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

[GreatWyrmGold]

In the next update: Imperial Prison Blues, or "How I learned that calling the Cop 'a corrupt piece of shit' to his face for letting me off the traffic ticket when I already have a warrant out for my arrest is a bad idea."

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Say what you will about Shanyi, but for all the disdain she has for the rules of the empire and especially Heaven, she's pretty hardcore about her own honor. Her own rules. Hence that heavenly vow she took the other chapter, taking on all the risk of her current plan.

Thinking about luck a bit, I wonder if it's more of a field or a finite resource that exists separate from individuals? Perhaps Wang Yonghao doesn't so much have inordinate amounts of luck inherently, but a larger 'mass' to which luck is attracted. This could explain why bad things tend to happen to people and places he encounters.

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Yonghao's luck is noted to be unusual, in that it causes events he doesn't want to happen. If luck normally worked like you describe, high luck would cause misfortune to befall those around you, which seems like it would cause unwanted events and be noticed.

That said, Yonghao's luck is noted to be unusual. It's possible that it works on different principles than most people's luck.

That, or this was going to happen anyway (consider the Lion Kingdom, which proves that random acts of large scale malice aren't exactly unknown) and that Yonghao's luck is what got him out of the city in the first place?

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That's a big assumption about cause and effect there. What's more likely: Yonghao's luck manipulating a gang of demonic cultivators into planning and carrying out an attack well in advance of the event it was needed to cover for? Or Yonghao's luck manipulating him to get drunk, pick a fight and have to flee so that he escapes the imminent bombing?

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In the absence of actual information about fictional worldbuilding elements, I often project the qualities of similar elements onto what textual evidence we have. From this process, I've cultivated the following WAG: Luck isn't a matter of cause and effect per se. It's just a factor bending the trajectory of events around it, like how a magnetic or gravitational field bends the trajectory of objects around it. Did Yonghao's luck cause the demonic cultivators to attack the city, or did it just react to them? What's the distinction?

Yonghao's luck is probably involved somehow—the event's shapes fit the "Yonghao gets into dramatic battles but escapes largely unscathed" pattern that his luck seems to prefer—but we don't know what would have happened if Yonghao was somewhere else. That said, we can make some guesses. If Yonghao's luck was powerful enough to cause demonic cultivators materialize out of thin air, or even to force them to execute plots they wouldn't do otherwise, he probably would have coincidentally run into more of them in the wilderness.

So I think it's fair to assume that his luck just deflected an existing demonic sect's plans. Maybe it altered the methods they chose to accomplish their goals—made them pick a flashy high-risk-high-reward plan when they would have normally picked something subtler. Maybe it just altered their target. But I don't think Yonghao's luck is powerful enough to compel them to rampage when they otherwise would have. It's also powerful enough to guide him towards actions which give him good odds of surviving the rampage intact.

 

[Eater]

If Yonghao's luck was powerful enough to cause demonic cultivators materialize out of thin air, or even to force them to execute plots they wouldn't do otherwise, he probably would have coincidentally run into more of them in the wilderness.

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To be fair, he does mention that one of his previous companions was killed by demonic cultivators, which is why he left Qian Shanyi in the lurch. So perhaps his luck is strong enough to consistently draw them to him, even if not to materialize them from the aether.

 

[GreatWyrmGold]

To be fair, he does mention that one of his previous companions was killed by demonic cultivators, which is why he left Qian Shanyi in the lurch. So perhaps his luck is strong enough to consistently draw them to him, even if not to materialize them from the aether.

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So I think it's fair to assume that his luck just deflected an existing demonic sect's plans. Maybe it altered the methods they chose to accomplish their goals—made them pick a flashy high-risk-high-reward plan when they would have normally picked something subtler. Maybe it just altered their target. But I don't think Yonghao's luck is powerful enough to compel them to rampage when they otherwise would have.

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[Eater]

Aye, I saw that, I was just saying that we can't necessarily discount that the only reason the attack happened at all was Wang Yonghao's presence as he does, as far as we know, run into them on a fairly regular basis; he runs into them enough that he's running away, after all. Even if they're not literally appearing from nothing.

