Bai Meizhen looked somewhat scuffed, her snow white gown dirtied at the hem, but otherwise, none the worse for the wear. She looked up as Ling Qi began to pick her way across the room.

  “Ling Qi,” she greeted, rising to her feet in a single graceful movement. “I am glad to see you well. I did not expect to be separated.”


  Ling Qi felt relief as she approached her friend. She had been hoping that they hadn’t been sent to entirely separate places. She glanced at her hands, which were still covered in filth, and grimaced.

  “Yeah, I didn’t end up in the best situation.” She came to a stop a short distance away from her friend and the shore. “Where is Cui? Is she alright?”


  Meizhen paused before responding. “She was wounded in my initial encounter; I am letting her rest in my dantian. It is of no concern,” she replied dismissively, turning her eyes away to peer around the cavern. “There is a door on the other side, but I believe this pool holds something of use. I suggest we investigate it first.” Meizhen gestured for Ling Qi to come examine it.

  Ling Qi took a few steps forward then stopped. “Do you need some healing salve for her?” she asked, eyeing Bai Meizhen in confusion. “I would have thought you had some, but……”


  “Perhaps later,” the pale girl replied. “For now, it is more important that we puzzle this pool out so that we may leave this place. I fear the creatures that dug these tunnels may return.”


  The idea made sense, but something wasn’t right. If it were anyone else, even Ling Qi or herself, she could imagine Bai Meizhen dismissing a bit of hurt in favor of pursuing a goal…… but not for Cui and not so easily. Bai Meizhen was not very expressive, but she couldn’t imagine the girl would truly look so unconcerned about her cousin being hurt.

  A knife slipped surreptitiously into her hand. “I think it’s more important that we help Cui first. Why don’t you bring her out?”


  Bai Meizhen scowled at her, studying her face as if deliberating on something. Then she lunged.

  Ling Qi’s eyes widened and she backpedaled. Her face paled as Bai Meizhen’s face tore in half like it was made of wet paper with a terrible ripping sound. It exposed a maw filled with sharp twitching mandibles, overshadowed by the much larger ones that erupted from where Meizhen’s cheeks had been. Ling Qi ducked under the snapping sword-length mandibles and leapt back, gaining distance from the Meizhen thing.

  The lake rippled as thrashing, chitinous coils emerged carried on dozens of clattering legs. The thing’s mask – and she hoped to every great spirit she could name that a mask was all it was – now hung in two limp halves from either side of its wide upper body. The ‘hood’ of chitin formed something that looked like a half-melted human face above its chittering mouth, and dark eye sockets burned with emerald fire.

  ‘
,’ the thing’s voice hissed in her mind, making her feel as if bugs were crawling over her skin. “
.’ The thing’s statement was punctuated by half of ‘Meizhen’ falling to the shore with a meaty thud and slowly dissolving into black sludge.

  “Like I’d buy that,” Ling Qi snapped. “Meizhen would destroy you.” Ling Qi was confident in her assessment despite the thing’s horrifying appearance. The thing’s body was thicker than her torso and several times longer, and she had a feeling it was very fast for its size. Even as she backed up, a wicked spike of a stinger at the end of its body was emerging from the pool.

  “How about this? You leave me alone and I won’t kill you like I did the rest of the bugs down here!” Ling Qi bluffed.

  The thing hissed, and Ling Qi shuddered at the fury in its mental voice. ‘
It raised its body higher, towering over her. “
’ Some kind of disgusting, sticky black fluid dripped from its maw to sizzle on the stone.

  Well, she didn’t really think that would work. Ling Qi needed to figure out what her plan was though. She had fifteen meters of starting distance from the thing, which left her a good twenty five meters from any of the walls.

  Ling Qi’s flute appeared in her hand, and she began to play as she kicked off the ground, jumping backwards and away from the monster as the mists began to roll forth. Ling Qi mingled the melodies and strengthened the outflow of her qi, thickening the mist around the grotesque spirit to confuse its senses.

