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

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This is the type of shit that makes me like a story some random side character with a cool gimmick that we will never see again
 
Winged_One said:
It was, ironically, a lot easier to get recognition for a sect branch from outside the empire than to register a new one within it. At the very least, that did not require her to prove a minimum number of members, or to have a sect compound - but proving her sect already existed was a challenge in itself, seeing how in fact it did not.
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The existence of sects outside the Empire is interesting. It suggests that there are other polities somewhere out there, which are in regular contact with Imperials despite the danger of going through untamed wilderness.

Wu Lanhua laughed. "Come up to me and Fakuang sometime, let us talk - or we could play a game if that is your fancy. I see that your plate has finally cleared up?"

She squinted at Wu Lanhua.

"...I was thinking of training my control over my flying sword in the wind, until we reach the next town," she finally admitted.

"Lake of Peace, was it?" Wu Lanhua shook her head ruefully, "Well, do not wait on my account. If you'd like to practice, then do so. You could still talk, I hope?"

"I could," she said, raising an eyebrow.
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I like how Lanhua, whatever her ultimate intentions for Shanyi Yishan, it does seem like she genuinely wants to be friends with her.

"You can pass through, but I wouldn't recommend it," he said, "it's easy to get lost, and that forest is dangerous right now."
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Hm. I wonder which would help Shanyi's vow hold together better—a blandly practical route which was likely to get her to Yonghao in one piece (but might be cover for some other, vow-breaking activity), or a reckless route that reduces her chance of success (luck or no luck) but proves her dedication to fulfilling the vow.

She was prepared to leap again as soon as she landed, but just then she saw Hui Yin, of all people, appear on top of the snake's head. He waved at her, seemingly unconcerned about the monster.
"Hey, it's you!" he said, "So where's the package?"

[...]

"This is Curls," Hui Yin said, patting the snake's enormous head as if it was merely a little cat, not a monster that could swallow him whole. It was a wonder that he could control it, being still in the refinement stage. "Come say hi."
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Hui Yin is awfully calm about a stranger finding out he delivers stuff by demon beast. Either owning/working with such things is neither illegal nor frowned upon, or Yin is just really chill.

And then they crashed into the forest, and she saw nothing except a cloud of dirt and wooden splinters, her ears ringing from the sheer cacophony of it all, but there was no time to process it because Curls simply leaped again, and the sky was back, and so was the wind and someone's scream, someone close - oh it was her scream.

She glanced up at Hui Yin, who was somehow managing to stay in place with a mere chain, repositioning himself on the snake's head with very light steps. He turned around, glanced at her face, and gave her a thumbs up, and she resolved that if she was going to survive this, she was going to punch him in the face.
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I guess that's evidence for the "Yin is really chill" theory. Considering that he's so calm about doing this. every. day.

He approached her to give her a hand, and she threw a punch at his jaw. [...] Her fist cracked against his spiritual energy shield, and she let her hand fall down, defeated.

"Feisty!" He laughed again, good naturedly, pushing her hand aside. "Alright, you get up on your own then."
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I feel like this job doesn't work well if the snake-director isn't chill enough.


Pinklestia said:
Angels? Wut?

I thought this was Xianxia.
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If there are gods, why not angels? It's like cultivators calling their jiàn "swords".
 
GreatWyrmGold said:
The existence of sects outside the Empire is interesting. It suggests that there are other polities somewhere out there, which are in regular contact with Imperials despite the danger of going through untamed wilderness.
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I agree. Makes you wonder about the cosmology and the creation myth as well. Does everyone have the same story about Gu Lingtian?

The instrument that Hui Yin has seems to match the description of a hurdy gurdy? I can't think of anything else that has a crank like that, and it's a quite western instrument. Not sure if I'm just not familiar with what it might be otherwise or if it implies that a more western style culture exists somewhere.
 
