That evening, after Elder Su’s lesson, she met up with Li Suyin to begin their mountain expedition. To avoid being followed, they had agreed to meet on a small plateau that was well off the beaten path but also on the way to their destination.

  Ling Qi was surprised when it wasn’t just Li Suyin who arrived on the windy cliffside. On reflection, she shouldn’t have been. The two of them only knew about the icy woods because of Su Ling. Why would Li Suyin leave her roommate out of things?

  “Why the fuck do you smell like that?” the surly fox girl said by way of greeting as she reached the top, Li Suyin arrived behind her, red-faced but not breathing as heavily as she had in the previous expedition.

  “Do you really think it’s a great idea to be wearing perfume for something like this?”


  Ling Qi blinked. The oils Gu Xiulan had applied to her hair had a faint floral scent. Was it really that strong? She couldn’t even smell it anymore herself.

  “I’ll wash up in that stream we have to cross on the way. Excuse me for being busy,” she replied defensively.

  “Don’t know why you’re using that crap in the first place. Thought you were one of the halfway sensible ones,” Su Ling grumbled.

  “You need a breather, Li Suyin?” Su Ling asked over her shoulder as the blue-haired girl straightened up with a determined look.

  “I-I’m fine,” Li Suyin insisted as she caught her breath.

  “A-and, I don’t think it’s a problem that you look…… nice? I don’t think perfume will be much more noticeable than a natural scent to spirit beasts. Don’t most of them have qi enhanced senses?” Li Suyin’s voice shrank until she was barely audible by the end under Su Ling’s glare.

  Su Ling’s tail twitched in agitation.

  “Whatever. None of my business if you want to smear crap on yourself. It’s not like we’re hunting,” Su Ling huffed. “And Li Suyin’s right that the dangerous stuff is gonna be able to scent us anyway. You sure you want to do this?”


  “Yes,” Ling Qi responded tightly. “We all need whatever advantages we can get, right?”


  “I agree,” Li Suyin added seriously. “I have things I need to accomplish.”


  “Fine. Not gonna argue about it. Let’s get climbing,” Su Ling replied brusquely, eyeing the steep path leading further up the mountain.

  Ling Qi found herself climbing the steep path with ease, and even on occasion, outpacing Su Ling. She could already feel the soothing rush of being immersed in darkness, and it made it easier to move quickly. Su Ling gave her a few suspicious looks, sniffing uncertainly at the air when Ling Qi passed her.

  Li Suyin still proved to be the limit on their pace. Even with her improved physical cultivation, the scholarly girl simply couldn’t keep up with them. However, she was not nearly as slow as she had been before.

  Still, Ling Qi didn’t begrudge slowing down. It was only with Li Suyin’s help that they’d have any real hope of finding a better qi locus.

  Night had fallen by the time they reached the woods. As the weather was clear and the nearly full moon was bright, the others didn’t seem to have too much trouble.

  For Ling Qi, the night vision was still strange. Without light, color was washed out, but she had no trouble seeing just as well as she could during the day. Glancing up at the moon, she dipped her head briefly. Even if it wasn’t the right phase, she could say a silent thanks.

  The three of them fell silent once they reached the part of the woods that they had refrained from entering before. The only sound came from Li Suyin’s painfully loud footsteps and the rustling cloth of their gowns. Ling Qi couldn’t do anything but keep a sharp eye out for beasts attracted by the noise.

  Being able to see perfectly well at night was useful but also disquieting. It let her clearly see the shapes of the crows perched high in the trees and the dark shapes of predators lurking at the edges of her vision. It wasn’t perfect; several times Su Ling had to stop them with a hissed warning, pointing out patches of creeper vines that were carnivorous or leading them away from places marked by the scent of a mountain bear or other predator.

  For Ling Qi’s part, she stopped the fox girl from putting her foot into the burrow of something hidden in the underbrush, as well as helping the group as a whole avoid a few other blunders.

  All the while, Li Suyin squinted into the dark. Ling Qi could tell that Li Suyin wasn’t searching with her eyes. This went on for the better part of two hours as they searched the woods. Several times, Ling Qi saw a predator in the dark – a mountain lion, an owl big enough to have claws the size and length of her fingers, and once, something that looked like a scrawny wolf – but none of them attacked, perhaps deciding that their group was not easy prey.

  She had an odd itching feeling on the back of her neck though, as if she were being watched.

  Eventually, Li Suyin’s senses lead them to an open cliff on the far side of the woods that looked out over the southern mountain side and the peaks beyond. The landscape visible was beautiful even at night with seemingly endless peaks extending as far as the eye could see. The cliff was surrounded by high ridges on either side with the thick woods they had traveled through blocking off its rear.

