Ling Qi

> *She was free, even if it meant she was often hungry or cold. . . . She might be ugly, she might be poor, but she was herself, did as she wanted, and to her, that was all that mattered.*
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   Ling Qi is the protagonist of Forge of Destiny. She is a former mortal street rat who, at the start of the quest, was brought to the Argent Peak Sect to become an Outer Disciple after an Agent of the Ministry of Integrity discovered her talent to become an Immortal. She was the only commoner from Tonghou City to be so selected.

She is fairly tall for her age and has the darker skin characteristic of the Emerald Seas as well as curly black hair and bright blue eyes which according to Ling Qingge are inherited from Ling Qi's unnamed father.

It is unclear what specific Chinese characters make up the Ling and Qi for her name. Individually, the phonetic sounds can refer to 零 líng and 气 qì, which means "zero qi." This is quite amusing to the questers as Ling Qi has, in quest, one of the largest qi pools relative to her peers. It also has a connection to one of Ling Qi's most prominent methods for disabling enemy cultivators, via draining them to zero qi. Ling Qi herself is amused by wordplay and has made puns on her name, as well as kept such in mind when naming Zhengui.

## Pre-Sect Life

She was born to Ling Qingge and an unknown father from a traveling caravan in the 37th week of Year 28. As Ling Qingge's occupation, at the time, was a prostitute, she grew up in a brothel. She has happy memories of her music lessons with her mother.

At some point she overhead her mother talking to a visitor to the brothel and thought she was going to also become a prostitute in a misunderstanding. After an argument with her mother over her future related to this, she ran away from home at the age of 10. While living on the street for four years, she apparently could sometimes hear voices no one else could hear and could feel things when she ventured out to the outskirts of Tonghou City where the wards against spirits and spirit beasts were weak.

## Outer Sect

On the carriage ride to the Sect, she only had her meager possessions - a few coins, some clothing, and an old wooden flute she liked to play on on occasion - and some items provided by the recruiter.

Once at the Sect, Ling Qi was directed by Sect Brother Dong Fu to Hall Four, where she met Han Jian and learned of the sect rules from Sect Elder Sima Jiao. On the path to the residences, she approached both Bai Meizhen and Sun Liling - the first successfully and the second unsuccessfully - in the hopes of being housemates with the girls.

Together with Bai Meizhen the two settled on what Ling Qi then considered a fairly luxurious space, something that was "several degrees nicer than anywhere Ling Qi had stayed in her life." The residence was a single story squat stone building with a "fairly spacious front room with a well kept hearth," "a pair of bedrooms, a tiny kitchen, and a third empty room laid out with thick mats." The house was furnished with "simple pallets and roughly carven chests for their belongings." It also had "a small yard in the back with a well appointed garden . . . and a tiny pond full of colorful fish."

Ling Qi was initially totally ignorant about basic Immortal lore because of her background and asked for Bai Meizhen's assistance. With Bai Meizhen's help in identifying her dantian and qi, Ling Qi began to cultivate toward Awakening.

## Ling Qi's Fighting Style

*For more details on Ling Qi's Arts see: Ling Qi's Arts*

Ling Qi's fighting style has been an outgrowth of both intentional choice and outright luck, much more so than may be for a cultivator from a more noble background. Her fighting style in the early days of the sect reflected this by being somewhat fragmentary and in-cohesive. Now it is beginning to coalesce into a style which most readily effects large groups and areas, with music being used to create special zones and territories hostile to groups of enemies and other Arts being used to support her allies in a fashion similar to other setting's bard characters.

This is further supplemented by her two defensive arts giving her the ability to dodge most attacks and to block most attacks she cannot dodge, which makes her a rather elusive and tough character to actually take down without specific preparations or overwhelming attack abilities in 1v1 dueling. The style does have some weaknesses in fighting singular peer or above opponents, with it usually requiring some kind of adaptation or modification of standard tactics in order to leverage her ability to weaken opponents and her toughness. These weaknesses are however, more often simply some scenarios being more challenging to apply her abilities to successfully, instead of outright vulnerabilities.

On the flip side it excels to a nearly ludicrous degree at destroying large squads and masses of cultivators who are in the Yellow and Red Realms. Preying on their spiritual defenses the large size of her zones of effect, with the largest being 400 meters in diameter, and their power due to her skill and specialties means several dozen opponents can be affected at once with weakening effects and qi draining.

Her abnormally large Qi pool, which is comparable to the Monsters of the year like Bai Meizhen, also plays a part in this by allowing her to use her abilities for an extended period of time. It also works well with her qi draining abilities and equipment, providing her even more endurance in a battle.

## Threads of Destiny

Ling Qi has made it into the Inner Sect, ranking fourth in the Combat Tournament. The only ones above her are Cai Renxiang, Sun Liling, and Bai Meizhen, the three monsters of her year. As such, she has started in a very favorable ranking for a new Inner Sect member. However, Cai Shenhua has issued an ultimatum to Cai Renxiang and Ling Qi, reach at least the rank of 525 and 530, respectively, and win the Inter-Sect competition. All within the next two years. Time is short, but Ling Qi has demonstrated the ability to excel in the world of Cultivation.

However, it is not only Cai Shenhua's ultimatum that Ling Qi needs to worry about in the coming years. Many of the Inner Sect disciples seem to hold her in low esteem due to recent actions, most relevantly Zeqing's Final Trial, and many of the nobles of the Emerald Sea seem to hold her in distaste. This is partly due to her choice of household hires from the city of Tonghou, but also due to the complex political framework the Emerald Sea operates under. There are daggers in many of the noble smiles, and Ling Qi will need to learn how to navigate these political battlegrounds if she is to build allies among the nobility.

In addition to the political battles, Ling Qi is struggling to establish who she truly desires to be. This is even more important due to the horrors she saw and participated in during the Bloody Moon Trial. With her very self being defined by her connections to Family and Home, Ling Qi must wrestle with who she will struggle to assist and who she will not.