The following day, Ling Qi set out early to meet Han Jian and his friends as they had discussed. She could not say she was looking forward to it, but it made sense to spend more time with the people she would be taking the test with even if Fan Yu was an ass and Gu Xiulan put her on edge. So despite her misgivings, Ling Qi descended through the morning mist, self-consciously adjusting the wrist sheath holding her knives.

  She didn’t think Han Jian would attempt anything untoward but…… she had been wrong about people before. She still felt frighteningly vulnerable.

  Regardless, she didn’t allow her doubts to slow her pace. Soon, she came to the field and found the group waiting for her. The fourth member of their cadre was here today, and Ling Qi could not help but pause and stare as the last of their number came into view through the mist.

  He was…… big. There was no other way to describe him. He was a head taller than even her and twice as broad at the shoulder. She briefly wondered if he was related to Instructor Zhou somehow. He was thankfully fully clothed, unlike said shirtless instructor, even if his disciple’s robe was stretched distractingly over a great deal of muscle for a boy who was presumably her age.

  She pulled her eyes upward at that point and resumed walking. The new disciple, who must be the Han Fang discussed last time, had a clean-shaven head and rough, blocky features with sun-darkened skin. As he turned to look at her along with the others, she noticed one final detail. He had a massive ropey scar stretching all the way across his throat like an ugly grin.

  “Ling Qi. Glad you could make it,” Han Jian said with an easy smile. He nodded to the new boy, who was examining her in a way that left her feeling defensive. “This is my cousin, Han Fang. Unlike my lazy cat, he’ll actually be helping us out. Don’t be fooled by his looks. This guy is still a first year disciple like us.” He added the last while clapping the other boy on the back.

  Ling Qi glanced between the two Hans doubtfully. The two looked nothing alike. She was aware of how little that meant when a golden tiger cub was also related to Han Jian, but she thought it strange anyway. She bowed in greeting to Han Fang. “It is nice to meet you. It seems I will be in your care.” She did her best to speak politely as she usually did around Han Jian.

  Ending his examination, Han Fang met her eyes, only to scratch his cheek awkwardly. He ducked his head politely but remained silent before glancing at his cousin.

  “Fang can’t really speak much so don’t mind him. We’ll show you some of the signals we use for communication later,” Han Jian explained patiently.

  Ling Qi’s cheeks heated slightly, and she shot the other boy an apologetic glance. That really should have been obvious given the scar.

  “Ah, of course,” she responded awkwardly, casting about for a change in subject. “Why……”


  “If the introductions are over, then shouldn’t we move on to practice?” Fan Yu asked gruffly from behind the two boys. “We don’t even know if she can fight without freezing up.”


  Ling Qi shot him an irritated look, but Han Jian nodded, looking apologetic.

  “Yu’s right. Sorry, Ling Qi, but we really do need to get to work. Do you mind having a spar with Xiulan first so I can see where you stand? I need to know what you can do to plan around it.”


  Ling Qi felt as if the bottom of her stomach had dropped out. The other girl was smiling sweetly in a way that didn’t make Ling Qi comfortable at all.

  “I…… Yes, I can do that,” Ling Qi responded hesitantly.

  “Try not to worry too much,” the other girl said sweetly as she moved toward an open part of the field and gestured for Ling Qi to follow. “I’ll just test your reflexes a bit. I need to make sure that you’re able to properly watch Jian’s back beside me, you know?”


  Ling Qi nodded stiffly as she took up a position a good eight meters distant from the other girl, all too conscious of the three boys watching them. There were no obstacles in the grassy meadow the group had chosen for practice so she would have no choice but to face the other girl openly.

  Ling Qi did her best to ignore the instincts that screamed at her to run, instead sinking into the low, defensive stance she had learned from the Zephyr’s Breath Art. She stared at Gu Xiulan, who bounced energetically on the balls of her feet, gloved right hand extended forward with her palm out.

  Han Jian took up a position about halfway between them but out of the way. Ling Qi couldn’t embarrass herself here if she wanted to work well with this group. Even if she couldn’t win, she could at at least give a good showing.

