Ling Qi enjoyed a few hours of relatively relaxed training and study with her friends, but soon enough, it was time to start heading up the mountain to meet with Elder Jiao for the week’s training. The paintings had changed again, this time depicting fancy halls filled with people in elaborate and expensive clothes mingling. They remained eerily lifelike, but it wasn’t as distracting as the twisted eye and mouth-studded shapes that they had depicted the week before.

  Ling Qi took her usual seat and clasped her hands neatly in her lap to wait, silently rehearsing the lines she had come up with to convince the Elder to teach her to be a better thief. The room was silent as Ling Qi practiced her lines, hoping to perfect her speech so as to avoid offending the prickly old man teaching her.

  Given her distraction, Ling Qi jerked in surprise when a cool hand fell on her shoulder, instinctively jumping out of her seat to turn and face the person who had touched her. Unfortunately, she put too much force in the motion and practically launched herself out of her chair, only to crack her head against the low ceiling of the cavern.

  Ling Qi managed to land on her feet but winced as she rubbed the top of her head, which throbbed with the force of the impact. She peered warily through the gloomy room to see who had startled her so. It took only a moment to recognize the person in question; a portrait of her had been staring at her all last week after all.

  Xin stood beside her seat with a bemused expression, one hand on her hip. She wore a gown of dark blue and black, which glittered with starry light at her every movement, and her white hair was styled in an elaborate updo pinned in place with glittering onyx pins and jewelry.

  “Feeling a little wound up, dear?” Xin asked compassionately, although Ling Qi could see the twinkle of humor in her red eyes.

  Ling Qi wrestled her breathing back under control and did her best not to glower at the older…… woman? Spirit? “My apologies,” she said with a bow. “I was only startled by your presence, Honored-”


  Xin clicked her tongue and for lack of a better word, flickered, appearing directly in front of Ling Qi to peer down at her. Had the woman been tall enough to do that before? “Don’t be like that, young lady,” she admonished, examining the point where Ling Qi had banged her head. “There is no call to speak to me so formally.”


  “Ah…… Sorry?” Ling Qi tried, thrown off-balance as she felt Xin’s cold hand come to rest on top of her head, washing away the minor ache with a feeling like cold water being trickled down her neck. “Why are you here?” she blurted out, feeling tongue-tied in the woman’s presence. “I mean, did something happen with Elder Jiao?”


  Xin took a step back, examining her with a critical eye. The gaze made Ling Qi feel vaguely childish, like it was her mother standing in front of her, checking to see if she had torn one of her gowns.

  “Oh, he’s just a little delayed,” Xin replied dismissively, finally meeting Ling Qi’s gaze with her own slightly luminescent one. “You have grown so well, haven’t you,” she said warmly. “I can hardly compare you to the skinny, dim spark you were when last we met.”


  “Thank you?” Ling Qi asked. It was true that she was no longer quite so malnourished, and she had grown much stronger. “You’re looking well too?” she tried again, only to remember Elder Jiao’s words at the end of the second part of Elder Zhou’s test. “I’m sorry if I caused you any trouble.”


  “It was nothing, dear,” Xin said, waving her hand carelessly to brush off the apology. “Becoming a voice for my greater self is merely uncomfortable at worst, and you have grown for it.” Xin’s gaze drifted downward to fix on Ling Qi’s stomach, or rather, Ling Qi’s dantian. “Well, I did have some hope of poaching you for myself. But the Grinning Moon will not treat you poorly.”


  Right, Xin was an aspect of the New Moon, Ling Qi thought. It made sense that Xin could tell what choice Ling Qi had made. “I hope not to fail in meeting her expectations. I did consider your offer strongly as well.”


  Xin looked pleased, raising her eyes back to Ling Qi’s face. “I suppose we will see. You are hardly ready to choose a Way properly regardless. You’re still in that experimenting stage, trying anything and everything,” she said impishly. “Your spirit is quite muddled as of yet.”


  Ling Qi’s expression grew concerned as she looked down, as if to examine herself. “.…… Is that bad?” she asked cautiously. “And what do you mean about choosing a Way?”


  “You simply haven’t found your true drive yet, which is hardly unusual for your age,” Xin reassured. “As for a Way, all cultivators must eventually choose the concept which defines them. It is impossible to advance beyond what you call Cyan without……”


  “XIN.” Ling Qi flinched as Elder Jiao’s voice boomed through the cavern, rattling the furniture. The shadows in the room roiled and swelled, tendrils of absolute darkness, opaque even to her vision, writhing across every surface as the light of the lantern flickered wildly. Worse still were the eyes, wide and glaring, gleaming like kaleidoscopes, that opened by the dozen across the shadows in the room.

