- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
So why would the Heavens pay attention to weird schemes to steal a bug, but not to someone just straightforwardly buy a bug? If anything, you'd expect the latter to be more likely to fade into the background.
Reach Heaven Via Feng Shui Engineering, Drug Trade And Tax Evasion
- Thread starter Winged_One
- Start date
- Original Novel Fantasy
Shard
One and Many
- Location
- Malaysia
I think Shanyi was using the Refiner thing to imply that she wasn't going to the forest for refining pills and was like. Doing NSFW stuff.
Why is it that the Heavens can listen to what people say, but not read the contents of the letters they write?
It's quite possible whatever tools the Heavens have in place to monitor the lower world can't pick out weird schemes. They'll definitely notice an open purchase, though, because Wang Yonghao is a person of interest - and if he or someone near him starts talking about acquiring the bugs, the Heavens aren't going to spend a very long time wondering why.
I have no idea. I actually went back and checked the last few updates too, but the most relevant bit I could find was
So, uh, I guess Shanyi just defaults to secrecy/shenanigans and didn't even think about taking an above-board route?
Chapter 53: Part The Mists Of Doubt Along Your Trail
Winged_One
Head Engineer of ATHENA
- Location
- Low Earth Orbit
Author Note: Want to read ahead? You can find some patreon-exclusive posts, as well as FOUR more chapters, over on my patreon, for a low price of 3$. That's right, despite being busy with a move all last week, I finally started to get back to the backlog.
I also have a discord server, where I post memes I make about FSE, and occasionally discuss some plans and worldbuilding details.
I also have a discord server, where I post memes I make about FSE, and occasionally discuss some plans and worldbuilding details.
"So what is it that worries you?" Wang Yonghao asked when they finally got back to the tavern, and started to descend into his inner world.
She sighed. How to explain this…
"You said you didn't have any problems?"
He nodded. "Yeah. I mean, it was disgusting, but aside from that..."
"And that's what worries me."
He actually stopped in midair, still a good ten meters above the ground. "You are worried because the plan went too well?"
"Yes."
"Shanyi, this is insane. Even I feel better now that it's done."
She glared up at him, gesturing to the open air below her feet. "Just get down to the ground, will you?"
He resumed his descent, but didn't shut up. "We set off on this heist, and I am worried sick. You, on the other hand, entirely blase," he said, "Now we are done, and you've changed your mind? This makes no sense."
"It makes perfect sense," she said, touching down on the grass and stepping out of her rope harness. "I expected opposition we could deal with, yet we found none. This means the Heavens are plotting something else, and the plot I do not see is a hundred times deadlier than the one I can."
"Didn't you say Zhao Jingxin could have spotted me?"
She waved him off. "It was barely anything. Now where did you put these worms? Perhaps they are sick, and our heist will be for naught."
He motioned towards the metal node of the chiclotron, right next to the baths. "Into the chiclotron, like we talked about, safe from the rosevines."
"Strange," she frowned, heading there together with him. "I can't feel their - "
Realization reached her mind at the same time as her own words reached her ears, and she dashed towards the stone cap on the node, wincing at her ribs as she tried to pull it aside. Wang Yonghao reached her just a moment after, and together, they opened the node.
Inside, she saw several bricks of stone arranged into a sort of cage, with only small gaps left for air, and a stone plate placed on top. When Wang Yonghao lifted it up, they saw that the cage was entirely empty.
"I left them still in their bag," Wang Yonghao said, confusion plain on his face as he looked into the empty trap. "They were still asleep, I think."
"They must have eaten the bag and climbed out, looking for more food," she cursed, casting out with her spiritual energy senses, and sighed in relief when she felt the two worms in the next water node over, evidently still alive. "I guess without any bones these hungry girls can squeeze through pretty much any hole."
A moment later, she got the worms out of the chiclotron. They seemed to have spent quite some time there, pushed further in by their ravenous hunger, and then pulled back by the uncomfortable drop in air temperature. Holding each one in one hand, so that they wouldn't wiggle out, she started to inspect them for damage.
Her worries turned to once again be unfounded. The two worm queens - as long as her elbow, bulbous, and as pale as their name implied - were a bit cold, but otherwise in decent health. There were no cuts or other wounds, no sites of discoloration, and the soft fur that covered their bodies was even and in good condition. Hopefully that should mean they would live long enough to produce the next set of queens.
Wang Yonghao stared at her studying the worms with a grimace. She raised an eyebrow at him, momentarily looking away from her work. "What?"
"How could you just," he made a vague gesture, "touch them so easily?"
Her eyebrow climbed further. "Why wouldn't I?" she said, lifting the queens to her eye level. One of them was trying to gnaw her fingers off with its hard black teeth. They were more than sharp enough to bite through bone, but it was just scratching uselessly against her spiritual shield. The other one curled up and seemed to have fallen asleep, it's fur - or was it whiskers? - rising and falling in slight waves along its length. She supposed it looked kind of cute, in a worm-like sort of way. "Are you afraid of insects, Yonghao?"
