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

---

Qian Shanyi grimly watched the entrance to the world fragment close far above her, hands crossed on her chest. Wang Yonghao and Linghui Mei would be heading off, doing their best to lose any trail Fang Jiugui could follow - while she was going to be stuck in here, all alone.

It was Linghui Mei's idea initially - and for all that she resented the conclusion, Qian Shanyi couldn't deny her reasoning. With her burns, she had to wear gloves everywhere she went to cover them up - and while by no means rare, such clothing was no longer in fashion. Combined with her height, and being a cultivator - she was simply too conspicuous.

And on top of that, she was the least experienced at evading the pursuit of others. Linghui Mei had her jiuweihu knowledge to fall back on, and Wang Yonghao spent most of his life running away from all responsibility. They knew what they had to do to muddy their tracks, and at this first stage of their escape, Qian Shanyi would only get in the way.

So she didn't argue when the other two suggested she stay behind. Because of the rich spiritual energy within Wang Yonghao's world fragment, it should take a mere week of recovery for her hands to heal, and once her most conspicuous feature would be gone, she would be able to help with the next stage of their escape plan.

Still. Even if she agreed with the reasoning, it meant she was going to be stuck in here for an entire week. All alone, just passing the time while her skin healed. It brought back memories of when she first opened her eyes in this world fragment, knowing nothing of either Wang Yonghao or his luck.

Qian Shanyi snorted at her own thoughts. She had food, water, a bath and a good hammock to sleep in. It was nothing like back then.

Enough sulking. Surely I could do something more productive instead.

She decided to check on the rabbits. They were settling into their coop well - and even dug several burrows. Despite being left alone for weeks at a time, they were still tame, and most of them came out to greet her once she entered their enclosure. All of them seemed healthy, with lustrous fur - as expected, given the omnipresent spiritual energy - though Erhao, Sanhao and Wuhao were getting fatter than the others. This either meant they were pregnant, or just that they had larger appetites. Qian Shanyi hoped it was the former - their plans for food security relied on all the rabbits being fertile.

Mei could probably tell just by smelling them.

Qian Shanyi sighed, thinking of the other two. At least they could talk to each other on their way. They must have been having all sorts of fun.

The beans were growing quickly as well. The fresh shoots were already climbing up the stakes Qian Shanyi and Linghui Mei set up in advance, only having a little trouble from the grass that was beginning to intrude back on the farm. It was growing incredibly fast - but so were the beans, so perhaps it would balance out in the end. Qian Shanyi doubted that they would be ready for harvest before she was done recovering either way.

As she was walking past the kitchen, Qian Shanyi glanced at the Spring of Plums, left out on the table. She promised to Liu Yufei she would read it, and she had nothing else left to do, but…

Qian Shanyi considered the possibility, snorted, and decided to go to bed instead.

Better uneasy dreams than romance.

---

Linghui Mei squinted up at Wang Yonghao, her current, elderly form only coming up to his chest. Back on the ship, they decided to split up, and only meet among the farms outside the city. She bought a tent and a pair of bedrolls for their trip, while Wang Yonghao circled around to make his trail harder to find, and did his best to blend in.

At least, he was supposed to. He changed out of his robes, and hid his sword - but his clothes looked barely worn. Too new, too clean - even his wide brimmed bamboo hat was hardly scratched. And beneath it all - nothing could hide his height, nor his broad shoulders.

It was all completely inappropriate for their next step.

"Come here," Linghui Mei said in her scratchy, elderly voice, pulling Wang Yonghao to the side of the road. There were few people out, at this time of day - except for a dozen farmers tending to fruit trees on their right - but it was enough that they both kept their voices quiet. "Lean down."

"Why?" the oaf said, not doing as he was ordered.

He'd been speaking to her more, of late, for reasons she couldn't quite discern. She would have almost thought he was trying to be friendly - but nothing could make her forget that deep within his soul, he was still a cultivator, and prideful like one. She could tolerate it from her master - but not from him.

"You stand out too much," she grumbled. "All of you cultivators do. It won't do at all. Built like an ox but dressed like a prince, soft skin like the butt of a baby - at least rub some dirt on your face."

With her short arms, she couldn't quite reach Wang Yonghao's collar, or else she would have done it herself.

"My skin is fine," Wang Yonghao scoffed, crossing his arms on his chest. "Should we go, grandmother? We have a long road ahead of us."

Linghui Mei wondered what possessed her master to trust this man with her life. She could already feel some of the bored farmers glancing at them, though without any real understanding. They must have seen her as just a grandmother berating her son.

