Three days later Wu Ling and Su Xiang made their way across the Outer City, crossing several wards to arrive in the Pilgrim's Ward from which many people intending to reach the Paragon Sword Sect in the mountains above began their journey. In this case, the people that they had come to meet with had no intention of reaching the Paragon Sword Sect but rather were headed far enough into the mountains to reach a secluded mountain lake.
“You know,” Su Xiang said as they walked. “You should wear that shade of ice blue more often,” she continued, complimenting the graceful dress that Wu Ling had selected for this particular venture. As much as seeing him like this had initially made her uncomfortable, Su Xiang had to admit that Wu Ling really had learned his lessons well. From the artful arrangement of silver hair pins in his elaborate hairstyle to the understated use of makeup, he presented the appearance of a cool refined beauty. “Is it me, or have your eyes become more silver than gray lately? It can’t just be the makeup making them look like that,” she concluded.
“No, you’re right, they are changing,” Wu Ling admitted, threading his way through the crowd of people clogging the main thoroughfare. “I lucked out in awakening and I lean more toward my mother’s Mercurial Mist Fox bloodline than my father’s Luminous Star Hawk. I’ve been too busy with art projects to figure out if I can actually draw on the power of my bloodline, but the less I take after my father, frankly, the better.”
For a moment, Su Xiang wanted to speak up in defense of Wu Ling’s father. After all, in her memories, he’d been a mighty sword cultivator, dashing, bold, and heroic in his bearing. For Wu Ling, however, he’d been someone who provoked battles he couldn’t win and caused the downfall of his family. Given how hard things had been on Wu Ling and his mother she could understand why he would rather not take after his father. “Well,” she said, diverting away from the topic of Wu Ling’s father. “I think the silver eyes give you an extra air of, I don’t know, etherealness. Like you don’t belong entirely in this world because you see a different one.”
“Now who’s the one flirting?” Wu Ling asked with a soft laugh. “Sister Xiang, if you want to gaze more into my eyes, you only have to ask, I’d happily drown myself staring back into the crystal clear sapphire jewels you gaze upon the world with. After all,” he added with a teasing smile. “I might have Artists eyes to see the beauty in the world and in the woman walking next to me, but you see the truth in all things which means you know it’s true when I say how stunning you are,” he said in mock seriousness.
“Okay, enough of that!” Su Xiang said, giving Wu Ling a playful shove. “See if I ever compliment you again. The dress is very pretty,” she added in an earnest tone. “You, I’m less sure about,” she finished with a laugh.
“Okay, okay, I yield,” Wu Ling conceded. “I just don’t know how you manage to spend most of your days in the same sect robes. It’s not that white and yellow don’t look good on you,” he acknowledged. “But replacing the yellow with a soft blue would suit you more if you’re wearing white. Or, with your features, you’d be truly stunning in dark robes, midnight blue or rich purple trimmed with black brocade and you’d cut quite the figure of an imposing swordswoman.”
“Did they teach you about fashion at the Pure Virtue Musician’s Hall as well?” Su Xiang asked with a raised eyebrow. “It’s like, every time I see you like this, you’re a better trained ‘girl’ than I am, and you’re not even a girl!”
“Hey now,” Wu Ling said, placing a slender finger to his lips. “Careful what you say. And no, I didn’t get all this at the Pure Virtue Musician’s Hall,” he explained. “I learned a lot from the Senior Sisters at the Bamboo Silk House. For many of them, selecting an outfit is little different than selecting their weapons and armor, it’s just a different kind of battle. There’s almost no such thing as a ‘sect uniform’ there because their individual appearances are an important part of what they do. Outside of a very small number of uninitiated and low-level disciples who support the sect’s official business, you’ll never see someone from the Bamboo Silk House dressed in a robe like yours. I imagine the sect we’re visiting today is going to be much the same. I doubt that a group of scholars with so many different disciplines adhere to strict uniforms.”
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“The Amber Lily Academy isn’t technically a sect,” Su Xiang argued. “More like a formal sisterhood of scholars that pool their resources for collective research.”
“It’s a collective group of cultivators that share a common cultivation focus on the Scholar’s path,” Wu Ling countered. “They follow a recognized leader even if they call her Headmistress instead of Sect Master. They accept disciples,” he continued, enumerating his points.
“They don’t call them disciples,” Su Xiang pointed out.
“Research assistants then,” Wu Ling acknowledged, waving off the importance of the distinction. “They have a clear hierarchy of Research Assistant, Researcher, Instructor, Dean and Headmistress. They might not call them Outer Disciples, Inner Disciples, Elders, Hall Masters, and Sect Master, but you can’t deny that they’ve mirrored the structure of small sects.”
“They’re hardly large enough to be a sect though,” Su Xiang argued, unwilling to give up her point. “They only have a few hundred members and no representation in the Inner City at all, much less the City Core.”
“So that makes them a very minor sect in Silver Sword City where we have huge and powerful sects,” Wu Ling said. “The Shining Blade Hall has what, seven Outer Halls scattered around the Outer City? The Bamboo Silk House has at least twelve and even they don’t consider themselves to be large compared to some of the other forces in the city. Step outside the city though. When you talk to travelers who have come from far away and the sects they left, they aren’t much different than the Amber Lily Academy.”
“Like you’ve ever been farther away from Silver Sword City than the foothills,” Su Xiang teased, having little other argument to refute him with.
“Isn’t that why we both want to travel the world? To see all the things we can’t see here?” Wu Ling asked rhetorically. “So many outsiders come here every year because they think it’s some kind of Holy Land of Swords but there’s so much more out there. Will you leave the sect when we leave the city?” This time, his question was far more serious. Both Wu Ling and his mother had their reasons to resent the Shining Blade Hall and while he held himself back from commenting on them around Su Xiang, he’d be much happier if she found herself a way out of the sect they’d both grown up in.
“I don’t know. The Shining Blade Hall doesn’t really have branches outside the city,” she admitted. “But they send out seniors and deacons to recruit from outside on a regular basis, it isn’t like the sect is without some reputation in the broader world. It could be useful to have that status when we travel. Besides, one day, don’t you think we’ll return to Silver Blade City?”
“Not really,” he said, shaking his head. “I think that one day, we’ll find that even Silver Blade City is too small for us,” he added, remembering the words of his Master. He’d find her at the foot of the Divine Mountain where all rivers converge, beyond the confines of this Mortal Realm. His ultimate path would leave this Mortal Realm behind if he wanted to truly follow the path his Master had provided him and he keenly wanted to see just how far on that path he could go. “If we have to leave all of this behind to follow our cultivation paths,” he said, waving his hand at the city. “Would you come with me?”
“You know I would,” Su Xiang said, wrapping her arms around his arm. “We promised. I just found you again, this time, you’re not getting away from me!”