 

[Simon_Jester]

It just seems like his luck would be more likely to guide him into the path of an oncoming attack that was already going to happen anyway, than to make up attacks for him to encounter or to divert existing attacks so that he can run into them.

By analogy, we can be pretty sure that all those treasures he's haphazardly been collecting weren't made up for the express purpose of going into his inventory, but rather that he's constantly being "steered" to places where he can pick up a lost legacy or thousand year old missing relic. His luck seems more likely to direct him than to be warping the entire rest of the universe around him.

 

[GreatWyrmGold]

I was just saying that we can't necessarily discount that the only reason the attack happened at all was Wang Yonghao's presence as he does, as far as we know, run into them on a fairly regular basis; he runs into them enough that he's running away, after all. Even if they're not literally appearing from nothing.

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If Yonghao's luck was powerful enough to cause demonic cultivators materialize out of thin air, or even to force them to execute plots they wouldn't do otherwise (emphasis mine...um, today-mine), he probably would have coincidentally run into more of them in the wilderness.

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Yonghao runs into demonic cultivator attacks when he shows up in places demonic cultivators are likely to attack, but when he's in the wilderness he only finds monsters. It seems reasonable to assume that his luck merely attracts demonic cultivator attacks, rather than initiating them. If his presence initiated demonic cultivator activity, he'd run into more groups of them roaming through the wilderness, looking for treasures or harvesting raw materials or sneaking through the undergrowth or something.

The demonic cultivators have been planning this attack for months, and it happens to occur on the day that Yonghao is in town, rather than when he's a hundred miles downstream. And they happened to pick a target where Yonghao would actually be, rather than the town next door that Yonghao will never visit.

 

[notbirdofprey]

Yonghao runs into demonic cultivator attacks when he shows up in places demonic cultivators are likely to attack, but when he's in the wilderness he only finds monsters. It seems reasonable to assume that his luck merely attracts demonic cultivator attacks, rather than initiating them. If his presence initiated demonic cultivator activity, he'd run into more groups of them roaming through the wilderness, looking for treasures or harvesting raw materials or sneaking through the undergrowth or something.

The demonic cultivators have been planning this attack for months, and it happens to occur on the day that Yonghao is in town, rather than when he's a hundred miles downstream. And they happened to pick a target where Yonghao would actually be, rather than the town next door that Yonghao will never visit.

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Or alternatively he just happens to visit a town the demonic cultivators were planning to attack on the day they were planning to attack it.

 

[Simon_Jester]

Yeah. I think "This guy's luck steers him to the exact place something bad is going to happen, at the exact time it's going to happen" is more likely than "this guy's luck steers other, more powerful outside forces to the place he happens to be standing."

In the same sense that the monsters and treasures he encounters in the wilderness were probably already there waiting for someone to trip over them, and his luck, which knows where everything is, nudges him to go to the places where those things are instead of just wandering around aimlessly.

 

[Eater]

Yonghao runs into demonic cultivator attacks when he shows up in places demonic cultivators are likely to attack, but when he's in the wilderness he only finds monsters. It seems reasonable to assume that his luck merely attracts demonic cultivator attacks, rather than initiating them. If his presence initiated demonic cultivator activity, he'd run into more groups of them roaming through the wilderness, looking for treasures or harvesting raw materials or sneaking through the undergrowth or something.

The demonic cultivators have been planning this attack for months, and it happens to occur on the day that Yonghao is in town, rather than when he's a hundred miles downstream. And they happened to pick a target where Yonghao would actually be, rather than the town next door that Yonghao will never visit.

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I don't mean to make a big thing of this, but I'm not being clear I guess. I mean to say that we don't have evidence that the demonic cultivators aren't following Wang Yonghao around.

My initial response was to point out that, contrary to what you said (that if he was attracting demonic contractors he would run into more of them in the wilderness) what we know of Wang Yonghao's past indicates that he does in fact run into demonic cultivators on a regular basis. He's had one of his prior companions cut to pieces by demonic cultivators, golden rabbit bay was attacked a few days after he showed up, and he feels that being around him is sufficiently dangerous that he fled Qian Shanyi's presence. I feel that that's two strong and one weak pieces of evidence that it's not necessarily coincidence.

