Threads 95-Diplomacy 4

Ling Qi had secured an in. Wang Chao seemed to be in a pretty good mood so she suspected he’d be amenable to more weekly training sessions. But Ling Qi thought maybe she could push for more.

“It might be interesting to make something more of it,” Ling Qi mused.

Sixiang silently encouraged her.

“What did you have in mind, Miss Ling?” Wang Chao asked.

Rather than answer directly, Ling Qi asked, “Alingge, do you think you might be interested in training with us sometime?”

Alingge came up short, looking briefly bewildered by the sudden invitation. “I would not be opposed.”

“I assume you wouldn’t be opposed to allowing Liang He along either,” Ling Qi said, turning back to Wang Chao. “And maybe one or two others from time to time?”

“It would be more difficult to pass on the lessons you are looking for like that,” Wang Chao said slowly, but he was not dismissing her suggestions out of hand. She caught him looking briefly at Alingge. “Would your lord truly be fine with that, Miss Alingge?”

The girl twitched. “Lord Luo does not seek to leash his followers.”

Wang Chao held up his hands, speaking quickly. “I meant no offense!”

Her head really was in the gutter. Ling Qi blamed Sixiang.

they whispered unrepentantly.

That aside, looking at them talk, she didn’t get the sense that Wang Chao was interested in Alingge that way. Ah, that was it. Wang Chao was isolated. The Wang were new to their lands and position, so they had few vicontiel vassals, and not even that many baronial vassals. So compared to someone like Luo Zhong, Wang Chao wouldn’t have the wide base of vassal acquaintances needed to really play the same game as the other comital scions. But a comital scion was still comital, and together with someone of her position pushing it…

“I’m just not very skilled at setting up gatherings,” Ling Qi hinted heavily. “I was hoping you might assist me with that as well. Of course, I’d be happy to accommodate anyone you wanted to invite as well.”

Wang Chao brightened up considerably, and she was certain that she had hit the mark. “Oho, I see. That is what you mean! An interesting proposition, Miss Ling!”

“Gui doesn’t quite get it, but Big Sister wants to fight lots of people?” her little brother questioned. He was resting his forelegs on the lip of the crater, peering up at them.

“Something like that. You could meet other spirit beasts as well, I’m sure,” Ling Qi said, crouching down to rub his dusty head. “I think it’s a good idea.”

“Miss Ling’s ambition has grown since we traded our first words,” Liang He said dryly, only to quail as she shot him a look.

“Do not be like that, Liang He,” Wang Chao said, clapping him on the back. “We can use more sparring partners.” Wang Chao was increasingly taken by the idea of having something like Luo Zhong’s parties to his name. “Hm, hm, I’ll have to look into booking one of the good training grounds. And we would need sparring licenses…”

“I can see to those if you give me a list of names,” Ling Qi offered, standing back up. “I would not want to make you do all of the work.”

“Yes, of course,” Wang Chao said. “We’ll have to speak of things later. Still, that’s going to take some time to arrange, particularly with deployments!”

Ling Qi winced. “Ah, I hadn’t thought of that.”

The stocky boy nodded enthusiastically. “Things slip by all of us. So for now, why don’t we just decide on a time for me to give you some of that advice you sought?”

“Thank you very much,” Ling Qi replied, clapping her hands together and bowing her head. She found her smile was genuine. This… wasn’t so bad.

***

They scheduled their lessons for later that afternoon, and with a bit of wrangling, every third day for an hour in the evening. Wang Chao was not an inspired teacher, but Ling Qi listened carefully to his words anyway as he began to walk her through hardpoint tactics, herding maneuvers, and other such things. There was a surprising amount of social maneuvering and manipulation when it came to battlefield tactics. A cultivator could just blast away with their biggest techniques, overrunning enemies with superior power, but it was wasteful.

Instead, Ling Qi could accomplish so much more with a little cunning and tactical sleight of hand. Perhaps she had been engaging with full battlefields entirely wrong. Rather than thinking of it like a duel with a whole mess of people on either side, she should have been thinking of battles more like… very violent heists.

However, even as she drank in everything that Wang Chao had to say on matters of tactics and war, she found herself frustrated in other ways. Her cultivation still felt sluggish. Each cycling of her qi sent a twinge of pain up her spine, making it difficult to relax and meditate. Thankfully, it wasn’t so bad as to cause her to fail in opening meridians. With the help of Suyin’s meridian clearing tool, all eight of the meridians she needed to open for cultivating techniques next month were open, but…

She still felt slow.

Ling Qi did not need Sixiang