Studying through all of the security formations laid upon Wen Ai’s home was incredibly tedious, but if she was going to bypass them without breaking or defacing the schemes, it was an unfortunate necessity. She still wasn’t a fan of spending an hour in a cramped booth with a guy she didn’t particularly like. At least he wasn’t a creep like Huang Da.

  Once the review was done, she got to work on her other mundane tasks, including going out to hunt and stockpile cores for Zhengui so that he wouldn’t go hungry while she was cultivating. She would have to make sure to ration them out though lest the little glutton eat them all in one go.

  She supposed that might be a little unfair. He was growing at a pretty fast pace so his appetite wasn’t just gluttony for the sake of it. When he had hatched, Zhengui could be held in one hand, but he was now almost at the point of spanning both. Zhengui seemed to have found the trick of sitting on her shoulder without falling off of it by this point so she didn’t need to awkwardly carry him around by hand.

  The day passed quickly as she gathered cores and spiritually infused fruits and wood for Zhengui. Once he was safely and comfortably asleep in his kiln, Ling Qi made her exit, slipping out of the girls’ residential area to head higher up the mountain where the older Outer Disciples lived.

  Like the first years’ living area, it lay nestled in a small valley behind powerful warding totems, which thankfully didn’t bar her passage. The layout was different from what she was used to; there were fewer homes overall, but none of the truly tiny ones like the hovel Su Ling and Li Suyin had been living in prior to truce end. She supposed that made sense. Many of the shops in the market had attached living spaces so maybe other older outer disciples lived outside of the residential area set aside for them.

  Ling Qi focused on the mission at hand as she flitted over the rooftops, unnoticed by the handful of girls out and about in the neatly paved streets. There were signs of battle damage here and there and at least one home too broken to live in, but the damaged areas all seemed to be under the process of repair despite the fact that Cai Renxiang’s authority didn’t extend this far yet.

  Ling Qi scanned ahead carefully before each jump, checking for signs of security. This caution lead her on a roundabout path to a cozy home in the upper left quadrant of the area. Ling Qi briefly wondered when she had come to see a stand alone home larger and more opulent than any home in the outer reaches of Tonghou as ‘cozy’.

  Dismissing that thought, she carefully observed the residence from a nearby rooftop then slowly circled it as she confirmed the information Fu Xiang had given her. The information she had been given seemed pretty accurate.

  As Fu Xiang had informed her, the home appeared empty in the early hours of twilight; Wen Ai typically remained out cultivating until well past midnight. Ling Qi would have plenty of time to slip through the defenses, and she waited for the last light of sunset to slip from the sky and shroud her in comforting darkness before she began.

  First came the alarm laid around the perimeter. It was much more secure than the basic formation she knew. The one she knew could be bypassed with a bit of simple qi control, but Wen Ai’s alarm required Ling Qi to carefully watch the flow of qi through the encircling scheme and control her own to match its frequency. Even with that, it was only possible to bypass the alarm by entering at just the right spot.

  Ling Qi passed into the yard without a sound and pressed herself against the wall, hidden by one of the decorative flower bushes that dotted the girl’s outer yard. The next obstacle was her best point of ingress, a small window in the home’s kitchen meant to let out heat and smoke. It was too small for anyone but a small child to fit through, especially with the wooden bars breaking it up. Yet for her, it wasn’t an obstacle at all.

  Ling Qi had told Fu Xiang that she would enter through a larger window on the other side of the home, taking advantage of a flaw in the trap formations, but this was better. Qi flowed smoothly in her channels, and her limbs grew blurry and grey. The moment she had sight of the kitchen, she was inside. Blinking from one place to another like that was still very disorienting though, and she wavered for a moment before regaining her form.

  Even leaving aside the difficulty of placing too many formations in close proximity, wholly lining one’s home with traps was a good way to end up having one of them explode in the occupant’s face. Ling Qi She would be mostly safe until she got to opening the chest containing the box of letters now.

  She crept through the halls, idly noting the many flowers in vases, hanging from planters on the ceiling and more. Wen Ai seemed to have a theme, albeit understated.

  Wen Ai’s bedroom was tidy and neat with minimal furnishings. It pained Ling Qi to ignore the chest in the corner and a closet full of no doubt expensive clothes, but she had a simple goal and that was to acquire the letters and replace them with the fakes without being noticed. Perhaps she could look into doing a few more personal heists in the future.

  Her target lay under the girl’s bed, and soon, she had the polished wooden footlocker dragged out where she could get a good look at it. This was going to be the tricky part. The formation seal on its lock was no joke.