You say that if he was attracting them he would find them in the wilderness, but he might well do so. All we have are this trip with Qian Shanyi and one anecdote to go off of, with the anecdote being about the other companion being killed. It may be that this particular trip is out of the ordinary for him and took the two of them into a completely unpopulated area with no other (living) humans.

So far as the attack on golden rabbit bay, he'd been in town for a 'couple of days'.

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

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An attack that involves setting a load of explosives and attacking the city in the confusion doesn't strike me as needing months of planning.

I'm not saying you're wrong necessarily, just that I don't feel that the evidence we have at the moment precludes demonic cultivators being aware of/deliberately targeting Wang Yonghao, and specifically initiating activities they wouldn't otherwise due to his presence.

 

[Simon_Jester]

If your argument boils down to "we can't prove that Wang isn't being deliberately targeted and that attackers aren't going after whole urban areas specifically because he's there," then your argument further boils down to "it is very difficult to prove a negative," which we already knew. Since we do not have access to the internal thought processes of the guys who attacked the city, we can't say what they were thinking, and even if we did and they had reasons which had nothing to do with Wang's presence, we could attribute this to Wang's weird luck nudging their minds.

Within the confines of the story format, it's impossible to prove this negative.

However, this does not mean that we are obliged to accept, or even seriously entertain, every positive claim that comes down the road on the grounds that the refutation of a positive claim is a negative claim and therefore unprovable.

 

[racnor]

Speaking of demonic cultivation, was Gu Lingtian a demonic cultivator? As in, not just a heaven-condemned cultivator but a corpse refiner? Because

"Then, in a rage, he took up his sword, and cut his own, thirteenth way inside. The blood and ichor flowed in rivers, and it is said that the sounds of slaughter drove all within a hundred li into madness,"

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does not sound exactly righteous in terms of ascension methods (unless that's supposed to be the slaughter in heaven after he ascended?).

 

[GreatWyrmGold]

Or alternatively he just happens to visit a town the demonic cultivators were planning to attack on the day they were planning to attack it.

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I think that's the same thing I described from a different angle, but with a different set of base assumptions it could be a meaningfully distinct alternative. I think I'd agree that it's valid.

Speaking of demonic cultivation, was Gu Lingtian a demonic cultivator? As in, not just a heaven-condemned cultivator but a corpse refiner? Because

does not sound exactly righteous in terms of ascension methods (unless that's supposed to be the slaughter in heaven after he ascended?).

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I quickly searched the thread for any mention of demonic cultivators in the actual story.

Spoiler: Mentions

"But why would there be inauspicious feng shui here?" she wondered. "Perhaps this is a treasury of demonic cultivators?"

She swept her eyes over the treasury. She had never met a demonic cultivator, but she heard the stories, and looked for the usual signs: dripping blood, bones, wailing ghosts, and so on. She found nothing. Instead, her gaze fell on the pile of refining treasures, and her eyes widened in realization.

"The destructive cycle!"

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A woman must remain chaste in her bearing, and guard her actions with a sense of shame. Here, it is instructive to look at the case of the conflict between the Heavenly Mountain Alliance and the Three Thunderous Demonic Sects, when the Lady of the Six Vipers challenged the Grand Elder of the Heavenly Mountain Alliance to a duel. As they fought, the Lady happened to lose all her clothing, and the Grand Elder, ashamed of looking at a woman's uncovered body, lost his composure and averted his eyes for a moment. This was all it took for the Lady of the Six Vipers to slice his head off in a single slash. Take care to preserve your chastity, lest you distract the men in your life at a critical moment!

What kind of "womanly conduct" was Tang Qunying endorsing?

Never utter slanderous words. Your conduct should be exemplary here: this is an especially important principle for cultivators, for carelessly spoken words, imbued with spiritual energy, could lead to catastrophe. Even a single curse could kill a man, if spoken at the right moment. The second of the Three Thunderous Demonic Sects was infamous for their malign speech: seek to avoid repeating their sins.

The rest of the chapter covered cursing techniques. The author outlined, in great detail, exactly which words, at which cadences, and imbued with which particular pattern of spiritual energy should never be spoken under any circumstances.

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"What?" he scowled, "You want me to mine them from bedrock?"