  “Oh, bother. I really thought that would hold him longer than this.” The spirit sighed, resting her cheek in one hand but otherwise unperturbed. Ling Qi shot her an incredulous look.

  “Twelve layers.” The Elder’s voice no longer rattled the furniture, but it was still painfully loud. The shadow of the divan boiled upward, bubbling like a pillar of tar as it took on Elder Jiao’s features. He ignored her entirely in favor of glaring at Xin. “Why would you leave a twelve-layered dream cage around the workshop, you insufferable woman?!”


  Ling Qi quietly scuttled off to the side, not wanting to be in the Elder’s line of sight. As it was, his qi was nearly suffocating.

  Xin crossed her arms, turning a frown on the Elder. “Do not take that tone with me, and cease the dramatics. You’ll scare the poor girl to death.”


  Ling Qi hunched her shoulders, instinctively trying to appear small as the Elder glanced her way. Elder Jiao let out an irritated huff, but the twisting, reaching shadows receded,along with the oppressive weight of his qi. “Did it occur to you just to ask if you wanted to accompany me?” he asked Xin pointedly, still sounding irritated.

  “Is it not my duty as a wife to ensure that my husband does not grow lax?” Xin asked flippantly.

  The Elder stared at Xin, unmoving, unbreathing, and utterly still. “I am ignoring you,” he declared abruptly, as if handing out a proclamation from on high. “You,” he continued, pointing at Ling Qi, “will also be ignoring her, or this lesson will end.”


  “That is hardly fair,” Xin protested. “Come now. It wasn’t that bad.”


  “Which of my teachings do you seek this week, Disciple?” Elder Jiao asked airily, as if he hadn’t heard Xin.

  Ling Qi glanced between the two, feeling terribly off-kilter. Somehow, her image of the Sect’s Elders had been changed in a fundamental way. She fumbled with her words, trying to remember her rehearsed speech. “I…… That is…… I was hoping for the Honored Elder’s advice on the matters of retrieving enemy resources from guarded locations or containers, as well as their person.”


  The “Honored” Elder gave her a flat look. “You want me to tutor you in the arts of thievery. Is that truly what you want to ask?”


  Ling Qi shuffled her feet, ignoring Xin’s laugh. “.…… Yes,” she said in a small voice.

  “My, what an insightful girl,” Xin said smugly.

  Still ignoring Xin, Elder Jiao merely palmed his face. “Why not? Come, Disciple,” he said, flickering from the divan to the doorway.

  “What are we doing?” Ling Qi asked, hurrying after him. She cast an apologetic look at Xin, who drifted after them, no longer pretending to walk.

  “Live targets are required for this training,” Elder Jiao said. “You shall be testing yourself against your fellow disciples at my instruction. You will, of course, be required to deal with the fallout of failure on your own. You will not mention your training.”


  Ling Qi grimaced. She really should have expected something like this. She supposed she would just have to do her best to avoid getting caught.

  What followed was…… tense. Elder Jiao would set her a task like pilfering stones or pills from a disciple or slipping into a home unnoticed and planting tokens in specific locations. There was nary a hint of advice, only a few casual pointers for improvement in the aftermath of such tasks. The difficulty ramped up quickly as they proceeded to the part of the mountain where many of the older disciples lived. Ling Qi switched the contents of people’s bags, broke locks, planted pills and tokens in bedrooms and bathrooms, and rearranged furniture and knickknacks in the instants when their owners were out of the room……

  Somehow, she managed without getting caught once, even when the Elder commanded something ridiculous, like replacing a girl’s hair pins from her dressing table without her noticing while the girl was putting them in.

  Her success did seem to put the man in a better mood at least, and with each success, his advice on improving her cultivation of the more larcenous parts of her Sable Crescent Step art grew more useful. Indeed, the insights she gained from the Elder was enough to finally master the usage of Crescent’s Grace technique even under the light of the sun, albeit at an increased qi cost. Xin was encouraging as well, but sadly, she had to ignore the spirit. Xin did not appear to take offense, focused as she was on needling Elder Jiao, who ignored her every attempt with great dignity.

  It was, overall, quite a useful evening……

  Even if the news which reached her later of a spree of paint bombs, surprise hair dyes, and other prankish things, as well as fights breaking out over stolen property, made her desperately hope that no one ever discovered what she had been doing. She

  those tokens the Elder kept handing her were suspicious!

