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

That had to be a bluff. There was no way Lan Yu could tell it was her, with her face concealed by a thick veil, completely different clothes, and with not even a word being spoken aloud. She even changed her sword for one of the ones she intended to sell.

It wasn’t a bad bluff, but she could tell the other woman wasn’t used to the dance. It laid all her cards straight on the table, told Qian Shanyi what Lan Yu was thinking and likely planning, letting her respond exactly how she wanted to. If it was her, she would have made her target talk about themselves first, laid some traps, made them tie themselves up in claims and commitments before she ever went on the attack.

She did not expect to meet Lan Yu at the post office, but of course she already planned out her actions just in case she ran into her. There were many possibilities for how it could happen, but this meeting still started out better than a good quarter of them.

Qian Shanyi felt her soul buzz in excitement. So what if the only thing between herself and total discovery was the thin fabric of the veil on her face? She had bluffed with less, in the past.

The postal office around them might have been Lan Yu’s home, but this was Qian Shanyi’s playing ground.

“You call me a fellow cultivator, yet you don’t even know my name,” she rasped out, tensing her vocal cords with what little spiritual energy she had to make her rasp stronger, and changing the pitch of her voice. She watched the postmaster’s face carefully through small holes in her veil, looking for even the slightest change in expression. “It’s Lan Yishan.”

A slight crease marred Lan Yu’s forehead, as her gaze flickered over her appearance, lingering for a moment longer on her sword. Qian Shanyi chuckled slightly, seeing the crease deepen by a fraction. Before she came to the post office, she deliberately spent twenty minutes coughing to overstrain her vocal cords just for such an occasion. She was no actress, and could not mimic the sound of another - but making her own voice unrecognizable was no hard feat.

“What do you hope to achieve by this?” Lan Yu asked, her eyes snapping back to Qian Shanyi’s veiled face. “You have the same build and height. And to top it off - ”

She picked up the book she brought with her, and in the dim light she recognised it as the library visitation ledger. Lan Yu flipped over to the last filled page, and turned it to face Qian Shanyi.

“You said your name is Lan Yishan? Lan is my family name.”

“A common enough name, in the empire.”

“And your personal name is Yishan - the characters may be different, but the sounds are the same as Shanyi.”

Her claimed name was an easily admitted weakness, but one that did not arise out of thin air. Initially, she did not intend the identity of Lan Yishan to persist beyond her first conversation with Liu Fakuang. She picked the postmaster’s family name because she happened to be on her mind at the time, and switched the sounds of her first name around as a test - if the spirit hunter noticed the similarity of their names, she intended to turn it into a joke, to deliberately forestall him establishing a connection between herself and the woman he was seeking. It was best to tie the idea of her being the same woman to humor right from the start, so that later on, he would subconsciously dismiss any other clues she might have left behind that pointed in the same direction.

Though, she had to admit that a part of her simply wanted to see if she could get away with it.

Liu Fakuang didn’t end up noticing the similarity, and she did not bring it up herself, but once the details of an identity were in place, they were very hard to change. Not only was it much easier to further cement her identity in town by relying on someone with established rapport, but if she came up with a third name, she would have needed to avoid the spirit hunter entirely, lest he notice the inconsistency - something that would have been doubly hard, given that she intended to find a way to create a new seal for herself.

This was a common enough problem in deceptions - details established early on would lead to contradictions as time went on and the story began to develop additional details. This was one of the many reasons why deceptions had to always be treated as temporary, and ready to collapse at any moment.

“I hear accusations in your tone that I do not care for.” Qian Shanyi said, putting her legs up on the seat opposite hers, as if she intended to spend the rest of the day here. Projecting confidence was crucially important: Lan Yu may have been ninety-eight percent certain that she was Qian Shanyi, but there were those two percent of nagging doubt. As long as they persisted, she would have a degree of protection - for example, she doubted Lan Yu would go as far as attempting to restrain her. Right now, the postmaster was standing in between her and the entrance, but should she get a bit distracted, or move to the other side of the room, Qian Shanyi would have an opportunity to safely escape and vanish into the wind. “Speak clearly.”