"Oh it would be soooo much work," she dragged the words out, pushing her bluff further, "Hard work, too. I bet you'd need at least a week for everything. Just imagine yourself working with a pickaxe - and thank me that I thought to bring one from that sect, or else you'd have been doing this with a sword."

"Are you a demonic cultivator?" he spat out, his heartbeat going back up, "With how evil you are, you must be."

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"I am not from a local sect, he doesn't know me and hasn't heard of anything good I might have done. For all he knows, I am a complete scumbag, perhaps just one step shy of being a demonic cultivator. Why should he give me that much face?"

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"Well, yes, that's why even loose cultivators need to have some evidence they are called by their chosen name before we grant them the seal," he grinned at her, "Empire isn't quite so loose! Besides, why would anyone except demonic cultivators bother? There are legal ways to make a seal with a pseudonym, if your deals require discretion."

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Also several casual mentions of attacks by demonic cultivators or whatever.

So, most of what I've learned is how the term "demonic cultivator" is used rhetorically. Demonic cultivators are simultaneously the only people who would want a forged seal and the worst kind of person imaginable. So basically, they're discussed the same way people IRL discuss criminals.

However, based on stories Shanyi has heard, she expected a demonic cultivator's treasury to have bad feng shui. And one demonic sect practiced horrible curses that no honorable woman would want to imitate, here are instructions on what to avoid. This gives the impression that demonic cultivators are assumed to practice dark arts, and also that some other cultivators practice similar techniques when they can get away with it.

The Empire seems to respect Gu Lingtian, so he's probably not a demonic cultivator, even if his cultivation involves literal demons.

 

[Eater]

Lmao, everything we get from Tang Qunying is solid gold, thanks for reminding me of that!

From that specifically, and from the general vibes about how demonic cultivators are talked about (good point wrt irl criminals) I'm very curious how much of this is history written by the victors. If the Heavenly Mountain Alliance had been defeated would we hear about how the demonic mountain clans were defeated by the three thunderous peaks sects, for instance?

 

[Random832]

Demonic cultivators are simultaneously the only people who would want a forged seal and the worst kind of person imaginable.

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I think it's more that he's just so high on the empire's supply that he can't imagine anyone who isn't the worst kind of person imaginable wanting a forged seal. The postmaster didn't figure it out either until it was explained to her.

And Shanyi's situation is path-dependent too, not necessarily even applying to all runaways - she wouldn't have had any trouble getting a non-sect seal in her own name had she done so before she was wanted for questioning for the sword thing (though it's unknown whether she would have tried or assumed even that much would put her at risk for being dragged back to the sect)

 

[Simon_Jester]

I recently learned something interesting about Chinese history, which is that the word commonly translated into English as "bandit" is routinely used for basically every type of group of armed renegades, ranging from "those five guys who ambush travelers on the road from one village to another" up through "literal armies of a hundred thousand men who have gathered under a noted warlord to pillage entire provinces and potentially topple the dynasty if they get lucky."

I get the sense that "demonic cultivator" is subject to a similar form of equivocation, both in xianxia in general and in the internal culture of the empire in this story. That is, the term can mean some psychopath who's using genuinely and profoundly evil magic on a massive scale. Or it can also mean "someone who uses normal cultivation techniques, but does something society disapproves of with them." With "not obeying the law" being a prime example of "something society disapproves of."

 

[veekie]

For classic cultivation works, Demonic Cultivation is an objective fact that can be detected with predictable effects on their environment and a convenient political label for undesirables, because everyone agrees demonic cultivators can be killed out of hand as enemies of all that live.

The difference can be as thin as that between "I kill that guy so I can take his magic sword and drugs"(unrighteous, but not inherently demonic) and "I killed that guy so I can cultivate using the power of his pain and death"(demonic).
The former is just a murderer, the latter is cultivation wise, a cannibal(and eventually an obligate cannibal).

 

[Simon_Jester]

Well, that arguably echoes how a lot of the 'bandit armies' were very aggressive about the whole rape-loot-pillage thing; just because they were opposed to the authoritarian hierarchy of society didn't mean they were morally upstanding individuals.

Being a rebel makes you a 'bandit,' and the word 'bandit' tars you by association with all the nastiest criminals and outlaws in society...