  ‘
’ The thing’s chittering voice scratched at her mind as it surged forward, dozens of legs clattering on the stone, her qi sliding off it like water from a duck’s feathers. Rather than charge into melee though, it reared its head back, that awful maw gaping wide and spraying a gush of inky black gunk that stunk of rot at her.

  Time seemed to slow as she traced the arc of the spray and determined that she wouldn’t be able to move in time, even with her darkness-enhanced speed. Her qi surged, cool sable energy flooding her limbs, and she flickered, the gunk passing through where she had been standing, then dodged to the right to avoid the slick. It was still close. Her foot caught the edge of the gooey liquid, and she nearly tripped as she felt the thong of her sandal tear under the pressure of her continued movement, leaving her footwear behind, glued to the floor.

  She turned the stumble into a graceful spin away from the spirit as she continued to play, making another attempt at entrapping the thing in her mist. This time, she felt her qi take hold, and the worm let out a chittering screech of frustration as the mist thickened around it, muffling its senses and causing the music to seem to echo from seemingly everywhere at once.

  ‘
it hissed, coiling in place and peering into the mist. Emerald eyes flared with fell light. ‘


  The entire, monstrous thing crouched and then leapt toward her, mandibles extended. Ling Qi wove out of the way as the creature crashed down against the floor with stone-cracking force, her melody never faltering. Despite being close enough for the wind of its passage to send her dress and hair fluttering, she remained calm thanks to the weekly combat practice with Han Jian’s group. She knew that interrupting her song would likely spell the end for her. She could not afford that so she ran, darting away to hide in the mist.

  The skittering horror righted itself as she vanished into the mist, its mandibles snapping together in frustration. It raised its head, scenting the air as it scuttled in a circle, searching for her while its chittering took on a higher pitch. Ling Qi was hidden for the moment though, which meant she was free to change her song, adding the threatening notes of Dissonance to the melody.

  The creature shrieked in surprise and fury as shapes formed in the mist around it and struck, phantom claws scoring lines across its chitin. The worm’s retaliation struck only air and mist, dispersing the construct, but it was useless as other phantoms continued to form and attack. Ling Qi felt a savage satisfaction as she watched the thing thrash and suffer. It curled in on itself as she circled it at a distance, protecting its more vulnerable parts from attack, but it seemed that the creature wasn’t out of tricks yet.

  ‘We c

  the thing hissed. ‘
’ Ling Qi winced as the voice in her head rose to an ear-splitting screech. The worm’s eyes burned, giving off a haze of qi as it swung its upper body around and fixated on her, charging headlong toward her.

  Still, she had given herself space, enough for one more melody to add to her song. Her fingers danced over the holes in her flute, and she began to play its elegy. Ling Qi had been hoping to conserve qi, but she would rather ensure that this thing bled out with as little chance of harming her as was possible. Ling Qi avoided the shower of disgusting fluid that sprayed from its maw with near contemptuous ease even as Crescent’s Grace faded entirely. She circled away, still playing as her constructs continued their assault, cracking and scoring chitin where they struck.

  The fight entered a death spiral from there, the increasingly incoherent worm spasming under the constant assaults as she continued to play keep away with it. Its limbs began to grow sluggish in their movements, and its attacks slowed while greenish-yellow ichor began to leak from cracks in its joints and shell. It cursed and railed against her, but even when she began to hear fear in its mental voice, she didn’t let up and she didn’t let it escape. This thing had worn her friend’s face and threatened to eat her; she had no mercy for it.

  As it finally collapsed to the ground with a crash, she kept playing, allowing her constructs to continue striking it as it twitched and spasmed on the ground, letting out gurgling cries as its ichor pooled beneath it. Even when it stopped moving entirely, she didn’t stop for nearly a minute. Eventually, she lowered her flute, allowing the melody to fade as she flicked a knife into her hand and cautiously approached.