  None of that was what drew Ling Qi’s eye. Rather, what drew it was the broad crack in the stone cliff from which a faint silver mist wafted. The edges of the cleft were lined with glittering red and yellow crystal that were all too familiar. They were obviously spirit stones, if more than she had seen in one place before and not carved into uniformity.

  “A natural spirit stone deposit,” Li Suyin breathed out softly, looking at it in wonder. “And…… ah, that mist! Can you feel it resonating with your Argent Foundation?”


  Ling Qi could feel an odd quivering in the ‘skin’ that had formed around her dantian when she advanced to the third stage of Argent Soul. Was that what Li Suyin was talking about?

  While she was thinking, Su Ling had reached out to grab the blue-haired girl’s shoulder, her body language tense.

  “Stop. There’s something here,” she said harshly. “I can’t smell anything, but…… we aren’t alone.”


  Ling Qi nodded. She could feel it now that she was looking, a strange stillness in the air. A moment later, her instincts screamed at her to move, and she did so, qi surging as she felt the edges of herself blurring into the darkness around her. She landed from her sideways dive in a controlled roll as a thunderous crash broke the silence of the night.

  The ridge beside her seemed to have come to life. What she had taken for a large rock formation now rose on two trunk-like limbs, even as it withdrew the ‘arm’ that it had just tried to crush her with. It was vaguely humanoid and stood nearly four meters tall. Its ‘head’ was little more than a vague lump with two glittering crystal growths where eyes would normally be.

  “What the fuck is that?” Su Ling hissed, backing away with wide eyes.

  “It’s a Sediment Guardian! T-they often appear around such deposits, seemingly spontaneously generated from the natural qi expelled by the stones. They come in several……” Li Suyin was backing up as well, panic in her eyes. She appeared to be reciting a book passage from memory.

  “Can we kill it?” Ling Qi cut her off in a tight voice as she rose back to her feet, backing up as well.

  This wasn’t a great arena to fight in. The area was barely eight meters from the start of the woods to the edge of the cliff and only twenty across from ridge to ridge. There wouldn’t be a lot of room to dodge. At least the spirit didn’t seem to be a hurry as it rose to its full height and took a single lumbering step forward.

  “I don’t have anything that can hurt a damn rock,” Su Ling said as she eyed the slowly approaching thing warily. “I might be able to confuse it though, but hell if I know how that thing senses stuff.”


  “Vibration and sound,” Li Suyin replied immediately. It seemed when Li Suyin panicked, she became an encyclopedia. “Ah…… Supposedly, the crystal ‘eyes’ are a weakness, as well as the nodes on its back, but……”


  Ling Qi fought down her own fear as she continued to back away to stay out of the range of the thing’s limbs. She was the closest, and Su Ling and Li Suyin were about four meters behind her near the woods. They could probably escape, but then, this expedition would have been all for nothing.

  Ling Qi doubted her ability to hurt the thing, ‘eyes’ or no, but…… She glanced toward the cliff. Would it survive falling off? Could she manage to lure it over the edge with Forgotten Vale Melody? Su Ling said she could confuse it too. Maybe if the two of them worked together……

  Unlike the bo staff, which Ling Qi had taken to leaving tucked under her bed, wrapped in cloth, Ling Qi had begun carrying her flute with her at all times since she mastered the first measure of Forgotten Vale Melody. She had even taken some effort to design a holder for the instrument in her sleeve so it was as simple as flicking her wrist to get the flute in her hand……

  Well, it was simple

  Practicing and adjusting the holder until she could do it without fail had taken more time than she would care to admit.

  “Do it, Su Ling!” she snapped, her nerves vanishing the hesitation she would normally have felt at giving someone else an order. “Buy me a few seconds at least. Li Suyin, stay back, alright?”


  “Tch.” The fox-eared girl didn’t otherwise protest although she gave the flute in Ling Qi’s hand a curious glance as Li Suyin retreated further. Su Ling’s long fluffy tail uncoiled from around her waist to wave behind her as she glared at the Guardian. She extended her hand, a single finger pointing at the towering mountain of rock. A single wavering ball of ghostly blue-grey fire flickered into view behind her head as she did.

  “Get lost!” she growled at the spirit.

  Ling Qi wasn’t sure at first what the girl meant to accomplish, but then, fire the same color as the orb behind her flared up around the creature’s crystal eyes and the Guardian jerked in place as if struck. It let out a furious rumble like an avalanche in the making and swiped its arm at the empty air to its left, smashing into the cliff with enough force that Ling Qi felt the vibration under her feet. It stamped one trunk-like leg to much the same effect.

  “What did you do?!” Li Suyin asked in panic from somewhere behind as Ling Qi raised her flute to her lips, trying not to let her hands shake. The thing’s furious bellows were intimidating as it flailed its limbs, particularly since it was still moving slowly in their direction even if it paused every few steps to swing at nothing.