Eater said:
The instrument that Hui Yin has seems to match the description of a hurdy gurdy? I can't think of anything else that has a crank like that, and it's a quite western instrument. Not sure if I'm just not familiar with what it might be otherwise or if it implies that a more western style culture exists somewhere.
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Looking through hurdy-gurdy page on Wikipedia, it looks like there exists similar instrument called kaisatsuko (Japanese: 回擦胡, literally "wheel-bowed fiddle") - but it might be quite modern invention (the Wikipedia page for that instrument is very sparse).
 
Pinklestia said:
A celestial functionary is basically a Xianxia Heaven Salaryman.

Angel tends to remind people of two specific religions and derivatives that again are not Chinese.
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Point 1: Zoroastrianism and Sikhism, right?

Point 2: I don't know how to explain this again, but...you know this story is written in English, right? That's why I keep emphasizing other words whose Chinese equivalents are not used. The audience can be expected to have some idea what qi is, that word has filtered through a decent fraction of the Anglophone world from everything from old martial arts movies to shonen anime to the live-action Mulan. Tiānxiān or zhìdì jūn or whatever the specific word for a xian in the service of the celestial bureaucracy is, not so much.

"Angel" is a word with a specific meaning and specific cultural implications. So are "god" and "sword" and "heaven" and at least half of the words used in this story. Words like "god" and "heaven" remind people of that same religion, followed by Classical mythology, with a celestial bureaucracy coming maybe fifth or sixth depending on what kind of foreign media that audience is into. "Sword" reminds people of cruciform swords first, then maybe a gladius or scimitar, with katana being the first non-European sword they think of and Chinese swords probably not coming to mind without prompting.

But the word "sword' conveys everything that the audience needs to know about a weapon, without needing to define a jian from first principles. "God" and "heaven" give the audience a good idea of what cultivators are rebelling against, whether or not they have a personal familiarity with traditional Chinese cosmology. And "angel" does the same thing. It's not an accurate name for that kind of being in xianxia literature, but no English word is, because it's not an English concept. "Angel" is a perfectly functional translation for a word unimportant enough that basic functionality is all that really matters.
 
Why use one word when you can use two? Heaven bureaucrat covers a better meaning. Do you have a very strick word limit or something?
 
dhasenan said:
"Heavenly bureaucrat" implies they're going to do bureaucrat stuff. These are petrifying the populations of entire dang counties, which isn't common bureaucrat behavior.
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Pretty much this.

"Angel" covers a lot of ground. Even if we restrict ourselves to Biblical canon, angels do everything from carrying divine messages to smiting the firstborn of every family in Egypt. They might be benevolent, but there's a reason they always say "Be not afraid." (Well, the Angel of Death probably didn't. You know what I mean.)

"Heavenly bureaucrat" is a literally accurate description of what those beings are, but it's also misleading.
 
Yeah.

Honestly, I'm not seeing any advantage to the narrative for refusing to translate "supernatural beings that serve Heaven" as "angel."
 
Thing is, while a Heaven Salaryman might sign the form so you get striken by a Heavenly Tribulation, Xianxia Heaven has a separate army apart from the bureocrats. So using Angel is also missleading. However if you reach the point Heaven is actually sending their actual warriors after you it will be probably be ober a million words later or more by then.

Remember that Cultivation/Taoism Heaven is basically the "Heavenly Version" of the mortal Ancient China Emperor court, so besides people having superpowers it wotks in a similar way.
 
It is not at all misleading to use "angel" as a word for a supernatural being that smites stuff on behalf of an ordered, moralistically officially righteous, heavenly hierarchy.

Angels do a lot of smiting, more so than they do paperwork, in their original source legends.
 
For that matter, using "angel" as a word for a supernatural being that does the Bronze Age equivalent of paperwork (paper not having been invented yet) isn't misleading either. The word "angel" literally means "messenger," as does its Hebrew equivalent, מַלְאָךְ.

The smiting is usually more prominent than the messenger-ing, but that creeps its way into the source legends when it's a really important message. (The most important message is familiar to anyone who attended special Wednesday evening Advent church services through their entire childhood.)
 
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