  Ling Qi quickly fell into her week’s routine after that. She spent the early hours practicing her music on the mountain top, meeting with Li Suyin and Su Ling in the afternoons, and receiving tutoring in the evenings. At night, she scouted and prepared for her eventual raid on Yan Renshu’s base.

  Translating the manual was slow going, although Li Suyin assured her that they were making great progress given the limited amount of time spent on it. It appeared to be a manual on the creation of formations constructs, focused around the use of bone as a medium, but the details and actual technical instructions still eluded them.

  More important than any of that though was her upcoming outing with Meizhen. Well, she hadn’t really billed it that way or actually told Meizhen that they would be having an outing. But since she knew that Meizhen was intending to go out, she simply rearranged her plans to walk with her to the market.

  This…… was a little awkward because Meizhen clearly hadn’t expected her presence. Not that anyone else could tell Meizhen felt anything out of the ordinary at a casual glance. The pale girl beside her still moved with an effortless grace that made her seem as if she were gliding across the ground, all ethereal and fairy-like. Meizhen would look like a princess out of a storybook, Ling Qi mused, if not for the aura of gut-wrenching animal terror she radiated.

  Ling Qi couldn’t really compare to the other girl’s poise. Though her balance was good, her strides were long and obvious, kicking up the hems of her dark gown with each step.

  “What, precisely, did you need at the market?” Bai Meizhen questioned without taking her eyes off the path ahead of them as lower realm cultivators made way for them on the road. Meizhen did not acknowledge them.

  “I thought I would shop around among the pill makers again. It’s been awhile since I’ve stocked up,” Ling Qi said. “And I might need to trade up on knives soon. My old set is subpar.”


  Meizhen gave a quiet hum of acknowledgement. “I see.” To anyone else, it probably sounded like simple disinterest, but Ling Qi could read her friend a little better than that. Meizhen was uncomfortable.

  “How about you?” Ling Qi pressed on. They could do this. Things didn’t need to be awkward between them. “I don’t think you’ve ever gone to the market with the intention to buy.”


  “My own resources are typically superior,” Bai Meizhen acknowledged. She looked like she was going to fall silent again, but Ling Qi caught her eye and raised an eyebrow. Meizhen let out a near inaudible breath in response. “It is a matter of recreation. Nothing I would bother my family with.”


  Ling Qi blinked, her other eyebrow joining the first. “Really?” she asked with a hint of incredulity. “Just what kind of hobby would catch your attention?”


  The pale girl stared ahead, her bearing stiff. “I have decided to improve my embroidery. It is a useful exercise in manual dexterity.” Ling Qi wasn’t sure who Meizhen was trying to convince with that excuse.

  “Huh. I never expected you to pick up something so…… delicate.”


  Meizhen furrowed her brows slightly. “What are you implying? It is a perfectly acceptable recreational activity for a young lady.”


  “Sorry, I didn’t mean anything by it,” Ling Qi apologized. “Did you practice at home?”


  “.…… No,” Meizhen admitted. “I had other priorities in my limited free time.” Ling Qi suspected that those other priorities had been things like ‘sleep’ and ‘extra training’.

  “Well, I don’t know too much about embroidery,” Ling Qi said slowly. Mother had only just started teaching her that when she had run away. “But I can use a needle and thread well enough. Maybe we could practice a bit together?” She didn’t miss the way her friend’s shoulders subtly hunched inward, a sure sign of even greater discomfort in the reticent girl.

  “.…… Cai Renxiang has already offered instruction,” Meizhen finally said. “I am afraid I will have to decline.”


  Ling Qi’s expression fell as they passed one of the milestones on the path to the market before she masked her disappointment. “Oh, well, that’s fine. I can hardly compete with that. So you’re going out to pick up a sewing kit?”


  “I am,” Bai Meizhen said, looking at Ling Qi out of the corner of her eye. “.…… I will still be available for our spars,” she offered awkwardly.

  “I’m glad. I just wish there was something we could do together that wasn’t just work or practice,” Ling Qi said, surprising herself with her own honesty.

  “I do not see it as such,” Meizhen said thoughtfully. “We are cultivators. Polishing one another’s arts as we do together is hardly without its own…… intimacy.” Ling Qi hadn’t thought about it like that. In the end, the one Meizhen showed her techniques and arts to in their entirety was Ling Qi, not Cai Renxiang.

  “I guess so,” she said, feeling better. “I’ll tag along for your purchase all the same though. Even if you have all the money in the world, it’s important to get a good price,” she said, giving a sage nod at her own words.

  Bai Meizhen let out an amused huff. “What manner of pampered songbird do you imagine me to be?” she asked scathingly. Her tone didn’t hold any real heat though.

