Ling Qi had a pressing matter to deal with. Sixiang had been getting into some trouble in the residences on the boys’ side, apparently traumatizing boys by popping in at bad times. Han Jian had given her the tip in passing, but he hadn’t specified what exactly the moon spirit had done.

  Tracking down the moon spirit wasn’t too hard thankfully, if only because Sixiang didn’t seem to be hiding her trail, which hung in the air like a strong perfume. Said trail eventually led Ling Qi out to the location of what had been the first of Yan Renshu’s hideouts she had hit, the one from which she had stolen her pill furnace.

  Ling Qi approached the now-revealed entrance carefully. In the end though, it was for naught as Sixiang materialized in the tree branches above her head and waved with a cheerful expression.

  “You’ve gotten things cleared up, I see,” the spirit chirped, sparkling black eyes crinkling. “See, isn’t communication great?”


  “Are you sure you’re a Dreaming Moon spirit and not a Twinned one?” Ling Qi shot back dryly, the misty blackness fading from her skin as she abandoned her attempt at stealth. “I still don’t appreciate the setup.”


  “It’s all a matter of expression in the end. I’d think you would understand that there aren’t hard definitions by now,” Sixiang replied playfully, sticking out a tongue. “Even if you’re mad, I don’t regret it. I might not fully understand all the ways humans divide up love and affection,” the spirit continued, nose wrinkling, “but you needed to straighten things out. It looks like you decided to make her and yourself sad though.”


  Sixiang wasn’t wrong, but it still irked her that she’d been prodded into doing it by someone else…… though she couldn’t really tell if she was mad at herself or the spirit for that. “She is my friend, but I couldn’t return her feelings. Those are two different things entirely.”


  “Are they?” Sixiang asked, head cocking to the side. “Humans sure do love their divisions. Isn’t love just love?”


  “Of course not,” Ling Qi replied, incredulous. “There’s no way you cannot know that.”


  “I suppose,” Sixiang allowed. “I don’t really understand where the lines are though. Humans contradict themselves a lot, even in their dreams. You’d think you could be honest in your own heads at least!”


  “I can’t really disagree with that.” Ling Qi sighed. “But are you really saying you think……” She cast around for an example. “.…… what you feel for your parents is the same as what you feel for a friend or…… a guy you like the look of?”


  Sixiang hummed thoughtfully. “I’m part of all my Mothers and Grandmothers, so that’s different. Even if I call them that though, I don’t think I really have ‘parents’ in the way you think of it. I don’t understand why a friend shouldn’t also be a lover though or why you wouldn’t want them to be.”


  “.…… Not doing this right now,” Ling Qi sighed, shaking her head. “Anyway, please stop causing trouble in the Sect. You can stay and ask people questions, but please don’t invade anyone’s home or surprise them in private.”


  “Well, if they didn’t want company, why wouldn’t they put up proper barriers?” Sixiang huffed, looking a little miffed. “There was no call for all that shouting and whatnot.”


  “I’m sure they overreacted,” Ling Qi replied, lying through her teeth. “But please follow my request.”


  “Well, since it’s you, I guess I can do that.” Sixiang sighed, leaning back. Ling Qi twitched as the spirit pitched off the back of the tree branch, knees bending and spine contorting unnaturally to remain looking at Ling Qi. She supposed realistic spines were optional on spirits. “This is all very interesting.”


  “What are you doing anyway, bugging people at random?” Ling Qi asked, trying not to pay attention to the angle the spirit’s neck was bent at.

  “I’ve never talked to humans who were awake before,” Sixiang replied. “I am a…… muse? I think you call me that. I enter into dreams to grant inspiration. Grandmother gave me a body for the party, along with all of my sisters, but I only got to keep it because you spent all night chatting me up. So now I have a few months to have some fun.” Sixiang grinned then released their grasp on the tree, twisting in midair to land on their feet in blatant defiance of gravity.

  Ling Qi frowned. She knew she shouldn’t judge spirits as if they were human, but……

  “Don’t you start feeling all responsible,” the spirit chided. “I’m having fun, and there’s nothing wrong with living in dreams. You shouldn’t get so bogged down worrying about the future. Isn’t it the present moments that matter?