He sighed, covering his face with his hands. "Because they are covered in poop?"
"What?" She spread her hands slightly, framing Wang Yonghao in between the two worms. "No they aren't."
"They literally make their hives out of poop."
She rolled her eyes at him. Wasn't he listening when Zhao Anquan explained this? "No they don't. They consume sewage, but they consume pretty much everything they can bite through. That's why they also dump rotting vegetable matter into the mixture, so the worms would have more nutrients. And the queens don't even touch the sewage - that's for the worker worms."
"Which they eat to make worm poop. And then they build their hives out of it."
"The term is humus, Yonghao. It's not so different from what fallen leaves turn into in a forest. And it is not pooped, it is secreted."
"As if there's a difference?"
She gave him a flat stare. "Truly?" She gestured at his clothing with one of the queens. "Your robes are made of silk. Where do you think that comes from?"
His eyes shifted to his clothing and then back to her. Like a rabbit caught in a snare. "From…silkworms?"
"Which side of a silkworm, Yonghao?"
"It's - look, it's different."
"Or what of the bees - shall I call honey bee vomit?"
He groaned, burying his face in his hands. "Why would you say that?! Now I won't stop thinking of it!"
She shrugged. "You are the one who asked."
He'd get over it.
Probably.
Best not to let him dwell on it, just in case. "Let's build a house for these little babies," she said, getting up off the grass. "I can't hold them all night, and they'd happily chew through everything in here if we left them alone."
The temporary nest for the paleworms was quick to build. It consisted of a hole in the ground, only a couple feet deep, lined with flat stone plates and clay to keep rosevines from digging in or the paleworms digging out. At the top, they angled the stones inwards, to make it harder for the worms to climb out, and covered it all with a stone plate.
Well. Wang Yonghao did it, still refusing to let her help with physical labor until her ribs healed entirely, while she kept the paleworm queens from wriggling away to carelessly chomp on a demon beast core and blow themselves up. She also talked to him about the design, and helped measure and draw out the cuts on the stone plates to make them slot into each other, making the whole structure more stable.
They would have to build a much larger version based on the same principles when they added a latrine to the system, but for the time being, it would do. Building solid sleeping quarters took priority, and with the paleworms safely deposited in their new dwelling, with plenty of freshly cut grass to chew on, they should have gone right to it.
Emphasis on the should have.
"You've tricked me!" Wang Yonghao accused her, sitting on the foundation of their new house - a wide wooden frame, on top of stone plinths. His arms were crossed on his chest.
Qian Shanyi stood opposite him, her arms on her hips. "How, precisely?"
"By distracting me with all this talk about the worms," he said, "we were going to talk about how it makes no sense for you to be worried now."
"Were we?"
"Yes."
She sighed, and laid down on the grass to stretch her legs. "Oh fine," she said, waving her arm around casually. "What is it that confuses you?"
"Usually, when something goes right, people relax."
"According to who? No law mandates this."
Wang Yonghao pursed his lips, repositioning himself on the frame a bit closer to her. "According to me. Because it makes sense."
She sighed in exasperation. Why was this so hard for him to get? "Suppose you go to dinner with your extended family," she said, "You expect one of your aunts to twist things into an argument against you, as she always does, yet she is quiet and cheerful. Would you not grow anxious, not knowing what she is planning this time?"
"I don't have any aunts, so I wouldn't know. And you are still avoiding the question."
"You call an answer an avoidance?"
"I call an avoidance an avoidance. All this stuff about aunts - it's all very clever, but also has nothing to do with why you were worried."
"Have I not answered already?" She said, raising an eyebrow. "I do not know what the Heavens are doing, so I am worried."
"But you didn't know that before, either."
She opened her mouth to respond, and then closed it as the meaning of the words caught up with her. "Hm."
That was… True, annoyingly enough. Just because the Heavens were doing something obvious, it didn't mean that they weren't also planning something sneaky. So why was she worried now?
She shifted around, steepling her fingers together under her chest, drumming them against each other as she considered this. "Fine," she grudgingly admitted after a minute of thinking. "Perhaps I just needed the contrast of a job gone well to realize I was being a bit too careless."
"A bit?"
She shoed him off like an errant pigeon. "Not in the way you think - it's about thinking ahead, considering the possibilities," she said, pausing to think some more. "So what, do you think I am being too paranoid?"
"About my luck?"
"Yes."
"Probably not," he said slowly, "I just think you should relax."
She turned her head to look directly at him. For a moment she was sure she misheard. "You are telling me to relax?"
"Yes," he said, with a smug look on his face. "Panic never helps."
She was worried, not panicking. But more importantly…
"Junior, do not seek to use the techniques I taught you against me."
"If a master forgets a technique, they deserve a reminder."
She shook her head. When did he get this introspective? At this rate he'd start to behave like a scholar, instead of simply looking like one.
