The qi that now thrummed through Ling Qi’s dantian filled her body with energy. Her muscles tingled and her heartbeat thundered in her ears, making it difficult to remain still. The qi washed away the fatigue and thinly stretched feeling that followed a day spent in intensive effort.

  She had mastered the second stage of the Argent Soul Art and the depth of her well of qi had grown by nearly half. Letting out a breath, she performed another cycling of her energy and felt wonder at how smoothly it flowed and how swiftly it responded to her thoughts.

  This…… This had been worth it. She would need to dedicate herself to training hard, but she could instinctively feel that she now had enough qi to put into practice Elder Su’s lessons on using qi to reduce the need for sleep. It would leave her drained of energy, but she could train longer and harder if need be. With her increased stamina, she might even be able to begin seriously mastering the first techniques of the Zephyr’s Breath Art.

  With her success buoying her, Ling Qi left the meditation room feeling ready to take a well-earned break. When she found that her oft absent roommate had returned home during her cultivation, she was even more pleased. She hadn’t had a chance to speak to Bai Meizhen in a couple of days, and she wanted to discuss the possibility of teaming up for Elder Zhou’s test.

  “What do you mean you don’t intend to participate?” Ling Qi asked in distress as she looked across the fire at Bai Meizhen.

  The pale girl sipped quietly from a steaming cup of tea as Cui lazily slithered up from the collar of her gown, coiling around her neck in a loose loop.

  “Just as I said. I have no intention of joining the Sect military beyond training exercises. Elder Zhou’s instruction is valuable, but in the end, it is not the path I wish to take. My own physical cultivation is sufficient for my needs.”


  Ling Qi grimaced. So much for the hope that she could succeed by relying on Bai Meizhen. There was still the possibility of trying to join Han Jian…… but she felt less sure of her chances of successfully doing so. The boy had quite a few other friends from her observations.

  “Do you at least have an idea of what the Elder’s test will be?” Surely Bai Meizhen knew more of the various elders’ reputations than Ling Qi did.

  Bai Meizhen’s thoughtful hum had a slightly unnerving hissing quality to it, but Ling Qi was used to it by now.

  “Guan Zhou is a man dedicated to the Empire through and through. It is likely he will test for cooperation, coordination, and ability to synergize one’s skills with others. I expect the test will take the form of achieving various military objectives. Other elders may have input into the test however, which may change the form the test takes.”


  Ling Qi clutched her knees in worry as her thoughts spun through the possibilities. She might not have much combat ability…… but she was fairly good at sneaking and survival. Scouting was an important part of army operations, right? She hoped so. Her only experience with soldiering was listening to drunk city guards bemoan their superior officers.

  “Ugh. I wish I had more time and resources to cultivate with,” Ling Qi lamented. “There are so many things to do, and I’m still so far behind. I can’t afford to lose out on an Elder’s lessons.”


  Bai Meizhen regarded her emotionlessly over the rim of her tea cup as Ling Qi spoke to herself. Cui was staring at her too, tongue flickering in and out.

  “I had noticed that your cultivation has stopped progressing. Have you reached a block?”


  Ling Qi shook her head. “No, I’ve been cultivating the Argent Soul Art instead. It’s my…… foundation, right? If I strengthen it, everything that comes after will be stronger.” The explanation sounded better in her head, especially now that she was regretting the lack of immediate combat gains.

  Bai Meizhen nodded, a hint of approval flickering in her golden eyes. “That is a good way to think, but I can understand why you are distressed. Building a foundation is important, but it lacks immediate returns.” She glanced downward thoughtfully, meeting the eyes of her ‘cousin’, who merely flicked her tongue lazily in response as far as Ling Qi could tell.

  “Would you like some tea?” The question was bizarre and made Ling Qi blink in surprise as Bai Meizhen looked back up to meet her gaze.

  “.…… Sure?” Ling Qi responded a bit awkwardly. Was the other girl trying to comfort her?

  “What does that have to do with what we were talking about?”


  Bai Meizhen pursed her lips. “I am no herbalist, but I do have some small supply of spirit herbs. Several of the herbs are no longer useful to me.” She said this as if it explained everything. Bai Meizhen frowned at Ling Qi’s lack of understanding and expanded on her previous statement.

