What, you think the police aren't going to arrest you because you were trying to buy "grass" but not cannabis?
Reach Heaven Via Feng Shui Engineering, Drug Trade And Tax Evasion
- Thread starter Winged_One
- Start date
- Original Novel Fantasy
- Location
- Earth
- Pronouns
- He/Him
That probably isn't a problem for people who aren't being watched by the Heavens. It's one thing for a normal cultivator facing their first scheduled tribulation to ask for that information; it's another thing for someone who just made a Heavenly Vow so strongly opposed to their normal pattern of behavior to do the same.
If you assume that the subtle manipulation and the tribulations are handled by different departments of heaven and only the subtle department has any flexibility of mind because only it needs some then I suppose her plan might be plausible.
The manipulation department notes that she wilfully breaks a vow and suffers a max tribulation rather than be coopted so it stops trying to coopt her but that department doesn't do tribulations. The tribulations are handled rigidly according to a set schedule for vow breaking and cultivation progressions. Other departments can at most send requests that a cultivator be treated more or less harshly within the limits set by the schedule.
I don't see how Shanyi would have enough knowledge of heaven's bureaucracy to base a plan on that though. She's also not considering that the subtle department don't need to tribulation her themselves to kill her. They can do things to undercut her preparations to survive her next tribulation which is inevitable because she intends to cultivate past peak refinement. And they can send giant fish of course.
I think she's hoping that the department doesn't care about her and her enmity as such, that they care about their own schemes and whether she's useful, neutral or an impediment. She's trying to show that trying to coopt her makes her an impediment but otherwise she's neutral.
Thus she needs to stop the designated protagonist from cultivating until she's survived her tribulation and then let him do what he wants. The heavens know that she can't be made to advocate for them but they can also see that she isn't blocking their scheme when unprovoked. Lingering hostility is balanced by the fact she's saving them energy keeping their boy alive and serving as an example of the usefulness and joy of cultivation.
Seems like a fine line drawn on too many assumptions to me.
The manipulation department notes that she wilfully breaks a vow and suffers a max tribulation rather than be coopted so it stops trying to coopt her but that department doesn't do tribulations. The tribulations are handled rigidly according to a set schedule for vow breaking and cultivation progressions. Other departments can at most send requests that a cultivator be treated more or less harshly within the limits set by the schedule.
I don't see how Shanyi would have enough knowledge of heaven's bureaucracy to base a plan on that though. She's also not considering that the subtle department don't need to tribulation her themselves to kill her. They can do things to undercut her preparations to survive her next tribulation which is inevitable because she intends to cultivate past peak refinement. And they can send giant fish of course.
I think she's hoping that the department doesn't care about her and her enmity as such, that they care about their own schemes and whether she's useful, neutral or an impediment. She's trying to show that trying to coopt her makes her an impediment but otherwise she's neutral.
Thus she needs to stop the designated protagonist from cultivating until she's survived her tribulation and then let him do what he wants. The heavens know that she can't be made to advocate for them but they can also see that she isn't blocking their scheme when unprovoked. Lingering hostility is balanced by the fact she's saving them energy keeping their boy alive and serving as an example of the usefulness and joy of cultivation.
Seems like a fine line drawn on too many assumptions to me.
- Location
- Earth
- Pronouns
- He/Him
You know, Shanyi's best odds of getting away with this are the Heavens deciding that killing Shanyi in front of Yonghao would have an unacceptably high risk of pushing Yonghao towards taking vengeance on the cruel gods for the death of his ambiguous love interest. But that relies on, among other things, the relevant heavenly officials having read the right kinds of novel/manhua/whatever.
- Location
- Leeds
This is just wrong though.
She's aware the subtle department will try other things than tribulations.
She explicitly doesn't care. That is a risk she is willing to take.
That technique sure would have been useful for crossing the valley. And in some other scenarios, I suspect.
Speaking of cultivation, being cut off from the Heavens would sure come in handy when ascending to the next stage, since the main problem there is facing a tribulation at your most vulnerable.
Now that's an interesting possibility, if Yonghao's luck is two-part, pulling in opposite directions. Would explain a lot.
"ran down" would be better, IMO.
taut
complement
Chapter 43: Throw Your Hands To Strike With Reason
Winged_One
Head Engineer of ATHENA
- Location
- Low Earth Orbit
Author Note: If you'd like to read five chapters ahead, or read other works I write, you can find me on patreon. Now is the perfect time to subscribe, for those who are interested in how a tribulation looks like.