  Ling Qi had never been so thankful to have hairpins sturdy enough to withstand the rigors of a cultivator’s life. She felt the tense qi of the trap waver on the edge of going off several times when her control wavered or when her makeshift tools scraped wrongly. Eventually, the lock clicked open, and she was able to access the items inside the footlocker. In addition to the jade lockbox with the letters, Ling Qi could see pieces of beautiful jade jewelry, a small hand sized painting of a girl she presumed to be Wen Ai and a boy she did not know, and most temptingly, a single jade slip. It took all her willpower not to snatch it, but she had a job to do and a missing jade slip would defeat it. Ling Qi quietly removed the box of letters and placed the one full of blank fakes in its place then closed the locker, the formation’s automatic re-locking working in her favor as she slid the locker back under the bed.

  With her target secure in her storage ring, Ling Qi slipped out of the house, her heart pounding in her ears. That had been a whole different sort of tense than the mission in the spider nest but satisfying all the same. She resisted the urge to hurry as she sneaked back out of the residential district via the sheer cliffs at the rear, aided by short bursts of flight from her new gown. The feeling of flight was intoxicating, but she didn’t dare hold it for more than a few seconds at a time for fear of draining her qi overmuch.

  Once she reached the top of the cliff, she took a few minutes to meditate and absorb starlight into her dantian to replenish her qi before heading to the arranged meeting point for the handoff. She met Fu Xiang precisely where he said he would be, in a secluded hollow on the east side of the mountain, and handed over the box. In return, she received a map and a page of notes.

  Ling Qi took a brief look at it, but it seemed legitimate. The map pinpointed the location of the trial as being near the peak of the mountain, and the notes appeared to be a description of the warped space around it. Apparently, the warp turned the small network of crevices in which the trial entrance was located into a maze. The trial itself would accept up to two people at once but no more. It was more than she expected frankly so she wouldn’t complain.

  The two of them parted ways amicably enough, but as Fu Xiang pushed his glasses up with a finger, moonlight caught on his lenses, concealing his eyes behind the gleam. Ling Qi found Fu Xiang’s wide smile of satisfaction disturbing.

  Threads 87 Household 3

  The Sect’s war footing was not immediately obvious here at the foot of White Cloud Mountain, at least, not if she wasn’t looking for it. The town guards had been supplemented by soldiers, and their equipment had seen recent upgrades and refitting. Beneath the paved streets of the inner district of the sect town, dormant formation work hummed with new life, and on the walls, the squads on duty had been subtly reinforced.

  As for the people themselves, they seemed remarkably unworried. The general atmosphere was one of wary cheer. It made Ling Qi wonder how much information the mortals in town really got from the Sect. Ling Qi didn’t say anything about it to her mother; Ling Qi suspected that she already knew more than most.

  The market itself was a familiar sight, a square of beaten dirt ringed by stalls and street hawkers and crowded with people. It had its differences though, and she did not think them merely one of perspective. Whatever the reason, the Argent Peak Sect’s town was a happier place than the outer ring of Tonghou.

  It certainly seemed to have done her mother good. She watched her mother engage with people, both customers and vendors, and what she saw was encouraging. Ling Qingge seemed more confident in her dealings, less withdrawn and bowed than she had been when she had first arrived from Tonghou. It felt good to see.

  For her part, Ling Qi kept her own peace, using subtle flows of qi to downplay her presence and appearance so that she didn’t cause too much of a stir as she followed her mother, holding Biyu’s hand. She was content with that until she spotted a familiar head of shaggy dark hair through the crowd.

  “Su Ling!” she called, and her friend’s furred ears twitched. She wasn’t the only one surprised. Ling Qi noted sheepishly that several people near her had startled, her greeting having overridden her effort to remain inconspicuous.

  Sixiang teased.

  Su Ling looked Ling Qi’s way, her gaze flicking from Ling Qi to Biyu to her mother. Only then did she raise her hand in greeting and make her way over. “Ling Qi. Didn’t expect to see you here of all places.”


  “I had some extra time,” Ling Qi said. She glanced down at her little sister, whose wide eyes were following the irritable twitching of Su Ling’s tails. “Say hello, Biyu.”


  “Hi,” her little sister said shyly.

  “Hi,” Su Ling replied, visibly unsure of how to deal with the little girl’s attention. Around them, traffic was resuming. Surprisingly, it seemed that Su Ling’s friendly greeting had caused the townspeople to relax. “Still, never knew you to spend spare time not cultivating.”


  Sixiang whispered.

  Ling Qi took a mental swat at the muse. “I’ve gotten better at time management,” she said aloud. “What about you? You’re not much for spending time in town, last I heard.”


