Ling Qi soon fell into a new routine of training and cultivation. With the aid of Elder Jiao’s lessons, Ling Qi’s cultivation of the neglected Argent Mirror Art began to progress again. As she learned to channel qi through her mortal senses, its lessons grew clearer. By taking those same weaves and turning them inward on herself, she could ward herself from foreign qi attempting to infiltrate her system to deceive or debilitate. This Tranquil Rebuke technique could, in some circumstances, even retaliate against such attempts.

  In turn, this self-awareness and her training with Meizhen fed into her cultivation of the Sable Crescent Step art. More and more, it was growing easier to channel dark qi through her legs and spine without losing her focus, and she was on the cusp of being able to utilize her Crescent’s Grace technique even during the day. The dense water and dark qi of the Black Pool where they sparred certainly didn’t hurt.

  Even ignoring her arts, there were benefits to personal lessons with Elder Jiao. Although the Elder’s manner was irritating and his utter lack of praise for her efforts frustrating, she was learning. She learned how to pick out a dozen visual details at a glance and parse the sounds, smells, and feel of natural qi. She was even beginning to learn how to better read people through both physical and spiritual tells. Ling Qi just wished Elder Jiao didn’t phrase those lessons as commentary on how easily read and open her own tells were.

  It was with these lessons in mind that she continued her investigation into Yan Renshu.

  She began her search for information in the market, after having taken a bit of time to disguise herself to avoid any questioning being traced back to her. She had fallen out of practice with such things, but she thought she did a pretty good job. It helped that her usual wear, the Cai-gifted robe, was pretty recognizable these days so spending a handful of red stones on makeup, clothes, and other things had a disproportionate effect.

  Her new strategy was to determine if there were any major purchases of cultivation supplies going out into the more wild areas of the mountain. She had exhausted physical trails last week, so this time she was going to try the economic trail. The first few leads turned out to just be older disciples who had chosen to build freestanding homes out of the usual areas, but eventually, she came upon something more suspicious.

  There were several shops in the market which were selling semi-regular bulk shipments to disciples that, according to her investigations, should not have been able to afford them, or who had been among those who had run off in the aftermath of Sun Liling’s return. Tracking the disciples’ movements proved difficult however, Most lead to dead ends out in the woods. But she caught a break when some lead her to discover sites that showed signs of being used as temporary camps.

  From there, she found further traces leading her deeper into the wilder parts of the mountain until. she managed to catch sight of an early second realm disappearing into the side of a rock formation. Hiding nearby, she witnessed others doing so as well, and in following the disciples that left whatever base was hidden behind the rock illusion, she heard the name of Yan Renshu on their lips.

  Her first urge was to immediately slip inside, but she restrained herself. As galling as it was to stop so close to her goal, she was wary of going into enemy territory alone. She hadn’t truly suffered a loss yet, and she wasn’t eager to find out what it was like.

  She managed to pick up a bit more about the base she had found from watching the comings and goings. There were, from the looks of it, around ten to fifteen disciples residing there, most of which seemed to be production students, talisman crafters in particular. Her fingers itched at the loot that must be inside such a place, unprotected by the rules of the market.

  However, much to her frustration, she could not confirm whether Yan Renshu himself was inside.

  All too soon, the time for her lessons with the Elder drew near, and she had to withdraw. As Sun Liling and her allies remained stubbornly hidden, Ling Qi would continue observing and investigating Yan Renshu’s forces in the afternoons to follow.

  She was a bit nervous about today’s lessons. She would be turning in the formations workbook the Elder had assigned her, and given the number of problems she had failed to solve, she wasn’t feeling confident about it.

  That feeling only grew as she sat stiffly in one of the plush seats lining the room as Elder Jiao paged lazily through the book. She was certain he was doing it on purpose to wind her up; there was no way the man really needed that much time to examine her work. She kept her gaze on her own lap rather than on the room around her; with the exception of the painting of Xin, the decorations changed every day, and today, the hangings depicted disturbing images of twisted, misshapen spirits against backdrops of stars and disquieting underground vistas that hurt her eyes to look at.