  “The tea will allow you to cultivate longer and more efficiently. It cannot be used too often though. Once a month at most, lest you risk poisoning.”


  Ling Qi’s eyes widened. Even with the limitation, the tea would be an amazing boon. She hurriedly ducked her head thankfully to the other girl.

  “Oh! Then yes, please. Thank you very much.”


  Bai Meizhen waved her hand dismissively. “It is nothing. As I said, the herbs in question are not useful to one above the Red Soul realm.” She sounded pleased at Ling Qi’s acceptance.

  Later that night, Ling Qi was not regretting her choice even if the tea had been so bitter she had nearly spat it out. As horrible as it had tasted, it had left her qi practically crackling within her dantian, straining at its confines as if to expand her capacity by itself. In a single night, she felt as if she had made up for at least a few of the days lost struggling with art cultivation.

  When the tea’s effect faded and exhaustion set in, Ling Qi found herself toying with her flute for the first time since she had come to the Sect.

  Everything was changing so quickly. Ling Qi might not have true strength yet, but she was achieving something. It hadn’t really sunk in how different things were now. She had friends, if tentative and eccentric ones. She knew things that she could never have imagined having the time or energy to care about. She was seriously considering competing in a military exercise!

  As she brought the flute to her lips and closed her eyes, she could only think of one thing. She wouldn’t fail. She wouldn’t fall behind…… and she wouldn’t be a burden on her housemate forever.

  The other girl had helped her greatly tonight and in the past weeks. Their conversations had given her the basic understanding she would need to get by among the other disciples.

  She would pay Bai Meizhen back for her kindness.

  She played until tiredness finally stole her skill and laid down to sleep.

  Days passed. Ling Qi found herself spending more and more time on cultivation and using her qi to avoid the need to sleep. Every time she found her eyes drooping or her thoughts becoming clouded with exhaustion, she would breathe deep and cycle the qi in her dantian. The tiredness would fade, and she would resume cultivating.

  She could feel that she would not be able to keep this up forever. Every day that passed without sleep increased the slight feeling of strain and emptiness that she had begun to feel behind her navel as her efforts sapped the internal well of energy she was carefully cultivating. But for now, it would have to be enough.

  Not all of her time could be spent in solitary meditation. She still had lessons to attend and…… meetings with her friends for one reason or another.

  Things were also beginning to change in the lessons. Instructor Zhou grew harsher and more demanding, and the class began to slowly shrink as individual disciples gave up in the face of his harsh criticisms.

  Elder Su did not allow things to remain routine either.

  “I am glad to see there are none left who remain unawakened at the end of our first month together.” The matron opened the class on the second day of the week with an unusual statement. With the exception of her speech on the first day, she had always moved directly into her lecture the moment the the door closed.

  “It would have been unfortunate to have to expel such layabouts from my course,” she continued pleasantly, eyes scanning the room.

  Ling Qi noticed several of her classmates shifting uncomfortably, likely those who had only recently reached their awakening. She wasn’t sure; she had been so focused on her cultivation that she hadn’t paid them much mind. The only ones whose names she knew in Elder Su’s lessons were Li Suyin and Han Jian.

  “Going forward, I will have to be somewhat more strict in my requirements.” Ling Qi’s attention snapped back to the Elder, who handed out her ultimatum with a pleasant expression.

  “First, after this week, if you do not have at least one of your meridians cleared, you will not be welcome in this class. The exercises we will be performing next week require that you be able to affect the world around you.”


  Ling Qi caught Li Suyin shooting her a look of gratitude to which she responded with a weak smile. She was glad she had focused on clearing a meridian so early.

  “Similarly,” the Elder continued, unperturbed by the unhappy looks on a few disciples’ faces, “if you have not achieved the mid-Red Soul stage by the end of the next month, I will ask that you not return.” She paused to give a moment for that requirement to sink in.

  “I am confident that there are no slackers who will fail to achieve such a simple thing.” Ling Qi’s spirits sank a bit at that. It was something else she also had to worry over. At least this task seemed doable. With her meridian open and her Argent Soul Art improved to the second stage, she could now focus on raising her cultivation base.