Linghui Mei picked up a short walking stick she found, and gestured with it towards Wang Yonghao, regretting that she couldn't actually hit him. "We'll be joining a caravan of pilgrims," she said with a glare, "But if you join like this, among the sick and the poor, they will know what you are in minutes."

"Pilgrims? Well why didn't you just mention that right from the start?" Wang Yonghao complained, "At least tell me what you saw first, so we could discuss it. I thought it would be best to look like a craftsman and his mother, so I dressed the part."

"You should follow the words of your elders without needing to be told," Linghui Mei grumbled, but lowered her stick.

Wang Yonghao squinted at her suspiciously, but finally sat down on the ground. "What, are you a karmist or something?" he said, rubbing some sand on his clothes, and cracking his hat in several places with practiced motions.

"I have been following the letter of the Heavenly Will for all my life," Linghui Mei said proudly, giving the cultivator a challenging look. "If I am not a karmist, who would dare to call themselves that?"

Wang Yonghao chuckled, briefly glancing back at her. "I mean, not the entire Will, right?"

Linghui Mei's eyes narrowed down to slits. "What would you know of it? Of me?" she said, her voice dripping with venom.

"Hey, I've met plenty of karmists, lady." Wang Yonghao snorted, rolling his eyes. "Lived with them, here or there. Grew up in their orphanage. I know the basics. All I am saying is that -"

"What rule have I violated, then?" Linghui Mei cut him off.

"The…what do you call it…" Wang Yonghao snapped his fingers, trying to recall. "The central heavenly axis? Heavens above all, cultivators below them, humans lower still? Elders above children, husband leading the wife? And, you know." He leaned forwards, not getting up from the ground - which made him just about eye level with her. "Humans above non-humans."

Linghui Mei stepped back, her mask cracking a bit. She remembered her own lectures, the sermons. Her mother spanking her so hard she couldn't sit for a day when she almost slipped up on a question. She remembered giving some of those same sermons herself, to not stand out, never stand out. "Nowhere is that written explicitly," she hissed.

"Yeah, maybe not explicitly." Wang Yonghao chuckled, not sounding the least convinced. "I wouldn't know - I haven't bothered with the scriptures. But I've never met a karmist who'd give any spirit the time of day, let alone -" He cut himself off, making a vague gesture towards her. "You know."

Linghui Mei stepped back again, her lips parting in a light snarl. "I follow the rules," she said. "That's what matters."

It's what her mother always said. The Heavens kept the score, no matter what the foolish humans said or did - and Heavens cared not for excuses. Obey or die - simple, but also fair.

"Hey, it's your choice," Wang Yonghao said with a light shrug. "You can even put up a shrine in my inner world for all I care, though it would probably give Shanyi a heart attack. I'm just saying. Maybe don't throw stones at me?"

He got up, dusting off his pants, but looking much more like a traveler. "Should we go?" he said. "Or are you going to berate me some more?"

Linghui Mei snorted angrily and spun around, heading off down the road, still fuming in the depths of her soul.

---

Qian Shanyi woke up eight and a half hours later, to a world fragment that was no different from before, except for the bean stalks that grew just a little taller. She made rice, more than enough to feed her for the entire day, and then spent a couple hours sitting on top of her hut, using her flying sword to snipe adolescent rose vines that spread their leaves above the ground.

We'll need a permanent solution for them, sooner or later…

She wondered what the others were doing. In the outside world, only a couple hours would have passed - perhaps they were only just leaving the town.

And then she was back to her previous dilemma. What could she spend an entire week doing?

She already went through Wang Yonghao's short collection of cultivation manuals. She made an inventory of the swords. She couldn't farm, not with her hands as they were.

She glanced at the Spring of Plums, and shook her head, jumping off the hut's roof. She wasn't quite that desperate yet.

There was one important issue before her, one she had been putting off before, for she lacked the appropriate resources to address it. It was time to deal with it.

Back when she was roughing it up with Wang Yonghao in the unsettled forests, her overeager attempts to fry the clay in the chiclotron had almost killed the both of them, by making too much dead air. The dead air had dissipated, and they have not faced a similar crisis since - but that meant little. They were still dancing on the edge of the knife - at any point, they might do something that created dead air again, and kill themselves before they even realized it.

To be safe, they needed to know exactly what conditions created dead air, what made it dissipate, and how quickly. Only then could they consciously avoid the danger, instead of relying on chance. And Qian Shanyi already had a rough plan for how to do that.