  “You said it used sound!” Su Ling snapped, her hand shaking as she kept a finger pointed steadily at the thing’s head. Her fire cast her face in pallid light.

  “I figured the sound of a few dozen miners pounding on it would keep it distracted!”


  “Just try to help me lead it off the cliff! Can you adjust the direction?” Ling Qi called out, ignoring the byplay. It was the last chance she was going to get to talk for a bit because she finally began to play.

  As the first soft and almost whimsical notes of the Melody rang out over the cliff, Ling Qi began to circle, moving closer to the cliffside as the mist began to pour from every hole in her flute. The mist rapidly spread in a shadowy cloud to consume much of the cliffside. It took concentration to expand the musician’s protection over to Su Ling. She would just have to hope that Li Suyin would hold still. Thankfully, the creature turned towards her almost immediately as she played.

  Perhaps it was the qi-charged sound of the song, or perhaps it had to do with the second ball of fire appearing behind Su Ling’s head, but Ling Qi definitely had the thing’s attention. Now, she just had to hope she could affect the thing with the second technique of her Forgotten Vale Melody. She doubted she could get it to walk off the cliff on its own if its senses weren’t further clouded still.

  By now, Ling Qi was feeling more confident. The shaking in her hands had subsided, lending the music a clearer pitch as she began playing the next portion of the song. She continued steadily backing toward the edge of the cliff as the Guardian stomped toward her, no longer doing so at a leisurely pace. Although there were no visible effects, she felt her qi sink in through the thing’s hide and soak in through its rigid, inflexible channels to mingle with the wild qi of Su Ling’s technique.

  This seemed to infuriate the spirit even more. Its rumbling voice rose in a roar like a stone being split in twain by a hammer. It suddenly lunged at her with frightening speed, its arms raised to crush the apparent source of its irritation.

  Ling Qi jumped backwards on instinct, nearly fumbling the melody as the thing’s massive fists smashed into the ground where she had just been. She stood at the very edge of the cliff now.

  The rock spirit let out another furious rumble and shook its head like a bull being pestered by flies. Its limbs hammered the ground, apparently uselessly, although the crack of stone worried her. If she could just get it to lunge again, she could do this.

  Ling Qi considered fully activating her movement technique, but in the end, she decided against it. The creature wasn’t too difficult to dodge, and she wasn’t yet at the point where she could afford to spend qi so freely.

  Driven to fury by whatever Su Ling was inflicting on its senses along with her song, it wasn’t long before the creature lunged again, swinging wildly with its huge club fists. Ling Qi dodged desperately to the side as its rage seemed to have lent it further speed. She winced as she felt the wind of its attack’s passage. The close call made her fumble her flute, the song fading away.

  The Sediment Guardian teetered on the edge of the cliff, having managed to stop itself just in time. Ling Qi felt dread pooling in her stomach as it began to turn toward her.

  “Will you just fall already?!” Su Ling’s voice snapped from deeper inside the dissipating mist. Ling Qi glanced at her in time to see the twin balls of pale fire behind Su Ling’s head shoot forward like tiny falling stars.

  Instincts screaming at her to move, she dove away as far as she could from the guardian. The fires struck the ground and exploded.

  The fires failed to do more than scorch the guardian, but the ground was not so sturdy. Dirt and rock crumbled, and the spirit fell as the weakened cliffside collapsed under its weight. Ling Qi held her breath before the creature’s landing resolved with a mighty crash some fifty or sixty meters below.

  “Is it dead?” Li Suyin asked nervously as the mist finished clearing, daring to move up beside Su Ling once more. She was wringing her hands, looking decidedly pale.

  “I fucking hope so,” Su Ling muttered. “I can’t do too many more blasts like that.”


  Su Ling had the same irritable expression as usual, but she seemed tired. The glance she shot Ling Qi held some respect now though.

  For her part, Ling Qi was the closest to the edge of the cliff and thus, the one who peered over it…… carefully. Sure enough, the remains of the guardian were scattered across the base of the cliff.

  Ling Qi kind of wanted to climb down and look through its remains. She could see something glittering in its shattered corpse. It was shiny, and she wanted it.

  “It looks like we’re clear,” she called back as she straightened. She could climb down later after they had figured out what the deal with this deposit was. “So, Li Suyin, do you think……”


  “What a beautiful melody that was.”


  Ling Qi stiffened as she heard a soft, masculine voice speak up from behind her. She whipped around and saw Su Ling doing the same. It took a moment for her to spot the source of the voice because he was seated in the upper branches of a tree. It was the odd boy from spiritual cultivation who had commented on Li Suyin’s hands. Huang Da, if she remembered correctly.