"The world gone mad, ducklings teaching fish to swim," she said, "And how do you suppose I do that?"
"Ideally, you'd just become relaxed on the spot. Could you do that?"
"No."
His smug grin grew wider. "A shame. In that case, simply focus on my opinion - it should be almost as good."
She narrowed her eyes at the cheeky bastard. "You know, Yonghao, it's said that debating Dao with a fellow cultivator is the best balm for the soul out there."
"Would that help?" he asked, leaning forwards with a bad imitation of interest.
She scowled at him in return. "Feh. It's not entertaining if you are going to be all reasonable," she said, and then breathed out. Alright, enough sulking. "I'll feel better when I have something to work on. So if you want to help, let's talk about your luck."
"Alright."
"Give me a bit to collect my thoughts," she said, gesturing vaguely. "You can work on the house in the meantime - we do need to finish it eventually."
Wang Yonghao nodded, and went over to where they piled up the pine tree trunks, while she closed her eyes to think. He did have a bit of a point, even if he was wildly off in scope - simply worrying would achieve little.
Five minutes later, she opened her eyes, and folded her hands behind her head. "So," she began, "I think I have narrowed down the possibilities for the factor X behind your luck to about ninety six primary theories."
Wang Yonghao snorted, lining up another trunk to be cut to shape by the Honk of the Solar Goose. "Well, this mystery is practically solved then."
She grimaced. "Yeah. Hold your insults until I finish, it's actually much worse than this."
With four precise swings of his sword, the trunk was turned into a long, rectangular beam. She had to time her speech to be heard over the call of the goose, echoing around the world fragment. "I didn't mean to insult you."
"Fine, I'll hold my own insults at this travesty of a theory," she groaned. "If it could even be called that. The way I see it, there are four primary questions. One: what is the mechanism? Two: why you? Three: what is Heaven's motive? Four: why no communication?"
She turned over on her side, supporting her head with one hand. "Let's start with the first one. I don't mean the precise spiritual mechanics of your luck - that would be pure speculation. What I mean is this: does your luck cause unusual events, or does it attract you to them?"
Wang Yonghao kicked the separated bark to the side and picked up the beam, stacking it up alongside the others. "It could do both."
She nodded, not that he was looking at her. "It certainly does do both - any luck should. The question is about what dominates. If it merely attracts you to sites of conflict - then the world is no worse for your luck, but it is also no better. If it causes it - then we could think about where creating a bit of chaos could benefit everyone."
He glanced at her with worry in his eyes, and she raised one hand to forestall his objection. "If you don't want to think of it in those terms, that's fine. But let's move on. The second question is - why are you the one affected? I see four possibilities."
She raised her hand, counting them out on her fingers. "First possibility is random chance," she continued, "You just stumbled into some factor X when you were young - be it a quirk of your constitution, or an encounter with some treasure or artifact - and this initial event changed your luck, leading to everything else that had happened to you afterwards. Could have happened to anyone, you are just 'lucky' enough to win the initial draw. Second possibility is ancestry."
Wang Yonghao turned around, raising an eyebrow. "Ancestry? I am a nobody."
"Have you ever met your parents?"
"No," he said, frowning. "I am an orphan, remember?
She shrugged with one shoulder. "In that case for all we know you might be the Emperor's own son. If we don't know exactly where you came from, we can't dismiss the possibility."
Wang Yonghao's eyes widened in shock as he contemplated the possibility of his august heritage. She hurried to continue before he had a chance to object. "Ancestry could mean that you inherited your constitution, or that your mother slapped your ass with some ancient divine artifact just after you were born, or something else," she said, then frowned. "Actually, about a hundred other things, but the point is: it is due to something incredibly specific to your past. Maybe 'ancestry' is a poor term."
Wang Yonghao rubbed his face, then looked back at the pile of wood right next to him. "I don't know," he sighed. "I don't think this is it. I can't remember exactly, but I don't think I had any insane luck until I became a cultivator."
"And when was that?"
"When I was about nine years old, I think."
Of course he did.
Cultivators generally unlocked their spirit root between the ages of ten and eighteen, and ten was supposed to be almost unheard of. She had unlocked hers at fifteen.
"This doesn't necessarily mean anything," she said, not feeling even a little bit bitter. "If you have a special constitution, perhaps it was simply dormant until then. In fact… You've said you've fallen into a barrel of Asure Heart Cleansing Dew which unlocked your first dantian. This means you had to already be not that far from such a mysterious barrel when your spirit root unlocked, correct? At least in a town close by - and I doubt that there are many such ruins across the empire. One could certainly argue that your luck was setting things up for you in advance."
He grimaced, acknowledging the possibility, and then went back to the tree trunks.
"Third possibility is that you were chosen deliberately," she continued, "Either through some act of your own, or because you have a fitting personality, or something of that nature. The choice was not random, and it was not done because of who you are, but because of what you might be expected to do."
"Personality? The heavens are bad at reading people."