  Minutes ticked by in silence, and she could do little but endure and think. Su Ling had spoken to her earlier this morning, asking if she would be training at the vent. She was happy to find one of her friends seeking her out for once, and even more glad to have one of her training partners back. She was looking forward to spending time with her after this lesson.

  “Your technical proficiency is somewhat lacking.” The Elder’s dry voice shook her from her thoughts. “And I cannot call any of your solutions, such as they are, inspired. Nor can I find among your work any particular specialization.” His tone was neutral and bored. “What in the world do you want?”


  She hunched her shoulders defensively. “My apologies for the penmanship. I will take more time in the future,” she responded, even though she had taken more time than usual. “I’m afraid I do not know how to answer such a broad question.” A bit of irritation slipped in despite her best efforts, and she winced out how snippy her words sounded.

  He scoffed, but thankfully, did not seem offended. When she chanced a glance upward, she thought he actually looked amused.

  “Then consider the context of my words, child,” he said, making the book vanish from his hands in a swirl of shadow. “What do you seek from the formation arts? I would hope you are not wasting my time here. Your skill is sufficient for everyday minutiae already.”


  “Honored Elder,” she began carefully. “I admit, most of my interest is in breaking and bypassing formations rather than crafting them. You recall the bags I showed you the first day?”


  “I do. I am hardly senile yet,” Elder Jiao said dryly, leaning back against the wall where he sat on the divan. “Is that truly all you want? Do you find the formation arts so uninteresting?” he asked, raising one hairless brow.

  “Not as such,” she replied, picking her words carefully. Ling Qi was wary of the attention he was giving her and the slight undercurrent of danger in the air. “They are versatile and useful, but nothing I have been able to acquire is useful in the immediate sense. I just have so many things to do that spending time learning individual arrays seems……”


  He regarded her coolly before snorting. “Well, not an unexpected answer. The sort of arrays available in the archive are hardly the sort of thing to compete against the ability to shoot lightning from one’s eyes.”


  Ling Qi blinked. “Is there an art like that in the archive?”


  “I would not suggest it,” he said airily. “Very unstable, and difficult to aim. It can give the user rather terrible migraines as well.” He flicked his sleeve dismissively. “The formation arts are a thing of infinite complexity…… but its masters are not prone to sharing.”


  “So, the arrays in the archives……” Ling Qi reasoned out slowly. “They’re just the things everyone knows, aren’t they?”


  “Quite so,” Elder Jiao said with a chuckle. “Formations that are used so commonly that no one is going to hide them. That is not to say that you cannot advance in the art using those materials however. Can you tell me how?”


  Ling Qi’s expression soured. “.…… You have to create them yourself, don’t you? By using the primers available.”


  “Or convince a master to teach you, yes,” Elder Jiao agreed. “I will inform you now that I have no inclination to do so.”


  Ling Qi smiled bitterly. The reminder that these were limited training sessions was hardly welcome. “Of course, Honored Elder,” she replied, inclining her head. “I would be happy to receive your insights into the foundations of the art.”


  He eyed her consideringly then flicked his billowing sleeve again. This time, she had to hastily raise her hands to catch the scroll and brush case he had tossed at her. “Then pay close attention, child. I will not repeat myself.”


  Ling Qi hastily moved to unroll the blank scroll and prepare herself to take notes. She absolutely would not waste this.

  Elder Jiao was, for all his irreverence, obviously an expert in formations. She could barely keep up with his words on the interactions between the basic characters and the functions of their components, as well as the ways in which the characters could be altered in order to nullify or bypass their effects.

  For the next few hours, there was no sound except that of his voice and her brush, and numbers and characters danced behind her eyes by the time she staggered out of the cave. His words had given her inspiration though, and she fell upon the bags the moment she got home.

  With a new eye for the difficulty of the ‘locks’, she was able to quickly divide the more difficult ones from the less secure containers, allowing her to work on disarming the less lethal countermeasures. The first bag opened easily but was useless, containing only small curiosities like strings of beads, a lock of dark brown hair, a polished bone hairpin, and other such things. No talismans, elixirs, or anything else useful.

