Threads 322 Parting 8

Back in the Outer Sect, Elder Jiao had implied through Xin that he was considering her for apprenticeship in the Inner Sect. In the end, she had chosen to follow Cai Renxiang. She didn’t regret that choice, but she wished it were possible to grasp both opportunities.

As if sensing her thoughts, Elder Jiao snorted. “You’ve gotten yourself into exactly what I warned you of. Between that woman and these foreigners, you’ve filled your plate to overflowing. And that’s leaving aside your lady’s domestic ambition.”

Ling Qi pursed her lips, searching his expression. She knew that he had once been the Minister of Integrity, a leader and founder of that organization, and the eyes and black hand of the previous emperor. How much did the elder know of the duchess? Of what had passed between Cai Renxiang and her mother?

In truth, sometimes, when she was alone meditating on the future, she wanted to scream at the thought of the mountain she had set herself to climb.

Elder Jiao tapped the bowl of his pipe against his palm, glancing at his wife, who raised an eyebrow at him. “You are plotting,” he accused, jabbing his pipe at Xin.

“Ah, to be accused by my lord husband so cruelly.” Xin sighed, resting her cheek on her hand. “I could weep.”

Ling Qi shivered. The press of their wills as they clashed, the two seventh realm’s eyes meeting over her head, was nearly as bad as being back in the court of Xiangmen.

“I already said it. You were right.” Ling Qi repeated, “You were right, but I don’t regret it, following Renxiang, diving into these politics, because no one else would do it right!”

A hint of the frustration that had been building in her over these last months escaped. Even those most aligned with them were condescending at best. What would have happened if she had left the matter of her meeting with Emissary Jaromilla at the caldera battle to the sect to report? What would have happened if she and Renxiang had simply gone on to the intersect tournament and left this whole horrifyingly complex endeavor to, at best, a well-meaning courtier, and at worst, an outright disinterested bureaucrat?

And this was only the first hurdle to seeing that this beautiful mess of a province, her home, didn’t fall in when the lynchpin at its center cracked.

Elder Jiao’s expression went flat. “Too clever girl, are you really trying to manipulate me?”

He looked like a mannequin. His eyes were blank and dead and glassy. The eyes in the dark were not though. They glared down at her.

Xin scoffed. “You know she’s not, Jiao. As if you can’t read a child’s intentions clearly. Honestly, husband, all humor aside, I am disappointed in you.”

“I know we are not the same,” Ling Qi insisted. “I only have the barest knowledge of what you have done and who you are. I know that even with what little I can…” Her senses wavered.

A knife. A knife that was a man. Cruel Virtue, the blade to carve out the rot that the body might live and breathe healthily again. But each cut revealed a new tumor. The sickness ran so deep, deeper than the foundations themselves. Rot. Rot. RotrotrotrotrotrotROTROTROTROT-

“Feh. What obnoxious eyes you are cultivating. Have you been training her in secret, Xin?”

The awful, crushing despair that Ling Qi felt passed as swiftly as it had come. The flash of vision had been even briefer than the others, but where Xia Ren had left her unsettled and Elder Ying had left her sad, now, she just felt nauseous and drawn, like the victims of the red fever when it had swept through Tonghou. She felt as if her body was tied down with immense weights. Her head pounded, and even her qi felt sluggish and dull.

“Of course not.”

“Hmph, no, this wouldn’t be you. Too unpolished. An undefined domain feature.”

Ling Qi’s vision swam and returned.

Elder Jiao regarded her. His body seemed animate again, the shadows less dark. “You know I was listening, girl. Here is another answer for you. Power is delusion. It is what men fool themselves into believing they have, that they may move the world. The true secret? They can’t. Peasant, lord, and emperor alike, mortal or immortal ascended, all their efforts are worthless. Nothing fundamental changes anymore, not since the end of the age of myths when the great laws were set. The pieces get shuffled around, and the names change, but humans are humans, and the world is the world. It always comes back to the same pattern, the formulation set by cultivation itself.”

He sounded bitter. Incredibly bitter.

Xin sighed.

Ling Qi stared. “We are definitely different.”

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

“Why? Because you will succeed?” Elder Jiao asked sardonically.

“No. Because I never believed I could change the world in the first place.”

He furrowed his brow.

“Lady Renxiang… I thought she was a fool at the start. I thought her statements were the empty posturing of a noble who didn’t understand anything. I was only partially right. She’s not naive. She won’t look away from inconvenient truths. Neither of us truly understood people back then. I was too low, and she was too high.”