"They don't necessarily have to be good at it," she said, prepared for the question. "Take a house: I could not begin to guess what makes one stand and another one topple over. But if I saw a well-known architect making measurements…"
She let her words hang, and Wang Yonghao finished her thoughts. "You could rely on their opinion."
"Right."
He turned back to look at her. "So you think, what?" he said with a frown on his face, "There is someone going around figuring out who would be a good target for divine luck?"
She shook her head. "Not necessarily so direct, but it's not impossible either. It is something to consider, in either case. And the final possibility is…"
She paused. Should she even mention it? This was really speculative, and she didn't know how Yonghao might react…
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him still looking in her direction. "What?" he said, bringing her back to reality.
She sighed. Well, it was going to come out eventually. "That you weren't always an orphan," she said quietly. "It is said that when Gu Lingtian broke into the Heavens, he tried to paint a bridge out of his familial love. In retaliation, the Heavens erased his family, and made it so that he was an orphan all along."
This time Wang Yonghao actually stepped back in shock. "What?!"
"Yeah, tell me about it," she muttered, before gathering her thoughts together. "His rebellion comes from before modern history," she said, hoping to lessen the blow. "What is known of it freely blends fable with fact. If the Heavens have such a power, then as far as I know, they haven't exercised it since, even when it would have served them well."
As far as I know. As if such words meant much. It seemed to help Yonghao, at least.
"Which brings us to the next question," she continued, "what is Heaven's motive? We know they are somehow related to you. If we assume that they have done something truly drastic, then they must be getting something out of it. Again, several possibilities: opportunism, crippling, grooming, bystanders."
"Bystanders?"
She grimaced. "We don't actually know for sure that the Heavens are involved with your luck. All that we know is that they've granted me a vow I used to find you, that your inner world blocks whatever method they use to spy on the vows, and they were ready to retaliate in force when I broke it. This may or may not mean something, but it's all circumstantial. It could still be that the Heavens are merely paying attention to you in some way, but otherwise staying out."
Wang Yonghao gave her a considering look. "I didn't expect you to say that."
She rolled her eyes. Please. "I am not blind, Yonghao. I still think the evidence leans in their direction - but that is not enough for me to dismiss the possibility entirely. The bastards up top are not the only ones with bizarre horrors in their vaults, after all."
She wasn't sure what would be better - to know for sure it was the Heavens, or to know that it wasn't. The other candidates were no less malicious, and certainly less studied - if also, generally, less powerful. She spent a minute thinking over the possibilities in silence.
Wang Yonghao went back to the beams. Having cut and cleaned a few of them, he started measuring out lengths, using his sword as a ruler, and cutting two wide notches into each beam, where they would lock into each other. She quietly watched him work, holding herself back from offering advice.
Finally, she sighed. "Where was I?" she said, "Right, opportunism. This would mean that the Heavens didn't plan on your luck, but are still using it for their benefit. Taking out talented cultivators opposed to them, saving karmists, stealing artifacts that are too dangerous to their eyes, but would gather dust in your inner world - that sort of thing."
Wang Yonghao straightened up, flicking sweat off his forehead. "I don't collect those kinds of artifacts."
She raised an eyebrow at him. "Those kinds?"
"Yes, you know," He waved his arm vaguely. "There are swords and then there are Swords. Whenever I find one that has a blade made of wind and sings poems into my mind, I just turn around and walk away. Most of the time that's enough."
"Interesting," she said mildly. "That you find them at all could be evidence, or it could be nothing."
There was determination in his eyes. A good sign, she supposed. "Yeah. You said there are four possibilities? What's next?"
She nodded. "Next is that they could have tried to cripple you. Your luck does not behave like normal luck should - what if this is not a coincidence? Imagine how much you could do if your monstrous luck obeyed your whims."
"Like what?"
"If I had it, I'd be an empress in fifteen years and lead a new war on the Heavens in thirty."
"I really do not want to lead any kind of war."
She nodded readily. "Of course - but you have grown up with your current luck causing you anguish all your life. If it obeyed your whims, you would have a different mindset - and this is exactly my point."
He paced around, a thinking look on his face, the construction forgotten. "You may be right. And the last one?"
"The final possibility is in some sense the reverse - that they sought to build your mindset to their benefit from the ground up. To either make you obsessed with cultivation, or hateful towards other cultivators, or… something. Failing that, simply to make you strong, to serve whatever strange plan they may have at a later point."
He gave her a baffled look, and she chuckled. "I didn't say they had to be good at it. Which brings me to the final question. Why did the Heavens never try to talk to you? Remember: we have, more or less, established that they are involved somehow - at least indirectly, at least as bystanders. So why not communicate with you? They have many ways to do so - that they do not talk to most people is immaterial. They could send a messenger, twist your luck into meeting a karmist with the right ideas, or get your hands on one of the vanishingly rare artifacts that were made for that purpose. Instead, you get deafening silence. Why?
He stopped in his tracks, staring off into space. "That's… a good question."