  The next bag contained a rather large amount of crow bones, which was creepy but equally useless.

  Only on the third did she find anything useful. The bag had three stoppered clay vials full of liquid, two of them airy and light and the third thick and black. Ling Qi could tell they were potent elixirs at a glance. At the bottom of the bag, wrapped in leather, lay a book with a pale white cover. It was full of text that she could make neither heads nor tails of. The characters were crude and blocky, completely unlike the Imperial script.

  Unfortunately, her efforts ended there. The ‘locks’ on the final bag stymied her, proving frustratingly unbreakable in their construction. Still, it was not a bad haul.

  Threads 105-Descent 7

  Ling Qi noticed someone approaching her, their presence loud, a beacon almost as obvious as Cai Renxiang. Her expression smoothed into neutrality as she faced Ji Rong. Hanyi almost bumped into her at the sudden stop, but it only took her a moment to recover, peering around Ling Qi’s skirts to see what had drawn her attention.

  Ji Rong studied her warily as he came to a stop a few strides away. He really hadn’t changed his manner much. He still stood with hunched shoulders, his hands stuffed into his pockets. Only the golden loops of scales that hung about his shoulders and the peering lizard-like head of his companion resting on his shoulder was any different. “Yo. Your boy going to be good for this?”


  Ling Qi regarded him, trying to pick out just what he wanted, why he could possibly be approaching her. So it was that Hanyi beat her to responding.

  “Zhengui is fine, obviously,” Hanyi retorted. “Don’t look down on him or my Sis!”


  Sixiang snorted out a laugh in her thoughts, and Ling Qi tried to keep her eyebrow from twitching. This girl…… She really could change gears quickly.

  Ji Rong glanced down at her. “That so?”


  Hanyi huffed, but Ling Qi held up a hand to quiet her before she could respond again. “Zhengui is just tired. Why are you asking?”


  He met her eyes and rolled his shoulders, drawing a grumble from his own spirit. “Look, I’m not tryin’ to start a fight. It’s obvious he’s hurt though. I just wanna know if we’re down a fighter.”


  “And why is that? Does he look wounded to you?” Ling Qi shot back.

  He snorted. “Don’t give me that. I saw your face back then. Parents don’t get that face when their kids ain’t hurt. You looked like you were gonna gut someone.”


  Ling Qi’s eyes widened, and internally, Sixiang sighed. “He’ll be fine. It’s nothing that will impair him in a fight,” she said tightly. She didn’t bother responding to his provocation regarding their relationship. “How about you? Isn’t it reckless to bring a spirit just on the edge of green down here as a combatant?”


  The shrunken dragon gave her an outraged look, his gleaming golden scales puffing out around his neck in a way that made him seem bigger. “You! Don’t imply that I can’t fight. You dare……!”


  “Chill, Relong. She’s just tryin to get a rise out of ya,” Ji Rong snapped. “I put down my conditions. He fulfilled ‘em. If he gets his fool self killed, that’s his own business. He’s my sworn brother, not my kid or my servant.”


  Ling Qi stared at him. How could he be so unconcerned? Well, no, she knew how. Somehow, she had just expected……

  Sixiang remonstrated with her in her thoughts.

  “I wonder how useful he’ll be though. Has he even had time to practice like that?” Hanyi asked snootily. “Zhengui is definitely way better.”


  Ling Qi almost winced. Even with the small amount she knew about dragons……

  She had already stepped in front of Hanyi before the young dragon had even finished coiling to spring, and Ji Rong caught him by the scruff of the neck before Relong could make it off of his shoulder. “We can’t afford to fight right now, Re,” he barked. Toward her, he said, “I’d appreciate it if you’d quit needling him.”


  Ling Qi breathed out. Sixiang was right. She was letting things get to her and taking it out on Ji Rong. She gave a short nod. “Less teasing, alright?” she said to Hanyi. “If you want to pick a fight, do it when we get back.”


  “Like I’m afraid,” Hanyi sniffed.

  “Say those words again when I am not restrained by duty,” the dragon grumbled, dangling from Ji Rong’s fist in a way that reminded her of a kitten being carried off by its mother.

