Threads 83-Integration 1

The Singing Mist Blade hummed in her grasp, its song quiet as she held it in front of her face, studying the curves of the metal and the uncountable characters finely etched into the curves of the twisting blade. A domain weapon was an odd thing, almost extraneous in many situations. Ling Qi’s acted as a pestering wasp, buzzing about enemies and distracting them, infecting her enemies with enfeebling qi through the medium of its song.

But it never quite fit. She had trained until she could move it like she would any other limb, but holding it in her hand, it didn’t really feel like part of her body or spirit. It was just an attachment.

Ling Qi released the polished handle, never meant for a wielder’s touch and let the blade float over her lap, humming softly and trailing mist. She looked up to see Cai Renxiang sitting across from her next to the vent in the heiress’ meditation room. Cai’s domain weapon, a twisting ribbon of silk hung with tiny bells, floated between her hands. The girl’s eyes were half closed, and the silk rippled with prismatic light. Ling Qi looked again at her own weapon with a frown, feeling it through her connection. Even as she wielded the blade with more precision than ever before, recently, her domain weapon had felt incongruous.

“What is our plan, now that the challenges are closed?” Ling Qi asked, feeling the way her qi trickled through the artificial channels carved into her domain blade.

“We need be at the forefront of the Sect’s military efforts,” Cai Renxiang answered calmly. “Our efforts during the incursion have been rewarded, have they not?”

Ling Qi let out a disgruntled sound at the response. With the start of the eighth month, Ling Qi had made a notable jump from her previous rank of 756 to rank 730 based on her performance in defense of the three villages. Cai Renxiang had made a smaller but still respectable climb to rank 708, and most of her friends were steadily climbing as well. She glared at her unresponsive blade. “Is that really satisfactory?”

<Can’t stand being beholden to chance, huh?> Sixiang chuckled silently in her head.

“It is not,” Cai Renxiang replied. She did not open her eyes. “But matters are being decided above our heads for the moment. We must prepare to snatch opportunity as it passes by, but to seek it out at this moment will reflect poorly upon us. I share a degree of your discontent however. We must be aggressive in volunteering for duty. I have signed up for front line operations in the Wall.”

“Will they really let you do that?” Ling Qi asked, giving her liege a dubious look. Testing aside, she was still the heir of the Cai.

“Mother would be displeased if they did not,” Cai Renxiang said with certainty, easily picking up Ling Qi’s real question.

<There’s not coddling your kids, and then there’s that,> Sixiang grumbled. <And that’s not even the thing she’s worked up about.>

Ling Qi could see where Sixiang was coming from, and she didn’t disagree. While she would not claim to know Cai Renxiang’s heart, she was fairly certain that the girl had at least one thing in common with her. She would not be satisfied with less than her best.

“My friend, Su Ling, hinted at something going on with the enemies below. Li Suyin is probably involved, too. I’ll see if I can get my name on the shortlist for that.”

At that, Cai Renxiang cracked an eye open. “Is that so? Very good. I will be relying upon you to keep up. Please do not forget your other tasks.”

Ling Qi pursed her lips. “That Wang guy, right? I’ll look into it.”

<You’re trying to brush up on tactics, right? You should ask him for advice. People always like to feel learned, and it’s easy to feel positively toward someone who asks for your help,> Sixiang whispered.

Ling Qi grunted in response. It wasn’t the first time Sixiang had suggested that strategy since they had “returned,” but it irked her pride. Wang Chao had been dismissive of her at the party. Approaching from a position of weakness didn’t sit right with her.

“Do you believe you have finished forging your connection?” Cai Renxiang asked, interrupting her thoughts.

Ling Qi glanced down at her weapon, feeling her qi soaked into every bit of its spiritual presence. Faintly, she heard the strain of an unclear melody. She cleared her mind, turning her focus fully back to the weapon and then nodded. “Yes. So what does integration entail?”

“There are many texts available on the subject,” Cai Renxiang admonished.

Ling Qi smiled faintly. “I learn better from people. Besides, I would like to know your thoughts on the matter, Lady Renxiang.”

Cai Renxiang let out a dissatisfied hum, but she did not admonish her. Ling Qi took it as a tentatively good sign. Since that day at Zhengui’s hill, her liege had been a little more permissive in private. “At the most base mechanical level, it is an exercise in spiritual surgery, transferring an art and the meridians it occupies to new housing. It is permanent, the first of many such steps we will take on the road to the peak of cultivation. While this one is a small sacrifice, a matter of utility rather than true loss, it is wise to consider the implications well.”

Thoughts of the sacrifices necessary for higher cultivation were troubling, but Ling Qi was well beyond the point of stopping. “And what is the point of that?”

“It trains the mind for the stages which come after,” Cai Renxiang explained, letting her eyes drift shut again. “A cultivator is not merely their body, and a cultivator’s body is not merely flesh. Even if you can speak the words, you do not understand them without experience. These exercises replace much trial and error which our ancestors needed to perform to ascend the realms.”

Ling Qi understood. “You called that explanation base and mechanical. Is there something more to it?”

Cai Renxiang was silent for a time, but eventually, she answered. “It is not possible to excise and transfer a piece of your spirit to a new bodily vessel without affecting yourself. You know that climbing the realms of cultivation requires sacrifices, things cast aside. What you place in your domain weapon is something which will remain with you always.”

“If you do not mind, what did you put in your weapon?”

The silk floating between Cai Renxiang’s hands rippled, and the bells sounded faintly, ephemeral and echoing. The crimson eyes splayed across her chest narrowed in hunger. “My desire for purity. You know well my attitude toward disorder and uncleanliness.”

“I said I was sorry for putting the tea leaves back wrong,” Ling Qi mumbled. Rarely had she seen her liege more blatantly incensed as she had been this morning. “That doesn’t sound like something you would want to be rid of though.”

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“It is not. Nor is removal the purpose of the exercise,” Cai Renxiang said. “For as long as I can remember, I took pleasure in ordering my surroundings, even more so after my awakening. Yet the world is untidy. It can be improved, but my plans will never be executed to perfection. This is not because the world cannot be predicted or ordered, but because I have failed to account for all factors. It is important to be able to accept some degree of disorder and uncleanliness in action, but it is more important to not forget the goal I am seeking past that tolerance.”

Ling Qi nodded slowly. “It’s what drives you. By enshrining it in your domain, you make sure you never lose touch with it.”

“Precisely,” Cai Renxiang agreed.