Threads 416-Taming Winter 5

“How well do you think you can hold under its pressure?” Ling Qi asked.

To her eyes, their camp, this little bubble of reality in the endless expanse of white, was being maintained well. The crushing pressure did not pierce the walls, only frosting the now fusing stones. Still, she would rather hear the words from the one performing the technique.

Bo Qian knelt by their fire, which had boiled over. Soft smoke poured out of the charcoal and formed a smoky cover over the walls. It should have been choking, but somehow, the air she breathed was fresh and clear.

“It’s not a crushing pressure, but a wearing one. I can hold this protection for days, but if we wish to go anywhere, that is another matter.” He looked at the top of the stone ramparts he had raised, now settled and solid as if they’d been raised to stand by expert masons. “As the situation stands, I suspect our friend could push harder, but…”

“But that isn’t its nature,” Ling Qi finished. “It won’t press, or even fight, unless we try to escape.”

“This smug jerk!” Hanyi complained. “Not even taking us seriously.”

Ling Qi shook her head. “You know better than that, Hanyi. Its actions have nothing to do with that.”

Her junior sister huffed and crossed her arms. “Yeah, I know. This is just how it normally is, huh?”

“Yes, it is.”

Ling Qi peeked out beyond the walls with the help of dancing wisps of silver. She couldn’t perceive any center to the spirit, just a diffuse, featureless whiteness, and snow so solid that she could barely even perceive the gusts and flurries kicking through it.

“I’m going to take this slowly,” Ling Qi decided. “Bao Qian, please…”

“What were we just talking about?”

The other cultivator chuckled and flexed his fingers in the dark earth. The walls of their fortification shuddered and settled, somehow becoming even more solid in her senses. There was a hyper-real density to them that reminded her of the fortified walls of a castle. It was the sort of formation-enhanced stone that even she would have difficulty passing through with her techniques.

Free to study her opponent now, Ling Qi let her perception flood out on a thin ripple of her qi. The snows ate at her qi immediately, albeit far less elegantly than Huisheng’s thieving fingers. She didn’t pull away, fighting its pressure but letting the leeched motes be carried away into the storm.

The voice of the snow sang.

Quiet. Quiet.

The cold cried out.

Silence!

It wasn’t the same as Zeqing’s song. This was the Whiteout Wonderland, a storm that blurred away the world, letting travelers wander in its depths until exhausted, they sank into the false warmth that preceded death. Still, this was a cousin to Zeqing, a spirit with no mountain of its own, but no less hungry or territorial for it.

The spirit was not hiding in the snow, nor dematerialized like Ling Qi could be when hiding in her mist. The storm was the spirit, and although there was a core to enable it to keep existing from winter to winter, it was still more phenomenon than person. Even if she couldn’t contest the spirit’s raw power as she was right now, she could work with this.

Ling Qi let out a breath and returned to herself.

“Big Sis, are you okay? Your eyes looked like mine!”

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“Did they?” Ling Qi reached up. There was some frost on her cheeks. “I have an idea for solving this, but I’m going to need you and Bao Qian to hunker down and try to avoid its attention. I need the spirit’s full attention on me.”

Bao Qian was dubious. “I can close the field within my walls to muffle us, but you will have to be outside of the protection to get its attention.”

“Can you only do that for the finale?”

He hesitated before nodding. “Just give me the signal, if you’re certain.”

“I am.”

“I can’t help?” Hanyi asked, forlorn.