  “That’s a really careless way of thinking,” Ling Qi retorted with a huff, shooting the spirit an unimpressed look. “You have to worry about the future so the moments to come will be better.”


  “Ugh, logic,” Sixiang said, making a face. “Don’t be like that.”


  “You really are carefree, aren’t you,” Ling Qi replied, voice dry as she crossed her arms.

  Sixiang nodded agreeably. “Yup! I was going to name myself ‘impulse,’ you know? But I didn’t like the way the word sounded.”


  “.…… Just stick to the public areas please,” Ling Qi said.

  “Sure, sure, I’ll be good,” Sixiang said airily, not reassuring her at all. “Public areas just means outside, right?” she then asked, sounding uncertain.

  “Yes, but if someone invites you in,” Ling Qi answered, emphasizing the word invite, “you can go inside.”


  She was pretty sure the spirit understood. She would just have to hope that Sixiang kept their word.

  ***

  Ling Qi spent much of the rest of the day putting Liao Zhu’s advice into practice in regards to her new art, Phantasmagoria of Lunar Revelry. She practiced both the physical steps and movements, as well as the flows of qi.

  After, she began to meditate and bring herself once more to that nowhere place in the center of eight silvery reflections. This time, three of the moon phases called to her. The first, the Dreaming Moon, rippled with color, and she saw herself standing before all of her friends and many others, her flute at her lips. Then she saw herself, as the host of the party, moving among them, smoothing over disagreements, and keeping the atmosphere of the party light.

  The second, the darkest one representing the hidden depths of the New Moon, called. There were no faces here, only a flash of the map Xin had gifted her and a single spot of darkness yawning like a pit in the face of one of the carved mountains. It swallowed her up, and Ling Qi found herself deep underground before a pool of liquid darkness within which something gleamed.

  The last, surprisingly, was the gentle bright light of the Mother Moon. In that light, she saw Zhengui as he was when he had been playing with Hanyi in the snow. The image subtly shifted, and she saw her little spirit happy and content with Hanyi perched on his back and indistinct but somehow childlike figures all around.

  In the end, though she wavered, Ling Qi chose to go with the Hidden Moon’s quest. Not only was Xin the root of many of her successes and a person she liked besides, but also Ling Qi was more free at the Sect than she ever had been before. If she couldn’t indulge herself in curiosity now, then when could she? Perhaps exploration of her curiosity would even help her curb her tendency toward tunnel vision and missing things on the periphery of her interests. Her choices didn’t solely have to be about who she was after all. They could be about who she wanted to be.

  With her cultivation done for the day, Ling Qi headed down to the main office of the Sect office once again. She planned on making back the points she had spent purchasing her tutoring from Sect Brother Liao this week.

  Ling Qi had had her eye on one particular Sect mission for some time – a simple exorcism job that would allow her to scope out the location of the tournament at the same time. Thankfully, the mission was still available – according to the Sect official handling the distribution of jobs, the clean up of the grounds was nearly complete.

  The journey out to the venue itself was uneventful. The tournament grounds lay several kilometers to the east of the Outer Sect mountain at the flattened top of a high rocky hill. A wide, well paved path split off from the main road carving its way east from the Sect village and wound its way to the top where the tournament grounds lay.

  The outer structures looked like a great horseshoe from above. Their lowest reaches were taken up by comfortably appointed public spectator space, interrupted by private boxes, which increased in frequency and opulence the higher the structure rose. At the end of the horseshoe was a building with a great tented roof of gleaming silver shingles that resembled the Sect’s main office in the Outer Sect.

  At the center of the structures lay the stages themselves, four huge rectangles of white stone with stylized pillars that rose to pointed peaks a dozen meters up in each corner. Each stage was a good two hundred meters in length, and radiated a solid aura of earth and mountain qi. Ling Qi doubted she could so much as chip a single fragment from their stonework.