I also have a discord server, where you can look at fanart and memes. Thanks for reading!
I also have a discord server, where you can look at fanart and memes. Thanks for reading!
Her punch slammed into his mouth, and he rocked back, arrogance shifting to shock in a flash.
"Oh I am sorry, my fist must have slipped," she noted idly, taking a step closer, and kicking at his knee. "how unlucky of me."
In his stumbling, he managed to step off just to the side of her strike. The rage in her heart was gone, crystallized down into cold certainty in an instant.
"Why did you do that?!" He stared at her with wide eyes, wiping blood off his mouth with one hand. She felt his spiritual energy shield spike in intensity, and strengthened hers to match.
"Me?" She put a hand on her chest, feigning innocence. "What are you talking about? It's not my fault if your luck moves my hand to dislodge some impurities inside your own head, is it?"
She felt a brief spike of disappointment that her hit hadn't broken off one of his teeth. Well, there was always the next one.
"Luck - you punched me!"
"Did I?" She raised her eyebrow, pantomiming thinking with one hand. Her other hand flicked back to a series of strings tied to her waist, and she let her long rope fall down on the ground, filling it with spiritual energy, sneaking it over to his feet. She pounced on him again. "I didn't notice."
Instead of a response, she felt spiritual energy burst out of his feet, and he retreated into the air just before her punch connected, standing on two clouds of fiery dragonflies. She raised her head to keep a watch on him, resting her hands on her hips.
The fingers of her left hand kept moving her rope around. Could she make it leap up at him? No, he was too high.
"Get down here and punch me like a man," she taunted.
"Why would you punch me?" He shouted at her, "I didn't do anything to you!"
"To hear you say it, you are responsible for every single problem in my life." She scowled. "So I figure, you want to treat me like a brainless jade beauty, helplessly pulled around by the strings of your luck? Incapable of my own plans, decisions, even mistakes? Well, hey, I guess I am fine with that - means I can do whatever I want, and not care in the slightest, since it's all your fault anyways."
"What - that's not what I said!"
"It's what you meant," she said, her breathing stabilizing, "now get down here and debate Dao with me like a true cultivator, or I'll have to force you down."
"Force me - you can't even fly!"
Instead of responding, she picked up the free end of her rope from the ground, unclipped her sword sheath from her belt, and tied the rope to the handle of her sword. Stretching out her hand, she started pouring her spiritual energy into the blade.
"Hey- " Wang Yonghao said, worry bleeding into his voice, and backed up a bit more, "hey, what are you doing?"
"To cultivate is to rebel against the Heavens," she intoned, letting a grim smile break out on her face, "I wouldn't be much of a cultivator if I couldn't drag even the stars down to the ground, would I?"
The spiritual energy flowed through the sheath and the sword, spinning up, stabilizing, and in mere moments, the sword started to hum.
"Let us see if we could follow in Gu Lingtian's footsteps." She sneered, and with a clap of air, her sword rocketed up into the air, invisible wings holding it aloft and heading straight for Wang Yonghao. The silken rope whipped behind it, like the string of a kite.
He dodged it, because of course he did, and she brought the sword back for another pass, trying to at least catch him with the rope. The sword was moving too slowly to break through his spiritual shield, in any case.
"Since when do you have a flying sword technique?!" He shouted at her, bouncing around in mid air. Somehow, the random flaps of turbulence managed to always pull the rope just far enough away from his limbs to avoid catching on.
Because of course they did.
"You can thank your luck for giving me one."
"Stop this, Shanyi!"
"Then get down to the ground and fight me."
"Please! I didn't even do anything to you!" he cried.
"What?" She scowled up at him. "You asshole, you kidnapped and beat me half to death! Or did you already forget? And now you have the sheer fucking gall to say all my decisions and everything you did was actually just down to your luck? As if it was your luck that swung your fists!"
"It's - I apologized! You said we were square!"
"I don't care about apologies, I care about actions and understanding," she said, "understanding that you clearly lack if even now you make excuses for yourself."
Wang Yonghao was too fast, dodging her sword every time, and with his luck, he didn't even have to look at it half the time. She needed it to go faster, but there wasn't enough space for it to accelerate.