  She wasn’t a fool. The knife flew before she closed within ten meters, burying itself in one of the creature’s now dull eye sockets. It didn’t so much as twitch. Ling Qi finally allowed herself to relax, approaching and ripping her knife free. She studied the thing’s corpse, and soon saw what she was looking for, a wide crack on its lower body, torn wide by a dozen attacks, glittered with light.

  She grimaced as she used her knife to pry its exoskeleton open further and rolled up her sleeve before plunging her hand into its foul innards. Her hand came back clutching a core the size of a child’s fist but also covered in truly foul-smelling goo.

  Disgusted, she slipped the core into storage, keeping her flute in her hand for the moment. She glanced at the still, silver pool in the dissipating mist. Ling Qi wanted to wash her hand clean, but she was leery of touching the silver liquid. She was also miffed to find that her sandal was irrecoverable, leaving her with one foot bare.

  On the one hand, the pool might have something useful within it or was useful in and of itself. On the other hand, the worm had been trying to get her to examine it so it could be a trap. On further investigation, the face-stealing creature’s claim of a door did turn out to be true. It was a blocky, ominous-looking thing of black stone with sharp, seemingly dangerous characters carved on it that she didn’t recognize.

  Ling Qi let out a weary breath. She’d have to choose which one to investigate first.

  Threads 51-Downtime 2

  Ling Qi peered into the distance at the smoking crater in the ground, the glassy glimmer of melted dirt and shattered stone surrounding it. Then she shook her head. “Sorry, little brother. You still missed.”


  “Ugh, stupid Zhen,” Gui grumbled. The giant tortoise lowered his head and swallowed another massive mouthful of dirt, stones, and plant matter from the miniature mountain of “ammunition” they had prepared.

  “Silence, foolish Gui!” Zhen hissed as the air around him rippled with heat. “I, Zhen, merely need a little more practice!”


  Ling Qi watched with a critical eye, flickers of silver marking the use of her perception techniques as she examined the processes of the technique Zhengui was trying to develop. He was not very good at taking in earth qi, so for now, they were using this crude method, but once he had mastered the more mundane aspects, they would have to work on the internal ones. Perhaps she could ask Xuan Shi? He had much more experience with earth arts.

  “You ready with the target, Sixiang?” she asked, resting her hand on Gui’s scaly head as he swallowed the “fuel.” Molten glass dripped from the corners of Gui’s mouth. It was cute.

  “Got ya covered, boss,” Sixiang said, and in the distance, Ling Qi saw the clay target, a simple, unadorned disc, spinning and floating in midair. The wind coiled around the disc, preparing to fling it into the distance. Sixiang was getting better at manipulating the wind, but so far they had not come up with something that could be called a technique.

  “Alright. Fire when ready,” Ling Qi said with a grin.

  Zhen’s throat bulged as the missile formed and traveled up toward his mouth, gathering fiery qi along the way, and the disc was flung away. A moment later, he rose to his full height and spat, and a burning mass of molten earth and ash erupted. The missile was roughly a meter across in size and arced high through the air trailing ash and rippling heat. It arced down a hundred meters distant, and the qi contained within churned. In a flash of fiery light and molten shrapnel, it exploded.

  “Give the boy a prize!” Sixiang announced cheerfully, and Ling Qi grinned as well. The disc was gone, blasted into burnt fragments.

  “Ha! It is done!” Zhen crowed.

  “Hmph. Zhen should not be so proud. Sixiang is taking it easy.” Gui taunted, even as he eyed the pile of dirt and stones with distaste.

  “It’s a good first step,” Ling Qi soothed as Zhen turned outraged eyes on his other half. “We’ll work on consistency, and then, we can move onto harder targets.”


  However, before they could continue with their practice, Ling Qi found her attention drawn away. She turned to look to her right as she felt Hanyi’s qi approaching. Even from here, she could feel the spirit’s anger and embarrassment, long before she spotted her trudging up the hill where Zhengui practiced his techniques.

