Zhengui was demanding an ever greater share of her attention what with his appetite growing at a ferocious rate. The little fellow practically inhaled cores, and the less said of the massacre of the fruit platter she purchased for him, the better. One of the flower beds in their garden had also met its demise at Zhengui’s maw. The little turtle-snake had chomped and shredded the plants into a carpet and rapidly dug out a hollow for himself.

  Ling Qi was glad that she had both studied herself and asked Xuan Shi for help, or she might have been much more worried. Zhengui was preparing to breakthrough to the second realm. Still, it was hard not to fret when Zhengui was acting as if he were in a trance or a fugue, barely responding to her when she spoke.

  However, she knew that she could only support him while he broke through. Heedless of the cost, she quickly set about purchasing a great deal of high quality wood, straw, and other plant-based kindling to line his growing nest with. She burned further spirit stones providing materials for security formations around the garden, well aware that Zhengui would be helpless in his hibernation.

  After a few days, Zhengui buried himself under a mound of dirt and shredded plant matter, and the feel of his thoughts grew muted and indistinct. A short time later, the kindling began burning, flames shot through with lines of emerald green greedily consuming the offerings in the pit that had once been a flowerbed.

  With Zhengui settled in, Ling Qi finally forced herself to leave the garden. She would not do Zhengui any good by stalling her own growth. She had been invited to train and explore with the Golden Fields group, and she planned to take advantage. Having been more than a month since she had picked up the jade slip for Argent Current, it was high time that she actually put it into practice.

  It was surprisingly easy to pick up Argent Current during the training sessions between rounds of careful exploration with Han Jian and the others. Argent Current focused on striking a single point again and again until it shattered, like a river breaking through a dam. It rewarded working together with other users of the technique as she found when working with Xiulan. If both of them used the Pressure Crack technique, the qi they poured into it reinforced itself, building off both of their efforts to greater results.

  Their efforts at exploration also finally bore some fruit this week as they discovered a set of caverns behind a small waterfall rich in Earth and Water qi. The caverns were littered with bones, not all of which looked animal. The sun was already setting by that time though, so Han Jian decided that it would be better to come back when they were fresh.

  In her spare time at the Argent vent, Ling Qi continued to pursue her whim, dangling one of the new Ossuary Scouts she had made down into the crevice at the end of a cord. While the little bone construct mostly got caught in cracks or otherwise got stuck, eventually, after many false starts and failures, her scout finally found the bottom of the vent. It was nothing grand, simply a small chamber slightly over a meter across filled with a bubbling pool of what looked like liquid silver. It was the source of the mist which rose from the vent. Ling Qi collected a few vials full of the stuff via her scout, noting with concern that the construct’s bones seemed to be petrifying with exposure to the liquid. The fourth time she sent it down, it came back up as a fossilized sculpture.

  Ling Qi made sure not to directly touch the stuff. It did feel like it was full of incredibly potent qi though, so she left it to Su Ling and Li Suyin to see if they could make anything of it. Her curiosity satisfied, she returned to cultivation.

  However, Ling Qi found it hard to concentrate. Between events with Zeqing and the introspection of her cultivation. Ling Qi found her thoughts turning back to her Mother again and again, even as she contemplated meeting Zeqing again. She felt that her communication with Mother was going well, that they were reconnecting, and that made her happy, but all the same……

  She remembered the night she had run away from her home. It was a memory that she had long suppressed, which had grown ever more clouded with emotion and self justification.

  She remembered the feeling of betrayal, fright, and panic that had consumed her younger self’s thoughts. Mother had been all she had, and she was supposed to protect her. Now that she thought about it, her first lessons on how to stay quiet and out of sight and notice had come from her Mother. It hadn’t been enough to avoid notice from customers, not back then.

  She remembered how much it had hurt to listen to Mother talk about her like some piece of meat or fatted calf at market, to have Mother smile and titter at the big leering oaf whose disgusting eyes had fallen on her, and to have Mother act like the only problem with the oaf’s proposition was Ling Qi not being ‘ready’.