 

[GreatWyrmGold]

I think it's more that he's just so high on the empire's supply that he can't imagine anyone who isn't the worst kind of person imaginable wanting a forged seal. The postmaster didn't figure it out either until it was explained to her.

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Rhetorically, that seems like a distinction without a difference. Either way, it divides cultivators into the vile demonic cultivators and honorable cultivators who would have no need for any kind of deception. You're a loyal citizen of the Empire, or a monster. No middle ground for people opposed to both Imperial authority and blood magic.

 

[Dark as Silver]

Aye, I saw that, I was just saying that we can't necessarily discount that the only reason the attack happened at all was Wang Yonghao's presence as he does, as far as we know, run into them on a fairly regular basis; he runs into them enough that he's running away, after all. Even if they're not literally appearing from nothing.

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Ah yes, the heavens spontaneously conscripting random people into demonic cultivator conspiracies whenever Wang Yonghao enters town.

 

[Eater]

Ah yes, the heavens spontaneously conscripting random people into demonic cultivator conspiracies whenever Wang Yonghao enters town.

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I was thinking more like a moths to a flame situation, but that would be very funny

 

[Dark as Silver]

I was thinking more like a moths to a flame situation, but that would be very funny

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Moths to flame? If demonic cultivators where moving from outside the location in, then it would be rather unsubtle.
"Why did you attack our city."
"I dunno, I was planning to attack Silver Hare City, then next thing I know I've traveled to Golden Rabbit Bay and the bombs fuse is already lit, so I thought 'Sure why not?'"

 

[Eater]

Moths to flame? If demonic cultivators where moving from outside the location in, then it would be rather unsubtle.
"Why did you attack our city."
"I dunno, I was planning to attack Silver Hare City, then next thing I know I've traveled to Golden Rabbit Bay and the bombs fuse is already lit, so I thought 'Sure why not?'"

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No, like Wang Yonghao is the flame and they notice him through the way his luck disrupts the environment or some such. So perhaps they attack the city because something there appears to be affecting the background qi in a way that demonic cultivators are specifically sensitive to. If they think it's a particularly powerful artifact rather than a person it would explain why they went after the larger sects.

We already know that Qian Shanyi can track Wang Yonghao by his luck. Sure, they're entangled and she's aided by her heavenly vow, but she's also a fairly weak cultivator. It doesn't seem out of the question for a higher order cultivator to be able to track him in the same way.

 

[Dark as Silver]

No, like Wang Yonghao is the flame and they notice him through the way his luck disrupts the environment or some such. So perhaps they attack the city because something there appears to be affecting the background qi in a way that demonic cultivators are specifically sensitive to. If they think it's a particularly powerful artifact rather than a person it would explain why they went after the larger sects.

We already know that Qian Shanyi can track Wang Yonghao by his luck. Sure, they're entangled and she's aided by her heavenly vow, but she's also a fairly weak cultivator. It doesn't seem out of the question for a higher order cultivator to be able to track him in the same way.

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Thats not what the moth and flame metaphor really means... But also yes? Thats exactly what I described, if Wang Yonghao was being tracked by terrorists who keep attacking cities he's in, someone would at some point have questioned the people tracking him. Would have noticed the terrorists where outsiders. Its not exactly subtle.

 

[Candesce]

I think the issue is that we don't have eyes on the people doing the questioning, so it's entirely possible someone has noticed the terrorists were outsiders.

Though I think Wang Yonghao being directed into locations terrorists are going to attack is more likely than Heaven (re)directing the attacks; fewer moving parts, fewer connections that might resist the pull, less energy invested all around. And we know Heaven's resources aren't infinite, or Heavenly Vows wouldn't matter.

 

[Dark as Silver]

I think the issue is that we don't have eyes on the people doing the questioning, so it's entirely possible someone has noticed the terrorists were outsiders.

Though I think Wang Yonghao being directed into locations terrorists are going to attack is more likely than Heaven (re)directing the attacks; fewer moving parts, fewer connections that might resist the pull, less energy invested all around. And we know Heaven's resources aren't infinite, or Heavenly Vows wouldn't matter.

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We can however infer that the Empire/Sects haven't observed demonic sects tracking Wang Yonghao though, because for years they seem to have totally failed to do anything about it. And if they've succeeded, then multiple demonic sects tracking him, just looks even weirder.