  Hanyi was soaked to the bone. Her dress hung heavy from her shoulders, stiff and covered in frost and ice. Icicles dangled from the hems, clinking musically as she walked, and her hair was muddy and full of water weeds.

  Ling Qi was at her side in the blink of an eye, crossing the intervening distance as little more than a blur. “Hanyi, what happened?” Ling Qi asked, crouching down to look at her. Ling Qi could see the fading remains of bruises and scrapes on the young spirit’s arms and legs.

  “I was just playing, and this stupid jerk knocked me off the side of the waterfall! And then this spirit got mad ‘cause I froze his dumb pond,” Hanyi sniffled out. “Then I had to walk all the way out here ‘cause I can’t get into the cave without you.”


  Ling Qi grimaced. “Sorry about that,” she apologized. The locks on the disciples’ homes were not something she could modify. “But who knocked you off a cliff, and why?”


  “I dunno,” Hanyi pouted. “I was just playing and singing by the stream, and they got mad at me for making noise and kicked me off the cliffside.”


  Ling Qi frowned. She sensed something a little evasive in Hanyi’s tone.

  “What?! Big Sister, we need to go beat them up!” Zhengui announced, apparently having caught the story as he trundled over. “We can’t just let people mess with family.”


  “Doofus,” Hanyi muttered under her breath, looking away briefly. She quickly brightened up though, looking pleadingly up at Ling Qi. “Yeah, you should beat them up, Big Sister!”


  Sixiang whispered dryly in her thoughts.

  “I still need to know who it was,” Ling Qi pointed out.

  “Well……” Hanyi began sheepishly.

  ***

  Ling Qi did not know what she had expected, but it was not this.

  Standing before the perpetrator, she looked into Yu Nuan’s eyes and saw stubborn determination mixed with fear. The girl looked much the same as she had when Ling Qi had challenged her last. She had a new set of piercings in her right ear, and some of the others had been changed for studs of other colors, but that was the extent of her physical changes.

  “What is this I hear about you knocking my spirit off this cliff?” LIng Qi asked coolly, gesturing to her right where the clear waters tumbled over the cliffside, churning up the pond below. Chunks of slow melting ice still floated on its weedy surface. Hanyi peered out from behind her, and Ling Qi did not miss the way she pulled a face and stuck out her tongue at the other disciple.

  “I lost my temper,” Yu Nuan replied defensively. “But that little…… Your spirit has been bugging me all month, interrupting my practice and trying to challenge me, and when she scared off the spirit I was trying to bind……”


  Left unsaid was what Ling Qi read between the lines. Yu Nuan had assumed Ling Qi was trying to mess with her and was now preparing herself for the consequences of rising to the bait. Ling Qi eyed Hanyi, who huffed.

  “Like that’s a good excuse for attacking me like a big jerk. You knocked me off a cliff!”


  Yu Nuan’s pierced eyebrow twitched violently. “We’re all third realms here,” she growled. “Don’t pretend you’re made of glass.” She crossed her arms and looked defiantly at Ling Qi. “I’m not gonna apologize.”


  “Hanyi, why have you been following Disciple Yu around and challenging her?” Ling Qi asked suspiciously.

  The young spirit looked briefly furtive, but a hard look from Ling Qi made her darting eyes still. “I wanted to beat her. Everyone says Big Sister crushed her so easily, so I thought I should be able to win too.” She scuffed her foot in the dirt. “I kept losing.”


  There was another violent twitch of an eyebrow from Yu Nuan. Ling Qi felt bad for the other girl. Hanyi had caused the two of them trouble. If, or rather, when, it got around that Ling Qi had allowed one of her spirits to get attacked by a lower ranked disciple, it would give her detractors even more ammunition if she didn’t do anything about it. Ling Qi rubbed her forehead in frustration before she caught herself.

  Straightening up, she looked the other girl in the eyes and measured her wary stance. “I will need an apology,” she stated baldly, causing the other girl’s shoulders to stiffen. “However, Hanyi, you need to stop-”


  “No!” Hanyi interrupted stubbornly, stamping her foot. “I’m gonna beat her! She’s a cheater, and she made fun of Momma’s song.”


