“She was still wishing herself dead last time I saw her.” Su Ling gave a wry grin. “I can’t say a drinking ceremony with a giant spider was what I was expecting from that.”


  It was the next day, and Ling Qi had met Su Ling early in the morning to get some practice in. She was trying to further master Argent Mirror, and the fox girl’s illusions were the best practice she could safely find.

  “Yeah, when she said she would need help getting back……” Ling Qi trailed off as she leaned back against the tree she was resting near. Training had gone pretty well, but she was feeling more than a bit mentally exhausted from practicing the perception art for so long.

  Su Ling sat across from her, wiping an oiled rag along the length of her sword. Ling Qi had noticed her using blade cleaning and care as a meditative exercise lately. “I saw her putting a bunch of those big clay jars into her ring, but I didn’t really think about it. It’s just a hangover though. I’m surprised that she can’t just fix that,” Ling Qi admitted.

  “Ehh…… Liquor meant for cultivators is as full of weird shit as medicines,” Su Ling said easily. “Hao, the guy I sell my stuff to, does business with a couple of brewers. You have to use some pretty potent stuff to affect a cultivator.”


  Ling Qi hummed to herself. She supposed that made sense. “Do you think you have some free time still?”


  “Sure? I don’t have anything I gotta do till later.”


  Ling Qi knew it was a little silly to hesitate now after she had already asked, but she still felt awkward about asking. “I’ve been doing some composing. Do you think you would mind listening for awhile?”


  The fox girl’s ears twitched, and she looked at Ling Qi oddly, pausing in her work on polishing her blade. “Huh, you picked up another art then? Figured you’d be full up.”


  She frowned at her friend. “No, just normal music. Not everything I do is cultivation.”


  Su Ling gave her a singularly unimpressed look.

  “.…… I’m trying to do some normal stuff,” Ling Qi muttered. “If you don’t want to……”


  “I don’t mind,” Su Ling replied over her. “I’m just kinda surprised. Hope you’re not expectin’ me to know one note from another though.”


  “I don’t need you to,” Ling Qi said, sitting up. “Just tell me how you feel about the piece when I’m done. That’s more important than the technical stuff.” At the risk of sounding arrogant, she was beyond flubbing notes at this point.

  She played without end for the rest of the morning, allowing her tension and nerves to flow away into the melody she wove with her flute. It was nice. It was everything she liked about doing things with Su Ling. There were none of the undercurrents of awkwardness that remained with Meizhen, the tension with Xiulan, or even the feeling of needing to live up to some impossible image that Li Suyin sometimes gave her.

  Su Ling was hard to read. She complimented the music easily enough, but she was vague on her thoughts about it. The girl seemed sad, if anything, which was strange, as the melody she was working on was a lighter one. She didn’t seem inclined to talk about it though, so Ling Qi did not push…… yet.

  For now, Ling Qi would just enjoy some relaxation before she got back to work.

  ***

  Ling Qi crouched over the glittering red and yellow growths at the edge of the vent, a length of sturdy cord dangling from her fingers. She still retained one of her scouts from last week’s actions at Sun Liling’s fortress, and she had found herself at a bit of a loss as to what to do with the thing. She didn’t want to waste its remaining operation time, but she wasn’t going to need it for much this week.

  In the end, her thoughts had gone to the vent and the seemingly bottomless crevice she had rescued Zhengui from. Ling Qi was wary of getting caught in a space too small for her body though. Such occurrences had been…… messy in Elder Jiao’s simulations, not to mention painful. That has inspired her to just resort to a more mundane solution. It cost her no more than a trip to the supply house in the girl’s residences.

  “Are you done screwing around with that?” Su Ling asked impatiently, breaking her out of her thoughts as she felt the bundle of bones at the end of the cord come to rest on something solid.

  “Yeah,” Ling Qi replied absently, giving the spool she had staked to the ground beside the vent a little twist to ensure it could turn properly. “I didn’t know you were that eager for another concert,” she added lightly as she stood and turned, dusting off the front of her gown.

  Su Ling, seated on the ground with her sword across her lap, looked discomfited by the comment, scratching her cheek sheepishly. “It’s a good focus for meditation. The third stage of the Insurmountable Crag art is kinda……”


  Ling Qi nodded her understanding as she settled herself on the flat stone that was her customary seat. Mountain qi didn’t really come naturally to the other girl, so as much as Su Ling liked practicing her sword art, it was an uphill struggle. In the case of Argent Mirror, the difficulty had been offset by how easily she took to Lake qi, but she didn’t have that advantage with her sword art.