  The shopping trip was quite fun. Meizhen could certainly make the disciples running the shops sweat, making it all the easier for Ling Qi to haggle them down. It made for an amusing diversion, and in the end, Ling Qi found herself glad that she had decided to tag along anyway.

  Threads 108-Descent 10

  Ling Qi was a little surprised by the simplicity of the plan. Some part of her still expected grand and intricate gambits from a cultivator strategist, but she supposed it made sense. This wasn’t a heist or a burglary; this was smashing a shop’s front window to test the response times of the guard, or a gang burning a stall to prove that yes, they were serious about the money.

  They stood amongst the thick fungal trees on the hill overlooking the fortress, which was situated several kilometers north and west of their entry point to the cavern.

  “Are you ready for this?” Ling Qi asked Su Ling as a single silver wisp drifted out to the edge of the forest.

  “As ready as I am for anything involving you,” Su Ling retorted dryly.

  “You can’t blame me for this one. I was following you,” Ling Qi joked back. “Seriously though, Su Ling, do you think you’re ready?”


  Su Ling grimaced, her ears lying flat against the sides of her head. “Nah, but it’s not like I have the hard part. Me and Flowers just gotta protect the beacon and make sure the rest of you can bug out.”


  “Not really the point, but I get it,” Ling Qi murmured, glancing toward Bian Ya, who stood a short distance away, crouched in front of her spirit beast. They seemed to be having a private conversation. “I trust you to have my back.”


  “I guess I trust you to have my front, crazy girl,” Su Ling said huffily. “Besides, we have that Xuan guy. He’s some kinda ducal boy like the snake princess, right?”


  “This one will endeavor to match the praise of Sister Su.” Xuan Shi kneeled a few meters away, examining the scores of ceramic plates which Ling Qi knew to be a potent defensive formation. “It is the pride of Xuan that the land itself shall break ere we will.”


  “Let’s hope we don’t have to test that down here under a few million tonnes of rock,” Ling Qi said. “We’ll be relying on all of you though. It’s only a matter of time till we’re going to have to retreat.”


  Xuan Shi dipped his head. “This one will see to his duty. Miss Ling may rely upon that.”


  “Indeed,” Bian Ya said, brushing dirt from her gown as she straightened up. “Ling Qi, you are being called to the front.”


  Ling Qi dipped her head in acknowledgement. “Good luck, everyone.”


  As the others reciprocated her farewell, she turned and faded into the shadow of the trees, heading for the edge of the forest.

  Ling Qi could already see her destination. Their position lay at the bottom of a valley whereas the fortress occupied a hilltop. Built from blocks of white bone, the thing bristled like the shell of an insect. Five pointed towers rose, equidistant from one another, joining sturdy walls whose upper reaches were marked by angular spikes. The central structure was a stepped pyramid of black stone marked by luminescent and foreign carvings.

  Ling Qi thought as she flitted forward.

  Ling Qi chuckled to herself. Good enough. After Guan Zhi broke a hole in their defenses with the initial assault, she and Liao Zhu were to move into the breach and begin laying about while avoiding stealthier tactics. Ji Rong was paired with her to assist with enemies who proved too tough for her to run over or who would otherwise impede her general havoc-raising, attention-gathering role.

  It was a little ironic that he was acting as her support.

  Ling Qi thought.

  Hanyi boasted.

  Guan Zhi would have to pace herself due to the cost of using fourth realm techniques down here, saving her strength for the inevitable reinforcements.

  Ling Qi thought as she approached the wood’s end.

  Sixiang replied.

  She arrived at the forest’s edge a moment later, landing in a crouch beside Guan Zhi. “Reporting in,” she said evenly as she stood up.

  “Very good. Our retreat route is plotted?” Guan Zhi asked.

  “The route is plotted out,” Ling Qi agreed. She had already shared the map with Bian Ya, who would be guiding the retreat.

  “Finally. Time to actually do something,” Ji Rong said, grinning as he looked down the hill.

  Liao Zhu, crouched on a branch, was not so crude in his expression, but there was a visible tension in his shoulders.

  Her commander merely nodded, standing with her arms behind her back. “Get to your positions then. I am not my uncle. It would be unwise to be near while I unleash my power.”


  Ling Qi joined the others in acknowledging her words. She leaped away from the little clearing, flitting through the tall grass where the very last of the fungal trees grew.

  But she couldn’t help but keep an eye behind her where she could feel the gathering of power.