  The thin, lanky boy dropped down gracefully to the ground as she spotted him. He seemed different, more energetic than he was in class. The unsettling lopsided grin on his normally expressionless face didn’t help, nor did the sickle clasped loosely in his right hand.

  “What do you want?” Ling Qi asked flatly, already falling back into a defensive stance. She could see Su Ling doing the same, one of her curved knives having found its way into her hand. Li Suyin was pale-faced and had slipped behind the fox girl.

  “That is a bit of a difficult question,” Huang Da responded thoughtfully, lingering at the treeline as he cast his sightless gaze over them. “Had you asked me when I set out tonight, I would have said that I merely wished to observe my lovely scholar for the evening.”


  Li Suyin made a strangled sound that Ling Qi found entirely appropriate for the situation, even as Su Ling shifted in front of the blue-haired girl, baring her sharp teeth in an unfriendly fashion.

  “But then, I saw you,” Huang Da continued, gesturing toward Ling Qi with his sickle. “The way you bloomed in the Dark. I had not paid you much mind before. To think there was another such vision of loveliness right under my nose……”


  Ling Qi felt the hairs on the back of her neck prickling. She preferred this guy better when he didn’t talk and seemed half-asleep. She also didn’t miss his emphasis on the word Dark; he must be able to sense the element she was using somehow.

  “Thank you. I think,” Ling Qi managed, mostly masking her real feelings. She held back from saying what she actually wanted to say due to her interest in not starting a fight.

  “Just spit it out already, ya creep.” Su Ling was apparently unable to do the same. “If you just wanted to do your shitty flirting, you wouldn’t have popped up here.”


  “Mongrels like you should know better than to bark at your betters. You should control your pet better, Li Suyin,” Huang Da responded irritably. “But yes, I’m afraid I can’t let this chance pass by. There are only three spots at the top, and that Ji Rong is all but certain to get one. To have to choose between two such beauties…… How unfortunate.”


  Ling QI bristled. She hated this guy’s attitude and the implication that he would just…… choose which one of them was allowed to use it. Her emotions were tempered by the fact that he was apparently confident enough to appear before all three of them like this. There was also the fact that he had managed to follow them without being noticed.

  “You know you can’t attack us, right? The truce is still in effect. You can’t make any of us stay away from this place.”


  “Rules and laws are relative,” Huang Da replied with a shrug of his shoulders. “And all things are not as they seem. You should know that well enough, Ling Qi. Did not Bai Meizhen harm someone on your behalf only a few weeks ago? The truce is not nearly so ironclad out here in the wild. So I really am afraid that I can only let one of you stay here with me, how sad……”


  Li Suyin was trembling behind Su Ling, who looked ready to outright assault the boy physically if her body language was any indication. This was a problem. Ling Qi needed every advantage she could get, but she couldn’t bring herself to play along with this asshole to get it. That didn’t even take into consideration that she would have to betray Li Suyin and Su Ling to do so.

  He had to be confident to confront them all like this, but if they all attacked together……

  Threads 29-Siblings 3

  That night wouldn’t be the last time she tarried longer at home, Ling Qi promised herself, but for the moment, it would have to do. She would have to change some of her plans and half-formed schedules, but she believed that she could accomplish her goals

  spend more time at tasks aside from cultivation. Her liege certainly managed, even if she was starting to strain under the workload.

  This reminded Ling Qi that she had never actually asked just what all that paperwork she so often saw Cai Renxiang going through was for or just what it was that took up so much of her time. When she had realized that on her way back up the mountain, Ling Qi felt briefly uncomfortable. Cai Renxiang had never offered to share the information, but Ling Qi had never really asked either. When she thought about it, their relationship was still pretty distant, wasn’t it?

  Unfortunately, Ling Qi would not have time to currently act on that realization. Not only was she moving to more advanced lessons under her senior brother in the Scouting Corps in preparation for live exercises next month, but also she had the first of her “tutoring” sessions with Bai Meizhen’s cousin scheduled for the afternoon after said scouting lessons and the evening was set out for cultivation. Plus, if she recalled correctly, Cai Renxiang was going to be busy herself for some time. Cai had taken up some sort of major sect duty, assisting the Core Disciple that had made Ling Qi’s gown with a project.

  It seemed that the slowing of cultivation with age was not just a matter of decaying talent and the nature of qi. Staying engaged with the people and the world around her was quite a time sink. Ling Qi couldn’t afford to just play hermit or space out and cultivate whenever it suited her anymore; she had to consider so many other things.

  Ling Qi was still contemplating that problem by the time afternoon had rolled around and the time for her first meeting with Bai Xiao Fen had arrived. In her letter confirming the tutoring, she had picked out a mostly barren spot a good distance from the Sect town. It was the site of a clearcutting; the Sect was overseeing an expansion of the fields around the settlement, it seemed. For the moment though, it remained empty, and so it was still good for her purposes.