  Looking back with older eyes, she could remember the bruises on Mother’s neck the next morning and the hitch in her step. She could recognize the vapid flirtations as a distraction and the way her Mother had snapped at her in the morning exhaustion. Su Ling had accused her of missing things before, and she wasn’t wrong; Ling Qi knew she had a bad habit of tunnel vision ever since she was a child.

  It had been years since she had thought about that night, and she had never really questioned or examined her apparent reasoning for leaving. She had a good excuse, of course; the streets offered little time for introspection…… or maybe until now, she hadn’t wanted to acknowledge that the basis of so much of her hardship was a wrong assumption.

  She was a stubborn girl. She knew that well enough……

  Ling Qi couldn’t regret her decision though. Even if she no longer blamed her Mother, the fact was that she would never have been truly safe with her either, especially as she grew. She could acknowledge now that Mother had been barely more than a girl herself at the time. Even now, Mother should only be a bit over thirty. Could Ling Qi have avoided ending up the virtual property of some overstuffed merchant or petty mortal official if she had stayed?

  It was with those thoughts in mind that she put her brush to the page.

  Gazing down at the drying ink of the third draft or so, Ling Qi pursed her lips. Letters were very limiting, especially when she suspected that they weren’t entirely private.

  Tonghou still hung heavily in her thoughts.

  Threads 121-Reverb 1

  With the end of the month looming, Ling Qi soon turned her attention to one last art. Ephemeral Night’s Memory was a subtle little art and not something she had made great use of since she had begun cultivating it earlier this year. It was an art for muddling and snatching fragments of memory, enabling the user to more easily sneak around and avoid leaving traces. She had mostly used it as a combat trick to disorient an enemy right before striking by making them forget her position.

  Compared to the likes of the Laughing Flight of the Wind Thief, she found its cultivation incredibly simple compared to the other art, mastering its remaining lessons in a very short time. Ling Qi found herself pondering its lessons as she worked out the last flaws in her usage. She knew very well that memory was a tricky thing, something people could rewrite to avoid facing contradictions. She had done it herself, unconsciously, in blowing up her mother’s stress and lessons into something they were not to reinforce her justification for leaving home. No, memory was not always reliable at all, even before considering arts like this. False memory could easily supplant reality.

  Ling Qi let out a breath and opened her eyes.

  Memory could be tricky, but that simply meant that it needed to be guarded well. That was all. Ephemeral Night’s Memory was a step in that direction.

  “Memories degrade and change, and there’s nothing wrong with that,” Sixiang said. The air beside Ling Qi shimmered, and the ghostly outline of the muse, wearing robes of glittering moonlight, appeared.

  “You would know,” Ling Qi acknowledged. She had swam in the memories that made up Sixiang. They were fragmented things, wisps of sensation and experience without logic or coherence. Only the most recent memories, those of their most recent incarnation, were anything clear. “I’ve already accepted the truth of impermanence. Something like this isn’t going to bother me.”


  “I wonder how much you have. Acknowledging the ending, the big capital E one, is one thing, but it’s so far away.” Sixiang leaned back to look up at the stars. “You certainly didn’t accept my Ending. I’m thankful for that, even if I think you’re silly for looking at it that way.”


  Ling Qi didn’t reply. She knew Endings. It was the light going out of a man’s eyes as frost crept over them. It was a bead of colorless radiance on the end of a saber and howling missiles of spiralling wind. It was winter in the streets where the unlucky never saw another spring. It was that glimpse of lightless, heatless nothing which Zeqing had given her.

  Her teacher had been right. She was not really ready yet to contemplate the full truth of the End. Even understanding implicitly that it would come, she didn’t want it to. “I couldn’t just let you be lazy and drift off,” Ling Qi said lightly. “You’ve put a lot of work into this incarnation. It’d be a shame to waste it.”


  Sixiang gave her an amused look. “I guess. I doubt the next one will be as interesting either.”


  For a time, they sat in silence under the moon.

  “Time has been flying, huh?” Sixiang mused. “Seems like this month has passed by so quickly. Almost time for another tournament in the Outer Sect.”


  Ling Qi nodded. “In a few months. At least this year, I might not come across as completely out of my depth,” Ling Qi said wryly. The practice she had gotten with the sect’s disciples this year would hopefully serve her well with the noble visitors Cai Renxiang would no doubt expect her to mingle with.