It all came down to one core problem. To figure out how to create dead air, she'd first have to know how to detect it; otherwise, how would she know that her idea worked? But in order to detect it, she needed dead air to already be present - otherwise, how could she test different ways to detect it?

A perfect, circular dilemma - or so it seemed at first glance. Because she already had one way to sense dead air - herself. She knew that if there was too much of it, she would pass out, and then die.

It would have to be enough.

Walking over to their collection of glassware, Qian Shanyi gave it a look-over. She wanted to start small: just a test, to see how things would go. Picking out a small flask with a glass cork, she brought it over to the fire node in their kitchens.

Based on what she and Wang Yonghao knew, dead air was related to fire. Fortunately, Qian Shanyi had plenty of fire-type spiritual energy to work with. Step one was to make sure enough of it could seep through her glassware to support ignition.

She lowered the flask into the fire node on a length of incombustible silk, and saw fire spark within it - before the cork promptly blew off and bounced off Qian Shanyi's forehead. She caught it with her other hand, and gave it a pensive glare.

Air pressure. Should have thought of that.

She needed a way to relieve it. Going back, Qian Shanyi picked out a different cork - one with a long, but thin glass tube passing through it. This time, she saw the fire spark within the flask, air whistling slightly as it blew out of the far end of the tube. Once its flow slowed down, she plugged the tube up with her finger, sealing the remaining air within the flask.

The overheated air was hot enough to hurt, even through her gloves, but she still allowed herself to smile. It might have been small, but -

The fire within the flask grew dimmer, sputtered, and then vanished entirely, leaving a small pile of brightly glowing dust behind. It grew slowly in size, more glowing particles materialising in the air and drifting down to the bottom of the flask.

What?

She quickly drew the flask out of the fire node and brought it closer to her face, shaking it slightly to stir the strange dust. It looked just like coals or ash in a fireplace - the red glow dimming quickly as the dust cooled, the glow playing across the surface in mesmerising waves of scarlet.

With a start, Qian Shanyi realized what she was looking at. It was solidified fire, also known as coal dust.


She frowned, thinking through what happened. This flask was made from glass that was permeable to spiritual energy. When she lowered it into the fire node, it filled the flask, creating fire, and rapidly heating the air. That part made perfect sense.

Then the fire went out.

Why would it go out? The spiritual energy that created it didn't go anywhere.

Qian Shanyi took the glass cork out, and turned over the flask, shaking the coal dust out - only for it to catch fire as soon as it passed through the flask's neck.

A thought stirred in the back of her mind. She was trying to make fire because she knew it led to dead air, even if she did not yet know how. And then, as soon as she lit a fire in an enclosed environment, it started doing things she didn't expect.

Did she… succeed? Was the coal dust remaining whole because all the air in the flask was alchemically transformed to dead air, which… prevented combustion?

Qian Shanyi shook her head to clear her thoughts. She had to make sure, instead of jumping to conclusions.

First of all: was it a fluke? Qian Shanyi shook out the rest of the dust, and quickly scrubbed the inside of the flask with a special cleaning brush to get rid of the residue. Then she did the exact same thing as before, and predictably got the exact same result.

So, not a fluke. Second possibility: was it the glass itself? It was supposed to be alchemically neutral, but perhaps that was false, and it was reacting to the coal dust, or to spiritual energy, or to the air in the flask, and throwing everything off.

This time, instead of plugging up the tube with her finger, Qian Shanyi attached a second, identical flask to the end. Once the fire went out, she pulled the apparatus out of the fire node, and flipped it over. The uncombusted coal dust fell through the tube and into the second flask - where it blazed into flame.


The second flask was completely identical to the first one - same glass, same shape, same everything. This meant that the only difference between the two could be the air. Right?

Just to be sure, Qian Shanyi repeated the experiment, but with the flasks switched around, on the off chance one of them was somehow special. Same result.

So, it probably was the air.

Qian Shanyi tapped the flask against her forehead in thought. It had cooled down somewhat, but even then, she had to tap quickly, lest it burn her skin.

She couldn't possibly be the first to discover this, nor even the hundredth. Alchemist sects no doubt knew all about the secrets of dead air - and even beyond them, others must have as well. Blacksmiths, coalburners - plenty of people could have put it together.

But coalburners did not write books, and alchemist sects guarded even the smallest scraps of their knowledge jealously. She knew it well - after all, Luminous Lotus Pavilion was one of them, so hell-bent on secrecy it ground her own cultivation down to a crawl.

Alchemist sects would have made her pay through the nose for even this little secret.