  Su Ling scuffed her foot against the ground. “Helping keeps the people relaxed. Couple a busybodies pestered me into doing it. S’pose just walking around town for a couple hours a day isn’t so bad.”


  “Your efforts are appreciated, Miss Su,” Ling Qingge said, returning from the stall she had been at. “Many people are thankful for your efforts during the troubles.”


  “.…… Yeah,” Su Ling said. She hid it well enough from mortal eyes, but Ling Qi was increasingly certain that Su Ling was very uncomfortable with Ling Qi’s mother. She wouldn’t speculate as to why.

  “Well, since we’re both out, why not walk together? You can help reassure everyone that I’m not too scary,” she said self-deprecatingly. While she was keeping her qi suppressed, she knew the richness of her garb was still alarming.

  Ling Qingge shot Ling a curious look but didn’t object, dipping her head slightly. “It would be our honor, Miss Su.”


  “No need to call me that,” Su Ling grumbled half-heartedly. She hesitated then shrugged. “Fine. Guess I can’t let you go ‘round jump-scaring people.”


  There were a few more pleasantries to exchange, but soon, they were following Ling Qingge on the woman’s rounds again. Su Ling wasn’t much for small talk so it fell to Ling Qi to resume conversation.

  “Any more news you can share on that expedition?” Ling Qi asked casually.

  Su Ling grunted. “It’s happening before the month is out. I’ll be going. Suyin won’t be.”


  Ling Qi’s eyebrows rose. “That’s surprising. I would have thought she would be an obvious choice.”


  “She is. That’s why they don’t want to risk her, third realm or no,” Su Ling snorted. “I don’t know the details, but they want to send us deep.”


  Sixiang mused.

  Ling Qi mulled that over as they moved through the crowd and stopped, letting her mother speak to someone else. “I wouldn’t mind being able to watch your back on the trip, assuming you’re willing to put my name forward.”


  Su Ling cocked her head to the side. “Why’s that?”


  “Gotta keep climbing,” Ling Qi said. “And I thought you could use a familiar face.”


  “Sis-y going on a trip?” Biyu piped up, pulling her eyes away from Su Ling’s tails.

  “Maybe.” Ling Qi tussled her hair.

  “I hope it is one you are well prepared for,” her mother said warily, returning.

  “I think I am.” Ling Qi met her mother’s eyes confidently.

  “And you, Miss Su?” Ling Qingge asked, breaking eye contact after a tense second.

  “Ling Qi’s more capable than I am,” Su Ling grunted, looking unhappy at the question. “S’pose I’d be glad to have her along.”


  Ling Qingge frowned. “I cannot object then, although I hope my daughter remembers her words.”


  Ling Qi sighed. She was never going to live down stopping a knife with her collarbone, was she? The maneuver had even been successful! “I’m not quite that flighty, Mother. I won’t be gone long.”


  What was with Ling Qingge looking to Su Ling for confirmation!

  “Probably not more than a week,” the other girl grudgingly confirmed.

  “Sis-y be good,” Biyu added gravely.

  Ling Qi huffed. “Should we really be loitering like this?” she asked with great dignity, gesturing to the man whose stall they stood in front of. He was looking nervous.

  “The hell kinda word is ‘loitering’?” Su Ling snorted. “But yeah, c’mon, let’s not give this guy any trouble.”


  “Of course. My apologies, sir,” Ling Qingge added, bowing her head

  Ling Qi still didn’t much like getting ganged up on, even if it did feel nostalgic. She stole a glance at the back of Su Ling’s head. Xiulan might have left, but that had just shown her that she needed to keep her friends close while she could.

  Like hells she was going to let Su Ling go diving into that pit without her.

  Threads 88-Deals 1

  Ling Qi skipped across the roiling ground, trailing a train of flickering images, ephemeral and dreamlike, in her wake. All around her, phantoms in dark and refined garb circled and danced in the mist to an eerie melody. Beneath her feet, the dirt writhed and spearing roots, smoking with superheated sap, erupted from it, grasping and reaching only to catch the trailing hems of phantom gowns.

  A great bulk stomped through the mist, scattering phantom revelers around his trunk-like legs. His shell glowed with a dull volcanic heat, leaving a wake of hissing steam in the mist, and a serpentine head wove above, molten eyes tracking her movement through the crowd. A boiling jet of liquid flame jetted from the serpent’s open maw and splattered across the earth, melting dirt into glass.

  A voice rose in the mist, a young girl’s voice raised sweetly in song, and in unison, two reptilian heads flinched and turned to the new threat.

  the muse whispered.