  She was supposed to meet the official in charge of the cleaning work at the large building, but Ling Qi set down on the upper right stage to have a little look around first. The fighting stages were utterly alike and without feature, but the pillars proved a bit more interesting. Embedded in their sides were fist-sized gemstones with hundreds of facets – diamonds, if she had to guess – which flickered with faint, multi-colored light on close inspection. Of course, there was only a single visible character on each formation: ‘Light’, ‘Sound’, ‘Touch’, ‘Weight’, ‘Scent’, and others still. She was fairly certain she was looking at a highly complex formations array. It may even be something like what Elder Jiao had set up in Elder Zhou’s test. Ling Qi didn’t linger too much longer though. Whatever the array was, it was as far beyond her skill as Elder Jiao was.

  Casting one last glance back at the massive gemstones, Ling Qi left the stages and headed down the tiled path leading to the large building at the far end of the complex. She met the Sect official in charge, a slightly graying man in the third stage of the third realm, just inside the building in a wide lobby that looked as if it could hold at least two hundred people at once in reasonable comfort.

  The man offered her a respectful bow in greeting as she entered, which she returned politely. “Sect Sister Ling, thank you for your acceptance of this duty.”


  “I am somewhat surprised that it remained available for this long,” Ling Qi admitted, straightening up from her bow. “The fighting stages seemed to be in perfect condition though, and I saw no flaw in the stands either.”


  The man nodded at the implied question. “The majority of the work is complete,” he said evenly, straightening his own posture. “Only the basement floor of this building, which comprises the waiting area for those who have failed and the medical facilities, remain to be cleansed.”


  That shouldn’t be too hard. Curious, she asked the man, “How many participants are expected that a whole floor would be needed for the losing participants, Sect Brother?”


  “Two hundred or so, I would expect,” the official replied, raising a greying eyebrow. “Most will be eliminated in the qualifying round of course, but few would throw away their chance for glory before so many spectators.”


  That was more participants than Ling Qi expected. That would be a really long tournament though, wouldn’t it? The man had answered though, so perhaps she could gain some more information.

  “Sect Brother, before I begin my duties,” she inquired politely, “might I ask how the tournament is structured? No one has actually said exactly how it will work……”


  The older man furrowed his brows. “Well, it is not hidden knowledge,” he replied slowly. After a brief moment of consideration, he answered, “Disciples will be divided into eight, roughly equal groups, four of which will engage in battle on the stages until two remain in each ring. Then the remaining groups will do the same. With sixteen disciples remaining, the elimination duels will begin the following day. Disciples who have lost are confined to the lower floor until the completion of the tournament in order to prevent any unfortunate accidents.”


  Ling Qi nodded in understanding. She had half-expected the entire thing to be a series of elimination duels, but it made sense. The Sect was a military force too, and group stages gave those with less direct skillsets a chance to show off and potentially secure a place as they would only have to win one elimination round. It added some uncertainty and luck to the process, but even duelists needed to be able to survive in a general melee. And, well, she doubted spectators had the patience or time to watch the number of duels required for a tournament full of elimination duels.

  “I see. Thank you for explaining, Sect Brother,” she said gratefully. “Would you explain then what is required of me?”


  Her duty was simple. She just had to disperse the various low grade spirits which had formed down in the basement and activate the cleaning talismans she was provided with for the more mundane work. The task was not a terribly dangerous one at her level of cultivation, but it was time-consuming and tedious.

  It was also, she found, an uncomfortable one. The moment she descended the stairs to the first basement level, the temperature dropped noticeably, and the hairs on the back of her neck rose at the prickling feeling of being watched. Much like her time cleansing the forest, Ling Qi found half-formed whispers tickling her ears, and the oily feeling of loss and despair clogged the air.

  FAILURE.

  The cloying aura of this place clawed at her thoughts, cold and depressing, but Ling Qi gritted her teeth and circulated her qi, keeping Argent Mirror primed and active. The tranquility brought by the art allowed her to proceed serenely through the dim, echoing hall where disciples who had lost were brought for medical attention or to await the ending ceremonies.

  Ling Qi descended into the shadowy basement in complete silence, little more than a drifting shadow as she lightly crossed the polished wooden floor.

