Qing-Li Xue
Race: Human
Age: 16
Gender: Female
Appearance: 5’3 and 117 lbs, Qing-Li is lithe and slender, giving the impression of a dancer instead of a martial artist. She moves gracefully, flowing like water, but can switch on a dime to attain the sharp exactness of steel or the unyielding hardness of earth. Like others of the Harmonic-Cycle Fist, Qing-Li dyes her hair the same color as the first form that she started in; brown for Earth. Though she wears most of her school’s clothing, as a user of the Cloth Spear, Qing-Li also has a rather long scarf that she drapes around her neck, and her travels has seen the girl replace sandals with knee-high boots.
Skills: Qing-Li, though still young and in training, is a practitioner of the Harmonic-Cycle Fist, a martial art that always one to seamlessly shift through five different forms in order to deal with any situation. As she stands right now, she has learned three forms.
Yellow Dragon – The Earth Form, and the one she’s most confident in. Employs hard blocks, with the intention of damaging the opponent’s ‘weapon’ in a battle of attrition. Primarily defensive, but also has a variety of throws and pins, meant to disable and stun.
White Tiger – The Metal Form, which she impatiently transitions into, because defensive battles are boring. There is a similar focus on ‘hard’ strength with Earth Form, but it takes the form of chops and stabs with an open palm, fingers tightly pressed together. The focus is on a decisive strike, not a combination of attacks. Masters of this form are said to be able to cut through swords with their hands.
Black Tortoise – The Water Form, which Qing-Li generally dislikes using, because it always feels so weak. One’s hands are no longer rigid, like swords, but more relaxed, swaying softly. Strikes are fast but soft, using the enemy’s momentum to add strength. It’s a fighting style centered on redirections that end up in a counter blow, and unlike the brutal takedowns of Earth Form, Water Form is used to disarm and to push people along elsewhere. If it wasn’t for the fact that one must learn their Forms in the order of mutual generation, Qing-Li would have loved to skip it.
Outside of martial arts, Qing-Li knows how to cook simple meals, read, write, and do basic household chores, though she doesn’t necessarily like it. Furthermore, she’s fairly good at relocating limbs, setting bones, and fancies herself as a pretty good shogi player. That last bit, of course, is fairly subjective, as her only strategy is to kill everything.
If eating copious amounts of food without gaining too much weight was a skill, yeah, Qing-Li has that as well. Gods have mercy on the first all-you-can-eat restaurant she finds.
Powers: Like any martial artist worth their salt, Qing-Li is capable of circulating ki through her body, empowering it to superhuman levels. That isn’t enough in a world of magic and spirits, though, and thus, the Harmonic-Cycle fist also teaches several magical skills to complement their martial arts.
Earth-Breaking Stomp – In Earth Form, Qing-Li lifts her leg high up, before stomping down, causing the earth to shake around her and cracking the terrain below her.
Wind-Shearing Blade – In Metal Form, Qing-Li brings her hands to the side, before lashing out like a samurai drawing their katana. A hand-sized ki-blade shoots outwards, at a maximum range of 30 meters, doing the same damage as what she normally would have done.
Full-Moon Fade – In Water Form, Qing-Li’s movements become serpentine and supple, her footwork drastically improving and allowing her to slide in any direction she wants, regardless of how rough the terrain is or how steep the incline is. This can only be maintained for a minute or two, however.
Weapons/Equipment:Cloth Spear – The scarf Qing-Li wears is her weapon when her fists are not enough. By pushing ki into its fibers, she can control it as if it was an extension of her body and harden it until it becomes as tough and heavy as steel, making it a surprisingly useful weapon. Generally, she uses it when her Wind-Shearing Blades are not enough, or when she needs to make sure that she can tie someone down.
Bio: Qing-Li Xue lead a life that was so simple and plain that it’s honestly rather boring. There were no tragedies in her life, nor any dramatic turning points. As a daughter to a father who never got a son, Qing-Li was trained at an early age to become the successor of the Harmonic-Cycle Fist School, treated as a boy instead of a girl. Her hair was cut short and she never complained about the harsh training she had to endure. An energetic tomboy who wanted to make her father proud, she did her best in everything, whether it be eating dinner with a fervent gusto or meditating so hard under a waterfall that she got a headache from how empty her head was.
As she grew older though, her father came to the conclusion that he was an idiot for keeping his increasingly womanly daughter stuck in a dojo with sweaty young men. Tasking her with the mission of gathering valuable fighting experience, the man sent her off on a cross-continental adventure.
He probably couldn’t have predicted that she’d decide that the best way to gather fighting experience was by joining the Guild and taking on jobs against dangerous, rebellious spirits.
Looks like idiots were born from idiots.