  “You’ll be fine,” Sixiang encouraged. “Worried about the match you have coming up?”


  “Not really,” Ling Qi denied, letting her eyes drift back shut. In the end, it was only an exhibition match. She wanted to win, but faced with the reality of the barbarians under their feet and in the skies and of the politics she was becoming aware of, it seemed so small a thing.

  “That’s a little arrogant, isn’t it?” Sixiang questioned, letting their bare legs dangle from the rooftop. “At least take it seriously.”


  “I will,” Ling Qi reassured. She would definitely give the fight her all. After all, that was the polite thing to do, and she had come far in terms of politeness. Even if she didn’t like him much, Ji Rong was still a peer, and in the end, they were on the same side, whatever rivalry their patrons had within the Empire.

  ***

  “I shall be disappointed in you if you lose,” Bai Meizhen said from behind her.

  Ling Qi met her friend’s eyes in the mirror as the girl finished arranging the pins in her hair. “I’m starting to think that you’re more invested in this duel than I am,” Ling Qi said dryly.

  Bai Meizhen gave her a disdainful look as she stepped away. “You are too lackadaisical.”


  Ling Qi stuck out her tongue. Bai Meizhen scrunched up her face in disgust.

  Ling Qi stood, laughing under her breath, and Bai Meizhen let out an amused huff.

  She eyed herself in the mirror. Everything about her image was in place. Her hair was done up with only a few thin streamers hanging down her back. She had adjusted her mantle, going for a lighter, gauzier blue silk than the usual low hanging “wings.” Pale white lace shrouded her hands in voluminous sleeves.

  It didn’t look too bad, she thought. And that did matter because in some ways, this was a show. They would be fighting in one of the bigger training fields, and there would be quite an audience given that the two of them were both ducal representatives in a way.

  The Sect was at war. Their duel would be overseen by a core disciple on medical leave, rather than an elder. It had occurred to her that the duel might not even get sanctioned in the first place, but it seemed that the Sect still had an interest in maintaining normality.

  “Let’s get going. We don’t want to give them any reason to complain,” Ling Qi said, heading for the door. Bai Meizhen nodded her assent.

  Outside the preparation room, three people waited. Her spirits, Zhengui and Hanyi, were there, and Bao Qingling as well, although she stood well off to the side.

  “You look pretty, Big Sis,” Hanyi said from her seat on Zhengui’s shell. “Can we wreck this jerk now, so I can get back to work?”


  “Be polite,” she chided. Hanyi’s drive hadn’t disappeared. It was only stoked by the news that Bao Qian was closing in on a deal for a performance. They had been given a date for next month.

  “Hanyi should not be so pushy,” Gui scoffed.

  “I, Zhen, am ready to win though,” Zhen insisted.

  Bao Qingling only glanced at them as Meizhen paced to her side. There was a subtle awkwardness there, like a clockwork missing a gear.

  Sixiang whispered.

  No spying, Ling Qi thought back, keeping her expression even.

  Sixiang grumbled.

  “I will leave you to it, Ling Qi,” Bai Meizhen said. Looking up at Bao Qingling, Meizhen continued, “You secured our seats?”


  “Yes,” the taller girl grunted. “Lower seating, east side.”


  Ling Qi gave Bai Meizhen and her…… friend a nod, and they split up, Ling Qi heading for the field and they, to the audience. Zhengui trundled along behind her with a confident stride.

  She emerged onto the field and into a buzz of noise. At the four corners of the combat field were four familiar structures, gem-set pillars like those that marked the tournament arenas. These weren’t as advanced; they would only contain the fight and warp space a little, making the battlefield larger within the perimeter, but the need for their presence still spoke to her recent growth.

  And her opponent’s, she supposed.

  Ji Rong stood on the far side of the field, his arms crossed. His foot tapped impatiently against the hard packed dirt of the field, but his scarred features were set in concentration. His Spirit, Relong, hovered in midair, his looping coils a miniature of the gargantuan beast that even now loomed over the Sect.

  Sixiang thought curiously.

  Ling Qi thought back silently. She might have taken steps to leave it behind, but in the end, Ji Rong was too close a reminder of unpleasant memories.

