Reach Heaven Via Feng Shui Engineering, Drug Trade And Tax Evasion

First, Qian Shanyi decided to do some tests. She wanted to find out how much the earth would block spiritual energy, and for how long.

She limped over to the pile of weapons, keeping her leg bone in one place with her spiritual energy, and picked out a sword that was as wide as her head. It would make for a good shovel.

Walking over to the very edge of the world fragment, she quickly dug out a row of identical deep holes, and dropped a single Ice Crystal Bar in the first one. The temperature in the hole quickly dropped. She waited until the air temperature stabilized, took the Ice Crystal Bar out of the hole, and dropped it together with the wood-type Spiritwood log into the next hole over. The temperature of the second hole barely changed, and it emitted plenty of wood-type spiritual energy.

Her ability to sense spiritual energy wasn’t very precise: at best, she could distinguish spiritual energy flows about a foot across, as well as get a feel for the total amount and type of the energy. But that was enough to tell what was happening: pure spiritual energy in the air dove into the hole, and turned into wood- and water- type spiritual energy. The water-type spiritual energy immediately headed directly towards the Spiritwood log, and turned into more wood-type spiritual energy, barely having any time to affect the environment.

Next, she moved the two treasures into two separate, adjacent holes. The water-type spiritual energy emanated from the hole on the left, formed a little cloud, and then gathered into a stream heading into the hole on the right, where it turned into wood-type spiritual energy, before shooting off towards the center of the world fragment. In mere moments, the flow had reached equilibrium.

She glanced back towards the center of the world fragment. There were plenty of fire-type treasures there, yet the water-type spiritual energy did not head towards them. The destructive cycle of feng shui was generally stronger than the creative cycle, but the distance also played a role.

Finally, Qian Shanyi pushed the earth back into the hole with the Spiritwood log, burying it. The stream of wood-type spiritual energy vanished under the ground, while the flow of water-type spiritual energy was immediately disrupted. In moments, it reformed, now heading towards the center of the world fragment. She felt around the inside of the open hole: the walls were quickly cooling down.

After several minutes, the flow changed once again. Water-type spiritual energy coming out of the hole cut down by half, and when Qian Shanyi poked around the hole with her hand, she felt that the wall in the direction of the Spiritwood log was now much colder than the others. Sure enough, the spiritual energy suffused the earth, and was piercing through it to head directly towards the closest spiritual energy sink.

In general, spiritual energy would take the easiest and shortest path to head towards its target. That the flow split in half probably meant passing through a foot of earth was about as hard as passing through thirty meters of air.

Qian Shanyi sighed, and rubbed her tired eyes. If several minutes was all it took to suffuse a foot of earth, then burying the treasures will do nothing. She needed a better plan.

She sat down to think, and her hungry stomach grumbled again. She closed her eyes, and forcibly pushed her hunger out of her mind. Even if she was going to cook that damnable demon beast egg, she was not about to do it before solving the problem with feng shui. With her luck down in the gutters, she would explode for sure.

She needed to somehow isolate the treasures from one another. Perhaps she could wrap them up in Silvered Devil Moth Silk? No, there was no way for her to get a solid seal, and as long as there was even the tiniest gap, the spiritual energy would find it and leak through.

Suddenly, she frowned. Perhaps she was approaching this from the wrong direction. If she couldn’t work against the spiritual energy, maybe she should work with it.

Corners of Qian Shanyi’s mouth twitched downwards. This would be so much digging on a hungry stomach.

“Well, nothing to it,” she sighed, and got up. “There are no easy or clean paths on the road of cultivation. Even a mere carp does not take breaks as it leaps through the dragon gate on its path of ascension. Digging this ditch will be the next step on my path to immortality!”

Qian Shanyi leaned on her shovel-sword, wiping sweat off her brow.

Her back hurt. In retrospect, the giant sword made for a terrible shovel, but she had nothing better to replace it with. Her broken leg also started to whine. She was keeping it in one piece with her spiritual energy, but whenever she put her weight on it, the bone fragments would shift against one another by a hair, sending spikes of pain into her mind.

On a more positive note, the spiritual energy recirculation ditch was finally complete.

The ditch was made out of two concentric circles of holes, going around the center of the world fragment, with the smaller being a bit under twenty meters in diameter, and the larger being a bit over. Each circle contained ten holes, positioned equidistantly along the circumference. Straight, narrow trenches zig-zagged between the holes, connecting each hole on either of the circles with two holes on the other one in an alternating pattern.