Instead of making another pass at him, she pulled the sword over to the edge of the world fragment, and slammed it into the side. Her sword slid along the almost frictionless surface, circling around the entire thirty meter spherical border, gaining speed with every second as she poured more and more energy into it.
"Funny thing about luck, Yonghao," she started with a wide smile, malice in her eyes, "there needs to be a path for it to find. So what happens when my sword flies faster than you could dodge? Should we conduct this experiment, little rabbit?"
"Why are you trying to kill me?!" he cried, pulling at his hair.
"You said you tried to kill me today, with the flash flood."
"That's not me - that's my luck!"
"By your own words, the fastest way for me to get rid of it would be to get rid of you! After all, who knows! Perhaps your luck would force us to meet time and time again. Besides," - she scoffed - "Kill you? Please. As if your luck would let you die - I would sooner believe you would spontaneously develop a resurrection technique. No, I don't think I can kill you. But I can make it hurt."
She held his stare for a moment, and saw him gulp, before the fireflies below his feet winked out and he dropped down to the ground. She motioned for her sword to turn downwards, and out of the corner of her eye, saw a cloud of earth burst into the air where it safely buried itself in the dirt.
"What do you even want from me?" he said, holding up his hands as she stalked over to him.
"I want a bare modicum of fucking respect," she growled, raising her hands in the only defensive stance she knew, dancing lightly on her feet as she circled around him. Seeing her do so, he unclipped his own sword sheath, and tossed it aside. She waited for him to raise his hands, and then pounced on him.
"I do respect you!" he said, blocking her strikes. "You are an asshole, but you've helped me a lot!"
"Bullshit you do," she scowled, "you respect nothing - not even yourself."
Pugilism was not a core part of either the Seven Flowers Bloom or the Three Obediences Four Virtues, the two fighting styles she had studied so far, but the basics - footwork, keeping your distance, guarding yourself - were shared between every martial art. She had never been attracted to the practice herself, and her Elders would have blown out their heart dantians if they ever heard of her practicing something this unrefined, but she had to admit that there was a very visceral satisfaction in slamming her fist into something and feeling it give.
Unfortunately for her, Wang Yonghao seemed to have actual training. He realized this quickly, and relaxed, mostly going on the defense. The arrogant prick still refused to punch her in the face.
"What are you even trying to do, Shanyi?" he said a minute later, catching her arm and tossing her over his head. She spun around in the air, landing on her feet, and sprung back into the fight. "I beat you last time! I am stronger - especially without a sword! You can't win this."
"That is your philosophy, huh?" She sneered. "Only fight the sure fight? No wonder you run away so much."
"Well… Yes!" he said, easily hopping over a wide leg sweep she made. She spun on the ground, turning her momentum into an upwards kick, aiming for his groin while he was airborne, but he caught her leg, and kicked her in the chest, sending her skidding off down the grass. "Of course I run - I can't beat my luck! Anyone would do the same thing!"
"Luck this, luck that," she said, picking herself up, and sprinting back to him, "if things go well, luck made them good. If things went badly, luck made them bad. If you've fucked up, luck made you fuck up. If you hurt someone, luck made you hurt them. Is that what you call respect? Complete abdication of any responsibility for your actions?"
"Of course luck did that!" He scowled at her, and closed the distance first this time, managing to trip her up. He didn't capitalize on the opportunity, and she sprung back to her feet a moment later. "You even said you found me because of the vow - because of my luck! How can I not say it?"
"I didn't find you because of luck," she sneered. She needed a plan, this really was going nowhere. "I found you by being resourceful - your luck was just one more piece on the board. Should I thank the suns in the skies for giving me light to see? The winds, for bringing me air to breathe while I stalked you? The river waters, for letting me travel at speed? If you didn't have luck, I would have found another way."
"That is not the same thing," he said, falling for her feint at his kidneys and dodging right into a kick at his neck - but his hand came up just in time, leading her leg millimeters away from his skin. "My luck kills people!"
"It also saves people."
"From me! It sometimes saves them from the misfortune I bring! Even your tribulation - you are only in it because of your vow, which you only made to find me!"
"That's not how luck works, you idiot." She sneered again, frustration welling up in her. "It rearranges things. That mushroom spirit you fought? It had to already be in the forest, hadn't it? It would have come into conflict with the human towns eventually - your presence just expedited the inevitable."