“Lift up your veil and things will be clear as day.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“At this point, sheer spite.” Qian Shanyi laughed quietly. “You come here, make accusations and demands? I will not do what you want.”

“I should simply call the spirit hunters on you.”

She hadn’t done so already? This was getting better by the second. Maybe she didn’t even need to escape.

“Then do so and stop wasting my time.” She sighed, waving her off carelessly and getting up from her chair. “I will enjoy seeing them come and embarrass you. Are those the maps I requested?”

She confidently headed towards the table with the maps. Lan Yu put a hand in front of her, and she sighed.

“Postmaster Lan, what do you hope to achieve by this charade?” She shook her head, enjoying the slight twitch of an eyebrow caused by her blatant hypocrisy. “You either believe I am this ‘Qian Shanyi’ - ” she made quote marks in the air - “or you do not. If I am, then call the spirit hunters. If I am not, then give me the maps. Yet you do neither.”

She truly would be fine with either. If the postmaster went off to call the spirit hunters, she’d flee while she was away. If she let her take the maps, she would just calmly walk out of the front door.

She could see the indecision warring within Lan Yu’s mind. Indecision was one of the most common killers of those unused to gambling, and the most versatile weapon in the hands of those who knew how to use it. It served her well over the years.

When she stretched her hand to take the maps again, Lan Yu didn’t stop her.

“What is it that this Qian Shanyi did in the first place?” she asked, unrolling the first map on one of the tables and pinning the corners with small weights. It was best to keep Lan Yu talking - there was a small chance she could find something that could convince her to not report her even after she left, “Kill someone?”

It took a couple moments for Lan Yu to respond.

“You are wanted for a conversation about the sale of an unregistered sword,” she finally said.

“So she stole a sword?”

“No.”

“No?” Qian Shanyi gave an inquisitive stare to the other woman. “You sound awfully sure of that.”

“Whenever an artifact is stolen, a report is made to the postal office,” Lan Yu said, “These reports are collected into lists in regional centers, and sent all over the empire. The news travels quickly. Whenever an artifact is sold, it is checked against these lists. After the spirit hunters surprised me with the news, I sent a request to the neighboring towns for their updated copies. In the week since, not one of them had a sword that fit the description of the one you were trying to sell. It’s almost impossible for the sword to have been stolen.”

“And if it was…not reported?” She raised an eyebrow, smoothing out the second map on the next table over.

“If a theft is not reported, it concerns neither the empire nor the postal office,” Lan Yu said.

“Then what is it that you accuse this ‘Qian Shanyi’ of? If she didn’t steal the sword, and the sale did not occur, what precisely is the problem?”

“What is the problem?” Lan Yu said, and she could hear a hint of actual anger in her voice now, “What is the problem?! I told you what the problem was when we first spoke! The rules we have are written in blood! The almanac is there so cultivators know not to kill each other. The imperators are there to mediate before you try. The spirit hunters are there to catch those who succeed. And the post office is there to warn others, so that before you even think about starting a feud that will end with six hundred people dead, you will know, in the very shell of your brain, that you will be found for certain, that the empire will hunt you to the ends of the world for as long as you live like the animal that you are!”

That felt too specific, too personal. She couldn’t recall any demonic cultivator attacks that killed six hundred people, but that meant little. She never kept up with those news, and the empire was enormous.

Personal was good. It was something she could use.

“Luminous Lotus Pavilion, was written on your seal,” Lan Yu continued, “You are a sect runaway, aren’t you? Not the first one I see. All of you have your own stories, but the way you think is all the same. You are trying to escape, find safety? But you refuse to follow the rules we made to protect you from each other! And now a fairly small matter of a sword sale has turned into you having a false seal! So tell me, why?! Why do this?”