They must have even managed to force the empire to keep it out of libraries. After all, knowledge was built upon other knowledge - and so every secret, no matter how simple, made it all the easier for other sects to catch up to them. With the entire cultivation civilization so reliant on alchemy - how could the empire truly push back?

The few held the keys of power, and refused to let go. The same curse that plagued them all for hundreds of years.

Qian Shanyi shook her head to clear her thoughts. There was nothing she could do about it -

She stopped, narrowing her eyes. That was an old saying, one she told herself many times - but things had changed. She wasn't simply an underappreciated disciple anymore.

She glanced around the world fragment. In the past weeks, she was so focused on the what and the how that she forgot to think about the why. Wang Yonghao wanted to get rid of his luck - but what did she want, besides getting stronger?

What did she truly have against the alchemist sects? She was resentful against Luminous Lotus Pavilion, certainly, but not so much as to swear vengeance.

But to cultivate was to rebel against the heavens, was it not? With Wang Yonghao in the picture making it possible - was it not her duty, as a cultivator, to make a difference?

Qian Shanyi sighed, and got up from the ground to put the flasks away. She'd need to think about this. This wasn't a small decision to make.

Her thoughts turned back to the somewhat more acute question of dead air. Even if she discovered one alchemical transformation, that did not mean it was the right one. After all, she had no real reason to believe dead air prevented combustion - even if it was also transparent and odourless.

What are the chances of two separate alchemical transformations of air in the presence of fire?

Not even checking would be the height of folly.

At least creating this mysterious gas seemed extremely easy - all she had to do was place a sealed container within the fire node, and wait until the fire within it would go out and coal dust began to accumulate. That left the question of testing its effects on her body - and finding out the critical dose.

The only way to do that with any degree of precision was to lock herself into a container filled with dead air, and wait until she felt the effects. She even had the container ready for just such a purpose - their glass cauldron was more than large enough to fit her, even if it would be a bit cramped.

There was, of course, one small, insignificant problem - one of those "effects" was passing out, quickly followed by death.

I should probably wait for Yonghao or Mei to test this, Qian Shanyi thought, putting the flasks away. They could pull me out if I pass out. Back to reading Spring of Plums, it seems…

---

Four hours later, Qian Shanyi tossed the unreadable trash down on the kitchen table in frustration, and headed for their stacks of wood. She couldn't wait any longer - she was just going to test it herself.

She wasn't suicidal - or at least, not any more than she expected herself to be after trying to force herself through two separate stories of a young and oh-so-innocent daughter of a sect elder falling in love with a dashing, yet careless loose cultivator in an act of forbidden, yet passionate love. She simply had a good idea for how to make the device, and, perhaps, was more than a little willing to do literally anything that did not involve that damnable book.

Those damn articles better be worth it.

Problem: the experiment might make her pass out and then suffocate to death. Blindingly obvious solution: build a device that automatically pulled her out of the caudron if she ever lost consciousness. Really, she felt stupid that it took her four entire hours to think of it.

The first step was to make a raised structure to anchor her device. Without the full use of Qian Shanyi's hands, the only way to move the tree trunks was to hook her rope under one end, lift it with her shoulder, and then slowly walk it over to the fire node, changing the lifted side with every "step". It was tedious - but she had nothing but time.

She placed two trunks down on the ground, parallel to each other, forming the first layer of her structure. To get enough height, she needed three layers - and so she cut some saddle notches into the trunks with her flying sword technique, and then built a square frame, using four more. It was the same principle as their hut - but since all she needed was to keep the trunks from rolling away, she didn't bother making the notches all that deep.


Next was the cauldron: she crouched down next to it, threaded her rope through the anchor points on the sides, and then pulled it onto her back, like an enormous backpack. She brought it over to her platform, and placed it in the middle of the square.

Having the cauldron down on the ground would not do her a lick of good: it had to be raised up in the air. Thankfully, this cauldron was already designed to be suspended upside down, or even spun around while an alchemical transformation was in progress: there was a special anchor loop for chains or ropes on its bottom.

Tying one of her ropes to the hut, Qian Shanyi passed it through the loop, and then to the palisade around the bath, making a hang line; as she tightened it, the cauldron rose up into the air. A couple more shorter ropes kept it from spinning, secured to a pair of swords she stuck in the ground.

The lip of the cauldron was angled inwards slightly, and its lids were made to match - with an edge fifteen centimeters tall, and circular ridges that would fit into grooves on the cauldron, made to form a perfect seal once the lid was locked in place. Locking the lid, of course, would be suicide - so instead Qian Shanyi filled it with water to compensate for the gap, before sitting down on top.