Before digging the ditch, she made a giant compass by completely fraying the wine crate rope, tying it into a twenty-meter long thread, and attaching it to one of the spare swords. She did her best to sketch the design of the ditch on the ground, making sure to keep everything as symmetric and equidistant as she could. She wasn’t sure this level of precision would be necessary, but her life depended on this working out perfectly.

She settled on twenty holes after careful consideration. With five holes, she was worried that the severe concentration of spiritual energy in any one node would lead to problems - for example, the fire node might turn into a massive column of fire. With ten holes, the angles between the adjacent trenches would not be sharp enough, and spiritual energy could slip through some of the nodes entirely. Fifteen holes could not be symmetrically arranged in two concentric circles: this meant twenty holes was the way to go.

She didn’t know if she had just invented something new, or if the largest sects around had something similar. Luminous Lotus Pavilion certainly did not: her sect had six storage rooms scattered around their compound, but the materials stored weren’t of high enough quality to really cause feng shui problems. This was only a problem that could be caused by massive wealth in the first place.

Now that the spiritual energy recirculation ditch was complete, she just needed to test it.

She frowned. Spiritual energy recirculation ditch was kind of a mouthful. She needed a shorter name.

“Hmm. It is going to circulate spiritual energy… Energy circulator? Cyclo-energy?” she mumbled to herself, “No, that sounds awkward. How about this: one of the other names for spiritual energy is chi, and in the language of the ancient era, ‘tron’ means instrument. Chi-cycle-tron, chiclotron, this sounds about right.”

Enough linguistics, it was time for testing. She gathered all the heavenly materials and earthly treasures, divided them by type, and then did her best to split each type into four equal groups. Each group went into its own pre-determined hole in the ditch in accordance with the production cycle of feng shui.

The idea behind the chiclotron was very simple. Each node - that is to say, a hole in the ground - would contain heavenly materials and earthly treasures of a particular type. Pure spiritual energy would enter the node from the top and become polarized. From there, it would head down a straight trench to an adjacent node of the next type on the productive cycle of feng shui. For example, an earth node would be linked to a metal node and a fire node by a pair of trenches. In accordance with the principles of feng shui, earth-type spiritual energy would follow the trench towards the metal node, and become re-polarized. From there, it would flow to a water node, and so on around the circle. Because of the zig-zag nature of the trenches, the energy should never have a direct line towards the nodes housing the materials in accordance with the destruction cycle, avoiding inauspicious feng shui. As a result of the recirculation of spiritual energy around the chiclotron, the auspiciousness of the environment and the quality of spiritual energy should continuously increase.

Well, that was the theory. The practice was that the chiclotron didn’t fucking work. Spiritual energy spilled over the lip of the structure, avoiding the trenches entirely, and then exclusively followed the destructive cycle of feng shui.

Qian Shanyi sighed. The destructive cycle was stronger, after all, and the distance between the conflicting nodes was only marginally larger than between the compatible ones.

She had kind of expected that, but hoped she would be wrong. The fix to this problem was simple: cover the trench. But that would mean even more shoveling dirt with her poor, innocent, exhausted back muscles…

First, she took out the spool of Silvered Devil Moth Silk, and cut it into long sections covering the trenches, and stuck them in place by shoveling dirt on top. The nodes followed suit, covered by large square cuts of silk, similarly kept in place with dirt.

Silvered Devil Moth Silk was impermeable to spiritual energy of this density: with it covering the trenches, spiritual energy could no longer escape directly upwards. This left two paths: flowing through the air in the trench towards a compatible node, or trying to reach a conflicting node directly through many meters of earth. Spiritual energy always took the easiest path, so Qian Shanyi hoped this would solve her problem.

She waited anxiously, observing the flow of spiritual energy above the chiclotron. Some polarized spiritual energy seeped through the earth around the nodes, but these minor losses were inevitable. It should mix with the pure spiritual energy around the world fragment, and wouldn’t present any harm.

After a while, she breathed a sigh of relief. The spiritual energy didn’t blow the lid off the chiclotron, and there didn’t seem to be any major leaks either. It was finally working as intended.