  Guan Zhi, standing in the knee-high grass, exhaled and rotated her arms, bringing her hands together in front of her chest, elbows pointed out. The air vibrated. The valley shook. In a circle two meters around her feet, grass flattened as if crushed by an immense weight. The fungal trees shook and bowed, branches ripped down to be crushed into the flattened dirt. Then the circle widened.

  Four meters.

  Tree trunks groaned and strained and screamed and shattered to splinters.

  Eight meters.

  Dust and wood shards failed to fall to earth, pulled irresistibly toward Guan Zhi, an orbiting sphere of debris. The air shimmered, and Ling Qi could feel what little light there was distorting.

  Sixteen meters.

  Naught stood higher than her feet in the whole of the circle, and Guan Zhi’s hand darkened to the color of blackened bronze, snapped out, catching a stone from the cloud of debris.

  Thirty-two meters.

  Only a handful of seconds had passed. Cries of alarm were beginning to rise from the fortress, and Ling Qi could hear the faint sizzle of impurity burning flesh from within the warped and darkening cloud.

  Sixty-four meters.

  As Ling Qi completed the arc of her leap and landed atop a still standing tree, she saw the blurry form of Guan Zhi move, cocking her arm back, and then a boom of thunder as a projectile whizzed out. Ling Qi tightened her hands upon the branch as the wind screamed and her perch rocked in the passage of the missile.

  Ling Qi was just barely able to see it, the ragged stone Commander Guan had thrown. When Guan Zhi had snatched it, the stone had been the size of a fist; now, it was a perfect sphere the size of a marble, and air and light alike warped around it.

  The stone struck the tower with an echoing boom. Ling Qi shielded her eyes from dust, and the noise of crumbling masonry rang out, washing over her as the sphere of warped light expanded a dozen times over. Blocks of bone, enhanced by the shishigui’s foreign formations, crumbled to powder, ripped inward toward the center of the distorted, smoky gray sphere two score meters wide that expanded outward from the point of impact.

  Ling Qi could feel the screams from within the vanishing tower, even if the actual sound was unable to escape the circle. It lasted only a second, and when it vanished, a compressed sphere of dust and stone the size of her head dropped to the ground, oozing pinkish froth, leaving a perfect spherical scoop missing from the tower. At the edges of the scoop, severed formations sparked and spat, and the air trembled with the fluctuations of the destabilized array.

  Inside, Ling Qi saw a scene of confusion and alarm. Shishigui who had been patrolling the walls had fallen back on the floor and stared, those inside the tower gaped at the hole in their defenses, and the many individuals in the courtyard were scrambling to respond.

  Ling Qi leaped from her perch.

  Zhengui landed in the courtyard with a ground shaking boom.

  Balanced on her toes at the highest point of his shell, Ling Qi raised her flute to her lips as The Mist rolled forth from the singing blade which circled overhead. Standing on a lower spike, Hanyi laughed and raised her hands and her voice in the Spring’s End Aria.

  Ling Qi joined her, and together, they brought winter to the underworld. Frost spread across stone and flesh alike as the temperature dropped, and in The Mist, frost coalesced into haunting skeletal shadows whose raspy voices joined the song, even as frozen claws tore into rubbery grey flesh.

  Below her, Gui bellowed, and the frozen earth cracked as tendrils and roots reached up to spear unready foes. The roots continued to spiral and climb up crumbling bone walls to stab and grab at enemies in the broken halls. Above, smoke rose from Zhen’s maw as he snapped down lightning fast, sinking his fangs into a squealing shishigui and flung it away, flames leaping from its wounds.

  Yet her enemies were not overwhelmed. In the handful of seconds after she had appeared, the wide open and chaotic courtyard saw order already forming, drill sergeants and officers howling and yipping for their comrades.

  To her left was something like a kennel where shishigui stood gaping as dozens of rat beasts cowered and yowled in confusion. A single shishigui almost twice as tall as the others and clad in heavy chitin armor let out a bellowing bark which silenced the yowling, and before Ling Qi’s eyes, the chaotic mass began to fall into order as lesser herders joined in, their qi propagating through the pack and each other.

  To her right was a short, twisting tower which looked like a carven waterspout. Two of the dancing assassins stood at the entrance, already recovering their poise.

  And in the center was the pyramid keep from which she could sense many gathering auras.

  Just a short distance away, a squad of the creatures armed with slings seemed to be forming up, preparing to barrage her, guided by a pair of low third realm officers.

