Destiny Cycle

In the Celestial Empire, a young girl from the slums is found to have the Talent that may allow her to become an Immortal. Sent to the Argent Peak Sect, she must desperately catch up to peers who have been preparing for years — and survive three months of testing before disciples are freed to battle each other for resources and strength. Contending with tests, strange teachers, unfriendly peers, and her own ignorance, Ling Qi must defeat many obstacles and find those willing to stand at her side when the truce ends.

With the Sect's great truce no longer in effect, Ling Qi must contend with her peers on the mountain. The Outer Sect has split into two camps, and her friendships have made her allegiances clear. To continue climbing the steep mountain of cultivation and maintain the allies she has gathered, she must strive like never before. But someone is watching from the shadows — someone with an unhealthy interest in her advancement.

Advancement has come quickly to Ling Qi. Her foes have been defeated, her enemies have surrendered, and her talent no longer goes unnoticed in the Celestial Empire. A title of nobility is within reach — a prize with implications that will stretch over her now-long life. Looming over it all is the end-of-year tournament, the last barrier between her and the Inner Sect with all its resources and lessons.

The tournament is past, the Inner Sect achieved, and Ling Qi has chosen the path of her life going forward — retainer to the heir of the province, an absurd leap for a girl who lived on the street a year before. Now she faces a strange prospect: peace. With her first great hurdle past, Ling Qi will find her greatest challenge might just be her own self, and whether she can adhere to the ideals she has chosen.

The peace of the Sect has been broken. Incursions come from the nomadic tribes of the southern mountains and from deep underground. Against both old and new foes of the Empire, Ling Qi and her allies are put to the test. Conflict is the great whetstone of talent — but war may devour genius and common talent alike without differentiation. What is to be gained and what is to be lost as the fires grow?

Assigned by the Duchess to investigate strange foreigners encountered in dialogue with the mountain tribes, Ling Qi and Cai Renxiang must take a perilous journey through the wild mountains. It is a difficult and unpopular task — the Empire has always met outsiders with war. But history is not as simple as it seems.

Preparations for war and diplomacy alike fill Ling Qi's days. The world is in motion, and she can hardly count the loose ends she has to tie up before the great summit with the people of the south. Still the Argent Peak Sect stirs to war on multiple fronts, and the end-of-year tournament swirls with politics she is now an observer of rather than a participant in. More and more, she is reminded how vast the world is beyond the Sect's walls.

Ling Qi's mastery of the realm of Dreams grows, and her strides carry her further daily. But her time is not infinite — the great Summit between the Celestial Empire and the Polar Nation looms, and with it the chance to head off further conflict and prevent the embers of war already ignited in the south from spreading.

Ling Qi's time in the Argent Peak Sect has come to an end. She is now the Baroness Ling, retainer to the heiress of the Emerald Seas, and her duty is to oversee the Summit she and Cai Renxiang have struggled to bring about. On it rides the chance to weave a fragile peace with the people of the southern mountains and the tribesmen of the Cloud who align with them. War is already at the Empire's doorstep — and many eyes watch, hoping for the failure of the heiress and the ideals Ling Qi represents.