  That was the last thought she had before Han Jian chopped his hand down.

  “Begin!”


  Gu Xiulan was moving before Ling Qi could so much as blink. Her left hand blurred forward, curled into a fist before the echo of Han Jian’s words could fade. Sparks erupted from her knuckles and the air distorted with heat as Gu Xiulan launched a bolt of superheated air that screamed like an overheated kettle.

  Ling Qi barely had time to widen her eyes before her instincts and feel for the currents of wind howled at her to dodge. Desperately, she rolled to the side, barely fast enough to avoid the missile.

  Then, she was forced to dodge again, this time beneath a fan of heated air as the other girl danced backward and swiped her gloved hand through the air in Ling Qi’s direction. Ling Qi could smell the tips her hair charring as she rolled under it and sprang back to her feet. Her every instinct cried out to flee and escape danger, but she forced herself to ignore them. She had to stay close in this fight, or she would have no chance at all.

  The third attack came in the form of a rising wave of heat kicked up by a sweep of the other girl’s leg, carrying grit that stung and burned whatever it touched. Ling Qi jumped, forcing wind qi out into the air around her to boost her leap and carry her over the worst of it. She landed hard, wincing at the jarring feeling in her knees as her legs bent to absorb the impact.

  A flick of her wrist brought one of the blunted training knives to her hand, and she flung it, the wind carrying it unerringly at her smirking target. Surprise flickered in Gu Xiulan’s eyes, and her gloved hand rose to deflect the knife. Ling Qi saw a wince cross the girl’s expression at the impact before the blade bounced away. All told, it had only been a handful of seconds since the fight had begun. Ling Qi locked eyes with the other girl, tensing as she planned her next move.

  “I think that’s enough to get started on,” Gu Xiulan said with a smile, relaxing her stance. “You’re pretty rough, but we can polish you up a little,” the pretty girl added cheerfully. “You would have been in quite the trouble if I had been using real fire.”


  There was an edge of warning in the other girl’s tone. Gu Xiulan was right though. Even now. Ling Qi’s legs stung from the painfully hot grit that had gotten under the hem of her gown.

  “Thanks,” Ling Qi responded slowly as the other girl crouched to pick up her knife. She toyed with the idea of shooting back a quip about the other girl being wounded too if her knives had been sharpened, but she decided that it was better not to push things. “You were almost too fast to follow,” Ling Qi added after mulling it over.

  “We’ll have to work on that then,” the other girl said sweetly as she handed Ling Qi’s knife back to her. Han Jian had a satisfied look on his face as he observed the two of them, Han Fang was unreadable, and Fan Yu was scowling at her, ass that he was.

  “A little dodge training is just the thing for you, I think,” Gu Xiulan continued, her smile taking on a sharp edge.

  Ling Qi felt a shiver go up her spine at the girl’s words and expression. Why did she have this strange impending feeling of doom?

  As it turned out, it was because Gu Xiulan was absolutely brutal in her teaching. Ling Qi lost count of the number of times that she caught a dainty fist with her short ribs or was laid out by a jab to the jaw. Gu Xiulan hit like a full-grown man twice her size. Ling Qi was just surprised at how few bruises she had by the time she parted ways with the group that afternoon.

  Although Gu Xiulan seemed to take a personal and sadistic pleasure in putting Ling Qi in the dirt over and over again, Ling Qi decided that she didn’t care. She was getting stronger and whatever else she could say about Gu Xiulan, the girl’s advice was sound. Ling Qi had been able to block or at least avoid some of Gu Xiulan’s hits by the end.

  Despite that resolution, she could not quite decide if she was grateful or hated the other girl. She would decide after the test.

  However, Ling Qi had not spent the day just being beaten by a girl several centimeters shorter than her. She had also taken part in a few drills with Han Jian and the others and learned something of their own styles.

