Threads 415-Taming Winter 4

After the last three months, Ling Qi did not think she could feel relief from sitting down. That she did now just proved how quickly little gripes could pass with cultivation.

The simple camp chair’s canvas stretched over a wooden frame barely even sank under her weight as she settled into it. She had kept her qi circulating carefully, but her calves were burning so much that she eased the flow. Too much climbing, something she’d gotten out of the habit of, even before her injury.

“Should you really be sprawling like that? Goes against the image you’re cultivating.”

“Sir Bao will have to have the decency of not spreading a lady’s secrets,” Ling Qi drawled, cracking one eye open. With her feet stuck straight out, the heels of her boots were propped up on a rock before the small crackling fire. It burned low but hot, consuming the chips of charcoal Bao Qian had fed into it.

They were near the base of the hill, and the bulk of the wagon was providing a windbreak on the side where the earth and scant trees did not. Hanyi was out there in the darkness, instructing her new followers.

“You have changed,” he mused. He knelt on one knee, and she watched curiously as he fit a metal grill affixed to three iron legs on top of the fire, letting the metal slowly gather heat.

“We haven’t had cause or time to talk much, but it has been a dense set of months.”

“It has, at that. I think you just might be set to overtake my cultivation entirely, even with your injury.” Bao Qian dusted himself off and settled into his chair.

“Does that not bother you?”

“It’s a prick to my pride, I won’t lie. But when I hear news of you, I see that your ambitions are bigger and more urgent than mine.”

Ling Qi hummed. “So you’re content?”

“Hah! I don’t think many would say that to a Bao.”

She opened her other eye to observe him. He’d pulled an iron skillet and knife from his storage ring and was now emptying a pouch of dark shelled nuts into the skillet. He picked one up and began carving a gash into the shell.

“I’m not in a hurry. Already, I have three hundred years ahead of me. I suppose that’s my flaw. I’m not given to urgency.”

“I haven’t had the luxury, and war is coming for us all far sooner than that.”

“You have thrown yourself into urgent tasks! I don’t know what one of my cultivation would do about a war though.”

Bao Qian was a couple years older than her, and he was solidly at the sixth step of the third realm. She could see his point in a distant way.

“You could say that I follow our patriarch’s school of thought. Wealth built in haste is a castle of sticks. Wealth built in patience, a fortress of adamant.”

“Oh, your patriarch gives lessons?”

“Only for the very top earners. This type of thought is central to us, the parts of the house which sided with the Duchess.”

“Not exactly a plodding decision.”

“And isn’t that the fun of platitudes?” Bao Qian shook the skillet, evening the distribution of the now carved nuts.

“You missed one.”

“Ah, that one is on purpose. Without the cut, it will pop from the pressure, and that will tell us when the others are done roasting.”

Ling Qi straightened up in her chair, resting her chin on the back of her hands as she leaned toward the fire, taking in the smoky scent.

“I don’t think I can agree. I understand that I can’t run forward at full speed all the time, but neither can I settle in place. I don’t want to.”

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“I could tell,” Bao Qian acknowledged. “But you have an inkling of the idea. Wealth compounds on itself.”

“Power gathers power.”

“A success now may be worth more than a success later. It’s a hard balance to suss out.” Bao Qian laughed. “Ah, but get into those equations too deeply, and you’ll have a room full of elders spitting, hurling chairs, and fashioning their diagrams into blades.”

Ling Qi tilted her head. “So rowdy?”

“Only after the children are sent to bed and the ledgers come out.”