  “It’s not like I mind,” Ling Qi said, idly running her fingers along the polished length of her flute and wondering what she should play.

  “Yeah, I guess I’m glad you asked,” Su Ling said as she closed her eyes. “I never would have thought you could do songs that don’t make people’s hair stand on end.”


  Ling Qi made an affronted sound, shooting her friend a dirty look. She knew the rough girl’s jibe was friendly though, so she wasn’t offended. “It’s hardly my fault that the mountain seems to explode every other month,” she huffed, raising her flute to her lips. She hadn’t really made any proper songs yet, so she would just play what she felt.

  The next couple hours passed in peace as she played and her friend meditated, ripples of dull grey Mountain qi occasionally surfacing on the mirror-polished blade of her sword. Eventually, the drift of the sun ended their relaxation though.

  As Ling Qi opened her eyes and lowered her flute, she felt the tingling of a new meridian slowly forming down her arm, and felt a thrill of satisfaction at her progress. Elder Su had made clearing meridians sound hard, but while it was time consuming, she had never really found it difficult beyond the first few.

  Su Ling’s breathing was even, and her furry ears drooped low. Her friend almost looked asleep, although Ling Qi could tell that she wasn’t. Her expression was melancholy though, and it made Ling Qi wonder. She mulled over her options and as usual, elected to take the direct path.

  “Do you want to talk about it?” she offered as she dismissed her flute back into storage.

  Su Ling opened her eyes, giving Ling Qi a confused look. “About what?”


  “Whatever has you down,” Ling Qi replied simply. “Sad wasn’t what I was going for with that piece.”


  Su Ling looked at her for a moment and scoffed. “Since when are you all touchy-feely. ‘S more Suyin’s thing isn’t it?”


  “We’re supposed to be friends, right?” Ling Qi asked dryly. “Of course I’d ask.”


  “I left you be when you came to the Medicine Hall with frostbite and a look like someone had pissed in your rice,” Su Ling retorted, crossing her arms.

  Ling Qi hadn’t even noticed Su Ling was there when she went in to get treated. “Yeah, well, maybe I’d have liked it if you said something,” she shot back, feeling defensive.

  Su Ling looked away, uncomfortable. “You have other people for that.”


  Ling Qi frowned. She…… didn’t, really. She loved Meizhen as a friend, but she had no desire to bare any part of her past to the highborn girl. The thought of doing so made her deeply uncomfortable, and the thought of burdening Xiulan or Suyin with her complaints didn’t exactly fill her with joy either.

  “.…… It’s nothing important.” Ling Qi found Su Ling looking at her with a sort of unhappy realization on her face. “It’s just, ah, what’s the word -” Su Ling drummed her fingers on her knee, “- it’s just nostalgia.”


  Ling Qi toyed with the end of her braid. “It seems like every time I start to trust someone more powerful than me, they pull something shitty.” The vulgarity passed her lips without thought, rare as that was for her these days. She could remember the unreasoning panic which had seized her thoughts in the aftermath of the incident with Meizhen. She had only been able to push it aside because Meizhen was her friend.

  Then Zeqing had come along and flung her into a deadly blizzard, shattering the comfort that she had started to take in her presence. She could recognize that she had started to latch onto the snow woman; her mastery of Argent Mirror wouldn’t let her ignore that.

  “I can get that,” Su Ling said quietly. “Not quite like you do, but fuck, nobody is the same when it comes to that kind of thing.”


  “Guess so,” Ling Qi mused. She supposed it all came back to Mother and the ugly argument that had led to her fleeing to the streets. It seemed foolish of her looking back. Those memories took on a different cast when looked at with the eyes of an adult. She had a few reasons to pay Tonghou City a visit, it seemed.

  “That’s a scary look,” Su Ling said, drawing her from her thoughts. “Got someone you’re gonna kill?”


  “Maybe,” Ling Qi said slowly. “How about you?”


  “Sure,” Su Ling replied, meeting her eyes dead on. “Got a list, ending with that murderous furry bitch.”


  “Guess that’s something we have in common,” Ling Qi said, remembering her friends words about her spirit mother. “Let me know if you need a hand.”