  The shadowy shapes which clung to the many pillars of the underground hall did not stir as she passed them by, although the aura of unrestrained self-loathing and despair they exuded tingled across her thoughts, nipping at the edges of her qi. With her arts and cultivation, the clinging, emotional weight slid from her without harm, so Ling Qi proceeded deeper into the hall, mapping it out in her mind, noting where the highest concentrations of the spirits were.

  They were twisted things, blurry, half-melted images of boys and girls her own age or a bit older bleeding into one another and staring with empty black eyes as they whispered their mantras of failure again and again. Some seemed more solid than others, but none seemed more real than a particularly thick clump of fog.

  When she had mapped everything out, Ling Qi let out a breath and drew her knives. They hadn’t seen much use since she had purchased them, but her archery was too loud for this, as was her flute, so she fell back on her very first weapons……

  It definitely didn’t have anything to do with the cool knife tricks she had caught her tutor doing out of the corner of her eye when she meditated.

  The wraiths were not particularly resilient and dispersed easily with a single well-placed blow, but they did have, to her senses, anywhere from early to peak second realm cultivation and numbers. Luckily, they seemed not to care for one another’s presence or their surroundings overmuch unless directly roused. While she could have cleared them out all at once, it would have taken significantly more qi than the slower, stealthier method, and she wanted to conserve her energy for Zeqing’s lessons.

  To be honest, she wasn’t sure what the spirits could actually do. For all she knew, if she whipped them up all at once, they would fuse into some kind of giant angst titan. Best to avoid something like that. So over the course of the next few hours, she cleared away the clinging spirits. It was obnoxious work as they seemed to spawn back in behind her as she went along, but it was rewarding in its own way.

  Every time she dispersed a wailing specter, she got a tiny snippet of memory: the feeling of holding a sword, the sight of a spear’s point whistling by her ear, the rocking gait of a horse beneath her, and so many more. They were disjointed things without context, but she could feel them drifting around in the back of her thoughts. If she cultivated after this. she might see some small improvements in her skills.

  Eventually, she figured out that if she cleared a small section then started up the cleansing talismans, it would prevent further wraiths from spawning in that area. That would have been nice to know earlier, but she had gotten used to the Sect’s sink or swim methods by this point.

  Within another hour, she had the place clean and cleansed, ready for a whole new batch of washouts and their assorted angst.

  Ling Qi might not fully understand the games of status that seemingly every noble played, but she knew that losing would be a chain, limiting her ability to grow.

  Threads 160 Always Winter 1

  “So, you are saying that enough generations had passed for these spiders that stories of their exile had been mythologized almost entirely,” Ling Qi said blankly, descending the stony mountain gorge that lay beyond the forested vale.

  “That is accurate,” Cai Renxiang agreed.

  “Spirit beasts of the chitinous type are generally very short lived until mastery of Shen is achieved,” Meng Dan commented. While the main genealogy had been left inside the ring for safekeeping, he was paging through one of the other treatises found alongside it. “Two or three decades in the third realm is typical among most types.”


  “And the Duchess was basically treated as……” Ling Qi continued.

  “A wrathful deity,” Xia Lin said, deeply amused. “It seems that those who fled their master sensed his craven fear of justice, despite his ramblings. His own focus on past glory did him a disservice, I think.”


  “So the split ended up as a kind of religious schism,” Ling Qi concluded, rubbing her forehead. “When the Hui and his original partner died, the spiders that were left split on whether they should keep following or seek forgiveness and return.”


  “Miss Ling observes correctly,” Gan Guangli said. “It was a little odd to hear, but I do believe I like these fellows. I am sure that they can be integrated well!”


  “Gui agrees. The spinners were much nicer!” her little brother said, each of his steps sending up puffs of dust and bouncing gravel.

  Ling Qi observed the billowing cape of shimmering spidersilk thrown around Gan Guangli’s shoulders. Woven from the silk of the single fourth realm spider present, it was obviously potent even without being a proper talisman yet. There were many more such garments, Ling Qi knew, packed away in Cai Renxiang’s storage ring.