  “Demands are not all I have for you,” the Elder continued.

  “Beginning next week, I intend to reward those who I feel are working the hardest and improving the most.” That drew an excited murmur.

  “Each week, I will provide those five students with a medicinal pill from my department.” She flicked her sleeve and held up a softly glowing blue sphere the size of a thumbnail between her fingers.

  “This is the Qi Foundation pill. For cultivators of the Red Soul realm, it provides a significant boon toward cultivation, greatly increasing the rate and efficiency of your qi absorption and meridian opening.”


  Ling Qi fixed her eyes on the pill before it disappeared back up the Elder’s sleeve. She…… didn’t really know how impressive her growth rate was. Li Suyin had seemed to imply that it was high, but the other girl was likely flattering her so that she would continue with their study sessions. Ling Qi would have to think about how she could acquire one of those pills; she needed every advantage she could get.

  For now, she needed to pay attention to Elder Su’s lecture. The Elder had moved on to outlining the day’s topic. The class would be studying the various effects environment could have on qi and how to identify sites which had a strong energy and were thus helpful for cultivation.

  Apparently, this entire mountain was selected as a training ground for this reason. The spirit stones it had once contained were long mined out, but the lingering energy still provided an ideal environment for new cultivators.

  Ling Qi made a note to look into the mines at some point. Even if the mines had been stripped bare, they might still hold something of value. Finding even just a handful of extra spirit stones could be really useful.

  It was doubtful that she was the only one with that thought……

  A darkened mineshaft was also almost as good as a cluttered alley for the purposes of getting the jump on someone. Perhaps seeking out more trouble wasn’t the best idea with Elder Zhou’s upcoming test, but it was something to consider.

  Threads 7-The Bloody Dream 1

  Ling Qi grinned as talons of black diamond ruffled her hair with the wind of their passing, and she faded back into the mist, eyes locked on her opponent.

  Shen Hu doggedly followed her trail, eyes aglow with the colors of sunset, but he soon found himself lost in the mist again. Ling Qi was helping Shen Hu hone an interesting new technique in this spar. As Ling Qi circled him, casually playing her melody, she once again felt the brush of his qi as another pulse washed over the field they were sparring in. This time, the half-formed technique didn’t slide off of her, and the warm, placid qi stuck.

  Shen Hu’s faintly glowing eyes immediately snapped to her, his right hand whipping up, and the talons he had been striking at her with broke away from his gauntlet with a sound like shattering glass, launching three gemstone daggers her way. Ling Qi twisted in response, smoothly avoiding the first two, while the third flew through her suddenly phantasmal shoulder, trailing black mist.

  “Looks like you got it down,” Ling Qi said, lowering her flute and straightening up.

  “Seems like it,” Shen Hu said with a satisfied grin, coming out of his combat stance.

  Sixiang snorted, amused.

  Ling Qi chided in her thoughts. If Shen Hu wanted to maintain the pretense that his second spirit didn’t exist, she wasn’t going to be rude and press the matter. Out loud, she said, “You’re getting better at working the throws into your style too.”


  “Not good enough though,” he grumbled as his gauntlets crumbled into sparkling dust. “The big attacks are too draining, but the little ones are still too slow and awkward.”


  “Or I’m just too fast,” Ling Qi replied just a little cockily. Xiulan was a bad influence on her.

  “Or you’re just too fast,” he echoed agreeably. “Your qi just never runs out, does it? How did you cultivate it so much?”


  “You know I can’t answer that,” Ling Qi said wryly, waving away the last dissolving strands of mist, allowing the morning sun to once again shine down on the grassy field. The four stone pillars sitting at the corners slowly stopped humming as the formations carved into their surface powered down with the qi of the battle fading. She had to hand it to the Sect. Training fields that blocked any outside observation beneath the fourth realm were a great salve to her paranoia.

  “I guess so,” Shen Hu said. “Did you want to practice hitting me with something? I kinda feel like I’m taking advantage.”