  Ling Qi sat atop a small, stony hillock as she waited for her “junior sister” to arrive, idly playing a contemplative tune on her flute as her thoughts wandered. Sixiang hummed along in her head, and Hanyi was back at her sect lodgings soaking up argent qi at Ling Qi’s upgraded standard vent. Hanyi was frustrated; apparently, her transformation and breakthrough during the escape from Zeqing’s home had left her unable to use some of her channels properly, and it hadn’t cleared up yet. As for Zhengui……

  Ling Qi perked up as she felt Xiao Fen enter the range of her senses. The younger girl’s aura had not changed much since their last meeting three months ago, but she had advanced well into the mid stage of the second realm in both forms of cultivation. It was only a few moments later that she caught sight of Xiao Fen picking her way through the rolling stump-strewn landscape at a dignified pace.

  Xiao Fen had switched out the basic argent uniform for a new gown, black in color and simple in cut. The second layer of the gown shimmered silver, as did the trailing sash around her waist and the pins and ties in her hair. Like the threads of sharpened metal woven into her braids, Ling Qi could tell that the sash was a weapon too; she could see the faint gleam of needlepoints on its trailing hem.

  It seemed impractical, but then again, Ling Qi hit people with concentrated artistic expression, so who was she to judge?

  “Hello, Junior Sister!” she called cheerfully, lowering her flute and raising a hand to wave. Senior Brother Ruan was right; being able to say that was fun. “Come on up, and have a seat.”


  She watched as Bai Xiao Fen peered up at her from the bottom of the slope with narrowed eyes and then glanced around, seemingly unsettled by something. Ling Qi hid the grin that tried to surface as she stared down at the other girl.

  Xiao Fen gave their surroundings one last distrustful glance and then began to ascend the hill. “Greetings, Senior Sister Ling,” she replied with stiff formality. “Shall I assume this…… site is a gift?”


  “Something like that,” Ling Qi said, keeping her expression straight. “How have you found the Outer Sect so far?”


  “Mildly stifling. This place is both too dry and too cold, and my simpering peers are an irritant,” Xiao Fen said, reaching the top of the hill. The girl glanced around briefly before finding a flat spot to kneel like a retainer at attention. Ling Qi raised an eyebrow, glancing down at her own informal seating on a raised boulder. Well, whatever made the girl comfortable.

  There was also that reply. “Are you alright, Junior Sister? I don’t really mind, but that is a little rude, isn’t it?”


  “Bai Meizhen has asked that I speak plainly in private with her and said that I should treat you with the same respect I do her.” Xiao Fen seemed to twitch uncomfortably at the admission.

  This girl was very literal, Ling Qi thought, bringing a pulse of amusement from Sixiang. “You know, it might not be my business, but what exactly is the relationship between you two?” Ling Qi found herself asking

  “I am here to serve her. Members of the Xiao branch are raised to devote themselves to a member of the main Bai house. It has been my honor to be selected so early for that duty,” Xiao Fen answered proudly, but Ling Qi could feel a seething ember of discontent at the core of her words. That was the real root of her problem with the Sect, Ling Qi suspected.

  Ling Qi had done a little studying on the Bai before this, so she had known the answer. Of course, the history she had read had couched the relationship in terms of a story about the eldest and youngest of the eight daughters of the Bai’s founder, Yao the Fisher. When the eight daughters of Bai had fallen to feuding and civil war, only the youngest sister had stuck with the eldest and supported her rightful claim to clan headship from the very start, and they had decided that their descendants should always be side by side.

  Ling Qi had felt that history didn’t seem like that was enough for the sense of honest devotion she got from Xiao Fen whenever Meizhen’s name came up. She had expected there to be something more between the two like their mothers being friends, or that they were childhood playmates, or…… something.

  “It might not be my place to say, but if you really want to serve Meizhen well, duty won’t be enough, I think. There’s more to family than that.”


  Xiao Fen gave her a singularly unimpressed look. “You are right. It is not your place. Even if my cousin thinks so highly of you, what can you know……?”


  “I know Meizhen is a lonely person, and she closes others out easily,” Ling Qi interrupted bluntly, her aura stirring as she spoke. “I know that her mother is gone, and for whatever reason, she doesn’t interact much with her father. When our time in the Sect ends, she’s going to need someone to support her, and I’m not talking about cultivation or combat.”


  Xiao Fen stared at her for several long seconds, and Ling QI could practically see the twin motivations of pride in her clan and obedience to Meizhen’s words warring in her head. “I will take your advice into account, Senior Sister,” she finally said, her voice dull.