All she learned from the Seven Flowers Bloom was completely useless at this, she might as well have asked him out for a dance - and while Three Obediences Four Virtues had a great deal of useful advice, it was all of the disemboweling variety, and required a knife besides.
"You do not know that," he said, but she could see she put him off balance, if even a bit. Her kick landed just a fraction closer to his skull. "It could have lived peacefully, and my luck enraged it. Made it attack when it otherwise wouldn't have."
"Then why are you not a hermit?" She laughed. "Even if you really think it's all down to your luck, then it's still your decision to travel around people. Your fucking agency. So which is it?"
He stumbled again, and this time, she managed to plant a solid punch in his face. His spiritual shield crackled, but held.
The trouble was, she had started out with less spiritual energy than he did, and then wasted still more on her flying sword technique. She was running out faster than he was - she needed a way to change things around. Her rope was too far away from her, at the very edge of the world fragment, and Wang Yonghao's luck wouldn't allow her to lead him away from the center. She needed something else.
While he was distracted, she reached behind herself, and tore off one of the many tassels she made to control her rope technique, hiding it in her fist. Carefully, she spun the technique around the belt of her robes, keeping it at its lowest power - she would have to time this very carefully. Her spiritual energy shield should hide it from his senses, at least.
"It's - it's not so simple," Wang Yonghao said, getting his stride again, "I am no saint! I don't want to become a hermit because my luck might hurt people."
"Or save people."
"Save them from me!"
"Say it's a good thing you saved those people," she snarled, "just fucking say it. A murderous spirit is dead, and nobody even got hurt. That's a good thing. Say it's a good thing."
"It's not - "
"Say. It."
"Say what?" he snarled back at her, "That I am a selfish bastard for putting them in danger in the first place? Yeah, I know that!"
"No. Say that it's a good thing for cultivators to save people."
"Of course it's good for cultivators to do that -"
"You are a cultivator. Say it's a good thing you did what cultivators do."
"Fine!" he snarled again, "It's good that I killed it! At least sometimes I can kill something that deserves it! Are you happy now?"
"Overflowing with joy," she deadpanned, dancing away from a punch he threw back at her, "without you, that moron Jian Shizhe would have fucked up, brought that demon beast too close to town, and it would have killed people. If not today, then weeks from now. Now say it's a good thing you stopped it."
"It's good I am a butcher - is this what you want to hear?"
"All cultivators are butchers, you are not special." She sneered. "Say it's good mothers and fathers won't have to dig graves today!"
"And then what?" he shouted, and his eyes snapped to her face and away from her hands. Foolish mistake. "It's good that I kidnapped you, because you got a good technique from it in the end? It's good that I almost killed you, because I didn't? I just don't want people to die! Why can't you understand this?!"
Using his distraction, she caught his left arm in her right hand, and powered up her rope control technique. With trained flicks of the fingers on her left hand, she made her belt untie itself, unravel, and slither across her body and onto Wang Yonghao. Her robes, now unsecured, opened up, and his eyes widened, before he turned away instinctively, blushing profusely.
Second distraction. Her leg swept under him, throwing his back into the grass, and her belt tied into a noose around his throat, starting to squeeze. His spiritual energy shield crackled under it, keeping it at bay - but now that he had to burn energy every second simply to resist the pressure, they should be more evenly matched.
Falling down on him, she slammed her knee into his stomach with all her weight, and started to punch him in the face.
"You don't get to decide how I die," she snarled, straddling him, "that's between me, my sword, and the fucking Heavens!"
He brought one of his hands to block, the other reaching up to his neck to tear her belt off. That wouldn't do. She caught that hand, and pulled it away from him, pushing the other one down with her leg.
"You think being around you puts me in danger? So fucking what?" She continued, struggling for leverage, "By the time you arrived, I was already growing stir crazy in my sect. If not for you, I would have found some other way to reach for the skies - and if there was no way, I would have made one! You think you are doing me a fucking kindness by protecting me? Do not insult me - I need a sword that can slice apart the very Heavens! Danger? I put myself in danger! Because I am a cultivator, and that's what cultivators do!"
Untrained as she was at grappling, she needed both hands to keep one of Wang Yonghao's hands away. His other hand was mostly free - she could push it away from his neck, but that was about it. She saw it scrambling down in the grass, and his hand closed around a handle.