  Su Ling stood up, dusting off her pants. “I might at that. Should probably get going though. Got a lot of work yet.”


  “The same,” Ling Qi sighed, copying her friend. “Until next time.”


  Threads 120 Wind Thief 2

  The wind screamed in her ears as she plunged downward, and Ling Qi’s heart pounded with it. The walls of the ravine blurred by, and the cold stone below beckoned. This was a dream, but dreams were real enough in their own way.

  The Grinning Moon was many things. It rejected constraints, all constraints, and this, she refused. It loved cleverness and tricks, and this, she accepted. She recalled vaguely a text she had read last year, claiming that the Grinning Moon was the patron of clever investigators. She had found it odd at the time, but she now knew it was not wrong.

  The Grinning Moon did not care about goals. It did not care about motivations. Perhaps its various local manifestations and avatars did, but the moon itself did not. The Grinning Moon was a thing of action and movement. Call it a heist or a sting, a casing or an investigation, the moon cared not. It only cared that she acted, that she sought to live and run and fly, to match her mind against others and come out on top.

  As the ground approached, solid and inviolate, Ling Qi came to understand the core virtue of the Grinning Moon. That which underlaid all the rest.

  Self-assurance.

  Ling Qi looked at the approaching ground and felt dormant meridians churn to life. The howl of the wind transformed into her laughter, and the shadows of the ravine closed in as a welcoming embrace.

  She looked at the ground and decided that she wasn’t falling anymore.

  Yes, she could not defy the Law of Earth, any more than any infant could defy the Law of their mother. But what parent did not know the mischief which a child could get up to before the Law could be enforced?

  Ling Qi became the wind and the shadow, and her momentum changed. She shot through the air, parallel to the ground, at a speed fit to strip a mortal’s flesh from their bones. As the wind, she cared not. Feet and toes grew solid for one moment as her slowed descent carried her down into the depths of the ravine. There, her feet skipped across stone, and muscles filled with the force of a hurricane flexed, granting her flight for a few more glorious moments.

  Carried on rising warm winds, Ling Qi spiraled upward as the other winds howled free. The wind of the northern storm howled, fierce and unrestrained, shaking the vault. The south wind screamed the song of a blizzard and lashed with mighty gales, making hinges groan and indolent gods raise their heads in alarm. The east wind whispered softly, and locks and bindings came loose.

  The cool night air struck Ling Qi like a flung glass of water, and she blinked as she looked up at the clear night sky and the twinkling stars. The wind tugged at her gown and hair as she fell from the apex of her leap, some thirty meters in the air.

  She fell, and Ling Qi smiled as she took hold of the wind and shot off to the east, sending the canopy of the trees rustling in her wake. She spun, she flew, and she danced in midair. She could not restrain her laughter at the sheer joy of her movement. A second and a third time she guided the wind until at last she had to allow her foot to lightly touch the top of a hill and grant her new momentum.

  Through forest and glade she flew, and one by one, she restored function to her other arts. Through a maze of webs in which she had once carefully snuck, she flew freely, scattering and startling the dreamweaving spiders in her wake, untouched by their threads. Around an old forest shrine, she circled and danced, and an old and hoary stag raised his head to watch her flight in bemusement.

  And somewhere, far under the earth behind a maze of broken space, an ancient corpse’s horned skull shifted, and black flower petals drifted to the carpet of bones at its feet.

  ***

  Ling Qi was humming cheerfully as she returned to her sect housing. The mundane gown she had worn was ragged now, worn threadbare by twigs and leaves and the rush of wind. But it was fine. None of her peers had noted her passage, only the faint blowing of the wind. Through the cracks in her window slats she flowed, only rematerializing as her feet touched the smooth stone of the interior.

  Lately, she had been feeling pressured, tasks and worries and goals clouding her mind and distorting her focus. Her chest still ached with the crack in her nascent way, and the Duchess’ task still loomed. Thoughts of courtship and cultivation and social activities crowded the edges of her thoughts. They were not gone, but she just felt so refreshed now.

  Ling Qi blew out a breath and smiled as she strode down the hall to her bedroom. She would handle them all. Even those tasks which had been imposed on her,…… it was her choices that had led to those impositions. And if she had decided she was going to do something, it was going to be done. It was only a matter of finding the how. She was going to succeed. She would not accept any other outcome.

