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?"