Threads Chapter 409-Development 1
The journey south was much longer than she had grown used to. When she soared in the air, she forgot things like the twists and turns roads followed to pass between the mountains. She forgot that when traveling with mortals and low cultivators, she could not feel the wind scream past her. There was a plodding pace to travel on the road that Ling Qi found herself fretting over as the snow capped peaks out beyond the window of her carriage passed at what felt like a glacial pace.
It did, however, give her time to focus on the slow and meticulous repair of her meridians, cleansing them of the last fires, reconnecting channels where they had been blocked, and carefully nursing the spiritual health of the meridians where they had withered under the heat. Every shade of qi she used—ice, darkness, wind, music—had to be carefully realigned with her emptied meridians. But every time she felt her power flowing properly or felt a pattern come back into sync with her spirit, the rush was indescribable.
It was amusing to watch everyone step respectfully around Zhengui. Hanyi often stayed in the carriage with her, but Zhengui stayed steadfastly on the road, trundling along and clearing obstacles where they cropped up. Gui chatted freely with everyone who would speak with him, and as the days passed, that number grew.
Soon enough, the train of wagons and carriages rounded the last of the bends in their path, bringing Snowblossom into view.
The lake was a clear blue mirror reflecting the sky, and the mist and thunder of the falls were visible even from so far away. At the base of the cliff, small plumes of dust and smoke rose from work and habitation. Hugging the hills by the lake, harvested fields lay clear and ready for the next year's planting, and little homes dotted the spaces between. On those same hills, a drifting splotch of white like a cloud on the ground roamed in land closed off by barely visible fences.
The treeline had been trimmed back a good distance from the settlement, and a wall had been raised, closing off a crescent of land by the lakeside behind wood and earth. Behind it and the distant, swarming figures of workers laying foundations and digging into the earth, a small palace with curved, blue tiled roofs and clean white walls was being worked on, flush against the stone of the cliff. It lay shrouded in the mist at the base of the waterfall, glittering colors reflecting from damp tile, but the mist circled outside the manor walls and spilled from the roofs to flow down invisible barriers protecting the streets and inside of the space from the damp.
This was what the funds of the Cai could do when bent to Renxiang's purposes.
She remained there at the window of the carriage, head leaning out as the caravan made its way down the final stretch toward the burgeoning settlement.
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