  “I’m not saying that your clan is wrong or mistaken, or even that you’re performing your role badly. I don’t even know you,” Ling Qi continued, hoping that she wasn’t speaking in vain. “Just think about why she asked you to speak plainly to her, you know? Meizhen needs friends more than she needs a servant.”


  Xiao Fen regarded her silently again, some of the indignation slipping away. “I understand your intentions, Senior Sister,” she said, briefly dipping her head.

  Ling Qi let out a sigh of relief and pressed on. “Any luck on following our advice?”


  Bai Xiao Fen looked faintly shamed. “There were several…… setbacks. However, my current sparring partner did not crumble under the cultivation regime I set him after I informed him of our friendship. I believe I have acquired an acceptable friend.”


  Ling Qi stared at her blanky, but it was Sixiang who gave voice to her thoughts.

  “.…… There are so many things going on between those words, I’m not sure where to start,” the spirit said dryly.

  “That is…… good,” Ling Qi said, trying to find a polite way to ask her question. “What is your friend like?” she finally settled on asking.

  Xiao Fen considered the question “Liu Xin is the son of a mortal cobbler from the Lower Rootways of Xiangmen before his talent was discovered. He is appropriately ruthless in combat, and neither cried when struck in the groin or other pain centers nor hesitated to attempt similar effective techniques on me.” Here, the younger girl paused again. “I find his wit and capacity for cutting retorts in the face of unearned pride amusing. He enjoys a light White Branch Tea.”


  Ling Qi took a deep breath in and then let it out. She wasn’t going to judge. Still, a commoner from the capital of Emerald Seas. She had to wonder what it was like in a place that had so much cultivator presence. “Well, I’m glad that’s coming along,” she said with a nod. “How are things with the other matter?”


  “My intelligence is somewhat limited given the division between first years and the older years, but it appears that Gan Guangli has organized a successful faction from the remains of your liege’s project. There is a lesser Jin scion among my peers, as well as several -” The younger girl faught down a sneer. “- ‘nobles’ from the Western Territories. The information I have so far is here.”


  Ling Qi accepted the tightly rolled scroll that the other girl offered, and upon drawing it into her ring, she drew a storage ring from between the layers of her gown. “Here. Lady Cai has put together dossiers on all the first year disciples from Emerald Seas and the plans to convince them to cooperate or stay on the sidelines. There is also a tidy supply of cultivation resources in here for Gan Guangli, as well as any lower realms he wants to dole them out to. You can tell him that she’ll have some talismans ready for next month too.”


  Xiao Fen nodded once sharply, accepting the ring. “I see. And our…… tutoring?”


  “We can get started now,” Ling Qi said lightly before slapping the stone she was sitting on. “Up you go, little brother. Nap time is over.”


  Ling Qi very carefully did not grin or otherwise react to the quickly choked off shriek of surprise that rose from Xiao Fen’s lips as the entire hillock heaved upward, dust and stone falling away to reveal her little brother.

  Zhen slithered free of their shell to loom over the both of them. “Big Sister is cruel, making us wait so long, then accusing us of napping. I had to put up with foolish Gui’s humming for an hour.”


  “I’m only teasing. Thanks for playing along, little brother,” Ling Qi said lightly, resting her hand on Zhen’s burning hot scales. She glanced over at Xiao Fen, who was doing her best to look wholly unruffled. “Ah, right, Xiao Fen, this is Zhengui. He’s not a cultivation site, but he will be taking us to one.” She had cleared it with Gu Xiulan already, but the site that Gu Yanmei had shared with Xiulan last year was their destination.

  Xiao Fen shot her a look of frustrated irritation. “This Xiao Fen greets the honorable…… Zhengui.” It looked like saying the name physically hurt her. Ling Qi thought that she really needed to lighten up. “Senior Sister, what are your plans?”


  “I thought I would follow Elder Jiao’s example,” Ling Qi mused as they began to move. They would get running soon, but for now, there was no point in returning Zhengui to her dantian. “So we’ll start with some hide and seek in the caves at the site, and then, I’ll assign you some tasks. It might not be my best skill anymore, but I am pretty good at stealth still.”


  Yes, inflicting Elder Jiao’s lessons on someone else, insofar as she could, would certainly be appropriate tutoring. After all, she was passing on the wisdom of a Sect elder!

  Threads 30 Adventures 1

  It was a little unsettling, Ling Qi found, to be looking at herself from multiple angles. To study and analyze her own appearance and aura with supernatural precision. To see the hairs that were out of place, the imperfections in the subtle applications of her cosmetics, and the unsteadiness and minute errors in the flows of her qi.