  Ling Qi closed her eyes for a moment. “What did you need, Ji Rong?”


  He released his spirit, leaving Relong to coil back around his shoulders, and scrubbed a hand through his hair. “Seriously, I wasn’t trying to start a fight,” he grumbled. “You know things are gonna go to the hells down there, right? We might have a fancy escape route, but we’re still being used as bait.”


  Ling Qi wouldn’t quite put it that way, but he wasn’t wrong either. Sixiang’s phantom finger prodded her in the side, and she nodded. “I get it. My little brother,” she emphasized, “isn’t going to be a weak link.”


  He snorted, and her eyebrow twitched. “Good, but there was something else I was gonna ask you.”


  Ling Qi lifted an eyebrow and gestured for him to get on with it.

  “I want to fight you,” he said bluntly. She gave him a blank look. “Not here, obviously,” he clarified.

  “Why?”


  “Cause you’re the only one who’s beat me without being years ahead or a damned ducal,” he spat.

  “And you think you’re going to win now?” she asked dryly.

  “I think I’m going to get my ass kicked, but I don’t know how hard,” he said, making her blink.

  “Brother……” Relong mumbled uncomfortably, squirming around the boy’s neck.

  Ling Qi shot a look at Hanyi to wipe away the smirk that she knew would be forming.

  “I’ll be blunt in return. I don’t know what you’re getting at. Why now? You could have challenged me any time this year,” Ling Qi questioned.

  He grimaced in frustration. “Because I need to know if you’re just keeping pace or if you’re pulling ahead. And I’ve been putting it off, but I can’t anymore.”


  “And why is that?” Ling Qi asked, feeling the first thread of real curiosity.

  He glanced away grumbling. “She’s gonna kick my ass for this,” he mumbled. “End of next month, Sun Liling and me are leaving. She’s got family business back home, and I gotta do some formal crap myself. We’ll be back for the New Year’s Tourney at the end of this year, but I wanna do this before that.”


  “I’ll think about it,” Ling Qi said noncommittally, giving him a dubious look.

  Ji Rong looked unsatisfied but didn’t press her further.

  They parted ways, and Ling Qi shook her head. She’d have to pass the information about Sun Liling’s plans along to Cai Renxiang.

  ***

  When “morning” came, Ling Qi and Liao Zhu descended into the cavern. Foul and humid, the air left oily sweat to congeal on her skin as they carefully scouted out the abyssal plain at the edge of the cavern. Beneath their feet, the earth and grass had an unpleasant texture and malleability, an unwholesome spongey springiness that made her flesh crawl every time feathery grass fronds brushed her ankles.

  She knew on some level that it was irrational, that she had seen and experienced worse, but everything about this place seemed to trigger an instinctive loathing that was hard to dismiss. Even Liao Zhu, unflappable as he was, had a certain tension in his shoulders and tightness around his eyes as they scouted the immediate area.

  As unpleasant as it was, the tall, feathery grass was something of a boon, giving them cover to move through the rolling hills. At the edge of the twisted fungal forest, they found the first signs of real activity, a muddy track winding between the swaying trunks. Carefully following the path at a good distance revealed none of their enemy, but it did take them to the other side of the forest. The path itself terminated around a partially excavated boulder-topped hill, which looked much like a quarry on the surface.

  Seeing it revealed why the shape of the boulders Ling Qi had seen bothered her. Those oddly shaped protrusions emerging from the tops of the hills were not mere boulders. As Ling Qi looked down into a quarry where an immense ribcage lay partially exposed, she realized they were the scattered spinal bones of titanic beasts. The sheer scale of what she was looking at was difficult to accept. She had heard stories of the immenseness of certain beasts, even seen something similar at a distance in the form of the Sect Head’s companion, but never before had she seen a ribcage that could have contained all of Tonghou from only a few dozen meters away.

  And it was not alone. At the bottom of the quarry, the spongy earth had been removed, revealing not stone bedrock, but an endless, uncountable number of smaller bones, smashed and fused and petrified together. On one side of the quarry sat a single meters-wide block of the stuff upon an unmanned sledge. Skulls and ribs and other bones from too many creatures to identify were visible in its contours.