"When it comes to cheating at cards -" she began, and Wang Yonghao's face whipped in her direction.
"Of course you'd know how to cheat," he said, scowling at her slightly.
She blinked in surprise. They've never played cards together, on account of it being a luck game. "You don't?"
"No. Because I play fair."
"Bah," she said, rolling her eyes at the hypocrite. "'Fair' he says, when his luck eclipses the sun. Cheating - and spotting cheating - is as much a part of the game as any other. But no matter - I was leading up to a point."
"Which is?"
"It is said that there are three types of invisibility," she continued, "can't see, don't see, and won't see. First - your mark has no physical ability to see the trick, because you do it behind their back. Second - they could see it, but they do not notice it. Third - they do notice it, but they say nothing, because you've threatened to break their legs."
"And you think it's the same with the Heavens?" he said, frowning in concentration. "They either can't talk to me, for whatever reason, or they try but I don't notice, or they don't even want to?"
She nodded. "Exactly. Two, four, four and three possibilities for the answers - and any combination of them is potentially plausible. Multiply them together, and that's your ninety-six primary theories for your luck, and I can't outright dismiss any of them. But actually it's much worse - all of this is pure speculation. I might be missing key possibilities entirely, or one of these questions may be completely irrelevant. We just don't have enough information."
Wang Yonghao sighed, ruffling his hair. "This is a lot to take in."
She hummed in agreement. "That it is."
"Do you at least feel better now?"
She blinked, considering her own thoughts. "Yes," she finally stated with certainty, "Thank you for your help. But I could feel even better."
She got up off the grass, and went off to fetch her writing set and a solid wooden board, settling down next to the house that was slowly coming together.
"I need data," she said with determination, pushing the grass down with the board and pinning a sheet of paper to it. "Tell me about your adventures."
"What do you want to know this time?"
She grinned. "All of it. Start from today and go backwards - I want to know everything. Towns, names, directions, battles fought, ruins visited, enemies made… Everything. And then, I am going to search for gaps amid the patterns."
Wang Yonghao grimaced at that. "You realize that would take forever, right? I don't even remember most of it."
Her grin grew wider. "Got somewhere else to be? I am a gambler, Yonghao, but this game is played in a pitch black room with a cloth tied around our eyes. You can't win like this."
She tapped the sheet of paper in front of her with the back of her writing brush.
"So let's light a lantern, and hope we see something in the shadows."
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- Location
- US
Man, I love some of the dialog in this series. Such dramatic lines
- Location
- Texas
Thus began the penning of The Totally True, Definitely Happened Travels of Hao Wangyong. Centuries later, a scholar made briefly his career by retracing the steps of Hao after deciphering the obfuscation of the anonymous author. Shortly after his first published paper and the rediscovery of 15 ancient ruins, he disappeared, never to be heard from again.
- Location
- England
The Heavens' plot is revealed! You may have your poop worms, but now Wang Yonghao will always think of his robes as 'silkworm shit robes' and his honey toast will be forever bee-vomit toast! Fear the wrath of the Heavens!
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- Pronouns
- He/His/etc
Look at it this way Shanyi, once you kick down the doors of Heaven and ascend to immortality you can ask them yourself.
- Location
- Earth
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Have you seen how Shanyi's other plans went?
Also, she doesn't know the Unspoken Plan Guarantee protected her.
Well, there are limits to that protection.
I'm not sure Yonghao could make a worse argument without questioning the existence of free will.
See? Yonghao can make good arguments when he tries. He just says the first thing that comes to mind too often.
We need to get this dude some trashy adventure novels. And also figure out how to make him think before he makes a counterargument.
Yeah, it's usually hard to identify when retrocausal powers were used, by their nature.
What a silly argument.
Flashback arc?
Chapter 54: Scrape Away The Sap Of Mysteries
Winged_One
Head Engineer of ATHENA
- Location
- Low Earth Orbit
Author Note: Want to read ahead? You can find some patreon-exclusive posts, as well as FOUR more chapters, over on my patreon, for a low price of 3$. That's right, despite being busy with a move all last week, I finally started to get back to the backlog.
I also have a discord server, where I post memes I make about FSE, and occasionally discuss some plans and worldbuilding details.
I also have a discord server, where I post memes I make about FSE, and occasionally discuss some plans and worldbuilding details.
Qian Shanyi stared grimly as Wang Yonghao put the last couple beams on top of their new hut, her hands crossed on her chest. Her idea of collecting stories while he worked ended up distracting him too much from the construction work, and she decided to just let him finish.
The hut itself looked like a brick of wood - all lines and right angles, made easy with the Honk of the Solar Goose. The individual beams weren't actually attached to each other, but rather laid freely, interlocking at the corners with notches cut almost halfway through each beam. The roof was much the same - just another layer of notched beams over the very top. Here and there, they cut narrow window slits in between the logs - partly for airflow, partly to let in some light, and also to have somewhere to tie their hammocks.