  “Like I said, I’m working on defense. Avoiding your attacks is enough,” Ling Qi dismissed. While she was nearing mastery of another stage of her Sable Crescent Step art, she also felt like her improvement was slowing down when it came to her mundane ability to avoid attacks.

  Sixiang commented.

  “If you say so,” Shen Hu said, stretching his arms above his head before falling back into a combat stance. “So no mist this time?”


  “No mist,” Ling Qi agreed, not quite looking at him. Xiulan really had infected her. Shen Hu could be distracting at times. “It’d defeat the point if you had to spend half of your time finding me.”


  Shen Hu nodded, and Ling Qi let her meridians flood with dark qi. She wouldn’t let herself slow down now. Besides, sparring was more relaxing than most of her other responsibilities.

  ***

  Between keeping up with her friends and now trying to make a new one, Ling Qi found that she had a very thin line to walk. She needed to reach Appraisal, the second stage of the green realm as quickly as possible. Not only would it safely allow her to use more green spirit stones and improve her base cultivation, it would also allow her to finally master many of her arts and begin working on the foundation of her domain in earnest.

  Paradoxically, she found herself having to put off cultivation as she entered her second month in Inner Sect in order to improve it later. The reason was simple. The only thing she had truly lost upon entering the Inner Sect was the diversity of qi loci, cultivation sites, which she had discovered on the Outer Sect mountain last year. Her mentor’s home was a powerful focus of course, albeit one that she had limited access to, and the argent vent in her Inner Sect residence was generally useful, but still, she found herself slowed in several areas with the lack of proper cultivation sites for some of her elements.

  Ling Qi put to use the map of the Sect she had been given by Xin to discover new ones. She surprised herself when she ended up inviting Shen Hu along to help her push through the wilds to investigate the locations on the map, but he had said that he was interested in exploring during Cai’s party last month.

  Ling Qi still remembered her trouble with something as simple as bringing Su Ling to search for sites with her and Li Suyin. Had it only really been just a year? She really had changed since those days.

  Shen Hu went along with her pretty easily, not even asking to see the map. She supposed that made sense though. If he had already intended to explore randomly on his own, what would it hurt to follow her lead?

  Their first foray turned into more of a hunting trip. The location she had chosen from the map was practically overrun with beasts. It was a nesting ground for Hundred Year Cicadas, and after a few hours of swatting fist-sized bugs with oversized jaws out of the air, Ling Qi had gotten frustrated and just flooded the grove with mist. Her companion had taken care of the underground nests. Whatever site might have been there originally was gone, its qi drained away by the insects, but the creatures’ cores and wings could be sold for a small sum, so the visit wasn’t totally pointless……

  They probably would have gotten more if her mist phantasms hadn’t shredded so many of them.

  Their next foray was a lot more fun. Hunting a pair of Stonetusk Boars felt like actual hunting, and it was even a challenge with them limiting themselves to art-less combat.

  More importantly, the locations her map had guided her to still contained a couple of cultivation sites. The first was a convergence of several small streams, rich in water qi, which could serve as a nice meditation spot for some of her water arts. The second was even better. The stand of tall oak trees, planted in a complex pattern that turned out to be a qi-gathering formation, would be helpful with mastering her lone wood art, Thousand Ring Fortress, and assist in physical cultivation.

  It was on the third and final foray that Ling Qi would be able to make this month that they found something odd. This location had been marked by a rearing stag with a moon disc held in its antlers on the map granted by the Hidden Moon. The symbol had given her a sense of danger, but there was no risk without reward.

  “It smells like smoke,” Shen Hu said from below her, rubbing irritably at his nose as he peered down into the valley that lay before them.

  Ling Qi was perched on a low tree branch, giving her a better vantage point. The area appeared like any other valley between the high hills, lush and green with a lazily winding ribbon of blue running through its center. Yet……

  She agreed. It did smell like smoke, even with not a spark in sight.

  “There’s no fire qi in the air or the ground,” Ling Qi said with a frown. “Can Lanhua feel anything?”


  Shen Hu glanced down at the carpet of rippling mud beneath his feet; most of his spirit’s mass was merged with the earth, but she remained somewhat visible. “Nothing,” he said. “She can’t feel anything bigger than mice and bugs.”