  Her confident smile vanished as she opened her bedroom door.

  Her dress was gone.

  It had been laid out on her bed, and now, it wasn’t there. Her bedding was gone too, the bed stripped down to the frame.

  Ling Qi stood there and stared and wondered if the low sound of distress she heard was coming from her own throat.

  But then, out of the corner of her eye, she caught motion. The door to her wardrobe was partially open and beginning to swing in the breeze kicking up around her. Dangling from the wardrobe, she saw a corner of one of her sheets.

  Ling Qi cautiously approached the wardrobe and opened the door the rest of the way. There, she could only stare blankly at what she saw.

  Her dress was pooled in the corner of the wardrobe, its layers in disarray, sleeves wrapped around a bundle of fabric that she recognized as the tatters of her bedspread. She reached down, picking up her dress, and the ragged cloth dropped away, but a few threads still dangled from her gown, slowly being drawn into its fabric.

  Had her dress been stress eating? The silky garment hung between her hands, inert and inanimate, save for the rapidly disappearing stray threads. She had thought that her dress was not yet conscious, but……

  Ling Qi peered down at the wrinkled fabric and reached out with her thoughts.

  She could not feel anything to contact, just the flows of qi that made up the arrays worked into the gown. Just a simple animal reaction? She knew that the talisman drew on her qi to function, but it was supposed to go dormant when not in use. Maybe the Cai thread made it different?

  “Let’s get you cleaned up. You’re all wrinkled now,” Ling Qi murmured, turning away from the wardrobe and the scraps. She felt a little odd, talking to her dress, but she supposed she should probably get used to the idea.

  ***

  Sixiang snorted out an inelegant laugh as they spun through the steps of a new dance. “You’re so cruel, Ling Qi,” they chuckled.

  Ling Qi made an irritated sound, her gown swaying around her feet as they separated, reaching the end of the set. “I’ll just have to remember to leave a few spirit stones out for the dress the next time I’m out like that.”


  “I’m surprised you plan on there being a next time,” Sixiang said, resting their hands on their hips. Here, among the standing stones, it was easier for them to remain manifested.

  “It’s always possible,” Ling Qi hedged. She certainly hadn’t intended her little cultivation trip to take three days. She had thought that she was gone for only a single evening. Thankfully, this sort of thing was not uncommon with third realm cultivators, so no one had raised a fuss. What few people didn’t think she had just been on a cultivation trip seemed to figure that Cai Renxiang had set her some secret task.

  “If you say so,” Sixiang said in amusement. “Anyway, I think you’re fully healed. I didn’t sense any leakage.”


  “Do you have to say it like that?” Ling Qi complained. It made her sound like she was incontinent or something.

  “Not my fault you’re still a bag of meat and fluids,” Sixiang teased, sticking out their tongue. “Don’t worry. You’re solving that, too.”


  Ling Qi rolled her eyes, and Sixiang yelped as a gust of wind sent them scattering into multihued particulates.

  “Hey! My projection is still fragile!” they complained, voice echoing from near her ear.

  “Not my fault that you’re a bag of bad humor and dream gunk,” Ling Qi replied dryly.

  “Hmph, you’ve gotten mean,” Sixiang grumbled, spinning a new face from moonlight and wind. “I’m funny.”


  “Sure you are,” Ling Qi said with amused condescension.

  Sixiang stuck out their tongue again as they took a seat on a flat stone. For a moment, there was silence between them as Ling Qi arranged herself on her own favorite rock.

  “So what happened?” Ling Qi asked quietly. She still couldn’t easily step back and forth between dream and material without a technique, but in cultivating the Phantasmagoria of Lunar Revelry, she could feel that something had changed.

  “You flooded yourself with way too much dream qi,” Sixiang explained. “Even if you held onto yourself, you’re less material than than you were before. I don’t think it’ll be too much of a problem for you, but……”


  “It’ll be something to keep an eye on,” Ling Qi finished. It was something she had checked after her sojourn without her arts. She really was physically lighter now, as if she had lost a dozen kilograms without changing her appearance one bit.

  “I’m pretty sure you aren’t going to drift away. You’re too stubborn for that,” Sixiang joked. “So, what do you say? Wanna try another dance?”


  “Sure,” Ling Qi agreed. She would be more cautious with the liminal realm in the future, but for now, there was no need to worry.