  Yet turning those lines of visions outward, she couldn’t help but feel that it – and the work she had put in to clear some meridians for the art – was worth it. The silent broken stones of the dream grove stood all around, and she knew them perfectly. If she had to fight here, she was certain that she could navigate it exactly and could read the way the flow of natural qi here would affect her techniques or allow her to hide her own aura in plain sight, completely without thought.

  She understood Xin’s words to her better now. This was the basest root of personal divination, a perfect analysis of her immediate surroundings, such that it became obvious what would occur in the moments to come. Of course, she was alone, and so it was easy to feel like she had mastered the techniques of the Curious Diviner’s Eye art, but despite her prodigious progress in nearly mastering the art in a single week, she knew that the art was only the introduction to divination.

  She could know which leaf would fall next from the tree to her right with decent accuracy, but if she tried to predict the next action of the sparrow perched in its branches…… Well, her success rate was still abysmal.

  “Big Sister, are you done sitting around playing with lights yet?” One of her points of vision swiveled to see Hanyi sitting atop a crumbling stump of a wall, kicking her legs in irritation. Ling Qi could not help but notice the snarls in her qi, clogging the meridians in her body related to motion and movement. “I’m pretty sure you’re supposed to be going to meet that weird guy now.”


  Ling Qi blinked, and the ‘eye’ constructs of her new art vanished in glittering light, collapsing her vision back to a single perspective. “Is it that late already?” she asked, squinting up at the cloudy sky.

  “It’s been hours,” Hanyi said with the sort of put-upon exasperation that only the young could manage.

  Ling Qi grimaced. She had only shifted her cultivation plans to prioritize the Curious Diviner’s Eye art because of Xuan Shi’s invitation in the first place; it would be embarrassing to miss her appointment because of her cultivation. She had been quite surprised a few nights ago to find the odd boy on her doorstep with a request, but he had helped her enough in the last year that she wasn’t going to refuse, even if the thing he wanted assistance with wasn’t an apparent trial site.

  “We should get moving then,” Ling Qi said. “Thank you, Hanyi.”


  “Of course,” the young girl preened at her thanks. “You’re gonna have to wake up that big doofus though.”


  “What happened to Zhengui?” Ling Qi asked curiously.

  “He ate and fell asleep,” Hanyi huffed. “See if I sing a bunch of deer to him again,” she grumbled darkly as she hopped off the wall to lead the way.

  Ling Qi chuckled. Of course it was something like that. With a thought, she gave Sixiang a mental nudge to stir them from their own cultivation. She got a blurry sort of response, something like “five more minutes” if translated into words. Ling Qi let out a huff. There were some things she would rather Sixiang not pick up from her.

  ***

  With her spirits gathered up, she soon reached the place where Xuan Shi had asked her to meet him, near a ruined old road that wound a ways into the mountains. When she arrived, she found Xuan Shi leaning against one of the weathered distance markers, paging through a thin volume.

  “I hope I did not make you wait long,” Ling Qi said as she approached. She had chosen to travel on the ground to preserve qi and to make it easier for Hanyi to skip off and follow her for a while when she got tired of bantering with Zhengui in her head.

  The book snapped shut in his hands, and Xuan Shi straightened up, giving her a nod of greeting. “The baroness did not delay unduly,” he replied. “This one thanks you for your agreement.”


  “There is no need to call me that,” Ling Qi chided. “And I would hardly refuse a request like this. How did you find this place anyway?”


  Xuan Shi glanced to the side, tugging his hat down to cover his eyes. “.…… Study of a text may reveal many hidden things.”


  Sixiang mused.

  Ling Qi narrowed her eyes, thinking back to the many times she had seen Xuan Shi in the Outer Sect archives. “Just what sort of text?” Ling Qi asked. “I might need to start reading more.”


  “This one discovered a cipher within a certain series of novels. The final volume was filed among the shelves of the Inner Sect,” Xuan Shi answered after a moment.

  “Huh. I never would have guessed,” she said, bemused. “Do you mean those books I saw you reading in the archive last year? Why would they have a cipher leading to a place here?”


  “In the days before the Great Sects, the author resided here when not voyaging himself.” She could detect a hint of excitement in the boy’s tone as he began to speak on the subject. “This one sought out placement in this Sect for that purpose.”


  “So you figured out the cipher before you ever came here?” she asked. She supposed that Xuan Shi really was a smart guy.

  “Yes. Though the goal remained shrouded, the path, of course, intrigued this one,” Xuan Shi agreed, perhaps a bit too quickly.

  “You’re a bad liar, mister,” Hanyi said, emerging from the trees behind Ling Qi. She then shot Ling Qi a dirty look. “Big Sister is mean, walking so fast on her stupid long legs.”