  This was alarming in its own right. A fertile valley like this should be heavily populated by spirits and beasts. she asked.

  She felt the odd prickling sensation of the dream spirit pushing their presence out through all of her senses.

  Ling Qi narrowed her eyes at the seemingly peaceful valley.

  Sixiang let out a tsk.

  she thought irritably.

  Ling Qi felt like the muse was shrugging. they drawled.

  “Sorry. I was just lost in thought,” Ling Qi said, shooting Shen Hu an apologetic look. It probably looked like she had just spaced out.

  “It’s fine,” he replied. “What do you think? I could head in with Lanhua. I doubt anything will take us out in one shot if it’s a trap.”


  “I don’t think it’s a trap exactly,” Ling Qi began slowly as Sixiang fed her more information. “It’s more like…… this valley is part way into a dream?” She felt Sixiang’s approving nod. “So we can’t sense things inside from outside.”


  Shen Hu cupped his chin thoughtfully, but she saw a spark of excitement in his brown eyes. “Oh? I’ve never fought in a dream before.” He furrowed his brow. “Well, not that I remember anyway. Are you coming in?”


  Ling Qi couldn’t help but roll her eyes at his eagerness. This guy. He would go in with nothing but his spirit beast and not a single scrap of information. Of course, she couldn’t say she was any better. She hated wasting time. There was never really any question as to whether she would brave whatever was ahead.

  “Yes, I will. Bring Lanhua up. You’ll need to be my cover.”


  He accepted that so easily, she mused, as great torrents of mud rose to engulf him until Lanhua’s lumpy, marsh reed-covered head rose to her level. The spirit looked at Ling Qi with her pit-like eyes and let out a bubbling rumble.

  “I’ll cover you both. I promise,” LIng Qi replied. Really, the mud spirit was the more sensible out of the two of them.

  Making a sound like a gathering mudslide, Lanhua began to tramp down the hill into the valley, and Ling Qi followed, fading into the shadows of the canopy as she hopped from branch to branch soundlessly.

  The moment that they entered the range of the memory was obvious. One moment, they were standing under a bright noonday sun, and the next, they were under a night sky, and the forest was burning. Lurid light made the cool dark of night into a mockery of day, and plumes of smoke rose into the sky, framing a sullen, crimson crescent moon.

  From all around, the sounds of combat rang out. The crack of shattering trees reached their ears, and the earth shook underfoot from terrible blows. Yet those distant things could not draw her attention because in front of Ling Qi’s eyes, a battle raged.

  An earthshaking bellow rang in her ears as a titanic spirit struck the ground with its branch-like arms. It was as if one of the ancient trees of the deeper forest had uprooted itself and been reshaped into the vague outline of a man. Its burning canopy rose more than ten meters into the night sky, and below that was a visage like a caricature of an old man with knothole eyes and a beard of moss and lichen, flickering with embers. It had an apeish gait with too long arms and short legs.

  At the spirit’s feet, its foe darted in a blur. It was a man taller than any human Ling Qi had ever seen save Cai Shenhua. He wore a flowing and resplendent emerald robe marked by soot and blood. In his hands was a spear of polished bronze, and from his head sprouted a pair of horns parting his long brown hair. His red eyes burned with fury as his darting spear punctured the spirit’s hide of bark again and again, seemingly to little effect.

  His eyes fell upon Shen Hu and Lanhua then, and hope lit in them. “Soldiers! This prince requires your aid. Aid in striking down this mad beast that I might go to my father’s side!” he shouted while avoiding a thunderous blow that sent dozens of hungry, grasping roots writhing up from the ground to grasp and tear at the hems of his robe.

  Before Ling Qi or Shen Hu could respond, the tree spirit let out a furious howl that sent a shiver down her spine.

  Its words were foreign, a slow, consonant-heavy speech, but Ling Qi found she could understand it.

  Ling Qi heard Sixiang say something in her thoughts, but it was muffled and unintelligible. Shen Hu glanced in her direction, his face protruding from Lanhua’s chest, confused and searching for guidance.

  It really was like a dream. She had no context for this fight, no idea what was going on. Nothing made sense.