Because of course they happened to fall within reach of his sword.
"Good," she said calmly, staring into his eyes, "now either stab me, or don't, but make a decision, and own it."
"Fuck you," he said, let go of his sword, and punched her in the face with his free hand. Her spiritual energy shield held, and she responded by kicking him in the mouth, close distance not letting her put as much force in as she would have liked.
They scrambled against each other, punches and kicks landing without any pattern or technique, until his spiritual energy shield broke and her foot slammed into his teeth, and then his punch broke hers and sent her flying off into the grass. She rose, and stumbled up to where Wang Yonghao was still laying, dismissing her rope control technique before it strangled her only way out of this world fragment.
Her tongue felt around a hole in her mouth - that punch actually managed to knock out one of her teeth. She'd have to find it later - with healing pills, she should be able to put it right back where it belonged.
Wang Yonghao still seemed out of it, and so she tied her belt back on, and went off to get some water to clean up, covered as she was in fresh grass, dirt and blood.
One pot of water dumped over her head later, and she felt suitably refreshed, her thinking finally clear of rage. She got a second pot, brought it to the man himself, and dumped it over him too. He quickly woke up, blinking the water out of his eyes. His lips were split, and as he sat up, he spat out blood and a pair of teeth of his own.
"You alive?" She smiled, offering him a hand. He took it with some reluctance, and she pulled him up to his feet, helping him dust off some grime and grass.
"Sorry about punching you," she said lightly, "if you want to kick me out after this, I'd understand it completely. But no more of this bullshit about your luck deciding for me. I decided to punch you because I was furious. My agency is my own."
It's not like she could work with him if he didn't change his mind on this.
"Didn't you say you should kill me to get rid of my luck?" he asked, warily, hissing as he touched his face. "What happened to that?"
"I don't actually believe that," she admitted, "I was just trying to get under your skin. Sorry about that too."
"Why don't you believe it?" he said, "The threat is still there."
"The Heavens trying to kill me is not your fault." She shrugged. "That they may or may not use your luck as a weapon is irrelevant. I already challenged them when I stepped on the path of cultivation, as every cultivator does, and I was aware of the risks."
"But it's not just the Heavens." He winced. "What if my luck tries to kill you again on its own? It's all subconscious. In the back of my mind, I still had the idea of hiding from you - and so the flash flood happened just as you were crossing. Surely you agree it's not a coincidence."
"I am already going to be helping you murder your luck," she said casually, "if your luck decides to try and murder me in return, then I welcome the challenge."
Wang Yonghao looked at her strangely, and then started laughing. She arched an eyebrow at him.
"What?"
"Murder my luck?" He kept laughing. "That's how you put it? Heavens, you really talk like the old monsters sometimes."
"Well, I've watched every play about them that was performed in Golden Rabbit Bay," she said bashfully, "I suppose I picked up some habits from it."
"Some habits, yeah." He chuckled, bending over to pick up his own teeth. "You have healing pills, right?"
"I said I was prepared."
"At least one of us is, I guess." He sighed. "Look, I'm also sorry, alright? I know you don't care about that, but I am. I…didn't think how it would be, from your perspective, when I left you there. And…maybe I didn't need to push you about luck."
"I was once told by a fellow cultivator that it's good to make a little trouble for less trouble later," she said casually, "no permanent harm done."
She went back to check up on the rice. By a small miracle, she caught it just before it would have started to overcook completely, and pulled it off the fire. Now she just had to wait for the mushrooms to finish breaking up in the chiclotron, and then she could cook them together with the rice and other vegetables.
She yawned. She was honestly feeling exhausted - the hectic flight on Curls, her fight for her life on the glassy fields, and then this fight with Wang Yonghao took a lot out of her, and on top of that, she had been up and about for close to thirty hours. But there was one more thing she absolutely had to resolve today.
"So what will it be?" she asked Wang Yonghao.
"What?"
"Do you want to challenge the Heavens together, or do you want to kick me out?" she looked straight at him, "You can take the time to think it over, but I need a straight answer."
"Oh. Yeah, but I… have a condition." He winced.
She raised an eyebrow, letting him speak.
"You being alright with risking your life… I guess I get it, kind of," he sighed, "but this tribulation… It's too much. I want to try something else - I am pretty good at pretending to work hard, but achieving very few results. If you make me cultivate hard, but ineffectually, it might still pass the vow, right?"