  Around a slim young girl whose eyes glittered like chips of ice, the mist boiled with potential, dream images emerging, trailing the girl’s limbs, and echoing her motions just a few moments out of step. A root grabbed for the girl’s bare foot and caught only mist and laughing air. The girl’s voice rose, and frozen wind lashed the great beast, cooling and darkening his volcanic shell before a renewed burst of heat returned its glow.

  As they clashed, Ling Qi circled and continued her dance, leaping from one grasping rootlet to the next on light feet with only half of her attention. Between her revel and the muse’s illusions, she could feel the thinning in the air, the flows where dream was near the surface, touching on the waking world. It was still difficult. Dream qi was slippery and ephemeral, and its flows resisted her manipulation more than any other qi she had tried, and even now, despite Sixiang’s instruction, she couldn’t quite grasp it.

  The earth shook as her toes briefly touched down on a patch of undisturbed dirt. They had been at this all morning now, and she was beginning to wonder if they should be ending the exercise. While Gui was taking the spar in good humor, she could feel Zhen’s frustration, rising and boiling like the venom that dripped from his fangs.

  The task she had set for Zhen wasn’t easy. While she was handicapping herself by only using techniques from the Phantasmagoria of Lunar Revelry art, she knew that she was very hard to hit. Since she had renewed her devotion toward helping her spirits improve, Zhen’s accuracy had grown so much better, but it seemed that wasn’t enough to tag her.

  As she mulled over calling an early halt to the exercise, her eyes widened. Something had changed. The flow of Zhengui’s qi had shifted, and the heat of his body was growing. It shrank and condensed in a way that she had only felt during his practice of the Rebirth Inferno. She needed to stop him now. That was going way too……!

  Sixiang cut her off.

  She shut her mouth with a click. She had promised to help Zhengui. Stopping him from developing a new technique would hardly help that. She felt the heat condense again. It felt like a white hot sphere, a miniature sun churning with impossible heat. Then, as Zhen glared with affronted dignity at Hanyi past the frost crawling across his scales, the sphere of heat dropped, passing seamlessly into the earth.

  Beneath her feet, Ling Qi felt the stone boil. Instantly, shimmering green qi shrouded her and Hanyi both, just before the earth exploded. All around Zhengui, plumes of molten rock erupted in an expanding ring, pockets of boiling stone shooting upward under sudden and intense pressure. A wave of molten stone washed over Hanyi, and she yelped as her dream images shattered, but molten rock slid off of the verdant light that armored her.

  The hill rocked with explosions and noise, but Ling Qi’s voice cut through the sound like the howl of a blizzard. “Zhen, stop.”


  The young serpent startled as she materialized atop his other half’s shell. Where her hand met his burning scales, the air hissed and steamed, adding to the mist. “Big Sister, why……?”


  “Look around you,” she said, and he did. The hill was ruined. For nearly two hundred meters all around, cooling magma lay burning on the ground. It had escaped beyond the protections the Sect had laid down, and even now, she saw several fires smoldering in the underbrush. “Best not to set the forest on fire.”


  “Ugh, reckless Zhen should warn Gui,” his other half complained. “Don’t do weird things by yourself!”


  Below, Hanyi vanished in a flurry of snowflakes, reappearing on one of the remaining islands of intact soil. “Be more careful,” the snow maiden grumbled, eyeing the cooling droplets of molten stone still clinging to the hems of her gown.

  Zhen lowered his head, looking a little shamed. “Zhen apologizes to Big Sister. I just wanted to win.”


  “That’s fine. You just need to keep the surroundings in mind,” Ling Qi encouraged. “Congratulations on figuring out a new technique!”


  “It was pretty cool,” Hanyi huffed. “Dummy.”


  “Still, why don’t we take a break and cool our heads?” Ling Qi cut in. “Hanyi, go put out the fires. Zhengui, can you start reseeding the hill?”


  Her spirits answered with a chorus of “Yes, Big Sister,” and got to work. Really, they were good kids when it got down to it.

  ***

  “Sis, when are we gonna do some exercises where I can show off?” Hanyi complained as they sat down for a rest in the aftermath of the cleanup. Zhengui took up much of the hilltop so Ling Qi and Hanyi sat on either side of him on flattened stones.

  “Sorry, Hanyi. It’s difficult to think of a group exercise for your techniques. I promise we’ll go out together later,” Ling Qi replied.

  She had elected to work with Hanyi on something they had neglected. The effects they were working on, her ability to draw on others with a siren song and drain the life and energy from them, were fundamental to Hanyi’s nature, but Ling Qi had trouble helping her with them. Ling Qi had never learned the Lonely Winter Maiden art from Zeqing.