In place of a door, they made a set of free-standing beams that could be buttressed into special notches in the floor and ceiling, and secured in place with a couple swords they had lying around.
Despite Wang Yonghao's best efforts, the beams did not rest flush with each other, leaving many gaps in the walls - but that didn't matter, because there was neither wind nor rain in the world fragment. All the hut had to do was let them sleep without the rosevines getting in - and for this, it should serve perfectly. They'd plug up the largest holes with clay to block off the sunlight, and the rest they could ignore.
There was just one problem.
"So I've been thinking -" she began as soon as Wang Yonghao hopped off the roof.
He sighed, dusting off his robes. "Do you ever stop?"
She gave him a baffled look. "Do you ever stop breathing?"
"I do not breathe mysteries."
"Tragic," she said, shaking her head in mock dismay. "Crippled from birth. My condolences."
He rubbed his eyes with one hand. "Well, what is it?"
She pointed at the wooden building. "This hut. We are going to be sleeping there. That makes it a bedroom."
"Sure. And?"
"And a bedroom is supposed to have the door facing south. So riddle me this: where is south?"
Wang Yonghao looked around the perfectly circular world fragment, and its complete lack of any suns, moons, or anything else that could indicate a direction. "We could get a compass," he said uncertainly.
"Sure," she agreed, "But there is a bigger problem. Do you know why the door is supposed to face south?"
"Something about feng shui?"
"I also don't know. That's geomancy, and I only ever went as far as the elemental interactions. Do you see the issue?"
A frown creased his brow. She gave him a moment, but he still didn't speak, and so she simply continued. "Control of environmental feng shui depends on the environment." She motioned around the world fragment for emphasis. "And where do you think we could find a reference book for our environment? We don't have rain, snow, or night. The concentration of spiritual energy here is absurd. The wind doesn't blow, and we can change air temperature on a whim. All of which means…"
"That general instructions on geomancy won't apply here," Wang Yonghao concluded.
She raised a hand, turning it this way and that. "Some will, some won't, but we have no easy way to distinguish. And because of how much spiritual energy is around us, any significant drop in the auspiciousness of feng shui is a mortal danger." She sighed, and headed over to her tools. "I am not sleeping in there until I check it over with my luck bottle."
"Chiclotron should handle it, surely."
"That thing almost killed me several times," she said, shaking her head as she returned, bottle in hand. "I won't trust it blindly. Let's hope we don't have to rebuild this house several times."
Wang Yonghao rubbed his hair. "I mean… We'd still need to, at some point. The wood will warp and splinter as it dries. Some beams will need replacing."
"One thing after another," she said, hopping into the hut through the open doorway. Perhaps they should also consider adding some stairs. "First, I need to know which is safer - the cold bunker that is growing dampier and moldier by the day, or this hut of dubious structural stability."
Wang Yonghao hopped in right after her, and she handed him a piece of paper, a brush and an inkwell. "Here, you can help me note down the rolls," she said, "geomancy is a precise science - I'll teach you how to make the graphs later."
Qian Shanyi woke up from the sharp smell of pine sap tingling her nostrils. She rubbed her eyes open, sneezed, and wrinkled her nose. Pleasant in moderation, but this was a bit much.
Still better than that damp bunker.
Comparatively, the hut turned out to have somewhat better feng shui, though measurably worse than out in the open air of the world fragment. Perhaps having a door on the roof was worse than on the side, or perhaps there was some other reason, but the results were hard to argue with. It was possible that if they built the door pointing somewhere else it would have been better still - but Wang Yonghao didn't feel like rebuilding it just for an experiment, and frankly, even if she was ready to lug heavy beams around, neither would she. It was more than good enough to sleep in.
As she focused on her spiritual energy senses, she felt another unexpected benefit - in the darkness of the hut, spiritual energy became yin-polarized. Even the bunker let in too much light for this to work, and after so long in the ever-present sunlight of the world fragment, feeling this much yin spiritual energy sent a pleasant shiver down her spine.
Yin turned to yang, and yang to yin quite easily, and with no real harm - but one still felt more natural to her, and it was good to vary the two. Without a moon to bring in more yin, or even a day and night cycle, darkness might be their only source for the foreseeable future.
She yawned, and hopped out of her hammock, slotting her feet straight into her sandals with the grace of a cultivator. When she felt something wet touch her sole, she pulled one off to check, and saw a sticky glob smeared all over the wood. She raised her eyes upwards, and in the dim light of the hut, saw many droplets all over the ceiling.
Pine sap. Must have dripped while we were sleeping.
She ran her hand through her hair, and grimaced when she felt more sap stick to her fingers. It was all over her robes, too. This would be a joy to wash out.
Walking over to the "door", she pulled out a pair of swords holding the two beams in place, and with a light tap of her foot, sent them toppling out of the hut. Bright sunlight flooded through the opening, and she squinted at it. Clean air felt like a sip of cold water on a hot day after the sharp smell of the hut.