“Why?!” She hissed, flicking her veil away from her face with one hand. The opportunity, once presented, had to be pounced on with conviction - the time for hiding has passed, and she didn’t bother putting effort into her voice anymore. “I’ll tell you why! You were right, Lan is your name - one I picked out of respect for what you do here, but that is exactly why I couldn’t come here in the open! You said the empire is the post office - that as long as mail can reach me, I am in the empire. But the rules you speak of will cut me off from it, as soon as you tell my sect where I am! You say the rules are in place to protect me? I say they will bury me in a hole so deep no light can reach the bottom! By hiding my face, I hoped to save you the need to make this choice - who are you loyal to, Lan Yu? To the postal office, or to the sects?”

“Don’t be melodramatic. No sect would dare cut you off from our mail,” Lan Yu said, pursing her lips, “it’s one of the few reasons why the empire ever chooses to bring its hammer down. It’s even in the sect accords! Any sect that tried would get a slaughter post put through their gates.”

“I know our history as well,” Qian Shanyi sneered, “But there is so much variability there, is there not? They may not technically cut me off, but what does that mean? Do they have to provide me with more than a finger width of paper per month to write on? More than a sliver of graphite to write with? Do they have to make sure all my fingers are intact, and not broken from training? Who, precisely, will defend my rights then? Will you do it, Lan Yu?”

The postmaster paused, and she could see she had no good response.

“This is all just rhetoric,” Lan Yu finally said, “even if your sect did that, this problem had nothing to do with it. It was you not coming to the empire for a simple conversation.”

“The empire is required to drag me back. There is no difference here.”

“No. It is not.” Lan Yu shook her head.

Qian Shanyi gave her a confused look. That was a completely bizarre thing to say. Everyone knew that the empire returned runaways to their sects, what was the point in pretending otherwise?

“That you do not know this is yet another reason why you should have talked to us,” Lan Yu sighed, “legally, the empire is only required to assist in a retrieval after a sect makes a concrete request for assistance, including the identity and location of a given runaway. The empire is not obligated to do anything whatsoever until then, nor is it required to inform the sects about any information they may or may not lack.”

The difference felt subtle in wording, but massive in practice, and Qian Shanyi quickly realized the implications. They could pretend that any given runaway did not exist, putting the onus of tracking entirely on the sect, even if the empire itself could easily tell what was going on. It was a cheap way for them to sap the strength of sects - and perhaps even secrets, if a given person happened to know something important.

There was, of course, a problem with that logic.

“Oh please,” Qian Shanyi sneered, “is that meant to be reassuring? What guarantee do I have that a spirit hunter would not check in with my sect just in case, to ask about my character, or to see if perhaps I did steal the sword from them after all? After they knew where that question came from, I couldn’t take it back. I might as well wrap myself up with a gift bow and wait for them to come to me.”

“What reason would a spirit hunter have to do that?”

“No.” She stepped towards Lan Yu. “Reason? That’s not good enough, not when I have the entire life ahead of me, decades of time where so many things can happen. I can’t trust every single person that will ever see my seal to be reasonable. No, I can either lie to the empire once, and get a new seal. Or I can stop dealing with the empire altogether. Which would you prefer I do, Lan Yu?”

“I would prefer it if you didn’t violate the law.” Lan Yu narrowed her eyes.

“I am a good cultivator.” Qian Shanyi poked herself in the chest. “I have not killed anyone. I have stolen nothing. I have never, in my entire life, practiced any forbidden cultivation technique. The only thing I want to do is cultivate in peace and earn some money! By all rights, my skills can help the empire. So look me in the eyes and tell me that the empire would be safer if you followed the rules here than if you did not.”

They stared each other down for a long while, saying nothing.

“I am the postmaster,” Lan Yu finally said, “I will not let you violate the postal rules.”

Qian Shanyi tensed, waiting for her to finish.

“But the post office does not make the seals,” Lan Yu continued, ”I suppose I don’t have to inform that office of what I know.”

Qian Shanyi sighed, tension going out of her body.

“I believe you wanted copies made?” Lan Yu said, approaching the tables she spread the maps on, “Let’s get them done. I am supposed to be on leave today, and my books are waiting.”