Ling Qi shut her eyes after she re-read the letter. She’d half-expected Cai’s recommendation to cause something a little ridiculous, so she supposed it wasn’t completely surprising that a man only a step or two down from the actual Minister of Law for the entire Emerald Seas province had shown up at her mother’s residence. And with that display, it meant her mother was willing to make the trip to the Sect……

  She could admit to herself that the idea made her nervous. She wanted to include her Mother in her life again, but would all those ugly feelings that had kept her in the street well back up once she actually spent time with the woman again? How much of her conviction to reconnect with her mother was rooted in reality instead of rationalization?

  “What deep matters trouble you so, Junior Sister?” The smooth male voice, sounding right in her ear, was nearly enough to make her leap from her seat like a startled cat. It was a testament to the hours of practice and effort put into her composure since arriving here that she managed to resist the urge, only the tightening of her grip on the parchment in her hands betraying her surprise. She had been expecting someone before the letter had arrived, fluttering through the twilight sky.

  She stood up from the stone bench she had been seated on and turned to face the center of the hilltop where a white marble table sat in the center of eight benches. On the central table lounged a young man, one leg hanging loosely off the edge.

  He was, to put it bluntly, strangely dressed. The loose dark red pants of the same kind Sun Liling often wore and simple slippers were common enough, but the open, sleeveless black leather vest, in which dozens of matte black knives were holstered, was much more daring. Or maybe it wasn’t the Inner Sect? He might be trying to emulate Elder Zhou going by his chiseled musculature.

  Not that she stared. Not at all.

  He was wearing a weird mask, a thing of silvery metal sculpted to look like the uneven fangs of a mountain demon. It covered his face from the nose down, the black fabric beneath trailing all the way down his neck. Perhaps the most shocking though was the vibrant red crescent tattoo marked with tiny formation characters along its inside edge that curled around his right eye.

  The young man rested his masked chin on his hand as she regarded him. “Do I meet your expectations, Junior Sister?” he asked lightly, raising an eyebrow.

  Ling Qi quickly bowed her head, clasping her hands together as she went through the formal motions. “My apologies, Senior Sect Brother. I was just startled. I could not feel your presence at all.”


  It didn’t hurt to pay a compliment, especially if it was true. To her qi senses, he might as well have been part of the table.

  “Aha, you will have to excuse me. I have been performing missions for some time,” the young man said easily, a breeze tugging at his shaggy black hair. “You are lucky that you posted your request when I, the sixth-ranked disciple, Liao Zhu, was on mandatory leave, for no others could fulfill the request you have laid out, Junior Sister.”


  She was about to respond when his qi flooded over her like a blanket of cloying mist, tainted by the scent of copper. It made her skin prickle uncomfortably, but she maintained her composure. He was at the seventh stage of the third realm. Despite the unsettling feel of his qi, he didn’t seem like a bad sort. Prideful perhaps, but it looked like he had a right to be.

  “I thank you for using your time to instruct me, Senior Brother Liao,” she replied evenly. “I will not squander my good fortune.”


  “Hm, a dutiful response,” Liao Zhu mused, looking her over. “Well, I suppose I give you credit for your composure. Maintaining dignity in the face of arrogance is an important skill.”


  Ling Qi slowly straightened up, meeting his eyes with a wary look. “I am sure your pride is well founded, Senior Brother Liao.” She wasn’t falling for a trap.

  “True enough,” he agreed. “But my phrasing was deliberately grating. I had heard that the current crop of talents was a quarrelsome bunch, but it seems that may have been exaggerated. No matter.” He made a sharp gesture, dismissing the subject. “I am Liao Zhu, practitioner of the Soaring Sanguine Crescent, the Twinned Star Discourse, and the Sable Moon’s Veil. Introduce yourself.”


  Ling Qi straightened her shoulders unconsciously. The young man’s words felt odd. They were commanding, but she couldn’t manage to muster up any offense at the blatant demand. She supposed sharing the names of her arts was fine. He could hardly teach her if he didn’t know what she was cultivating. “I am Ling Qi, practitioner of the Sable Crescent Step and the Forgotten Vale Melody,” she replied, following his lead. “I would like to add Phantasmagoria of Lunar Revelry to my abilities.” The Phantasmagoria art had been in the jade slip the Dreaming Moon avatar had given to her for her apparently successful performance at the moonlit gala. She hesitated before continuing, “My cultivation art is moon-aligned as well, but……”


  “Eight Phase Ceremony?” he finished, more a statement than a question.