  Then Liao Zhu landed in their center, and his arms blurred. Weeping red wounds opened across one of the third realm officer’s throat, wrists, and inner thighs, and the creature let out a strangled scream as he collapsed, gushing blood from his everything. The creature’s companion struck out, and his spear slashed through Liao Zhu’s mask only for his form to blur. Then, there were two Liao Zhu, arms blurring and flashing as his knives butchered the squad like animals being carved up for market. His twin forms strode untouched through them like a whirlwind of steel and death, heading for the entrance of the pyramid.

  Even as Zhengui took his first stomping steps forward and Ling Qi prepared to lash her still gathering foes with ice and death, the air surged with the crackle of lightning, and the shishigui nearest to her screamed as jagged bolts of white light exploded among them, charring flesh to ash. Ji Rong arrived at her side, his hair spiked and sparking with crawling arcs of static.

  Taking in the scene, Ling Qi prepared herself to move toward the kennel.

  Silently, she conveyed her intentions to Zhengui, and he turned, his ponderous steps carrying her to the left of the breach where the tall shishigui rallied his beasts. Unlike the cone structure of the central fort, the kennel was a dome of black, glassy stone surrounded by a fenced-off yard.

  The brutish Houndmaster was different from his kin in many ways. He was taller, taller than even the thin and lanky dancers, taller than Ling Qi, and taller than even the Duchess had been, and his posture was less hunched, causing him to tower over two meters in height. His frame bulged with muscle, but there was something ugly about it, a subtle and repellant wrongness to the creature’s proportions, and when his limbs flexed to raise his strange two-pronged polearm, black ooze dripped from open tears in his skin under which exposed muscle flexed. His helm was a strange lumpy thing made of some kind of grey-blue metal rather than chitin or stone like so many of the other shishigui, though the rest of his garb was hardened leather and chitin.

  From across the field, Ling Qi met his eyeless gaze as Zhengui stomped across the hard-packed field, growing roots proceeding and clearing his path of straggling soldiers caught out of position. Wraiths continued to coalesce from the mist which poured from the singing sword circling her head, and their icy claws began to tear at his hounds and soldiers alike.

  The Houndmaster let out a deep bark, and in the back of her mind, Liao Zhu’s ring translated. “Retain order! Rally!” he roared, and power poured forth, meeting The Mist and clashing.

  Sharp-edged symbols flickered in the corners of her vision, and an invisible banner unfurled at his back, a twisting sigil composed of mingling lines of heat and cold. Ling Qi felt the flare of energies across piercings throughout the brute’s body, visible and not. Were those his domain weapon then?

  His hounds barked and bayed and yipped in response, and her wraiths’ talons failed to find purchase on their hides.

  Ling Qi turned her eyes from him, her gaze falling upon a smaller but still armored shishigui standing to his right, a node in the network of power that was beginning to form among hounds and their masters alike. She played a song of winter and endings, and the soldier screamed as the caress of hoarfrost entered his veins, turning blood to ice and rupturing his flesh. Around him, the rat hounds writhed and yowled under the echoes, patches of flesh and bristly fur freezing and shattering as they died. At her side, a young girl’s laughter and song rang out, and beasts threw themselves toward Hanyi in desperate adulation only to be captured by snaring roots and biting fangs.

  The Houndmaster bounded forth, his canine maw open in a bark of challenge, but only a shimmer of green in the folds of her gown showed her attention to the threat. Dueling wasn’t her goal here.

  His bounding leap was met by a crackling comet. Ji Rong roared his own challenge back as he leapt up in a shower of cracked stone and dirt, crackling sheets of lightning pouring off of billowing sleeves, and his fist met the creature’s polearm with a muffled boom. Around Ji Rong’s shoulders, light bloomed, and golden discs, nine of them, materialized, arranged in a circle behind his back and connected by a snapping ring of heavenly power. As the two combatants exchanged a flurry of blows midair, the black enameled lotus petals engraved on the topmost disc’s flat side flared with azure light.

  From behind her, Ling Qi felt the hostility of creatures in the drillyard, but before she could even articulate the thought, Zhengui stamped his feet on the ground and huge roots and trunks erupted. Pale green as new saplings, they twined together, erupting in a curving line across the fortress yard to split the kennels from the main area, cutting off a bare few dozen shishigui soldiers from those gathering in the drill yard.

  Ling Qi swayed through the barrage of slingstones and javelins that rose from those remnants, only a few coming close enough to scatter verdant sparks from her Hundred Ring Armament. But as she wove the chorus of her melody again, preparing to scour the kennels, Ling Qi could not help but worry.

  Her qi was not recovering. She could feel Zhengui’s energies recovering, if sluggishly, but her own breathing techniques and the Ten Ring Defense were failing to draw in and convert excess battle qi back into her own.