The beams fell down on the ground with a loud thud and a clunk, and she heard Wang Yonghao stir behind her. "Bwuh?" he said eloquently.
"We've got a sappy problem," she responded, stepping out to check the clock. Six hours of sleep - good enough. "Any ideas?"
She heard Wang Yonghao sigh, and after a short scramble with the ropes of his hammock, he stepped out of the hut. "A what problem?" he asked, squinting at her.
There wasn't even a single drop of sap on him.
"You know, it's the small things like this that make my blood boil," she said, gesturing to his clothes.
He looked at her, then at his clothes, then back at her, before shrugging with a lazy yawn.
She tore off some grass, using it to pick out spots of sap from her hair. "Infuriating as this is," she sighed, trying to get her temper under control, "I suppose it does further prove that your luck is not dependent on the Heavens to function."
"Did you need more proof?"
"Not even slightly," Qian Shanyi cursed, tossing the useless clump of grass aside. It wasn't getting the sap out, it was adding the stalks to her new hairstyle. "I am just looking for any excuse to not be absolutely livid that I will need to spend a good hour picking sap out of my robes and hair."
She spat on her hand to see if the liquid would help. It didn't.
"It didn't seem that sappy when I was cutting the wood," Wang Yonghao said, hopping out of the hut and heading towards the kitchens. "I figured it would take several days to start dripping. I guess it was hidden a bit deeper within the grain. You should use oil or alcohol to get it out - water won't do anything."
She sighed, and dropped her hands. Well, at least they already had oil - she bought some for cooking before they left to steal trees from a forest. "Thank you," she said, heading to their food storage. "I don't know how I would have explained getting sap in my hair in the middle of the night within a tavern. I suppose I will just have to wear different robes to sleep, and something to cover my hair, until all of it drips out of the wood. How long do you think that will take?"
Wang Yonghao shrugged. "No idea. A year? Maybe more - wood dries pretty slowly."
She gave him a long-suffering stare. "It will drip slower over time," he clarified. "But that's what you get from fresh wood."
"It's a Heavenly plot, all of this."
"We could try to dry out the logs faster with a fire treasure?"
"And burn down our hut in the process," she said grimly, picking up a bottle of olive oil and heading to the bath.
The oil worked surprisingly well, and after a good breakfast, Qian Shanyi felt leagues better. She and Wang Yonghao split up for the morning - he headed off to the edge of the world fragment to dig out a latrine hole, while she busied herself with scraping the droplets of sap off every surface of the hut. It was annoying work, but not too physically exerting, and after an hour she had a small pile of sap and resin collected into one of their spare bowls.
Perhaps she'd find a use for it later. She'd have to scrape the hut in the evening too, just to keep the droplets small through the night.
With her job finished, she joined Wang Yonghao, and once again helped him measure and sketch out cuts to the stone plates they were going to use.
The latrine itself would double as a composting pile, and so they were designing it with space in mind. They decided on a roughly cubic chamber, about a meter to the side, lined with stone and sealed with fried clay. It would keep the paleworms from escaping, and water from seeping in or out of it. On one side of the chamber, there would be an inclined tunnel, leading up to a much wider, but shallower chamber for the paleworm hive itself, surrounded by raised walls of packed earth, and likewise lined with stone and clay.
A similar design to that of a regular paleworm farm, if in miniature.
The first step was, of course, to dig out the two chambers. Since Wang Yonghao still refused her help - and they only had the one shovel, in any case - she spent her time writing down more of his adventures over the years. Fortunately, digging was easy enough that he managed to multitask, and she got quite a lot done. The work was progressing slowly, but surely - though organizing her notes was becoming a challenge in and of itself, as he kept correcting himself about where, when and in what order the various events had occurred.
"Tell me specifically about the various sects you have met," she asked when they stopped to cook some lunch. "ideally ones from outside the Empire."
"You saw some pattern?" Wang Yonghao asked, trying, and failing, to conceal his excitement.
She motioned for him to go back to washing the rice. It was his time to cook. "No," she said, "This is about my idea for making money. Seems to me that the Heavens rapidly drain your cash, if you ever manage to acquire some - perhaps to keep you moving. That means we need a way to make money whenever we need it - and the easiest way would be by selling some of our treasures, but the Empire has a dozen different mechanisms that make this exact thing difficult." He looked up at her in surprise, and she clarified. "It's done to catch thieves, poachers and the like - Lin Fang told us as much. They are not hunting you specifically. But if we were a registered sect, many of these issues would fall away."
Wang Yonghao grimaced at her words. She eyed him carefully, considering his reaction.
"So you want us to register a sect?" he said, exchanging the rice water. There was a tension in his voice, though concealed.
She shook her head sadly. "We can't. But we might be able to pretend we represent a sect from outside the Empire, and get recognition that way, which I think amounts to much the same thing. Do you know any sects that conveniently killed themselves off down to the last man, unbeknownst to the world at large?"