  Ling Qi shot her a cheeky grin, which earned her a frustrated huff, but in her head, Zhengui said suspiciously,

  Ling Qi rather doubted it was a dangerous lie, and she really did need to look into why Zhengui always seemed so snappish around Xuan Shi. However, Hanyi wasn’t wrong. She gave Xuan Shi an expectant look all the same.

  He sighed. “This one merely wished to read the final two volumes, which were archived within the Sect alone.”


  That was kind of a silly reason, but it was hardly the worst reason ever. Even if it was weird to imagine caring so much about a book as to travel all the way across the Empire to get at it.

  “We had better get going then,” she said instead of voicing her thoughts

  “Indeed,” he said, seeming relieved. “Adventure awaits.”


  The odd boy’s barely concealed eagerness was kind of infectious.

  ***

  The path was not a long one.

  Ling Qi followed Xuan Shi down the winding remains of the ruined road into a tiny vale between two large peaks. The road soon came to run beside a tiny stream which bore the signs of having been a greater flow in the past. At the bottom of the vale, the road reached its end in a crumbling structure of stone.

  At a first glance, Ling Qi had been unimpressed, thinking the old ruin to be their destination, but it quickly became clear that it wasn’t. Old but well maintained flows of qi radiated through earth and stone, forming the shapes of a complex array that once she noticed, she could not fail to see running through the entire vale.

  “So, what’s the trick?” Ling Qi asked as they strode into a crumbling hall, the faint light of afternoon streaming through the holes in the rooftop. Xuan Shi still seemed confident and showed no sign of needing aid, so she restrained herself from using techniques for now, but she was curious as to what this huge array could be for.

  “The appearance of destitution deflects avarice, but the ruin is merely the door,” Xuan Shi explained, words punctuated by the tapping of his staff on stone.

  As they reached the end of the hall, he swept the staff out and tapped a handful of stones in sequence, and the wall faded away before her eyes, the thick qi of earth and stone dispersing and transforming into the qi of air and wind. Beyond lay a flight of stairs that, if the building was as it appeared, would have led up into open air.

  Mounting the stairs, they came instead to a high ceilinged room, although a great skylight in its center allowed light to enter. Here, the floor was paved with incongruously well maintained tiling, the jade gleaming as if it had been newly placed. For all their polish though, the tiles were arranged chaotically without any thought for aesthetics. Ling Qi narrowed her eyes, reading the lingering qi in the stone.

  “It’s a big puzzle,” Ling Qi said, bemused. The floor was grooved such that the tiles could be slid around into new positions using two empty tiles, but what was the goal?

  “One which this one knows the solution to and has completed before,” Xuan Shi agreed. “The colors present are those of the voyaging hero’s ship. The way does not remain open however. Miss Ling, this one will have to ask that you follow instruction.”


  Sixiang said, amused.

  “Ling Qi is fine,” she said absently. “Alright, just tell me what to do.” It would take much longer with only one person sliding tiles.

  With Xuan Shi already knowing the solution, it didn’t take too long to move the tiles, making them form, instead of a chaotic mess, a striped pattern with an eight-pointed white star at its center. The moment the last tile clicked into place, a flash of qi ran through the puzzle and mist boiled up from the star in a roiling column only to quickly slow and flow into a coherent shape. Stairs formed of cloud and mist now rose in the center of the room, rising up to the skylight.

  “Is there any reason why we couldn’t have just flown up there?” Ling Qi asked.

  Xuan Shi gave her a mildly aggrieved look. “Without the stair, you would only exit the ruin.”


  Hanyi grumbled in her head.

  Zhengui added worriedly.

  If need be, she could always ride Zhengui back to earth, she thought, which seemed to mollify him as she began to mount the stairs beside Xuan Shi. The cloud felt odd. It was as solid as stone but also slightly springy and smooth as silk. As they passed through the skylight, Ling Qi found herself in a brightly lit room seemingly carved from clouds as well. Before them was a stone gate, and in its center, rather than a latch or a lock, was the symbol of Yin and Yang with circular arrays the size of a hand where the small circles of color would normally be.

  “This is why you invited me, huh?” Ling Qi asked.

  “The way will open only for a man and a woman together,” Xuan Shi agreed, stepping toward the gate. “This one does not understand the purpose of such a lock, but perhaps it will be explained beyond.”


  Ling Qi eyed the symbol, briefly scanning it for any hostile-seeming characters, but it seemed like a fairly standard locking formation, just with a weird key condition. She saw no connecting characters that might set off some other effect, and she was fairly sure Xuan Shi would have already checked more carefully than she could.

  Stepping forward, Ling Qi raised her hand and placed it in the array on the Yin side of the formation, while Xuan Shi did the same with the Yang side. The arrays lit up as they both laid their palms flat against the gate, and then, with a grinding groan, the gates opened inward.