Threads 11- Sect Challenges 1

Seeking a break from her churning thoughts, Ling Qi turned her attention to the young looking elder below. The elder was a squat, dour looking man with thinning hair and a wide face. He exuded a pressure that seemed to drain the very color from his surroundings. He wore plain silver robes, a minister’s cap, and a pair of tiny spectacles, all in perfect symmetry.

“We now begin the challenge given by disciple eight hundred and ten, Cai Renxiang, to disciple seven hundred and ninety five, Liu Su.” The elder’s voice was drier than a desert, and half as raspy. It seemed to absorb sound and attention alike, fixing Ling Qi’s attention on the dour man and silencing the murmurs from the other viewing boxes and the general stands. “In accordance with sect rules, Disciple Liu has chosen a match of administrative competence in lieu of a personal duel.”

Ling Qi’s eyes flicked briefly to her liege’s target, a handsome boy a year or two older standing firmly in the second stage of green and bronze realms. He looked calm and collected, confident even. She was too far away to feel much of his aura, but there was a faint papery scent to it.

Her attention returned to the elder then, yanked back by his droning voice. “In the constructed scenario, both disciples have been given the task of reorganizing a barony whose regulations have fallen out of sync with modern Imperial law. The disciples will then be tasked with organizing the county’s human resources for military mobilization. Disciple performance will be judged based upon time, accuracy, and minimizing efficiency losses, as judged by I, Elder Meng. Disciples, seat yourselves, and prepare to begin.”

Ling Qi watched, bemused, as the “challenge” began. Liu Su was impressive, insofar as he could be given the dull nature of the challenge. She felt the qi fluctuations as his domain expanded out, and paper and writing implements began to fly. Heavy reference tomes of law fluttered like overweight butterflies, their pages flipping rapidly as form after form was filled in by flying ink brushes, while Liu Su sat with his hands folded neatly in his lap, his eyes half-lidded and fluttering like a man on the verge of sleep.

Cai Renxiang, on the other hand, was less visually impressive. Yet the stern girl did not so much as glance at the tomes of reference she had been provided, and although she wielded only a single ink brush, her hands were a literal blur that only resolved if Ling Qi focused. Ling Qi was pretty sure she caught the sound of ink and paper sizzling from the speed with which her liege wrote.

Despite all that, she was still watching two people fill in paperwork, if rapidly, and that was difficult to grab her attention. Ling Qi found her thoughts turning back to what Meizhen had said. She didn’t know if she could agree with her friend. It felt as if she were just making excuses for herself.

Ling Qi had decided that she didn’t want to betray friends, but where did that line lie? Who was a friend, and what counted as betrayal?

She was still wrestling with that question when the match was called. Liu Su had finished faster, but apparently, his work could not match the quality of her liege’s efficiency and total lack of errors.

She would have to congratulate her liege. And Ling Qi would have to make sure she didn’t get left behind. She couldn’t put off her research and intelligence gathering on potential disciples to challenge just to navel-gaze. There would be time for that later.

***

Ling Qi was not sure what she had expected when she had set this meeting up.

“Does it not cause the gown to hang oddly and bunch up?” Gu Xiulan asked, idly swirling the cup of bubbling hot tea in her hand. “And I imagine it must chafe terribly.”

“Not at all,” Li Suyin replied, smoothing out the glittering silk folds of the gown she was showing them as she neatly folded it back up. “The metal filaments, once attuned to the wearer, will follow their motions naturally and can be controlled in the same way one would a limb.”

It wasn’t this, though.

“That sounds somewhat like a flying sword,” Xiulan commented shrewdly. “Are you certain you are not overreaching yourself?”

Li Suyin met Xiulan’s gaze steadily from where she stood. “It is just a prototype. I admit the control is limited to simple motions as things are currently, but the filaments are vectors for my arts all the same. My partner and I will develop it further when I break through.”

Xiulan continued to stare her down, to which Li Suyin responded by drawing herself up further. This was more like what she was expecting. “That’s the second time you’ve mentioned a partner,” Ling Qi said, pushing herself up from the wall she had been leaning against. “Anyone interesting?”

Li Suyin glanced toward her. “Oh! Um – I suppose neither of you interacted much with the crafting disciples. I have been collaborating with Du Feng, the disciple who placed second in the production competition, one rank above me, on a few projects.”

“Hm, I approve,” Xiulan said, pausing to take a sip of her near boiling tea. Ling Qi had no idea how the girl could stand it. She found the blend Li Suyin had set out to be much better chilled. “I suppose you really have grown.”

“I am pleased to finally meet your standards, Sect Sister Gu,” Li Suyin replied irritably.

Xiulan laughed. “You see? You would not have dared to talk back to me six months ago.”

Ling Qi coughed into her hand. “Maybe we should get back to our original topic.”

Despite her words, she was glad to listen to her friends’ banter; it let her feel normal again. Still, she had arranged this meeting for a purpose. As they were all in the eight hundreds, with her at 830, Li Suyin at 840, and Gu Xiulan at 890, they could share the efforts of their intelligence gathering as they were all trying to scope out the competition in the lower end of the Inner Sect.

“I am grossly underranked,” Gu Xiulan grumbled, her empty tea cup hitting the table with a solid clunk.

Ling Qi nodded in agreement. When speaking with other Inner disciples, and more often, just observing public areas from a well hidden nook, she had come to a similar conclusion. Disciples below nine hundred were mostly in the second realm with a scattering of partial breakthroughs. Even up to rank 880 or so, partial third realms were more common than full ones. She could say that those disciples were beneath her concern and not feel like she was being cocky saying so.

“Just how high are you thinking of challenging?” she asked, giving her friend a sidelong look.

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“High enough to reach the next reward tier. I would shame my family otherwise,” Xiulan sniffed.

“I am not yet certain that I wish to challenge for a higher rank at all,” Li Suyin sighed. “I really should finish a project or two first and begin my breakthrough.”

“Are you saying you don’t have your eye on any particular seat?” Ling Qi asked, raising an eyebrow.”

“No,” Li Suyin admitted, sitting down across from Xiulan, having finished putting away her prototype gown.

Ling Qi laughed, and Xiulan tittered along. “Well, let’s leave that aside for the moment. What have we learned about our yearmates?”

“Sun Liling has hardly shown her face,” Gu Xiulan answered first. “Neither has that Kang, though that might be for medical reasons. Bai Meizhen was not gentle in her match.”

“Ji Rong has been in the archives a great deal,” Li Suyin offered. “And not always in the arts sections. He got into a fistfight with a tome of Imperial law while I was studying construct behavior functions. The archivists were quite cross. One commented that it was becoming more common.”