Another four ropes were passed under the lid and tied around her supporting structure. With a twist of her rope control technique, Qian Shanyi forced the ropes to contract, and raise her upwards - into the cauldron.


It took her a good ten minutes of careful adjustments to make sure the ropes were stable, and the lid would end up in the exact same spot every time. Her idea was simple: as long as she circulated her rope control technique, she would stay sealed within the cauldron - but if she ever passed out, her technique would immediately break, all tension would leave the ropes, and she'd fall right out. In the clean air of the world fragment, she'd come back to her senses right away.

It really was perfectly safe! She even tied a pillow under the lid, to soften the impact. Falling out was a little rough, and water went all over the place - but otherwise, it worked exactly as she imagined it.

With the cauldron done, it was time to build the rest of her contraption.

To make the dead air, she used a large, empty distillation coil, simply placing it down within the fire node - the long spiral path through the glass tube should give the air plenty of time to be transformed. She attached one end of the coil to a tall pipe, lifted high into the air and far away from the fire node to pull in fresh air.

The other end had to go into a pump - but the one she had was only meant for small volumes, and not something the size of the entire cauldron. Fortunately, making a bigger pump was quite simple: a pair of glass valves, controlled with her rope technique, and a tall glass column with a metal plunger, twenty centimeters in diameter. It was supposed to be used as an emergency expansion volume for toxic gasses, to keep them from blowing up the rest of the glassware and spreading all across the laboratory - but with a weight added on top, and one of her short ropes put inside it transformed into a serviceable, if fiddly, low-pressure pump.

Qian Shanyi hooked up her abomination to the distillation coil, to figure out how well it worked. She needed to keep three separate rope control techniques going to manipulate it - but each of them individually took little effort, there was plenty of spiritual energy all around her, and she could take her time.


Close one valve - extend the rope within the pump to lift the piston and pull in air - switch the valves - let the piston fall to push the air out the other side. It took her a bit to get into the rhythm, but it wasn't as bad as she imagined it. The pump worked great, the air whistling through it with every movement of the piston.

Excited to finally get everything to work together, Qian Shanyi brought along more glass tubing, and started to secure everything to the cauldron. It took her another ten minutes of work, most of it spent on making sure all the joints were sealed tight, and on figuring out how to safely tie the piping to the cauldron hanging precariously in mid air.

While she worked, she realized another problem: the air coming into the cauldron would be so hot that she would sweat her skin off. Fortunately, it was easy enough to fix by adding a second distillation column to the system, this one filled with ice cold water to cool down the air. She had gotten three of them all together, and was glad for it.

But then it was all done, the entire contraption holding together well. It was time for the first true test run.


Qian Shanyi licked her lips in anticipation, sat down in the water-filled cauldron lid, and lifted herself into the cauldron, the glass walls closing in around her like the cocoon around a butterfly. Managing so many rope control techniques stretched her abilities almost to the edge - but fortunately, she didn't have to move all of them independently. Once she was sealed in, the ropes supporting her weight only had to keep a simple, straight form, which took up very little of her attention.

At first, she felt nothing at all. Pumping the air was a little tricky, but overall, it was boring work. Easy to get distracted, let her thoughts drift. If she wasn't paying attention - she wouldn't have noticed as her breaths deepened, her lungs having to strain just that little bit harder to support her. But soon, that vague feeling of stuffiness turned into outright suffocation.

She pulled herself out once her eyelids started to droop closed. She was stubborn - but not so stubborn that she was going to make herself slowly pass out even as every breath was a little agony. The fresh air outside of the cauldron slammed into her face like ice cold water on a summer day, and she let out a laugh.

It was definitely dead air. The feeling of it - exactly the same as back when she almost died.

She kept a count of how many times she pumped the air before she started to feel various symptoms. Knowing the volume of the cauldron, her own body, and the volume of the pump - with a little math, it gave her a good estimate of what percentage of the air had to be dead before she would start to feel it.

The answer turned out to be about two and a half percent before the feeling became obvious, and about ten until she started to outright pass out - though she suspected that if she was working hard instead of sitting calmly in a cauldron, it would have been much less. It was probably why she woke up at all, back then - once she passed out, her heartbeat calmed down, and her body needed less air to bring her back to consciousness.

But now she had her deadly numbers. All that was left was to figure out what made the dead air vanish in the first place.

She sighed, stretching out once she got her feet under her again. Making the contraption, testing it - it took her long enough that it was already "evening", at least according to the clock.

She smiled, heading for the kitchens. It was time for dinner, and then she would go to sleep again.

This was a productive day. Other experiments could wait until tomorrow.