Threads 426-Shenglu 5
The silk shimmered and took on a metallic tinge. The sweeping lower hem tightened and split along the sides, slits rising to her calf as the slippers beneath transformed into supple boots, plated, shod, and riveted with silvery-steel. The same color bloomed out around the opening of her sleeves. Silvery wire lace as light as clouds curled out like fractally spreading frost to guard her hands and crawled up her arms to thicken fabric with subtly inserted thin and flexible plates of moonsilver alloy. Her mantle flared out behind her in an invisible wind, buoyed on her mist like the dark wings of a moth. And she felt her dress' qi and her mist alike spin and weave together a veil of mist and liquid shadow fluttering over her face, held in place by a circlet of silver around her brow.
The greatest change, perhaps, was to the lowest layer. The shift writhed against her skin into a form-fitting, dense meshed weave of black fabric from the bottom of her chin down to her ankles, and all the way to her wrists as well. It was a snug feeling, but not uncomfortable.
Lin Hai looked pleased. "There is still some room for adjustment. I am sure you will want to decide what to do with your hair. As great as my ability to weave and stitch is, metals are simply better for holding armor formations. The combination of dusk steel, moonsilver, and Xiangmen void silk is excellent, and I’ve rarely had access to such quality."
She was only half listening to him because she could feel her own qi roiling, a vortex of black wind and flashing silver, more potent than it should be. To her own senses, she felt like she was a full stage above what she truly was in cultivation.
But she wasn't. It was a projection, like a beast puffing out its fur to seem bigger than it was.
"It is not like you to craft such an illusion," Shu Yue said clinically. Their head tilted a little too far to be comfortable on a human neck. "Only… Ah, I see."
"Possibility,” Ling Qi murmured. “Potential. That's what it's drawing on, the same as my dreaming steps. She can make it real, briefly, fractionally, can't she?"
Pride!
"Just so!" Lin Hai clapped his hands. “The mode is draining; I'd not expect the dear to be able to do it often or long yet, but it is there, if needed. Now that she’s awake, she should be able to harden her own defense further against a limited number of blows, and her abilities will develop and grow like any child, but I think you will find her most useful even now."