"I…don't think that would work," she said uncertainly, "the Heavens aren't very big on technicalities when it is to their detriment."
"But you wouldn't mind trying?"
"As long as you aren't doing it just because of the threat from the Heavens, I don't care what you do." She shrugged. "It's your cultivation. Build it, break it, turn it on its head - it's your business. I just don't want them to think I would be their patsy, and I don't want you to think like you need to do this. You have choices."
"Thank you," he sighed.
"I should be the one thanking you," she grumbled, "this tribulation will be terrifying, and if this works, you'd be saving my life. I don't want to face it either - if I could avoid it without becoming their servant, I'd do it in a heartbeat. But that also wasn't what I was talking about."
He looked at her in surprise.
"What do you mean?"
"Yonghao," - she gave him a flat stare - "you have an inner world that, best as we can tell, the Heavens can't see into - a perfect place to plan and scheme, a tool that could be sharpened into a weapon. And you have luck which is perhaps not entirely caused, but certainly heavily influenced by the Heavens. Forget the tribulation - if you want to get rid of your luck, there is only one place to head."
She pointed one finger up towards the skies.
"So what will it be?" she said. "Do you want to break into the Heavens and topple their thrones? That's my real question."
He stared at her for a long while, before he closed his eyes.
"I am just so tired," he said, "I can't keep living like this. If that's what it would take… Then yeah, sure. I am all in."
"Good choice, fellow cultivator Yonghao." She grinned. "Now let's plan how to make celestials into corpses."
dhasenan
always lowercase
- Pronouns
- She/Her
"That's my ninja way! Believe it!"
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
So you're not willing to let another person volunteer to cultivate intensively for a month to save your life, but you're absolutely willing to administer 'corrective' sword blows because "ehh, they're not hard enough to actually draw blood if I only hit him once!"
I mean... did she?
To be sure, what he did to her is a serious offense. But then, she's repeatedly meditated on the idea that people should speak carefully and have self control, hasn't she? Am I wrong?
If she still considers this man's actions to be acceptable grounds for violence, then she shouldn't have said or implied otherwise in the past, if only for clarity's sake.
Because we've had a lot of discussions of the form "it would be impossible for cultivators to function if they didn't X" and "it would be impossible for cultivators to get by without Y" explaining the social customs of X, Y, and Z that exist among cultivators.
Well, whatever X and Y are, Z is "it's impossible for cultivators to work together if they're constantly changing their mind about whether or not past offenses justify violence or not."
If I'm offended by your action, and I tell you that the two of us are at peace, and then I change my mind and attack you because of the original action, how can you ever trust me a second time?
(I've had problems in my own life with people who will behave for very long periods of time as though they have forgiven something, then bring up the old grievance as a way to shut down discussion of their own actions, so maybe this is just pushing my personal buttons)
Perhaps uncharitably, this... is still pushing my buttons.
I am coming to believe that Shanyi's concept of 'respect' is such that when others offer to help her solve a problem, the offer is twisted and reinterpreted as an insult. When others abstain from doing her harm, even if it would save time and trouble, it's condescension and arrogance. When others imply that a known mind-altering affect may have affected her mind, it's an insult so foundational that she will threaten to try to kill them, justifying it by the expectation that she will fail, and if they still abstain from doing her injury, it's still condescension and arrogance.
In short, what Shanyi wants is a definition of 'respect' that means that she gets to have boundaries, and others do not, except insofar as she chooses to grant them for her self-image's sake. And where she gets to draw her boundaries practically on a whim, based on her own personal quirks, and then be justified in violence against others who misunderstand her, and yet still expect to have their cooperation afterwards.
In all fairness, the man's life is pretty heavily defined by the absurd and overwhelming bullshit that his luck is constantly hitting him with, and he's pretty clearly tried to make a lot of decisions in his life, most of which were "ahahaha no'd" by his luck.
Yeah, man, you probably shouldn't choose to act like you believe her. Even if she's telling the truth, why should she think she can leave you ambiguous about whether or not she wants to kill you, go back and forth on that, and still take your cooperation as a given?
...
If he had one tenth of the ego Shanyi does, Shanyi would almost certainly be dead, or about to die at his hand in the near future.
