Threads 161-Always Winter 2

Ling Qi smiled to herself as she alighted atop the packed snow in the bottom of the gorge. To mortal eyes, it stretched unbroken in every direction, a solid field of white. If Ling Qi didn’t know better, she would be convinced that she was alone here. Naturally, she did know better.

Focusing on a tiny spark of warmth beneath the snow, only perceptible because she knew it was there, Ling Qi let herself sink into the packed snow as mist.

A moment later, roaring heat struck her face as she stepped through the flaps of the pavilion. Snow spilled in briefly after her, stopping only when the cloth flaps snapped shut again, cutting off the flow.

“Satisfied with your cultivation for the moment, Miss Ling?” Xia Lin asked, her halberd falling back into a rest position.

Ling Qi nodded to the girl, smiling. “No, but my allotted time is up. I believe that means it is your turn?”

Xia Lin smiled thinly. “It is so. Sir Gan?”

“Haha, so that time arrives already,” Gan Guangli boomed from where he sat cross-legged further inside.

The pavilion was quite large on the inside, and its canvas walls gave no indication of being buried deep under the snow. The floor was a polished wooden platform laid out with thick rugs and cushions in dull earth colors. Gan Guangli had been seated on one of the larger examples. When he sprang to his feet, his head nearly brushed the ceiling.

In the center of the pavilion, there was a stone pit which should have held a bonfire. Instead, her little brother lounged there, shrunk to a more reasonable size to fit in the pavilion. The smoldering heat in the room radiated from his shell.

“Where is Hanyi?” Gui asked of her as she approached, passing Gan Guangli as he moved to take Xia Lin’s place.

Out of the corner of her eye, Ling Qi observed as the girl gave him a terse nod. It seemed like that matter at least had a lid on it. Xia Lin’s dislike was tempered for the moment.

Receiving the inventory of items they would be splitting had probably helped Xia Lin’s mood.

“Hanyi is staying outside for now,” Ling Qi explained, resting a hand on his head. “She’ll stay close to the pavilion though.”

Zhen flicked his tongue quickly, a sign of dissatisfaction. “Hmph. Hanyi should stay inside too,” he grumbled.

Ling Qi rubbed her hand across his scaly head and passed him by. She didn’t disagree, but she felt like Hanyi needed this.

The hours she had spent out in the storm, observing it and feeling it, had pushed her understanding of cold. Witnessing the flows of qi in the storm had given her the final inspiration she had needed to fully refine her master’s art. She could call on its full power with only a single pair of meridians now. So if Hanyi wanted a bit more time outside, she would let it go. They were close enough that she could be out there in an instant anyway if needed.

On the other side of Zhengui, she found Cai Renxiang sitting in a meditative pose on a rug of white fur. Her ever-present radiance traced the pale lines of an indecipherable mandala behind her. At her side was Meng Dan, who sat looking down in deep concentration at a set of three large bronze rings laid out on the floor. The rings were each two handspans wide and wrought of bronze and inlaid with formation etchings of glittering green jade. The third of the talismans that Ling Qi had deemed immediately useful, the Practitioner’s Divining Rings were a tool for refining clairvoyance arts like her Roaming Moon’s Eye art.

“Have you figured out how to use them?” Ling Qi asked, sitting down across from Meng Dan.

“Oh yes, the activation was simple enough to decipher,” Meng Dan replied. He traced his fingers along the rim of the closest ring. Light pulsed in the inlaid jade, racing along the curving lines carved in the metal. Ling Qi followed its path, memorizing the pattern of qi. “Useful things. Not as good as a dedicated farseeing chamber, but certainly better than most could afford in the field.”

Following Meng Dan’s example, Ling Qi channeled the qi of her own clairvoyance technique into the third ring. The air within its circumference shimmered as if it were a pool of water, which she would normally need for her techniques. The view within the ring soon zoomed in on Hanyi still perched on the ledge outside. The image was sharp and crisp without any of the usual blurring.

“Huh. That is pretty useful,” Ling Qi said.

“I would hope so,” Cai Renxiang said, cracking open one eye. Radiance bled from her iris, causing Ling Qi to shade her eyes. “I wish for the two of you to search our route ahead and determine the best path for the morrow.”

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“I assume you can join in on my vision like before, Sir Meng.”

“I can indeed.” At a gesture, a wide roll of tough parchment appeared in Meng Dan’s hands, along with a writing set. “I am sure the Sect and Her Grace will enjoy a recent topographical and spiritual map of the region as well, if we are to operate here.”

“They will,” Ling Qi said. Normally, her art was not much use unless she was looking for something specific, but using it to map the immediate region would be fine. “There are three separate spirits mingling in this storm by the way. I was able to pick them out from the background.”