  “I wasn’t aware that it was so common,” Ling Qi replied, feeling disgruntled. She had thought it a rare art, being a gift from a Moon avatar.

  “None of that now,” her tutor chided. “The only soul on this mountain aside from the two of us with access to that art is Elder Jiao himself. I only recognize a fellow walker of the moonlit path.”


  That did take the sting out a bit. “I guess I should have expected that, since I asked for a moon tutor,” she said, dipping her head in his direction.

  “It might be the primary starting point for moon art practitioners, but it is a varied thing. I have no doubt that your ceremony diverges from my own,” Liao Zhu said with a slight shrug. “You chose the Grinning Moon, I think, and you are on the verge of another choice.”


  Ling Qi nodded, listening closely to his words. He had the air of a teacher about to begin a lecture. “You chose the Bloody Moon?” she asked, glancing at the tattoo around his eye.

  “I have always had an affinity for delivering final justice to the wicked, yes,” he answered, a satisfied tinge to his tone despite the morbid implication. “Do not be too frightened, Junior Sister,” he added, apparently picking up on her unease. “I chose the Reflective Moons next, that I might guide others before they fall from the path of virtue or ease those who have already erred but have not yet committed any unforgivable acts.”


  “That’s kind of you,” Ling Qi said, doing her best to keep any judgement out of her voice.

  “We all have our paths,” Liao Zhu replied, seemingly unconcerned with her thoughts. “Regardless, let us begin. The first thing you must understand, is that all moon aspects are one. They are mutable and flow into one another, and so your cultivation must remain as flexible as possible. To do this, you should……”


  Ling Qi listened closely as Liao Zhu lectured, committing his words to memory, and later, when he offered demonstration, the fluctuations of his qi as well. Even if he made her somewhat uncomfortable, he truly was a gifted teacher.

  Soon, Ling Qi mastered the parts of the sixth phase of the Eight Phase Ceremony that had escaped her. She had needed to take a firmer hand in molding the lunar qi she absorbed because she had been allowing too much to escape in her gentleness. The moon was ever-changing, but in the moment, it held definite form. She had been treating it as if it were wind or water. With his advice, her efficiency in absorbing and refining stellar qi improved by a magnitude.

  She found herself stymied though. Part of the art’s potential was once again locked away by a will beyond her own. Liao Zhu showed her how to continue her cultivation of the art in that incomplete state so her efforts were not wasted. But she suspected that as Liao Zhu had alluded to, she would need to choose another moon and complete that moon’s quest before she could proceed further.

  Under Liao Zhu’s tutoring, she also picked up the first revel of the Phantasmagoria. The art seemed to call upon the memories of that night at the Dreaming Moon’s chaotic revel. With the Illustrious Phantasmal Festival technique, Ling Qi could use her qi to impress her memories of that night on the world around her. Ghostly dancers would coalesce from a many colored mist in a riot of color, laughter, and movement, allowing her to slip in their midst and hide from any who sought to target her.

  With the next technique, Lunatic Whirl, Ling Qi could even have her dancers physically assist her by gathering around an intruder in the festival, forcing them to join the revelry. Once caught, the intruder would be moved randomly to another location within the festival, and the frenetic pace of the revelry would even drain their qi if they were unable to successfully disengage.

  It didn’t really work all that well on Liao Zhu – not that she expected it to with the difference in their respective cultivation – but she could definitely see the potential in the art. The Phantasmagoria was not as polished as Forgotten Vale Melody yet, but it was at the first stage of nine compared to the Melody’s fifth stage of eight. Perhaps in time, it could become, as Xin had suggested, another staple art of hers.

  In the morning, with her tutoring over with, Ling Qi returned to the Sect’s main office on the Outer Sect mountain to hash out the details of getting her mother moved to the Sect village. It took a few hours, but eventually, she had all the forms filed for transport and residency. The Sect covered all the costs, but Ling Qi felt uneasy about her family’s safety on the journey from Tonghou. She took the option to pay a moderate sum of yellow stones from her own pocket to hire additional guards. It was pricey, perhaps, but it would do her nerves well.