  Han Jian was a swordsman, perhaps unsurprisingly, but he preferred to stay behind the other two boys and direct their actions, flickering about with preternatural speed on bursts of heated wind to avoid being entangled in melee. Fan Yu wielded a a short-hafted spear and fought defensively using earth qi to harden his skin and bull through opponents and obstacles with brute force. Han Fang had a very large hammer and a talent for thunder qi. Fighting near him often left Ling Qi with a ringing headache, but Han Jian had assured her that she would become acclimated to the boom of his strikes.

  The week blurred by between cultivation, training, and lessons. Focusing on improving her fitness, Ling Qi found herself advancing impossibly fast. The qi she gently disseminated throughout her body seemed to multiply the effects of her exercise a hundredfold. She hardly had any fat to lose, of course, but her muscles grew more solid by the day.

  On the last day of Elder Zhou’s lessons before the coming test, Ling Qi felt a change as she meditated. The daily exercise of working qi into flesh and muscles began to grow more difficult as if she were trying to pack more loot into a bag already bursting at the seams.

  Growing excited as she recognized the feeling from the Elder’s instruction, Ling Qi eagerly pressed forward, even as a painful ache started taking root deep in her bones. She could feel her fingers clenching on her knees as she powered through the pain to surpass her own limitations.

  After a moment of blinding pain, she trembled as she felt something snap – and the pain vanished, taking with it all the aches of the day’s training.

  Then the stench struck her.

  Looking down at herself in dawning disgust, she nearly retched. She had somehow become covered in some kind of disgusting black gunk. It clung to her skin and soaked through her clothes. Her eyes watered at both the smell and the stinging feeling of the gunk getting into her eyes.

  “Good work disciple,” Elder Zhou’s deep voice shook her out of her horrified fascination. He loomed over her, his stern expression approving for once.

  “You are dismissed for the day. Go and cleanse yourself. You have expelled a great deal of impurities.”


  Nodding shakily, she stood.

  was what Elder Zhou had meant when he said that the Mid Gold breakthrough would begin removing the body’s impurities? Her cheeks burned with humiliation, but…… looking around, she did not see the smirks and mocking looks she had expected. Instead, there were looks of sour envy or wary appraisal.

  “Thank you very much, Elder Zhou,” she said hastily. “Ah…… is there anything I should do specifically or……” She still wanted to run and get this filth off of her quickly, but she did not want to make a mistake.

  The older man simply raised an eyebrow, a twinkle of amusement in his dark eyes.

  “I would suggest burning that gown. The smell will never leave it. Be off with you, disciple.”


  Not needing any further encouragement, Ling Qi rushed from the field to seek a long and well earned bath.

  Threads 11- Sect Challenges 1

  Seeking a break from her churning thoughts, Ling Qi turned her attention to the young looking elder below. The elder was a squat, dour looking man with thinning hair and a wide face. He exuded a pressure that seemed to drain the very color from his surroundings. He wore plain silver robes, a minister’s cap, and a pair of tiny spectacles, all in perfect symmetry.

  “We now begin the challenge given by disciple eight hundred and ten, Cai Renxiang, to disciple seven hundred and ninety five, Liu Su.” The elder’s voice was drier than a desert, and half as raspy. It seemed to absorb sound and attention alike, fixing Ling Qi’s attention on the dour man and silencing the murmurs from the other viewing boxes and the general stands. “In accordance with sect rules, Disciple Liu has chosen a match of administrative competence in lieu of a personal duel.”


  Ling Qi’s eyes flicked briefly to her liege’s target, a handsome boy a year or two older standing firmly in the second stage of green and bronze realms. He looked calm and collected, confident even. She was too far away to feel much of his aura, but there was a faint papery scent to it.

  Her attention returned to the elder then, yanked back by his droning voice. “In the constructed scenario, both disciples have been given the task of reorganizing a barony whose regulations have fallen out of sync with modern Imperial law. The disciples will then be tasked with organizing the county’s human resources for military mobilization. Disciple performance will be judged based upon time, accuracy, and minimizing efficiency losses, as judged by I, Elder Meng. Disciples, seat yourselves, and prepare to begin.”