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Khaos
Baguette, wine and cheese
A true cultivator debates Dao, is a butcher, saves people, rebels against the Heavens and puts themselves into danger, got it.
To come back to rebelling against the Heavens and risking their lives, I do wonder how many cultivators actually do that and how they do it. We haven't seen much other other cultivators' paths, but from a superficial glance, a lot of them have normal day job and don't take overmuch risks, it seems like it's more teenage rebellion against the heavens with an amount of very calculated risk rather than what Shanyi is doing.
My goodness, she's an in-setting Chūnibyō!?
- Pronouns
- He/His/etc
- Location
- Earth
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Is this violent sarcasm, or sarcastic violence? I'm inclined to call it the former, since the violence supports the sarcasm's rhetorical purpose, but I'm willing to hear alternate perspectives.
So do suns, winds, and rivers.
Shanyi keeps illustrating my points more succinctly than I ever could.
They're finally almost on the same page!
There's a difference between influencing someone's cultivation with a knife against your neck and influencing someone's beliefs with percussive philosophy.
Perhaps more importantly, there's a difference between influencing someone because it's what the heavens want you/him to do, and influencing someone because he pisses you off.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
I don't think that's necessary for the Platonic ideal rational fic protagonist.
Now, what is true of the Platonic ideal rational fic protagonist is that they wouldn't start a fight they weren't near-100% sure they could win. Whereas Shanyi absolutely started this fight with no compelling reason to expect that she'd win apart from "my opponent probably won't actually try to kill me even if I try to kill him."
I'd call this part pure sophistry. First, because influencing someone's beliefs absolutely can influence their cultivation. Second, because the underlying value here is supposed to be free choice.
His decision to help her with a problem (even one of her own creation) is much more free than his decision to cooperate with her because when he suggests that she's wrong he tries to stab and strangle him and basically issues this ultimatum of "help me or kill me" or "help me or kick me out to die."
I'm being uncharitable and I know it, but I feel like she's entirely willing to use the unspoken reality that if he abandons her she'll probably die to manipulate him. She's just got weird arbitrary hangups over how she manipulates him. Manipulating him to help her rage against the heavens is fine. Manipulating him to choose something that would offend her sensibilities but save her life in the process is bad.
I'm not liking it. Doesn't mean the story is badly written, but I'm not liking it.
Well gee, maybe she should have thought of that before she willingly created a situation where the Heavens would kill her for failing to influence him, which she did as a way of seeking her own advantage through association with him!
globalwarmth
ruining the weather.
- Location
- Polar ice caps
[some months later]
Alright, I've been thinking, when life gives you celestial peaches, don't make pie!
make life take the peaches back!
Get mad! I don't want your damn peaches, what am I supposed to do with these? Demand to see life's Court officials. Make life rue the day it thought it could give Yonghao celestial peaches.
Do you know who I am? I'm the man who's gonna burn your house down! With the peaches. I'm going to to get my fellow cultivators to invent a combustible 🍑 that burns the heavens down!
You mock it, but it's a sign of strong conviction. Heavens are not mindless. One does not negotiate with terrorists. Some things are unacceptable even if you get bribes.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
I think the Heavens may not be mindful enough to have this particular negotiation with, and that Shanyi is taking an argument that's basically about her own pride and trying to recast it as "I am teaching Heaven a lesson" to make it sound high-minded instead of stupid.
But we've been over that before.
- Location
- France
Shanyi quite accurately did not feel like this course of action was suicidal. The "would she have done this if it was certain death" counterfactual is not relevant here, because she knows the following :
- He considers her a friend and values her life
- He strongly dislikes killing
And I expect that "we speak while exchanging light blows" is reasonable in-setting. That is just a guess though.
Actually, I think she never told him that her alternative to following him was death, apart frolm the Tribulation. And in both scenarios here the Tribulation kills her. That excepted, he thinks kicking her out will inconvenience her a lot, but also save her life.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Well yes. The point is, she started a fight with no reason to expect that she'd win except that she's reasonably confident her opponent won't try to kill her.
Because she's violently angry, and he's willing to let a violently angry person assault him without escalating to lethal violence.
Her plans for avoiding death by the tribulation involve his presence. Based on what I remember her telling him before she hit him, he'd know that Shanyi thinks she has at least a plausible hope of survival with him, and minimal to no chance of survival without him.