  “I said you’re bad at it, you little snot,” Yu Nuan shot back. “If you’re just copying someone else, of course you’d be bad.”


  Hanyi puffed her cheeks out angrily, and Ling Qi restrained a grimace.

  Sixiang pointed out.

  Ling Qi thought. It was a weird and unwelcome thought, but not one Ling Qi could avoid having.

  “Yu Nuan, I will repeat: I will need an apology, but I am willing to compensate you for lost time and trouble.” She held up a hand to quiet Hanyi and to her, she said, “If you want to challenge someone, ask me first, and I’ll help you arrange it.”


  “Then I wanna challenge her now. She’s a cheater!” Hanyi said, pointing at Yu Nuan.

  “And why should I accept?” the other disciple replied, crossing her arms. “I’ve already lost enough time on this.”


  Ling Qi thought and then offered, “If you win, I’ll add on helping you wrangle a spirit since you’re having some trouble on that front.”


  The other girl stared her down, only briefly looking at Hanyi, which seemed to infuriate the young spirit even more. “I’m guessing this deal is only good if it comes with that apology, huh?” she asked.

  “Yes,” Ling Qi replied bluntly.

  “Fine,” Yu Nuan said. “You got a deal. What’s the time frame?”


  Ling Qi sighed. The annoying political bits had been smoothed over, but as she watched Hanyi out of the corner of her eye, she knew that there were other things she had been neglecting. She would have her chance since she would certainly be helping Hanyi with her composition.

  ***

  “Do you understand why I’m angry?” Ling Qi asked.

  “No, I don’t see what the big deal is,” Hanyi complained.

  Ling Qi rubbed her forehead in frustration. She sat on her bed, looking down at Hanyi, who knelt on the floor, looking recalcitrant. This wasn’t a conversation that Ling Qi wanted to be overheard. “Hanyi, you can’t just go around bothering people whenever you want. You could get me in a lot of trouble, you know?”


  “That’s why I challenged someone you already beat,” Hanyi argued. “She doesn’t have any strong friends either. Big Sis is way too nice. You didn’t have to give her anything.”


  Ling Qi grimaced. Even with the windfall she had gained from the sale of the mirror she had found in the Weilu tomb, giving up a green stone to Yu Nuan had been almost physically painful. It had, however, finally seemed to convince the other girl that this wasn’t some elaborate bullying plot. With her cooperation, Ling Qi could just pass the whole thing off as some friendly competition when the story hit the rumor mills.

  “That’s not a good reason, Hanyi. When someone tells you they don’t want to play, you have to stop,” Ling Qi explained sternly. For a moment, she struggled to articulate her thoughts into words, to put this in a way that Hanyi would understand. A whisper of inspiration from Sixiang helped her organize her thoughts.

  “That is not the sort of image Lady Cai wants us to project, and I also do not want to be that kind of person,” Ling Qi chided. “It’s not just a matter of strength. Reputation is important too. I trusted you to handle yourself well. That’s why I let you go where you wanted to go. Now I don’t know if I can do that.”


  “I still don’t get it,” she sulked. “I was just playing. You didn’t have any problem bullying those dumb stream spirits so your real little sister could play.”


  “That’s -” Ling Qi began to retort, only to shut her mouth with a click before she could finish the sentence. It was different. Those were just simple first realm spirits, no more intelligent than an animal, and Biyu was helpless. It wasn’t the same, but would Hanyi see it that way? The young spirit had a very stark and simple worldview.

  “Dealing with pe-humans is different,” Ling Qi finally said. “I know you might not understand well, but the ways we deal with each other are more complicated. It’s easy to mess up. It wasn’t a big deal this time, but in the future, you could really end up hurting me. Please just ask me before you do something to a human, okay? I promise I’ll listen and try to explain what you should do. And if someone really hurts you or bullies you, I’ll do everything I can to crush them.”


