi complained, struggling her way over the top of the rubble pile as Ling Qi slowly descended.
"Obviously, I, Zhen would not have agreed if it wasn't safe. Hanyi should be more brave," Zhen scoffed.
Ling Qi winced, she could feel the temperature around Hanyi drop from here.
Xuan Shi had it covered. Nice tanking art.
Zhengui: [Opens mouth, inserts foot]
That said if we relayed the tale to our friends I suspect they'd agree with Hanyi since this is the sort of Ling Qi-ness Zhengui seems to be inheriting.
"Without it's time, there is no brute might which could budge an an object," Xuan Shi replied. Raising his hand, he gestured and the staff shimmered before spinning back to his hand. As it did though, Ling Qi saw one of the jade rings which hung from its head shatter. "...Time cannot be held back forever however, and the price must be paid. Time arts incur great expense."
Ling Qi eyes the remaining rings, all made of the very highest quality white jade, which even the richest mortal could not dream of owning so much as a fragment of. "Just how much did it cost, last year to restrain Ji Rong like that."
Xuan Shi looked aside, seeming embarrassed. "...Too much. This one somewhat regrets the ostentatious display."
"Only somewhat?" Ling Qi asked, raising an eyebrow.
"The punishment was excessive, not unwarranted," he replied shortly. "But… this one should not have let the ruffian's words affect his temper so."
"Fair enough," Ling Qi replied, wondering what Ji Rong could have said that would actually lead to Xuan Shi losing his temper, while mentally batting away Sixiang's insistent nudging.
Knowing what kind of nerd Xuan Shi is now...Ji Rong insulted his waifu clearly.
After a moments deliberation, Ling Qi decided to leave Zhengui and Hanyi outside, both to guard the entrance, and because she did not want an ill tempered Hanyi in her head at the moment.
"Thy spirits are a rambunctious sort," Xuan Shi commented as they reached the door, raising his hat to study the unmarked wood.
"Aw, that's sweet of you to say," Sixiang laughed, twisting the wind into words as Ling Qi's eyes flickered silver and she studied the frame and the surrounding walls.
"I wouldn't trade them away for the world," Ling Qi added as she let her technique fade. "I am surprised you don't even have one though."
Xuan Shi inclined his head. "There is no practical need, but perhaps I might find one in the future," he replied quietly.
Touchy subject huh?
He nodded, and jabbed his staff forward, pushing the door open. What lay on the other side however, left Ling Qi unsure what to think. Beyond the door lay a dimly lit room hung with streamers of silk. In one far corner, their bubbled a pool of clear, clean water, with flower petals floating on its surface and in the other was a long couch, wide enough for two people lying side by side. Faint streams of soft, airy music floated on the air, carrying strains of contentment and affection.
Stepping through the door beside Xuan Shi, she glanced left and right, taking in the mostly empty shelf that still had dusty cups and a single bottle of sweet wine, and then back to the full length mirror on the other wall. "What," she said dully, for the second time this day.
...the entire thing was a privacy lock for a secret makeout room?
And the giant golem was there to keep people from intruding wasn't it?
Xuan Shi sank his face into his free hand. "...This one apologizes."
"Just what kind of books do you read?" Sixiang said in a delighted, sing song voice.
"The Voyages of Yu Long are tales of romance and adventure," Xuan Shi said defensively. "Not this… tastelessness," he said a bit too quickly, gesturing at the room in general.
"Only because the old goat could not get his original manuscripts published," said a voice from only just behind them.
...the amazing series was Bleached Underpants porno huh?
Xuan Shi probably is torn between wanting to see the originals and not saying such things in front of a girl
Ling Qi nearly jumped out of her skin as she spun around. How! She hadn't felt anything at… all.
Behind her stood a figure she had only seen briefly before. Staring down at her with serene gray eyes, Yuan He ran his fingers through his beard, an expression of faint amusement on his ancient face. Or… no, it was just an image of him, she thought, or else he was simply so far above her that her senses could not discern the difference. Either was possible.
Immediately, both Ling Qi and Xuan Shi bowed deeply. "Sect Head Yuan, this one meant no disparagement upon the Sect's trials," the boy beside her said immediately.
"Do calm down, disciples. As you have likely guessed, this is less a trial and more an attraction. I suppose it had slipped this old man's mind that it still stood," the Sect Head said, looking around with… fond reminiscence? Ling Qi tried very hard not to think about that.
This is like Dumbledore commenting on the utility of the Room of Requirement as a makeout venue in his youth.
Vaguely traumatizing to consider.
She coughed into her hand, still keeping her head respectfully low. "...Sect Head Yuan, I- could I ask you to explain please?" she asked haltingly.
He glanced her way, and ling tensed her shoulders. "Hm, I suppose it must be difficult to imagine," the old man mused. "But once, the Sect was a much smaller and less ordered place. My Sect Uncle Lang was a good man, but one with opinions on propriety and certain forms of openness that made him… unpopular."
Xuan Shi had a terribly conflicted look in his eyes. "Do you mean to say that his works were meant for only…"
The bottom of a steel shod cane cracked against the floor, and thunder rumbled. "Young man, if my Uncle's work spoke to you, then does it matter that it might have been planned to include some illicit content?" The old man asked blithely.
"...No," Xuan Shi replied after a moment.
Ling Qi didn't know that she agreed. Such things were kept well out of public for a reason, she had seen what it looked like when things like that were not handled with care, far, far from everyday life.
"Ling Qi," Sixiang sighed.
Girl has Issues.
But Yuan He is right. Good writing is good writing.
Even if it was meant for self pleasure.
"Well, my thoughts on the matter aside, I can hardly allow this place to remain open in this day and age," Yuan He sighed. "Still, the two of you have reminded me of good days. Even if the both of you rather missed the point of the place," he said with a bark of laughter.
"And what is that point?" Ling Qi asked, speaking before her mind could catch up, she didn't blame Xuan Shi for bringing her here. He was a poor enough liar that she was sure that he genuinely hadn't intended something untoward.
Yuan He gave her a look, and Ling Qi felt an unpleasant prickling on her skin, like he was looking through her. "Young lady, I think you will find that the men and women of this world can take most anything and make of it a horror. This place was however, built to bring young men and women together in joy and comfort, away from judging eyes."
Ling Qi looked away unable to hold the old man's gaze, what a surreal conversation this was. Still… she supposed it wasn't impossible. Her experiences aside… she had glimpsed things in Sixiang's memory, something so fundamental to the human experience couldn't be wholly awful. It didn't make standing here in this room make her skin crawl any less.
He probably was checking if she was bullshitting him.
Still, good advice to keep in mind for later!
"What happened to the author?" Xuan Shi asked quietly, breaking the silence.
"Sect Elder Lang fell in the final battle with Ogodei, like many others," Yuan He replied, taking another glance around the room. Once again he rapped his cane against the earth, and very suddenly they were back outside the ruin, and Ling Qi could hear Hanyi and Zhengui's cries of confusion behind them. "In any case, for bringing this to my attention, I will see the two of you rewarded, now, get you gone. Sealing off this valley is going to take some time."
It would have been nice to meet him.
Guess Yuan He would be preserving it as a memoir.
Anyways, our first personal meeting with Yuan He was nice.
Very down to earth despite his power.
[X] Dreaming Moon
Well, as for which moon now, I think Dreaming's best fit now.