  “I never got a chance to say thanks for getting us out of there,” Ji Rong said gruffly as she took her place.

  “I have had a full schedule,” Ling Qi said neutrally. Zhengui came to a stop behind her, and Hanyi stood up, doing her best to match Ling Qi’s pose.

  “Yeah, you have,” Ji Rong said. His lips quirked into a self-deprecating smirk. “You really did beat me last year, didn’t you?”


  Ling Qi was silent, knowing that he wasn’t just referring to the tournament. “We both made our choices,” she said carefully. “I just chose to apply myself differently.”


  He grunted irritably, rolling his shoulders. “Tch, you knew how to change skins when you needed to and had a lil’ less pride.”


  “I would say that my pride was different,” Ling Qi corrected evenly. She wasn’t insulted, not when he said the word pride with that bitter twist.

  “That’s fair,” Ji Rong allowed, lowering his arms to his sides. There was a faint static in the air, a crackling just beneath the level of hearing. “I’m lookin’ forward to sharing some pointers, Sect Sister.”


  “Yes, let us have a good match, Sect Brother.” Around her, the air was already growing damp and cold, fingers of mist worming through the grass.

  Even though there was nothing material at stake, she really didn’t want to lose.

  Threads 121-Reverb 2

  As the core disciple overseeing the match raised his hand to signal the start, Ling Qi briefly reviewed her plan. Ling Qi had considered trying to beat Ji Rong at his game, rush him down, freeze and defeat him before he could build up a charge, but that was not what she had spent the month practicing. Playing at his game would allow him to dictate the pace.

  The referee’s hand came down, and everything outside the field distorted as it expanded, putting hundreds of meters of distance between them. A trilling wintery melody rang out as her Singing Mist Blade materialized above her head, and the Mist spilled forth.

  Across the field, thunder boomed, and a ring of inscribed discs appeared behind Ji Rong’s shoulders. His fists rose, static crackled in whitening hair, and his silhouette seemed to frizz and jump.

  In the field between them, Ling Qi felt their domains clash. Both were still formless, nameless. The Mist spilled into the world and sang of winter’s hardship, but Ji Rong projected nothing outward.

  He had become the lightning.

  In that moment, she met his eyes and found commonality. Neither wind nor lightning could be caged. She would not be able to trap him with laughing revelers again.

  Then he was in front of her, his fist outstretched, sparking knuckles nearly touching her nose. Ling Qi became the wind and scattered as the heavenly bolt crashed through her. In the boom of thunder, her laughter could be heard.

  Even as her silhouette reformed, she heard glass shatter as his heels dug into the melted dirt and launched himself back at her.

  This time, a palisade of writhing wood rose to stymie him, even as a young girl’s laughter mingled with a dragon’s roar.

  As new grown wood blackened and bulged inward, Ling Qi used the moment bought and played the first notes of the Spring’s End Aria, calling upon the echoes of true winter. Hoarfrost spread across the ground, and icy mist trailed from the hems of her dress as she ghosted backward, carried on the wind, riding the shockwave of the explosion that tore through Zhengui’s barrier. When Ji Rong ripped through the wall, a battlecry on his lips, she met him with a Hoarfrost Refrain.

  The screaming howl of a blizzard lashed him, and the scouring cold poured into his channels. Ji Rong, suspended in midair, shattered like fine glass, a great waterfall of sparks and static falling to earth amidst sparks of ice.

  A fraction of a second later, she felt an impact on her cheek. From a scattered crackle of static, Ji Rong’s fist materialized, followed by the rest of him. Her head snapped to the side as heavenly power ripped through layers of defensive qi. The follow-up punch deflected off a ringing note in the air, and the third and fourth crashed through naught but air. The fifth struck her in the chest. Then, within her mind, Sixiang stirred, and chaotic qi rippled out, disrupting Ji Rong’s technique.

  They flew apart to re-materialize on the ground. For a second time, their eyes met. Ling Qi’s cheek stung where his hit had landed, and frost clung to strands of Ji Rong’s hair.

  Ling Qi smiled thinly behind her flute and flew backward toward Zhengui without turning, flaring her qi in a prearranged signal.