  Ling Qi watched, bemused, as the “challenge” began. Liu Su was impressive, insofar as he could be given the dull nature of the challenge. She felt the qi fluctuations as his domain expanded out, and paper and writing implements began to fly. Heavy reference tomes of law fluttered like overweight butterflies, their pages flipping rapidly as form after form was filled in by flying ink brushes, while Liu Su sat with his hands folded neatly in his lap, his eyes half-lidded and fluttering like a man on the verge of sleep.

  Cai Renxiang, on the other hand, was less visually impressive. Yet the stern girl did not so much as glance at the tomes of reference she had been provided, and although she wielded only a single ink brush, her hands were a literal blur that only resolved if Ling Qi focused. Ling Qi was pretty sure she caught the sound of ink and paper sizzling from the speed with which her liege wrote.

  Despite all that, she was still watching two people fill in paperwork, if rapidly, and that was difficult to grab her attention. Ling Qi found her thoughts turning back to what Meizhen had said. She didn’t know if she could agree with her friend. It felt as if she were just making excuses for herself.

  Ling Qi had decided that she didn’t want to betray friends, but where did that line lie? Who was a friend, and what counted as betrayal?

  She was still wrestling with that question when the match was called. Liu Su had finished faster, but apparently, his work could not match the quality of her liege’s efficiency and total lack of errors.

  She would have to congratulate her liege. And Ling Qi would have to make sure she didn’t get left behind. She couldn’t put off her research and intelligence gathering on potential disciples to challenge just to navel-gaze. There would be time for that later.

  ***

  Ling Qi was not sure what she had expected when she had set this meeting up.

  “Does it not cause the gown to hang oddly and bunch up?” Gu Xiulan asked, idly swirling the cup of bubbling hot tea in her hand. “And I imagine it must chafe terribly.”


  “Not at all,” Li Suyin replied, smoothing out the glittering silk folds of the gown she was showing them as she neatly folded it back up. “The metal filaments, once attuned to the wearer, will follow their motions naturally and can be controlled in the same way one would a limb.”


  It wasn’t this, though.

  “That sounds somewhat like a flying sword,” Xiulan commented shrewdly. “Are you certain you are not overreaching yourself?”


  Li Suyin met Xiulan’s gaze steadily from where she stood. “It is just a prototype. I admit the control is limited to simple motions as things are currently, but the filaments are vectors for my arts all the same. My partner and I will develop it further when I break through.”


  Xiulan continued to stare her down, to which Li Suyin responded by drawing herself up further. This was more like what she was expecting. “That’s the second time you’ve mentioned a partner,” Ling Qi said, pushing herself up from the wall she had been leaning against. “Anyone interesting?”


  Li Suyin glanced toward her. “Oh! Um – I suppose neither of you interacted much with the crafting disciples. I have been collaborating with Du Feng, the disciple who placed second in the production competition, one rank above me, on a few projects.”


  “Hm, I approve,” Xiulan said, pausing to take a sip of her near boiling tea. Ling Qi had no idea how the girl could stand it. She found the blend Li Suyin had set out to be much better chilled. “I suppose you really have grown.”


  “I am pleased to finally meet your standards, Sect Sister Gu,” Li Suyin replied irritably.

  Xiulan laughed. “You see? You would not have dared to talk back to me six months ago.”


  Ling Qi coughed into her hand. “Maybe we should get back to our original topic.”


  Despite her words, she was glad to listen to her friends’ banter; it let her feel normal again. Still, she had arranged this meeting for a purpose. As they were all in the eight hundreds, with her at 830, Li Suyin at 840, and Gu Xiulan at 890, they could share the efforts of their intelligence gathering as they were all trying to scope out the competition in the lower end of the Inner Sect.

  “I am grossly underranked,” Gu Xiulan grumbled, her empty tea cup hitting the table with a solid clunk.