Her brushes with death and all the digging exhausted her to the bone. On top of that, forcibly keeping her broken leg in one piece through all this labor was starting to drain her reserves of spiritual energy. She barely had the strength to gather the assorted clothes from the treasury into a makeshift bed, take another Big Mo’s Healing Tablet and tie a loose cloak around her eyes to block off the ever-present light, before falling asleep.

The clock will wait until tomorrow.

Qian Shanyi blew gently on her bowl of noodle soup. It wasn’t often that she had the time and money to go to the Northern Sky Salmon restaurant, and she wanted to savor it. Maybe it would be worth it to give into her teacher’s nagging and learn immortal chef techniques, if she could make soup like this for herself. She hummed a tune, and prepared to dig in.

Annoying laughter came from behind her, and she felt someone’s hand land on her shoulder. She pushed the hand off and turned around, coming face to face with a trio of drunks.

From how the spiritual energy flowed around them, she could feel that all of them were cultivators. The ones in the back wore the black robes of the inner disciples of the Black Mountain sect, though by the quantity of spiritual energy in their body she guessed they must have only barely entered the refinement stage. She immediately put them out of her mind as not worth her time or attention.

The one who put his hand on her shoulder was a lot stronger: somewhere near the high level of the refinement stage. If he wasn’t quite as drunk he might have passed for a scholar, with his flowing white robes and long black hair tied into a complex shape.

Despite his high cultivation, his robes were not ones of a sect: was he a loose cultivator? He looked younger than Qian Shanyi, and she felt a twinge of jealousy. She had only managed to reach the middle level of the refinement stage after working herself ragged, yet he was already ahead of her. What kind of monstrous talent was he?

All three were drunk, but the scholar in front was the worst of the lot, barely managing to stand straight. His face exuded unbelievable arrogance.

“Do I know you?” she said, giving them a cold stare.

One of the two in the back laughed. “Jade beauty, maybe we should get to know one another.”

“Not interested,” she said, making her glare colder still.

“Oh, sorry,” the scholar in front tried to take a step back, but lost his footing and stumbled forwards. His hand brushed against Qian Shanyi’s bowl of soup, sending it flying.

No, not my soup!

The soup bowl, its trajectory set by the cruel force of gravity, fell directly onto her knees, spilling all over her robes - her best set of robes - with not even a drop missing her body.

She leaped up off her bench, her face enraged, and grabbed the drunken scholar by the collar.

“Asshole, do you watch where you step?!” she scowled.

“Oh, I stumbled.” the scholar slurred out. She couldn’t tell if he was naturally calm or simply too drunk to care. The other patrons in the restaurant were looking in their direction now.

“You ruined my robes! And my soup!”

“Did I?”

“Yes.” she ground her teeth. She hated dealing with drunks. “Now apologize, pay me for new robes, and two bowls of soup.”

“Oh. But I don’t have any money.”

“You liar!” She snapped out, relaxing her hands a fraction in shock at the blatant falsehood. “If you didn’t have money how would they let you through the doors?”

He shrugged, and smiled lazily. “Luck, I guess.”

Qian Shanyi closed her eyes and stabilized her breathing. She felt humiliated, but there was no use getting angry - she wasn’t about to start a fight in public. The only thing she could do was ask a waiter for his name, go back to her sect, and then send him a bill for her robes later.

“Penniless bastard.” she shoved the drunk scholar back, and he fell down on his ass. “If you don’t have money, what did you forget here? Why don’t you flee from the city into the forest where you belong.”

Something clicked in the face of the drunk scholar, and he flew into a rage, a mass of spiritual energy suddenly pouring out of his body.

“What are you going to do, fight me while drunk?” she laughed in surprise. “In public? In the middle of the best restaurant in the city? The chef will put your head on the menu for disturbing the guests. Don’t court death, calm down.”

Then he beat her black and blue. It wasn’t even a contest, the bastard was far too strong. Blissful unconsciousness overtook her when her leg broke.

Qian Shanyi awoke shivering from the cold. Her face scowled, remembering her dream.

Soup?! This bastard beat me half to death because he couldn’t apologize over spilling a bowl of soup?!