  Once more, her song rang out, but this time, her target didn’t die. The icy qi that swirled around him whirled and screamed, condensing inward only to scatter on contact. Her technique shattered into fragments that peppered all of the hounds and their masters alike like a light flurry rather than a screaming blizzard.

  She saw out of the corner of her eye that the brute was grimacing with effort as he wove through Ji Ring’s fists, blocking and parrying with his two-pronged spear and weathering the lightning that poured out of Ji Rong. Ji Rong’s bolts were scattering into useless sparks across the Houndmaster’s armor. It was the same effect, distributing the force of their attacks across the whole group, and thus, rendering them nigh useless.

  No, that wasn’t quite right……

  Sixiang realized in her head, and the thought was confirmed a moment later as Zhen snapped a leaping hound out of the air and flung it away.

  Wisps of light whirled around her, and Ling Qi’s eyes flashed silver as she studied the flows of energy webbing their way across the battlefield. Hoarfrost Caress wasn’t the best choice then; she was going to need a bit more power to make it work.

  But her enemies weren’t just sitting still.

  The mass of hounds were no longer a disorganized mob. They were forming up into packs, each led by a houndmaster, ranging from a few dozen individuals down to groups of five or so, and beginning to scatter. Those of lesser cultivation broke from the main mass to circle around her and Zhengui like hunting wolves, their high-pitched yipping echoing and beginning to reverberate, the cacophony eating away at her concentration and making it harder to focus. Others dove into the ground, burrowing into the earth like worms. At the center of their formation, a dozen much larger and brawnier hounds loped forward, a houndmaster riding on the largest specimen’s back, and as he raised his spear, they opened their jaws in unison and screamed.

  Zhengui planted his feet as earth and stone rippled under the physical force of the noise, and at her side, Hanyi let out a cry of pain, clapping her hands over her ears. Ling Qi merely grimaced, the shroud of her Deepwood Vitality over them both shattering under the concerted assault. She felt a single drop of blood trickle from her nose.

  That had hurt, but the shishigui would have to do better than that. Green light flared as she restored the armor broken under the assault.

  Ling Qi thought tersely.

  As soon as the thought was complete, she leaped down from his shell, landing a few meters ahead. As she landed, she spun, her gown flaring outward as she began to dance. All around her in The Mist, phantom dancers emerged from skeletal wraiths, frost and rime transforming into glittering finery and grinning skulls transformed into coldly mocking faces.

  Many of the shishigui let out barks and yips of terrified panic as phantom dancers seized them and whirled them away from their comrades, disrupting nearly their formations and packs. Of her targets, only the spear-wielding rider of the larger hounds resisted the festival’s grasp as the spinning haft of his spear disrupted Ling Qi’s attempt, smiting the phantoms back into drifting mist.

  However, there were still scores of enemies, and as with the barbarians she had encountered in her last sect mission, it seemed to actually matter. Hounds leapt at her wildly as they burst from the ground, clawing and biting; glowing stones flung at her from slings exploded into noxious gases and goo.

  Ling Qi wove through them all, but it was a closer thing than she liked. She could not simply ignore her weaker foes given the weaves of qi empowering claw and fang and stone.

  But she wasn’t fighting alone.

  Roots erupted from the ground around her like a circle of spears, driving enemies back and giving her room to breathe, and snapping fangs caught leaping hounds midair and flung them away, burning. Hanyi’s voice rang out through the cold laughter and noise of the revel, and her phantoms clapped in adoration as hounds flung themselves at her with worshipful yips. Some died on Zhengui’s roots, some burned on his volcanic shell, and others, Hanyi caught in her arms, grinning brightly as she inhaled their warmth and vitality before dropping the broken corpses behind her like withered leaves.

  Ling Qi spotted Ji Rong driving his fist into the Houndmaster’s jaw, snapping the creature’s head upward and scattering broken chips of his enemy’s helm. His spirit’s jaw’s were clamped around the Houndmaster’s spear, yanking it aside to allow the blow through. Thunder boomed, and a jagged bolt of lightning half a meter wide slammed down on them both, sending up an explosion of dust and debris. On his back, a second and a third lotus bloomed with azure light.

  It really was chaos all around. Through a wisp, she saw rapidly organizing shishigui pounding on Zhengui’s wall. Their spears and claws did little against the growth, but she saw axes being expressed, and strange objects like large bellows were being hauled out by officers to spray clouds of noxious gas that left wood withered and black. The dancers were nowhere to be seen.

