Year of the Sapphire Ox – Time to Shine
Three Hooves, Saturday the 16th – Flying Sword Sect, Southern Courtyard Atelier
Today was not a cultivation day.
Today was arts and crafts, the spiritual edition.
Specifically, embroidery.
Though calling it "arts and crafts" was a dangerous understatement when one remembered that the teacher was Xu Anyue—third-ranked of the Five Realm Beauties, titled Mistress of the Seven Arts, youngest Embroidery Dao cultivator in known history, and the person whose casual stitchwork once stitched closed the air itself during a sect war.
But to the twins?
She was just their older sister.
Who, today, had graciously invited their guests to join her embroidery circle.
The Southern Courtyard's atelier was elegance incarnate.
Silk drapes floated like spiritual clouds.
Spirit-thread looms gleamed.
A formation array at the center pulsed gently, regulating spiritual thread tension and dispersing excess qi so no one accidentally accidentally embroidered a demonic seal into their pillowcase again. (It happened once. The squirrel remembers.)
The girls sat around low tables, silks draped over embroidery hoops.
Xu Anyue, her hair in a cascading side-braid laced with plum-blossom charms, wore simple white robes dusted with silver threadwork so intricate it made master tailors weep. She smiled gently. "Today we're working on snowflake and sunburst motifs. Beginner-friendly, but challenging enough to test focus and intent."
And somewhere in the distance, a hundred embroidery masters cried at the term "beginner-friendly."
The twins were ready.
Xu Meilin squared her tiny shoulders. "This is a cultivation of the hands. I have steady hands."
Xu Lihua narrowed her eyes. "I already designed the pattern in my head. Victory is inevitable."
Neither of them had ever held an embroidery needle in their life.
Thirty minutes in:
Xu Meilin was frowning at what looked like a cultivating spider having a midlife crisis on her silk. Her snowflake had eight arms, a tail, and had somehow bled ink across the corner.
Xu Lihua's sunburst resembled a flaming pancake collapsing under the weight of its own expectations. There were five attempted suns. One of them… might have been a duck. A very angry duck.
Meanwhile:
Zhao Ruqing: Perfect petal alignment. Embroidered a phoenix tail just for fun. She called it "warm-up."
Wei Feiyan: Her snowflake was so delicate it triggered light snowfall on her table. Fan tucked behind one ear like a badge of artistic authority.
Huo Lanxia: Accidentally embroidered a salamander that bit her. She adopted it. Named it Spicy.
Mingzhu: Her piece was stark, quiet, and beautiful. One snowflake. Dead center. It wept in monochrome.
Lin Xiuying: Casual elegance. Her sunburst was so refined it began subtly glowing with spiritual intent.
Lin Meiyu: Had sewn a landscape, a story, and an abstract representation of the Dao within the span of twenty stitches. Everyone pretended not to notice.
Xu Anyue walked slowly through the circle, offering gentle advice.
To Ruqing: "Your thread tension is strong. So is your self-perception."
To Feiyan: "Try letting the pattern surprise you."
To Lanxia: "Don't feed it spirit stones."
To Meiyu: "Did you… weave time?"
To the twins: "...Darling hearts, you've summoned abstract expressionism."
Xu Meilin stared at her silk. "This was supposed to be a snowflake."
Xu Lihua scowled. "My sun has no dignity."
Anyue sat between them, smiling like a patient empress among flaming toddlers. "It's not about perfection, my little sprouts. It's about presence. Your patterns will change as you do."
Meilin looked up. "So… we're failures now but with potential?"
"Exactly," Anyue beamed.
In the corner, Auntie Chen wept into her embroidery hoop. "They grow so fast… and badly."
Later, during break:
The girls drank iced flower nectar and stared at their works.
No one mocked the twins.
No one dared.
Because even if the patterns were cursed, they had been sewn with focused intent. The thread pulsed faintly with their unique qi signatures.
Even Lanxia's salamander bowed to them before sleeping.
And when they packed up, Xu Anyue carefully picked up her sisters' hoops, looked them over, and said warmly:
"These are first stitches. They're supposed to be a little chaotic. It means you're leaving your mark."
Lihua mumbled, "My mark looks like it lost a fight with a chicken."
"Chickens are apex beasts in their own right," Anyue said serenely.
Outside, a courier from the Golden Lotus Sect tripped.
Why?
Because the embroidery piece Anyue had done absentmindedly during class just exorcised a devil worm three provinces away.
She hadn't noticed.
She was too busy helping her sisters make snowflakes out of existential crisis thread.