  All told, according to the junior Sect advisor, the journey should take a bit more than two weeks, three at the outside. She would have a chance to talk with her mother before the New Year’s Tournament.

  Threads 159-Past 5

  “Oh, this is a shiny one. I like it,” Sixiang said, lying back on the polished surface of an antique table. They held a slip of white jade up to their face as if they could look into it with their eyes.

  Ling Qi glanced up from the near empty box in front of her and the jade slips arranged on the cover of a massive atlas of the Emerald Seas that lay on the floor before her. “Oh, what do we have there?” she asked cheerfully.

  Sixiang flicked it to her, and Ling Qi caught it out of the air, threading qi into the talisman to read the encoded information. Ling Qi frowned only a moment later. “Sixiang, this is another play.”


  “But it’s really intriguing, you know? I want to see how things turn out for the general and the prince. Can’t we watch it?” Sixiang pleaded, letting their head hang off the table to peer at her upside down.

  “And I told you we could see about investigating things more closely later. We’re organizing right now.”


  Despite her words, Ling Qi did want to look into it further. Many of the jade slips recorded performances, poetry, and songs. While they didn’t seem to contain techniques or arts, she could tell that there were insights to be found. As a musician, she had the itch to study the scores and the meter, but she just didn’t have time right now.

  Sixiang booed. “I’m gonna hold you to that later,” they threatened.

  “They’re not even full recordings. If anything, you should be bothering me to sell them to a theatre troupe so we can see them performed properly,” Ling Qi shot back. There was no heat in it though. She really had hit the treasure trove here.

  There were dozens of arts, mostly minor second realm things, but a few breached the third realm. From her inspection, they did not seem much lower in quality than her old Thousand Ring Fortress art. She was beyond them herself, but she could still see their value. She would have to split the treasures with Xia Lin of course, and she could already see ones the girl might be interested in. Even so, her share would be a great boon for her burgeoning clan library.

  More important though were the five jade slips that she had added to a third pile. They contained teachings on the crafting and modification of arts, and even a cursory glance had shown that their lessons were far deeper than the basic instruction offered by her sect lessons. There was musing on the shape of meridians, on insights and tribulations and breakthroughs that she knew she would want to study more closely later.

  It took a moment for Ling Qi to tear her eyes away from the remaining jade slips and turn her head to see how Meng Dan was doing. All around him were neat stacks of documents, books, and treasures, and dozens more floated around him, swiftly organizing themselves even as Meng Dan himself remained standing before the tapestry, rapidly going back and forth between it and the book. “Any luck so far?”


  “I believe I may have found the trouble,” Meng Dan said sourly. “The reason our prince has been so hard to find.”


  Ling Qi glanced from Meng Dan to the tapestry. He was glaring at it, and the tapestry was giving off an air of haughty indifference. “What is the problem then?”


  “Whichever miscreant embroidered the earlier names changed those that did not fit the dominant imperial and Weilu naming schema,” Meng Dan said. He sounded as if he had been gravely insulted. “I have enough context that I was able to locate him by the princess and her relations.”


  Ling Qi gave the tapestry a long look and considered the ravings of Hui Peng, written and otherwise. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. Does he even have an entry in the book?”


  “He does,” Meng Dan said primly. “Albeit, he is recorded merely as a ‘southern prince’ with few accomplishments. It seems that the High Kingship moved to a more northerly line after his father-in-law’s passing.”


  “The line continues though, right?” Ling Qi asked in concern. It would be problematic for their argument if the line just ended.

  “I am determining that. He and the princess certainly had children at least,” Meng Dan replied. “Tracing those lines is proving more difficult however.”


  Ling Qi looked back to her own work as she took up another jade slip. Threading qi through the formation, she peered at the information, and this time, she paused.

  “Heh, I know that look. Found something you like, huh?” Sixiang asked.

  “Maybe,” Ling Qi said. The jade was partially locked, revealing only a few tantalizing bits of information. It was a recipe for a potent breakthrough elixir called Heart’s Dream Elixir meant to aid in achieving the fourth realm and the opening of the middle dantian. But the information encoded within was clouded from her sight. It was going to take time to puzzle through, and what scraps she could make out told her that its ingredients would not be easy to acquire.

  It looked like she might have picked up a new long term project to be done with Suyin.