  Spirits above, she wished that she could pass the responsibility to Meizhen or Cai Renxiang, or even Xiulan. Someone who actually knew what they were doing.

  “Fine,” Hanyi said after a moment. “M’sorry I got you in trouble,” she added in a mumble.

  Somehow, seeing Hanyi finally looking crestfallen and apologetic wasn’t satisfying. Ling Qi slid off of her bed to kneel in front of Hanyi, her gown pooling around her knees as she tentatively rested her hands on Hanyi’s shoulders. “Why Yu Nuan?” she asked softly. “I still don’t really understand. Why have you been doing this?”


  Hanyi mumbled something unintelligible, staring at the floor. Ling Qi gently squeezed her shoulders, and the young spirit spoke up. “I want to be strong. If it was someone you beat, I…… I thought I could win. Even if I wasn’t as good as you, I would still be keeping up. But I couldn’t. I lost, and I shamed Momma’s songs. I told Momma I would be strong and pretty and smart like her, and I’m just NOT!” Her voice rose until she was practically shouting by the end.

  “Hanyi-” Ling Qi began, but she was swiftly interrupted.

  “I’m slow, and I’m heavy, and I’m still weak! That girl was right. I can’t sing right, and I can’t move right, and…… I’m nothing like Momma, and I should have just stayed with her so she could still……”


  Ling Qi pulled Hanyi into a hug, cutting off her increasingly hysterical words. “Hanyi, Zeqing wanted you to live. Everything else comes second to that,” Ling Qi said with complete conviction as the little girl in her arms trembled.

  “It’s not enough,” Hanyi cried, her voice muffled by Ling Qi’s gown. “Momma’s gone. I have to- I need to be like her or……”


  “Or nothing,” Ling Qi finished firmly. “You are Hanyi. You aren’t your mother. But one of the reasons she did what she did was so that

  could go out and be yourself, and not just Zeqing’s daughter. You don’t have to be just like her to make her proud.”


  She loosened her grip on Hanyi, allowing some distance to come between them again. Hanyi’s eyes were reddened by tears. “I can’t compare to Momma though,” she said. “If I’m not trying to be like her, then who should I be like?”


  “I’m not saying you can’t be like Zeqing, but you need to focus on

  strengths, and build yourself up,” Ling Qi replied gently. “You’re an energetic and forthright girl. Maybe you should accept that and -”


  “I dunno,” Sixiang said brightly, timing their interruption perfectly. “Do you really think she can turn being a stubborn brat into something productive?”


  Hanyi scowled at the empty air. “Who asked you! If Big Sister thinks I can, then I can. Don’t interrupt Ling Qi!”


  Ling Qi sent Sixiang a silent thanks as she stood and offered a hand to Hanyi. “Anyway, since the serious talk is done, there’s no reason to hang around in this dull little cave. Will you take a walk with me, Hanyi? We can talk about ideas for your composition.”


  Hanyi took her hand and rose to her feet. The young spirit’s smile was still a little brittle. “Yes! With Big Sister’s help, I’ll definitely make something good.”


  Ling Qi was careful not to let her relief show on her face. That had been a terribly difficult conversation. She led Hanyi toward the door. Some nice music chat would be a nice break.

  “Big Sister?” Hanyi drew her attention as they approached the door. For once, her tone and posture were almost shy. “Um…… You said I should focus on my strength, but what do you think that is?”


  Ling Qi thought about it. “I think it’s your curiosity and desire to explore,” she said gently. “I remember the first time we met, it was because you snuck out.”


  Ultimately, she thought that kind of impulse in Hanyi was probably a sign that the break from Zeqing was inevitable, even if she had accelerated it.

  “Exploring, huh?” Hanyi asked, twisting a strand of hair between her fingers. “Yeah…… Yeah! I can definitely make a song about that!”


  “That’s the spirit,” Ling Qi chuckled, ruffling her hair. “Let’s start working on some compositions then.”