  Ling Qi nodded in agreement. When speaking with other Inner disciples, and more often, just observing public areas from a well hidden nook, she had come to a similar conclusion. Disciples below nine hundred were mostly in the second realm with a scattering of partial breakthroughs. Even up to rank 880 or so, partial third realms were more common than full ones. She could say that those disciples were beneath her concern and not feel like she was being cocky saying so.

  “Just how high are you thinking of challenging?” she asked, giving her friend a sidelong look.

  “High enough to reach the next reward tier. I would shame my family otherwise,” Xiulan sniffed.

  “I am not yet certain that I wish to challenge for a higher rank at all,” Li Suyin sighed. “I really should finish a project or two first and begin my breakthrough.”


  “Are you saying you don’t have your eye on any particular seat?” Ling Qi asked, raising an eyebrow.”


  “No,” Li Suyin admitted, sitting down across from Xiulan, having finished putting away her prototype gown.

  Ling Qi laughed, and Xiulan tittered along. “Well, let’s leave that aside for the moment. What have we learned about our yearmates?”


  “Sun Liling has hardly shown her face,” Gu Xiulan answered first. “Neither has that Kang, though that might be for medical reasons. Bai Meizhen was not gentle in her match.”


  “Ji Rong has been in the archives a great deal,” Li Suyin offered. “And not always in the arts sections. He got into a fistfight with a tome of Imperial law while I was studying construct behavior functions. The archivists were quite cross. One commented that it was becoming more common.”


  Xiulan let out an unladylike snort of laughter. “That would be a sight.”


  “Shen Hu is probably only aiming for a small challenge, so he doesn’t fall below the rank threshold,” Ling Qi added. “He wants to focus on shoring up some weaknesses first.”


  “I believe that is everyone of import,” Xiulan said haughtily. “Unless one of your compatriots is aiming to challenge a combat disciple?” she asked, looking at Li Suyin.

  “Unlikely,” Li Suyin said. “It might be a little arrogant to say, but aside from Yan Renshu and Fu Xiang, none of the crafters ranked below me are my match either.”


  Yan Renshu was the sticking point. Like Gu Xiulan, he was certainly underranked. Ling Qi half worried that he would challenge Li Suyin just to spite her, but she could only speculate on the boy’s plans – if he had any. Not that it would be a serious loss for Li Suyin if that happened; she’d only drop one rank from Yan Renshu taking her former rank, perhaps a bit more if she were ‘leapfrogged’ by other disciples below her successfully winning rank challenges to disciples above her, but she would almost certainly stay in the same reward tier regardless.

  Ling Qi flicked her wrist, and a thick scroll appeared in her hand, drawn from her storage ring. “Let’s leave our yearmates aside. I did a little people watching and picked some things up about our new Sect Brothers and Sisters.”


  “I did as well since you asked me to,” Li Suyin added, placing her own scroll on the table.

  Xiulan rolled her eyes. “What a pair of scholars you are,” she mocked lightly. “I

  to and

  with our new brethren on this mountain. I felt no need to write down my insights.”


  LI Suyin and Ling Qi let out an almost simultaneous huff of annoyance, only to meet each other’s eyes and break into quiet laughter. Yes, Ling Qi was glad that she had involved her friends, instead of doing this alone.

  ***

  Ling Qi had been busy since meeting with her friends. The sluggishness to her qi had not vanished but instead, it lingered, a morose stillness that slowed her every effort to cultivate.

  In the same way, she found her thoughts haunted by the scent of blood and cries of pain in moments of silence. Increasingly, she found those moments appearing. She wasn’t the only one who had been affected by the Bloody Moon trial, and Sixiang had barely spoken up at all in the aftermath of it.

  Here and now however, Ling Qi let her worries drift away as the swirling snowflakes did on frigid wind. She sank eagerly into the welcome embrace of the heavy darkness which shrouded her mentor’s mountaintop home.

  In the depths of an impossible blizzard above the clouds themselves, lit by starlight, Ling Qi danced, following the motions deciphered from the jade slip containing the Sable Crescent Step.