  ***

  Ling Qi was not certain how long it was before the last old talisman was placed in a pile. Time was hard to keep track of in this sunless little pocket realm. But it was at last done.

  Ling Qi stretched her arms overhead as she surveyed the contents of the ring. Things were still a mess, but they were a catalogued mess. Sort of.

  Things were mostly piled with similar things anyway.

  “Any luck yet?” Ling Qi asked, turning back to Meng Dan. He had fallen back into a chair at some point with Yinhui perched on its arm. The book lay open in his lap, and a pile of densely written notes had begun to pile up beside his chair.

  “I have begun to gain a picture of events,” Meng Dan said with some satisfaction. “The minor civil strife which ended the High King’s rule, the passing of his grandchildren into the care of other tribes…… I have traced a few generations. They seem to have been on the winning side of the Mason’s War at least. Signs seem to indicate that their blood was concentrated in the southwest. There may be some connection to the fallen Li.”


  “Is that bad?” Ling Qi asked. “That’s still the dead end problem again.”


  “Ah, but both my family and the Diao adopted refugees from that clan when absorbing their lands,” Meng Dan noted. “Not to mention intermarriages. If I am correct, our argument remains solid.”


  “Good,” Ling Qi said in relief. “Do you need any more help, or should I head out and let Lady Cai know that the organization is mostly done?”


  She was feeling significantly better, her qi beginning to recover well. So they must have been in here for a while.

  Meng Dan closed the book in his lap and gathering his notes as he stood. “I believe so. Meaning no offense, but the work remaining is rather more in my realm of expertise.”


  “I take none,” Ling Qi said. “Are you coming out as well then?”


  “I think I shall. This place is rather dreary,” he agreed.

  “I will remain unless called,” Yinhui murmured, sliding into his chair with a tome the size of her torso in hand. “It is comfortable here.”


  “Only for you,” Sixiang said. “I’ll be glad to get out.”


  Ling Qi nodded, preparing to leave the ring, only to pause as Meng Dan extended a hand to her, holding a sheet of paper packed with his dense handwriting.

  “A small gift, Miss Ling,” he said, dipping his head. “While I acknowledge your earlier words……”


  Ling Qi took the paper as he spoke, glancing down to see names and deeds. A musician in court of the second Weilu duke, a brave general who had been lauded for saving a burgeoning city from an eruption of malignant spirits, and a playwright whose performances were in circulation until their loss in the disappearance were the first to catch her eye. There were more than a half dozen others as well. They were not dukes or provincial heroes or truly notable historical figures, but at a glance, they seemed like good people at least.

  “I do not believe it is a good thing to dismiss one’s ancestry wholesale. Many of our predecessors were foul, this is true, but many were admirable as well,” Meng Dan continued. “A single man is not a family tree.”


  Ling Qi paused. She had already dismissed thoughts of ancestry from her head. It was a curiosity, and there’d been no reason to give it more thought than that. “There was no need.”


  Meng Dan shrugged. “I am being somewhat presumptuous, I know, in putting my own belief upon you. But I think it is a sad thing to have no roots.”


  “Thank you,” Ling Qi said after a moment. Some names looked a little familiar. Hadn’t there been a few talismans with that name etched upon them, and a sculpture matched to that one?

  It might not be the worst thing to put those in her claims.

  “If you wish to track the ‘other side,’ I may have to charge.” Meng Dan smiled. “That cantankerous old talisman does not much like maternal bloodlines.”


  Ling Qi blinked. The man had ruled other Weilu, so it made some sense that his dalliance would be somewhere in the Tapestry as well.

  “I’ll consider it,” Ling Qi said, folding the parchment. “But let us get out for now.”


  ***

  Ling Qi had not been certain what she expected to see when she emerged, but this was not it.

  Under the dark canopy of the valley, lit by the fey lights and the eyes of the wood spirits lurking among every bough, were spiders in their thousands. They stood in a glistening castle of webbing woven among millenia-old trees. In the center, hovering above the form of a great brown spider the size of a small house, Cai Renxiang burned like a star with wings of radiance on her shoulders.

  The spiders bowed, one and all, pressing their bodies to the ground, to the webs, and to the branches. It was a gesture of supplication, obvious despite their inhuman frames.

  “Negotiations are complete then. The House of Cai accepts your reparations and your oaths,” Cai Renxiang proclaimed.

  Looked like they all had some things to share.