Threads 159-Past 5

“Oh, this is a shiny one. I like it,” Sixiang said, lying back on the polished surface of an antique table. They held a slip of white jade up to their face as if they could look into it with their eyes.

Ling Qi glanced up from the near empty box in front of her and the jade slips arranged on the cover of a massive atlas of the Emerald Seas that lay on the floor before her. “Oh, what do we have there?” she asked cheerfully.

Sixiang flicked it to her, and Ling Qi caught it out of the air, threading qi into the talisman to read the encoded information. Ling Qi frowned only a moment later. “Sixiang, this is another play.”

“But it’s really intriguing, you know? I want to see how things turn out for the general and the prince. Can’t we watch it?” Sixiang pleaded, letting their head hang off the table to peer at her upside down.

“And I told you we could see about investigating things more closely later. We’re organizing right now.”

Despite her words, Ling Qi did want to look into it further. Many of the jade slips recorded performances, poetry, and songs. While they didn’t seem to contain techniques or arts, she could tell that there were insights to be found. As a musician, she had the itch to study the scores and the meter, but she just didn’t have time right now.

Sixiang booed. “I’m gonna hold you to that later,” they threatened.

“They’re not even full recordings. If anything, you should be bothering me to sell them to a theatre troupe so we can see them performed properly,” Ling Qi shot back. There was no heat in it though. She really had hit the treasure trove here.

There were dozens of arts, mostly minor second realm things, but a few breached the third realm. From her inspection, they did not seem much lower in quality than her old Thousand Ring Fortress art. She was beyond them herself, but she could still see their value. She would have to split the treasures with Xia Lin of course, and she could already see ones the girl might be interested in. Even so, her share would be a great boon for her burgeoning clan library.

More important though were the five jade slips that she had added to a third pile. They contained teachings on the crafting and modification of arts, and even a cursory glance had shown that their lessons were far deep