She is absolutely influencing his calculations with the awareness that he can't send her away without directly increasing her chances of death- by something like 50% or more, if her estimates are correct.
If she doesn't realize that she's influencing him in this way, it's a failure of her ability to self-reflect. I can't decide whether I like the idea that she does realize better, or the idea that she doesn't.
- Location
- Leeds
Feels like you're misrepresenting this, he punched her hard enough to knock out teeth.
Understanding that people will rarely escalate to lethal violence is normal. Especially given that they both come from a highly martial culture, where tournaments, spars, trading pointers and so on, are normal ways of passing time, it should not be surprising that they were both able to handle this without murder.
Even if we want to attack Shanyi, saying he's letting her assault him feels like the sort of victim blamey in the "Why didn't you scream" kinda way that pops up irl sometimes.
- Location
- Earth
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I'd be shocked if it wasn't. RHVFSEDT&TE is riffing on xianxia tropes, and percussive philosophy is endemic to pretty much all action media, from The Matrix to Naruto to Black Panther. In a musical, when your emotions grow beyond the point they can be expressed with words, they're expressed with music; action stories are the same with fight scenes. And arguments, of course.
He knows Shanyi can put her teeth back in. Of course, the same is true for Yonghao.
I personally think Simon Jester is focusing a bit too much on the violence. IRL, a fight where people threaten each other with swords and knock each other's teeth out is pretty serious—just a step or two short of attempted murder. In this world—well, in the same paragraph where Shanyi realizes she lost a tooth, the author reminds us that this is a world where that's easy to fix. Trivial, with the right pill. The author also keeps drawing attention to the spiritual shields which prevent either one from injuring the other; the fight ends immediately after they break each other's shields.
That's why I keep calling this "percussive philosophy". (Well, also because I am deeply trope-poisoned and think it's funny. But there's also a rhetorical purpose.) Violence is involved, but by the standards of the setting in general and the characters in specific, it's not serious violence. It's violence at a level which the characters' superhuman abilities nullify, as a dramatic compliment to their rhetoric. Shanyi makes an argument about how Yonghao's luck isn't omnipotent while demonstrating a way that she could overcome his serendipitous evasion, he puts a hand on his sword and Shanyi tells him to make a choice and own it, that kind of thing. Blood and rhetoric, concurrent rather than consecutive, each building off the other.
If Simon Jester doesn't like percussive philosophy, that's fine. Not everyone likes musicals, either. Just...don't watch shonen anime.
- Pronouns
- She/Them
percussive philosophy would be arogant young master behaviour from an outside perspective tho right?
- Location
- Earth
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Well, duh. The hero talking about his virtue and the villain talking about his vice are both engaging in percussive philosophy. An arrogant young master can engage in philosophical debate without being less of an arrogant young master; adding fight choreography doesn't change that.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
See, what gets to me isn't that percussive philosophy is present in the narrative.
I'm fine with percussive philosophy. The thing is that if I'm going to keep liking the characters who engage in percussive philosophy, they have to have good reasons for the choice to fight in the first place. The choice to move the conversation into a fight-with-conversation reflects on the person who made that choice.
I'm not saying the conversation doesn't work as a conversation. I'm saying that the positions taken by Shanyi have made me like her less, both because I think she's contradicting herself in her own ideas about how Heaven works. And taking advantage of things she says she refuses to take advantage of.
To me, Shanyi has both virtues and vices. Often she has opportunities to display her virtues, but in this specific interaction has mainly displayed her vices.
Part of the reason for this, to me, is that one of the most important things "being said" in any given bout of percussive philosophy is the statement of why there is a fight.
If I decide to attack you for revenge's sake, then in shonen terms I am making that fight 'about' my philosophy that revenge is important. If you decide to fight me because you expect me to wreck the village, you are making the statement that you consider saving the village to be worth risking your life (or, alternatively, risking my life if you have a big strength advantage).
The problem isn't that the conversation is a fight, the problem is what is being said. Because the content of what Shanyi is saying is, for reasons I've already discussed, problematic in my eyes.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Except the issue here is that you're putting a higher threshold for 'good reasons' than is logical for their culture/material conditions of their universe that instead seems to be based in ours. The violence here has no consequence, can be fixed trivially and in the long run has harmed neither; if it helps, imagine two unemployed millennials arguing while beating each-other with foam bats; it's about as 'serious' imo.