  She had been taking Hanyi on trips up to the mountain peaks to practice though, and it was paying off. Hanyi’s voice and song were more confident and potent, able to ensnare more enemies and more efficiently, and her lethality had risen in accordance. That was what made it hard to train in a group. Like Zhen’s new technique, Hanyi’s techniques were lethal to their targets.

  “Mm, actually, you want to come to our dance lessons, snowflake? You might not be able to step into Dream like your Sis and I, but I think you’d benefit from some more grace,” Sixiang said on the wind.

  Ling Qi thought.

  Sixiang replied with a mental shrug.

  “I’m not clumsy,” Hanyi snapped, unaware of the exchange. “I can move around just fine!”


  “Ah, well, if you think you can’t handle it……” Sixiang trailed off, their voice echoing from the empty air.

  Ling Qi sighed as Hanyi immediately snapped back and agreed to attend. She really was going to have to work with Hanyi on that; she was way too easy to manipulate. She left her spirits to talk and bicker for a time, letting herself focus on cultivating the little scraps of insight she had accumulated during the spar into dream qi. She was making progress, but it was slow. However, that couldn’t last forever. There was still business to see to today.

  “Zhengui, Hanyi, we’re going to have a visitor today,” Ling Qi said, having let them get the bickering out of their systems. “Obviously, I’m going to need you both to behave.”


  “Huh? Who did Big Sis invite? Is the bright lady coming again?” Gui asked curiously.

  “Not this time,” Ling Qi denied. Cai Renxiang had been sparring with her more often, which included her spirits at times. She was able to press the heiress a lot more with the extra combatants. “I’ve invited Bao Qian. Do you remember him?”


  “I, Zhen, recall the shiny man,” Zhen said proudly. “He wanted to buy Zhen’s ash, so that Big Sister could get more cultivation stones.”


  “That’s the one,” Ling Qi replied, smiling. “We’re going to be talking about some business like that today.”


  “Ah, Gui will be good then, so that Big Sister can have more stones!” Gui agreed cheerfully.

  “You don’t have to do this, Zhengui. I am getting by fine regardless,” Ling Qi said. Her stock of green stones was steadily dwindling, but she didn’t want Zhengui to feel forced into it.

  “No, Big Sis will let Zhengui help,” they both said stubbornly, their voices emerging as one.

  Sixiang chided.

  Ling Qi sighed and nodded her assent before glancing at Hanyi, who had been oddly silent. “Hanyi, something on your mind?”


  “Sis, that guy, he said he could sell your songs too, right?” Hanyi asked. “I saw you using that stone thing to record.”


  “Yes,” Ling Qi said slowly. “I wasn’t selling that though.”


  “Well, I wanna sell some songs! That way I can have stones myself and buy pretty dresses and jewelry without having to get them from Big Sis,” Hanyi said in a rush, leaning forward.

  Ling Qi blinked and immediately felt a pang of guilt. “Hanyi, we can go shopping sometime if you like. It’s just been very busy lately.”


  “But I wanna get my own stuff! You worry about enough things,” Hanyi said. “C’mon, will you please talk to the guy?”


  Ling Qi hesitated, then said, “I’ll speak to him.” Making a request would cost her some in the negotiations, but she doubted it would be too bad. Although she could not say she knew Bao Qian well, taking advantage too much would run counter to his goals. Self-interest was at least something she could trust in.

  Hanyi grinned, hopping to her feet to wrap her arms around Ling Qi. “Yeah! Thanks so much, Big Sis.”


  Ling Qi patted her awkwardly on the back. She really didn’t know how to handle physical affection.

  Sixiang commisserated.

  Ling Qi wondered if she should be insulted for the sake of her species. Probably not. It wasn’t like Sixiang was wrong. “You’re welcome, Hanyi. Now, let up. We need to get ourselves cleaned up before we go to meet him.” While her gown was fine, her hands and face had gotten smudged with ash and dirt, and her hair could probably use a little touch up. Crinkly strands were starting to escape. Hanyi wasn’t better.

  “What should Gui do then, Big Sister?” Gui asked curiously.

  Hanyi sprang from her lap as she stood up and glanced over at Zhengui. “A little clean up might not go amiss for you either,” she said. He was covered in dirt, ash, and dried glass.

  “Hmph, leave it to slovenly Gui to forget that,” Zhen harrumphed. “We must make our scales shine!”


  “But Gui doesn’t like the water,” his other half complained, a childish whine touching his deep, rumbling voice.

  Ling Qi chuckled to herself. It was as she had thought. No matter how it seemed, they were still children at heart.