  She recalled what the fungus had called this place and understood. Land of Bones and Worms…… She’d seen the bones now. She wondered where the worms were.

  They did not linger long at the quarry. For whatever reason, it was abandoned. Of more immediate interest was the road they found and the structures visible now that they had traveled beyond the fungal forest. This road was not merely a packed dirt path; it was made of regular bricks of off-white “stone.”


  “Hoh, not exactly the work of savages,” Liao Zhu murmured as they crouched in the underbrush, watching the empty road.

  “They’re just bricks,” Ling Qi replied.

  He shook his head. “No, I only dabble in such things, but the design is advanced. Look at the drainage along the sides, the regularity of the stones, and the even mix of the mortar. These are not unsettled creatures.”


  Ling Qi was silent. She recalled Bao Qingling’s words. “It just means we need to be more careful,” she said.

  “Indeed.” Liao Zhu peered at the structures visible in the distance. “We will need to split here to cover more ground.”


  Ling Qi breathed out, reaching inward for support from her spirits. “Yes, Senior Brother. Should I take the outward path?” she asked, gesturing toward the road where it went toward the wall.

  “Yes,” he agreed. “But first……” He flicked his wrist, and a small silver ring appeared in his palm. He held it out to her.

  Ling Qi blinked. She took the ring out of instinct. “Senior Brother, what is this?”


  “It contains a technique of mine. So long as you wear it, you should be able to understand the creatures’ tongue,” he explained. “Please keep it safe. I shall have to return it to its original owner when we return to the surface.”


  “O-of course,” Ling Qi agreed, slipping the ring onto her finger. Now was not the time to feel awkward and uncertain.

  He looked at her a moment longer and then shook his head with a quiet chuckle. “Do watch yourself. A hero I might be, but this is no time nor place for damsels and daring rescues. Good hunting, Junior Sister.”


  “Good hunting, Senior Brother,” she echoed. A moment later, he was gone.

  Ling Qi turned her eyes back to the bone brick path. Skulking through the undergrowth, flitting from shadow to shadow, keeping close to the ground to avoid expending qi or revealing herself, Ling Qi made her way further toward the curving edge of the cavern.

  The fields caught her eye first. They were bright and colorful things, full of strange plants she did not recognize, odd things with big, ripe, flowering growths like puffy gourds. Wandering the fields were low-slung loping shapes with grey, rubbery skin and canine faces. She recognized her foes from the last time she had ventured into the caverns with Li Suyin. They were all nearly naked, their only clothing belts or bandoliers hung with tools. They were also performing what seemed to be mostly mundane farm labor. They weren’t mortal though. It was hard to judge, but they seemed to be roughly first realm.

  The laborers didn’t keep her attention as she moved around the edge of the field. Soon, a large structure, a dome of black metal and pale stone, came into sight, and here, she saw another familiar sight. Scampering, rushing, and crawling through ripened fields were swarms of the ugly human-rat things that had erupted into the cavern on Li Suyin’s expedition, only they seemed much smaller and less ravenous. The ones she saw in the fields were only the size of a small human child, and they seemed mostly interested in gorging themselves on the gourd fruits and tussling in a way reminiscent of other young animals, even if they were utterly hideous.

  Here and there around the field, loping around and occasionally prodding particularly violent scufflers apart with long sticks of bone, were more of the shishigui. These were more familiar, low third realm like the herders she had fought before. As she watched, one led another pack of the rat-things out of the dome while another took a pack inside.

  Circling further toward the wall of the cavern, the sound of flowing water reached her ears as the silhouettes of buildings came into view. They were tall, semi-conical things like artificial stalagmites. The village had no wall and sat astride a rushing river of tar-like liquid, which flowed from the interior out to the wall and then disappeared under the stone. Many bridges crossed the river, and the bridges teemed with shishigui, who were hauling…… something out of the water and throwing other things back in. She was too far away to make out what precisely they were doing.

  She had to decide what to investigate first.