Threads 51-Downtime 2

Ling Qi peered into the distance at the smoking crater in the ground, the glassy glimmer of melted dirt and shattered stone surrounding it. Then she shook her head. “Sorry, little brother. You still missed.”

“Ugh, stupid Zhen,” Gui grumbled. The giant tortoise lowered his head and swallowed another massive mouthful of dirt, stones, and plant matter from the miniature mountain of “ammunition” they had prepared.

“Silence, foolish Gui!” Zhen hissed as the air around him rippled with heat. “I, Zhen, merely need a little more practice!”

Ling Qi watched with a critical eye, flickers of silver marking the use of her perception techniques as she examined the processes of the technique Zhengui was trying to develop. He was not very good at taking in earth qi, so for now, they were using this crude method, but once he had mastered the more mundane aspects, they would have to work on the internal ones. Perhaps she could ask Xuan Shi? He had much more experience with earth arts.

“You ready with the target, Sixiang?” she asked, resting her hand on Gui’s scaly head as he swallowed the “fuel.” Molten glass dripped from the corners of Gui’s mouth. It was cute.

“Got ya covered, boss,” Sixiang said, and in the distance, Ling Qi saw the clay target, a simple, unadorned disc, spinning and floating in midair. The wind coiled around the disc, preparing to fling it into the distance. Sixiang was getting better at manipulating the wind, but so far they had not come up with something that could be called a technique.

“Alright. Fire when ready,” Ling Qi said with a grin.

Zhen’s throat bulged as the missile formed and traveled up toward his mouth, gathering fiery qi along the way, and the disc was flung away. A moment later, he rose to his full height and spat, and a burning mass of molten earth and ash erupted. The missile was roughly a meter across in size and arced high through the air trailing ash and rippling heat. It arced down a hundred meters distant, and the qi contained within churned. In a flash of fiery light and molten shrapnel, it exploded.

“Give the boy a prize!” Sixiang announced cheerfully, and Ling Qi grinned as well. The disc was gone, blasted into burnt fragments.

“Ha! It is done!” Zhen crowed.

“Hmph. Zhen should not be so proud. Sixiang is taking it easy.” Gui taunted, even as he eyed the pile of dirt and stones with distaste.

“It’s a good first step,” Ling Qi soothed as Zhen turned outraged eyes on his other half. “We’ll work on consistency, and then, we can move onto harder targets.”

However, before they could continue with their practice, Ling Qi found her attention drawn away. She turned to look to her right as she felt Hanyi’s qi approaching. Even from here, she could feel the spirit’s anger and embarrassment, long before she spotted her trudging up the hill where Zhengui practiced his techniques.

Hanyi was soaked to the bone. Her dress hung heavy from her shoulders, stiff and covered in frost and ice. Icicles dangled from the hems, clinking musically as she walked, and her hair was muddy and full of water weeds.

Ling Qi was at her side in the blink of an eye, crossing the intervening distance as little more than a blur. “Hanyi, what happened?” Ling Qi asked, crouching down to look at her. Ling Qi could see the fading remains of bruises and scrapes on the young spirit’s arms and legs.

“I was just playing, and this stupid jerk knocked me off the side of the waterfall! And then this spirit got mad ‘cause I froze his dumb pond,” Hanyi sniffled out. “Then I had to walk all the way out here ‘cause I can’t get into the cave without you.”

Ling Qi grimaced. “Sorry about that,” she apologized. The locks on the disciples’ homes were not something she could modify. “But who knocked you off a cliff, and why?”

“I dunno,” Hanyi pouted. “I was just playing and singing by the stream, and they got mad at me for making noise and kicked me off the cliffside.”

Ling Qi frowned. She sensed something a little evasive in Hanyi’s tone.

“What?! Big Sister, we need to go beat them up!” Zhengui announced, apparently having caught the story as he trundled over. “We can’t just let people mess with family.”

“Doofus,” Hanyi muttered under her breath, looking away briefly. She quickly brightened up though, looking pleadingly up at Ling Qi. “Yeah, you should beat them up, Big Sister!”

<Methinks we’re missing some context here,> Sixiang whispered dryly in her thoughts.

“I still need to know who it was,” Ling Qi pointed out.

“Well…” Hanyi began sheepishly.

***​

Ling Qi did not know what she had expected, but it was not this.

Standing before the perpetrator, she looked into Yu Nuan’s eyes and saw stubborn determination mixed with fear. The girl looked much the same as she had when Ling Qi had challenged her last. She had a new set of piercings in her right ear, and some of the others had been changed for studs of other colors, but that was the extent of her physical changes.

“What is this I hear about you knocking my spirit off this cliff?” LIng Qi asked coolly, gesturing to her right where the clear waters tumbled over the cliffside, churning up the pond below. Chunks of slow melting ice still floated on its weedy surface. Hanyi peered out from behind her, and Ling Qi did not miss the way she pulled a face and stuck out her tongue at the other disciple.

“I lost my temper,” Yu Nuan replied defensively. “But that little… Your spirit has been bugging me all month, interrupting my practice and trying to challenge me, and when she scared off the spirit I was trying to bind…”

Left unsaid was what Ling Qi read between the lines. Yu Nuan had assumed Ling Qi was trying to mess with her and was now preparing herself for the consequences of rising to the bait. Ling Qi eyed Hanyi, who huffed.

“Like that’s a good excuse for attacking me like a big jerk. You knocked me off a cliff!”

Yu Nuan’s pierced eyebrow twitched violently. “We’re all third realms here,” she growled. “Don’t pretend you’re made of glass.” She crossed her arms and looked defiantly at Ling Qi. “I’m not gonna apologize.”

“Hanyi, why have you been following Disciple Yu around and challenging her?” Ling Qi asked suspiciously.

The young spirit looked briefly furtive, but a hard look from Ling Qi made her darting eyes still. “I wanted to beat her. Everyone says Big Sister crushed her so easily, so I thought I should be able to win too.” She scuffed her foot in the dirt. “I kept losing.”

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

There was another violent twitch of an eyebrow from Yu Nuan. Ling Qi felt bad for the other girl. Hanyi had caused the two of them trouble. If, or rather, when, it got around that Ling Qi had allowed one of her spirits to get attacked by a lower ranked disciple, it would give her detractors even more ammunition if she didn’t do anything about it. Ling Qi rubbed her forehead in frustration before she caught herself.

Straightening up, she looked the other girl in the eyes and measured her wary stance. “I will need an apology,” she stated baldly, causing the other girl’s shoulders to stiffen. “However, Hanyi, you need to stop-”

“No!” Hanyi interrupted stubbornly, stamping her foot. “I’m gonna beat her! She’s a cheater, and she made fun of Momma’s song.”

“I said you’re bad at it, you little snot,” Yu Nuan shot back. “If you’re just copying someone else, of course you’d be bad.”

Hanyi puffed her cheeks out angrily, and Ling Qi restrained a grimace.

<You can just make her stop,> Sixiang pointed out.