  “The spirits were deeply enthusiastic in their attempts to placate their perception of her. I have no doubt that Mother will find a use for them,” Cai Renxiang said as they reached the bottom of the gorge, looking at the long, gravel-filled passage ahead. “For now, let us focus on our progress. We still have a long distance to travel yet.”


  They did at that. Even in ideal conditions, they were several days out from the location that the iron sliver was drawn to. She glanced up at the cloudy sky, feeling the churning icy qi in their depths. She suspected they would not have ideal conditions.

  Over the course of the next few days, they continued to travel south, and with every step, the air grew colder and the mountains bleaker. Scraggly trees and plant life gave way to tough grasses and lichens, and the caps of white on the cloud-piercing peaks of the Wall crept lower and lower.

  By day, they began to face increasing snowfall and encountered valleys filled with many meters-deep white powder. Even what ground was bare to begin with grew slick with ice. It probably did not help that they were traveling in the early months of winter.

  Increasingly, they began to run into minor trouble with spirits, who troubled their path until Ling Qi managed to placate or drive them off.

  At night, the skies would sometimes clear, showing the sky as a twinkling tapestry of infinite blackness, undimmed by any light of civilization. But in the southern sky, they began to see something new. Ribbons and sheets of twisting color, peeking out between the southernmost mountains, danced in the sky and undulated silently and unnervingly. The first time she had spied the lights, Ling Qi had frozen still, staring blankly. The icy qi in her meridians had flared, sheathing her skin in frost and rime.

  She was needed. That was what she had felt. Something terrible was happening, and she was needed.

  Only Cai Renxiang’s hand on her shoulder had stopped her flying south then and there. She’d been embarrassed when she had come back to herself, but she hadn’t been the only one affected.

  Cai Renxiang had been afflicted with a terrible revulsion. The others had merely been frozen in some kind of blank terror instead. They had been careful to not look directly at the lights after that.

  However, as they traveled south, the weather only grew worse. Screaming winds assailed them, icy cold fit to carve a lesser cultivator’s flesh, and the falling snow was so thick that all the world became blank white nothingness, even with all of their senses. The air was thick with potent cold qi, and Ling Qi could feel powerful spirits, things comparable to her mentor, lurking in the seemingly infinite expanse.

  So it was that on the third day of travel after several hours of meagre progress, they elected to make camp and prepare for negotiating passage on the next day.

  ***

  Ling Qi hummed softly to herself, and the howl of the blizzard stole the sound from her lips. The snow and ice crusted the hems of her gown and dusted her hair, but no more than that. The endless white expanse had been parted just a little to leave her in a pocket of calm, seated on a shelf of rock halfway up the gorge they had stopped to rest in. Below, she could feel Zhengui, his heat standing out like a beacon in the frost. He was in the center of their little camp, providing extra heat to the space closed off by the formation-inscribed cloth of their pavilion.

  The hostile weather shelter provided by the Sect was a powerful thing, shielding those inside from notice and hostile qi, as well as regulating temperature. Cultivators inside could rest and meditate without expending energy protecting themselves.

  Ling Qi had elected to stay outside for now. The cold and the wind called to her, and even if she couldn’t see it, she could feel the moon shining brightly above. Even if they weren’t arts, she had so many songs to study now.

  “Hah! And you were acting so uninterested before,” Sixiang teased.

  “Because we had a job to do,” Ling Qi said. “Now, I can relax.”


  Earlier, Ling Qi had discussed the shares of the loot from the ring with Xia Lin and Meng Dan. Xia Lin had been agreeable to a larger share of the auction proceeds in exchange for Ling Qi taking the Tapestry as part of her share, and Ling Qi had agreed to grant the Meng a right of first refusal on the Tapestry while Meng Dan had offered his services for the auction to be held. The remainder of the loot had been quickly split according to interest.

  “How’re things with that talisman anyway?” Ling Qi asked.

  “I don’t know how you lot do clothes and stuff if just holding a mirror feels this odd,” Sixiang admitted. “I haven’t worked out how to use it yet.”