  Her little brother was engaged with Ji Rong’s dragon, stabbing roots leaving scrapes and cuts across flying golden coils, but the moment that she gave the signal, he stopped, allowing the beam of liquid lightning that the young dragon spat to splash across his face to no effect.

  Hanyi’s voice rose in song and drove Relong back with the voice of winter. She hopped from Zhengui’s shell onto a squirming root, following as he retreated. That was part of the plan. Ling Qi trusted Hanyi to handle the dragon.

  Ling Qi had managed that situation perfectly well herself at that level after all. And unlike Heizui, Relong was at the same level as Hanyi rather than one stage above.

  As Ji Rong cut through the air, hot on her trail, a massive quantity of qi flowed down through Zhengui’s legs and into the field below.

  The earth roiled with life. Roots the size of entire saplings erupted, interposing themselves between her and Ji Rong. A flurry of fists tore apart a score, but a score more sprouted in their place. Ling Qi landed atop Zhengui’s shell, his volcanic heat only a pleasant warmth to her, and played a single ear-piercing note.

  As Ling Qi knew from sparring with Wang Chao, even if something could not be stopped, it could be redirected. Ji Rong, rocketing toward her still despite the lashing and obstructing roots, was taken by surprise when an eagle screamed and talons seized his shoulders from behind, using his momentum to fling him across the battlefield above her. Amidst the grasping roots, the phantoms of beasts rose, and the song of her sword and the Mist girded their claws and fangs in frost.

  She wondered briefly what she looked like to the audience, shrouded in mist standing atop Zhengui’s back and surrounded by a growing phantasmal army that stalked among root and branch.

  Ji Rong landed with a thunderous boom at the end of his flight, and a crackling fan of lightning rippled outward, ripping apart the phantasmal eagle. He glared across the field at her, crackling static pouring down his limbs and blackening the grass as he crouched there.

  Two of his nine discs were burning blue.

  Then, he did something that surprised her.

  His hand rose, two fingers extended. He stabbed them into his own chest, lightning-shrouded fingertips parting flesh like paper, and roared.

  It was not a sound which was meant to come from a human throat. Pebbles rattled and rose from the earth, and Ling Qi felt the wind vibrate and shake. Blinding lightning erupted outward in every direction from his position, and bolts fell from the clear sky. Reflexively, Ling Qi called on the Starless Shroud technique, and the bolts which fell upon her and her spirits vanished with nary a ripple.

  Ling Qi focused through the lightning, eyes flickering silver, and she saw him. A tracery of curling red lines like tattoos marked his flesh, and the wound in his chest bled freely, a crimson line running down his chest. Sparks crackled around his fingers, and his eyes burned blue.

  A third disc was burning.

  Ji Rong flung his hand outward, and crimson droplets scattered, each holding a single catalyzing spark, and orbs of lightning the size of a man’s head bloomed in the sky. Beneath her, Zhen’s throat swelled as he spat a boiling mass of glass and magma.

  It struck Ji Rong head on, but he erupted from it, bearing no more than scorched clothes and smoking skin.

  A fourth disc burned.

  Ji Rong charged, a roaring tail of lightning following him as if he were a comet.

  Ling Qi leapt down from Zhengui’s shell, her dress trailing behind her limbs like ripples of the night sky, and called forth the memories of revelry, the last link she needed to complete her defenses. Around her, howling beasts rose onto their hind legs, snarls turned into callous laughter, and robes and intricate armor bloomed across fur and hide. Ling Qi felt the brush of a dream.

  Zhengui tensed, and ash began to fall like snow. The aches of what few hits Ji Rong had landed began to fade.

  Overhead, orbs of lightning pulsed, and Ling Qi prepared herself to defend, only for the jagged bolts that erupted to strike Ji Rong. With each one, his aura flared brighter, and she felt his qi surging, building up power.

  A fifth and sixth disc glowed.

  He hit the front lines of her phantasmal army and howled like a beast himself as he tore them apart, fists flickering faster than her eye could track. Phantoms were torn into scraps of mist and dream. On his forehead, a third eye blazing with golden radiance burned, and behind his head, she caught a flickering vision of a thousand petaled lotus.