She got up off the ground. There was no going back to sleep now: the air might cool her skin, but righteous anger kept her soul scalding hot. She didn’t recognize his face at the time, but now, in retrospect, she knew the man. It was Wang Yonghao, loose cultivator who rolled into town to much excitement a couple days back, just in time for the annual Four Spirits tournament. They said he won it handily, pulling out an unheard technique after technique to counter every secret art of his opponents, even the ones they have never used in public before today. Rumors were split between calling him a cultivation genius and a fraud who rigged the games.

“Wang Yonghao, you will pay for this,” she growled, casting her gaze around the world fragment. “Now why the hell is it so damn cold?”

The grass and flowers around her were covered with a light dusting of ice, glittering like morning dew. She felt the air around herself, thick with metal and water-type spiritual energy.

“The chiclotron must have broken…” she sighed.

At least the sense of doom was finally gone: the feng shui must have improved quite a bit.

She shivered as she limped her way over to one of the water nodes on the chiclotron. Sure enough, water-type spiritual energy was seeping freely from the top. The earth on top of the node was frozen solid, and she couldn’t manage to pull the sheet of the Silvered Devil Moth Silk aside to look inside the node.

She had to stop this overproduction before the temperatures dropped even further. Cultivators were more resistant to temperature fluctuations, but by no means immune.

In the next node over, a much greater amount of metal-type spiritual energy was gushing into the air. Qian Shanyi pulled the cover aside, and a column of metal-type energy burst out with a draft of air. She looked inside: everything seemed to be exactly as she had left it. A thick stream of earth spiritual energy flowed in from the left, was converted into metal spiritual energy, and gushed out of the top. Very little of it went to the right, towards the water node.

Something must have blocked it. Did the trench collapse? The cover on top seemed fine though.

She had to look at the water node, but its cover was frozen to the ground. She thought about cutting it free with her sword, but she was worried of damaging the silk. Besides, there was a better option.

She headed over to a fire node, and frowned. All around it, the grass was yellowed as if in drought, and the ground underneath it was cracked and dry. The air above the node was shimmering with heat, unlike the rest of the world fragment.

As she carefully pulled the cover aside, the soil suddenly gave in under her feet. She was on guard, and leaped aside. A burst of fire came from within the node, before the heavenly materials and earthly treasures inside were buried by the earth. She carefully came closer, and saw that the soil inside the node was sandy and completely dry: the high temperature of the fire-type spiritual energy must have brought all moisture out of the earth.

“I’ll need to think of something to strengthen the trench later…” she sighed, and started excavating the treasures. At least she was no longer cold. The treasures themselves were red hot, so she had to flick them out of the hole with a quick move of her shovel-sword, and then slowly golf them over to the water node.

Steam poured off from the frozen earth as the temperature fluxes fought one another. Slowly, the earth began to unthaw, and Qian Shanyi managed to pull the silk cover aside to look into the water node.

The node was completely filled with ice.

She frowned, and sat down to think.

Some water-type treasures, like the Blue Tear Stone, produced water or ice when exposed to spiritual energy, but she was very careful to put them at the bottom of the node, below all other treasures, where the ice growth would not block the flow of spiritual energy. Besides, this water production fell off with distance, and so the ice growth slowed down rapidly with time. Something like the Blue Tear Stone would at most be covered by ten or twenty centimeters of ice even after decades of growth. But here, the entire node was filled with ice.

Finally, an idea appeared in her head. The fire node had dried the earth surrounding it, but where did all that moisture go? Most of it must have gone into the chiclotron trenches, raising the humidity of the air. Then, in the water nodes, all this humidity froze out of the air, forming ice. This ice made it harder for the metal-type spiritual energy to get to the water node until eventually, it became easier for it to burst through the earth around the silk cover on top of the node: this was why the air was thick with metal spiritual energy. A similar problem happened at the water node: as the ice grew, the difference in difficulty between seeping from under the node cover and heading down the trench became smaller, and more and more water-type energy started to escape into the air. This dropped the overall air temperature in the world fragment, leading to a runaway icing effect. Fire-type spiritual energy, being locked within its trenches and steadily converting into earth-type spiritual energy, could not balance out the temperatures.

Qian Shanyi rubbed her face. This wasn’t a problem when all the treasures were piled together, because the spiritual energy would constantly turn from one type to another, with about equal amounts of fire- and water-type spiritual energy present in the air at any given time, keeping the temperatures constant.

“Nothing here goes right,” she sighed. “At this rate, I’ll need to add freezing to death to the list of my problems.”