  The Liminal Labyrinth Gate that Sixiang held was a circular mirror set within a silver frame composed of delicate looping threads. The mirror reflected an endless kaleidoscope of color and mist and seemed to waver and fade when Ling Qi didn’t look directly upon it. Sixiang had asked Ling Qi to take it as part of her share. Apparently, it could help move objects and people back and forth between the physical and liminal realms.

  “It’s probably meant to be used together with the compass,” Ling Qi analyzed. The Dream Drenched Compass was another talisman that Ling Qi had secured as part of her share. It was an odd round device carved from dark red wood and inked with shifting characters that indicated directions far more complex than a material compass. A glimmering crystal of solidified dream spun lazily under the crystal glass.

  “Looks like we’ll have to take our own little field trip later,” Sixiang said.

  Later, Ling Qi thought, focusing back on the sheets of musical notation in her hands. The old paper remained crisp and dry, its edges barely fluttering despite the scream of the wind.

  It was honestly a little humbling, looking through these. She was proud of her music and proud of her songs, and she thought privately that her own work was a match for the skill of many of these old artists.

  There were some, however, that she could barely follow the notation of. They were dense with layers of meaning and intent, utterly beyond her ability even now. They were genuine masterpieces, and she suspected that some of the incomprehensible notation referred to the use of shen in their performance. She wasn’t going to sell these.

  But even if she had trouble with them, she found herself drawn to the music of Hui to understand it, and through it, them and the Emerald Seas their reign had wrought. She didn’t have the full picture, but she felt like she was beginning to understand, more than the corpse’s insults had given her. The music of the Hui was about transcendent things. It was about the interplay of the elements of the natural world and high ideals of beauty. It was about dreams and things that ought to be. It was like love as an ideal rather than an experience.

  She could understand why that corpse had disliked her so. Ling Qi knew that her own music was always touched by the grime of the ground. If she wrote a song about the beauty of a lotus, a stanza would most certainly touch on its muddy roots. In contrast, the Hui perspective was one that looked down always from above. Perhaps they had just spent too long among Xiangmen’s branches. Still, it couldn’t be said that there wasn’t beauty in that. While it would never be her style, she could still learn from the Hui’s style.

  But she couldn’t focus fully on cultivation just yet. While Zhengui was below with everyone, warming their pavilion, Hanyi was out here with her. She glanced up to the higher ledge where her junior sister sat, formally for once, gazing up at the sky where the powerful spirits of blizzard and mountain peak danced unseen.

  Hanyi’s expression was a complicated one. Longing, fear, pride, and other emotions warred on her face.

  “We’ll be treating with them later,” Ling Qi said as she materialized beside her spirit with a faint rustle of cloth. Ling Qi let her feet dangle from the high ledge as she turned her eyes up as well, tracing the eddies of power she could feel behind the driving wind and the driving snow.

  “Yeah,” Hanyi said.

  Ling Qi looked at Hanyi out of the corner of her eye, trying to determine the problem. “You want to talk to them yourself?”


  “I dunno. They’re like Momma, but they’re not Momma. They definitely aren’t like me. What if they get really mad like Momma was before the End?”


  Ling Qi admitted that it was a valid concern. Hanyi was…… not natural. What Zeqing had gone through was not natural. How would these wild spirits react to not only Hanyi, but herself?

  Or were they wild at all? They were getting close to their destination.

  Ling Qi let out a breath and slipped her arm around Hanyi’s shoulder. They listened for a moment to the deep and powerful song that underlaid the blizzard, noting its harmonies and its differences. One way or the other, they were going to have to talk their way through this. She doubted that Cai Renxiang would be able to cow these fourth realms.

  “Their song is pretty,” Hanyi said quietly, not lowering her eyes. “I like this place, Big Sis.”


  Ling Qi looked around to the frigid gorge so swiftly filling with snow and ice where even she could not see more than a meter from her face.

  “It is a nice place,” Ling Qi agreed, especially with those demon lights hidden by the storm. “Do you want me to stay here while I cultivate?”


  Hanyi nodded, leaning against her side as Ling Qi returned her focus to the music notes in her lap. She would need to rejoin the others later to plan their next move, but now was her time to cultivate song.