  “Your movements are empty.” Zeqing’s voice echoed from all around her as Ling Qi spun, avoiding a glittering ball of ice and snow flung at her by a giggling little girl.

  Ling Qi’s eyes remained closed as she kept her concentration, slipping between the driving shards of ice hidden in the falling sleet. “Where am I making a mistake?” she asked, her voice aloof and calm, emotion temporarily drowned in concentration.

  “You mistake me. You are not performing poorly,” her mentor replied, her voice a blustery gust. “Your intent is suppressed. That is the purpose of this dance, is it not?”


  Ling Qi hummed, sidestepping and weaving through the snowfield to the soundless thrum of the darkness that shrouded the mountaintop. “I am still surprised that your home is so……” She trailed off, a shudder traveling up her spine. She had never cultivated here during her time in the Outer Sect, and so, she had never felt the sheer potency of the qi in this place. “I didn’t expect so much darkness here.”


  “Darkness and cold are two facets of a single crystal,” Zeqing’s voice murmured in her ear while the blizzard howled and Hanyi laughed. “They are absence and emptiness and the end of all things.”


  “The silence is beautiful sometimes,” Ling Qi murmured. She did not speak of base sound, as the storm was actually quite loud, but on a deeper level, beneath sight and sound where there was only the flow of qi, it was calm and peaceful. There was no strife and violence, only a quiet stillness that made her heart ache. Yet she knew that the feeling was fleeting, without needing to hear Zeqing’s words.

  “Cold seeks heat, and darkness seeks light. Emptiness yearns for fulfillment. Such is the source of desire. Do not seek out the silence, Ling Qi.” Zeqing’s voice had a sad note to it. “Should you reach it, you would cease as surely as frost on a spring morn. Humans are not meant for such purity.”


  Ling Qi did not take any insult at the words. She knew purity of concept was not something to be desired. Not yet. She was still far from those heights.

  “Still, I wonder what it is like,” she mused. She had no doubt it would be inaudible to any except the blizzard which shrouded her. “Zeqing, would you tell me?”


  This time, her mentor did not respond immediately, save for an intensifying of the winds and the driving ice. Ling Qi smiled as she wove through another barrage of flung snow from an increasingly pouting Hanyi.

  “All things End.” Ling Qi shivered, the final word echoing like the ringing of a temple gong, layers of meaning skipping across her thoughts. “Heat, warmth, lives, cities, empires, rivers, and mountains; none are eternal. The sun and the moon, the heavens and the earth, these things, too, shall End in time.” Zeqing’s voice chilled her and spoke as if from the bottom of a deep pit. “And when the Heavens lie dark and the earth crumbles, even the End will cease. What lies beyond is unknowable.”


  Ling Qi let out a breath of relief as her dance came to a stop, and the chill faded. “Thank you for answering, teacher.”


  “You do not understand. My words cannot express the truth without dealing you great harm,” Zeqing said as the wind died and her human form spun into existence from snow and wind, floating serenely. “But that is fine. You are too young for such understanding yet.”


  “For once, I have no complaints at being told that,” Ling Qi remarked, rubbing her arms through the fabric of her gown. She still felt chilled. “Master Zeqing, do you think I chose wrongly in that dream?”


  “
” the ice spirit replied, her blood red lips unmoving. “
”


  Ling Qi was silent. The words resonated, and yet, what did she desire?

  “Are you done talking about boring stuff with Big Sis yet?” Hanyi called, her voice jarring Ling Qi from morose thoughts. Hanyi ran over to them atop the snow, her pale blue feet not making a sound or disturbing a single flake.

  “Yes, we’re done,” Ling Qi said, putting on a smile for Hanyi. “What did you want to show me?”


  “Momma showed me how to make flowers!” Hanyi chattered excitedly, grasping her hand to pull her along. “I made a garden. You gotta see!”


  “
.” Ling Qi did not turn back despite the conflict in her mentor’s voice. Hanyi had not heard, and Ling Qi was sure that those words were meant for only her.

  She felt a sinking in her stomach. All things End, huh?