  The area he plowed through stayed clear. The Mist rolled back in, but new phantoms and revelers did not arise in his wake.

  He was paying for his advance. A great black wolf the size of a horse tore gashes in his right arm with its fangs before lightning ripped it apart, a screaming hawk tore at his face before a fist crushed it, and a striking serpent’s fangs found his leg before he trampled it. Slowly but surely though, he was carving a path of violence toward where she stood.

  Zhengui’s roots stabbed at his feet and snatched at his limbs, but they failed to slow him down.

  Ji Rong charged, and Ling Qi remained still as the air around her shimmered, faint and dreamlike afterimages trailing her limbs as she raised her flute to her lips once more. Dissolving, she rematerialized behind him.

  The pressure of her spirit smashed into him with the weight of a glacier, and ice burns spread across his back, visible under his tattered robe. Ji Rong stumbled, and for a moment, she thought that he would be launched forward, ready to take another plume of magma from Zhengui.

  Instead, his feet dug into the earth, and he spun, throwing a punch at the open air.

  Ling Qi dissolved, but this time, it didn’t help. A ten meter-wide gash opened in the earth as the wind roared, and Ling Qi felt dizziness as the tremendous force tore apart the currents of wind on which she flowed, scattering, for a brief moment, her perception into a thousand whirling sparks of color and noise.

  Dizzy, she was struck a hundred times and more, sparking fists battering her spirit.

  Ling Qi reformed, crouching on the ground, feeling as if she had been run over by a cart. Ji Rong stood above her, and Ling Qi prepared to step into dream, dragging them all away to reset the match.

  The seventh and eighth disc activated.

  Around her, she felt the dream deepen, the world blurring and rippling. In a moment of communication with Sixiang, she understood. As Ji Rong drew back his fist, the world bent, and Sxiang manifested, slender arms wrapping around his chest. Their features were feminine, and as they leaned forward to nip at Ji Rong’s ear, space bent, and his movements slowed.

  “Heeeey cutie, things are about to get hot.” Sixiang giggled.

  It was at that point that magma concentrated down to a single point erupted under Ji Rong’s feet, and Ling Qi flowed back to her feet, the revelers around her beginning to cheer and stamp their feet.

  The ninth disc burst into light, and the magma was blown away.

  Ji Rong was far from unharmed. Burns marred his skin, his clothes tattered and charred, and she could see a trembling in his right leg that spoke of coming collapse. None of that changed the ring of scintillating lightning that burned overhead like a god’s crown. None of that changed the exultant cry of falling lightning that fell upon them, a blast which she could only compare to Cai Renxiang’s light in experience.

  The silence did.

  The roar of lightning, the music and revelry and howls of beasts, and even the distant sound of Hanyi’s laughter all fell silent. Starless Night’s Reflection was an art that mimicked the bottomless lakes of the Thousand Lakes. Its Black Mirror technique was its most potent defense, and she used it now, draining her qi reserves precipitously. Darkness bloomed from Ling Qi and swallowed them all.

  A moment later, it shattered, but the lightning was gone. The field lay unchanged as if nothing had happened at all.

  Ling Qi stepped forward and laid her hands on the gaping young man’s smoking shoulders.

  She sang silence, and the revelers roared.

  ***

  “It was a good match,” Ling Qi said, offering a hand to her opponent.

  It was to Ji Rong’s credit that he hadn’t needed intervention from the Call to Ending. He knelt there, blackened skin cracking under the returned heat. His qi was gone, but he was still conscious.

  “Yeah, you win. I yield,” he said through frost-cracked lips.

  Off to one side, Hanyi stood proudly atop his defeated dragon. Her dress was a little charred, and she’d gotten some cuts and scrapes from the brawl, but she was in good humor.

  Zhengui stood ominously behind her, glaring down at Ji Rong.

  Ji Rong stared at her hand as if it might bite him.

  “It’s not enough to just fight on my own, is it?” he mumbled.

  Ling Qi’s silence was her answer. She thought it was obvious.

  Ji Rong took a shuddering breath and took her hand. She helped him to his feet as the referee deactivated the field and the crowd erupted into noise.