  The fortress’ wall continued to shake and crumble as Guan Zhi pelted it from outside. Stone rumbled as a tower collapsed, and a pack of hounds and their shishigui leader screamed as a blackened stone ricocheted off a piece of broken masonry and consumed both them and the ground they stood upon in a sphere of misty black.

  But all this was happening on the periphery. Ling Qi spun and danced through the revel. All around her, the laughing moon fairies snatched at shishigui squad leaders, dragging them in to dance, while their billowing robes and caressing hands drew blood as if from a sharp wind. Ling Qi grimaced as a horrible scream ripped through the air, making her steps falter just a moment as her head pounded. Her distraction cost her, and a ceramic sphere shattered against her chest, a wave of noxious sludge splattering over her that burned and itched even through her gown.

  Her eyes narrowed as she glared at the leader of the largest pack, a third realm, if weaker than her. He and his hounds were troublesome.

  the muse confirmed in her head.

  Ling Qi thought.

  “Yes, Big Sister!” he cried, and she was already moving.

  She spun to the side, ducked under a leaping hound, and vanished into the shadow of a digger’s tunnel before appearing directly before her vexing foe. He jerked back as she rematerialized in midair before him, and Sixiang’s chaotic qi roiled out, disrupting the technique shielding him from direct harm. The revelers roared their approval, and from Ling Qi’s flute came the Hoarfrost Refrain.

  Stripped of his protection against a technique bolstered by her revel, the shishigui lieutenant let out a scream as his flesh split open and veins burst from freezing blood. Around him, his hounds howled in pain as they, too, were lashed by ice.

  More importantly, as he fell, combined with the other leaders seized and drained by her revelers, a significant part of the gathering power among them collapsed.

  Zhengui let out a bellow, and the earth bellowed with him. All around her, liquid magma geysered from the ground, scouring flesh, boiling blood, and consuming unprotected hounds.

  It was not all of them. Many held on, shielding themselves and their charges with techniques too numerous to name, protected by the blurring heat sigil of the Houndmaster still fighting Ji Rong, but it was a strong blow all the same. All but the hardiest hounds had been slain.

  “Ling Qi! Watch out!” Sixiang shouted, and Ling Qi bent backward without thinking as a glittering green knife hissed through the air where her neck had been, clasped by a too familiar, thin-fingered hand.

  There was a crash, and Zhengui cried out as a blazing meteor struck his side, revealing Ji Rong, rising from his knees, bloodied and wounded, and cradling his spirit beast in his arms. His foe stood from the crumbling rubble of the kennel, badly burnt but unbowed.

  And behind them, there was a splintering crack as Zhengui’s Paradise Rampart collapsed under its own weight, rotted from the inside. The shishigui behind the rampart let out a full-throated roar of triumph as they poured through, an advancing line of spearmen shielded by a thick miasma of impure qi.

  Near the entrance to the fort, Liao Zhu spun and slashed blindingly fast, dueling four third realms of worrying potency.

  However, before Ling Qi could so much as reorient herself, the cresting tip of the charging enemy formation crumpled. Across their line, a smear of red bloomed. To Ling Qi’s eye, it was as if some divine painter had dragged a red brush across the world. Flesh, bone, and armor alike liquified in a line a quarter meter wide, and enemies tumbled to the ground in severed chunks.

  The cause was only made clear a beat later as the blur across her vision resolved into Commander Guan Zhi, her raised leg coming back to rest on the ground. The young woman was an ominous sight. Around her, the qi of light and air bent and warped, making her look as if she were carved from black stone. Rocks and soil and droplets of blood alike floated around her, torn between the pull of her power and the pull of the earth.

  Before the stumbling shishigui line could so much as buckle, the dancer beside her let out an ecstatic cry, and Ling Qi’s gaze snapped upward toward the feeling of power that erupted. There, crouched atop the pinnacle of the fort, was a silhouette much like the vile priest she had spied at the river’s source, an emaciated figure cloaked in liquid rot with lines of thin nails driven into her skull. Gleaming piercings festooned the creature’s body, rods of bright steel that had been driven through the gaps between bones and weaved between emaciated ribs. The nails buried in the creature’s skull where eyes should have been flashed with vile green light, and Ling Qi felt her stomach turn as the world warped.

  Pain.

  Then the world warped again, and Ling Qi had to hold in a sob of relief as the crushing overload on her senses lifted. She saw Guan Zhi standing before them, her fist outstretched, glaring up at the fourth realm on the roof. Ling Qi could almost imagine that she saw the scattering ashes of a thousand memories twisting away in the air from the commander’s knuckles.Bian Ya’s voice sounded in her ears. “
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