"Maybe a couple," he said after a moment, and then frowned. "Was that what you meant when you said you got us a business partner? That you'd get Jian Wei's help in pretending to be a sect?"
"I've considered it," she said mildly, "but no, or at least, not directly. He has no reason to help us, and even less reason to trust our word with no evidence, on something of this nature. I might still find a way… but until then, his role is much simpler. His sect is actively expanding, and every new cultivator needs a new sword, and every old one wants one of higher quality - we could sell some to him under the table, and his sect could handle all the paperwork. We wouldn't be able to sell everything, not without tipping him off to the fact that we are much more than just some very experienced ruin delvers - but the possibility is worthwhile in itself."
"And you think he'd go for it?"
"I think it's likely, and I am all but certain he wouldn't be offended if I ask."
Wang Yonghao's grimace grew wider. "I guess I get the idea, but… I don't know. It doesn't sit right."
"Why not?"
"It's…I don't know." He sighed. "Do we have to talk about this? It's not like we need more money right this moment."
"Hm. Money can come and go, but that you don't want to talk about it makes me a hundred times more interested."
Wang Yonghao groaned, pouring out the last of the rice washing water, and setting the pot on the fire node to cook. "You just like pushing boundaries, don't you?" he said.
"To cultivate is to shatter all boundaries on human nature, Yonghao. Now fess up, what is it?"
He stayed silent while he chopped up some of the heavenly rooster for their dish. She let him think in peace, and picked up a kettle for their rosevine tea - it had reached just about the right temperature. She brewed it lightly - just enough for the taste, but not enough to affect her circulation of spiritual energy. Healer's orders.
"How do you imagine me establishing a sect?" Wang Yonghao finally said, while she was pouring a cup for each of them. "Patriarch Yonghao? Elder Wang? Ridiculous."
She hummed, not even looking away from the tea. "You are simply restating the same thing - that you don't like the idea."
"What?" he said in confusion. "No! I am saying it wouldn't be plausible for me to be one."
She rolled her eyes, then turned back to him and rolled them again, just so he could see. "Of course it wouldn't be plausible - that's why I wouldn't make you do that. Elders are almost always in the building foundation stage, though I do not recall if it's a strict legal requirement. We'd be playing the roles of regular inner disciples, not elders. Now stop dodging around the question, Yonghao."
He narrowed his eyes at her. "Fine, maybe I am." he said. "But it's not like I can see into my soul!"
"You are a cultivator, Yonghao. You can literally take a look."
He scowled at her, and she couldn't help but laugh. "You know what I mean. How am I supposed to know why I dislike something? Sometimes I just do!"
"By thinking." She snorted, gesturing to her head with her cup of tea. "Take as much time as you need."
He fumed all the way through their lunch, and didn't speak again until they were back to digging. With nothing else left to do, she was supervising. "I guess I just don't like the idea of belonging to a sect in general," he finally said.
"Because of your history with them?" she guessed.
"Partly? But it's not the whole thing."
She nodded. "Because you are worried this would make your luck worse?"
"No, I don't think it will." He shook his head, leaning on his shovel in contemplation. "At least, not directly. I mean, it's just a label at the end of the day, right? But it's just… I guess I don't like leaving traces."
She gave him a weird look. "You can't help leaving traces. The remains of your battle with that one mushroom spirit blocked off a whole town gate."
"Something that obvious isn't too common," he said, "Most of the time, I am just some face in the crowd. If I come into town, and something strange happens - well that's probably not related to this one loose cultivator, right? But if I am from a sect, then that's a bigger deal. That gets people to notice, and… I am already too noticeable."
She tapped her cheek with one finger, considering it. Wang Yonghao wasn't wrong, per se - there was a danger of the wrong person putting the picture together - but it seemed to her that if that was a possibility, then someone would have done it by now. Which meant that either his luck or the Heavens must have been actively running interference, and it shouldn't matter much wherever it was the rumors about a "loose cultivator Wang Yonghao" or about "Wang Yonghao, inner disciple of the Wang sect" that had to be interfered with.
"I don't see a point in announcing our arrival to all the world," she conceded, "we could be a sect on paper and claim to still be loose cultivators. Traveling incognito - it's not too unusual, I don't think, though I would have to consider how to best tie it into our story. And we could keep you off the claimed sect rolls entirely. It would put another layer of obfuscation between you and any paper traces we leave behind."
"Thank you." He sighed. "That would make me feel a lot better."
"And now, about those sects you mentioned," she said, settling down on the grass next to her notes, "tell me everything you know."
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The Sandman
So Zetta Slowpoke
- Location
- Wherever I am, which isn't where I'm not
And thus Qian Shanyi finally got Wang Yonghao to willingly talk about sects.
- Pronouns
- He/His/etc
Is having sects for money prostitution?
BagFullOfLizards
Some bag, mostly lizards
- Location
- A bag
I love the analysis in this series so much. This was such a cool chapter, with the characters digging into what might be going on.
IIRC they're doing this to avoid being murdered by other cultivators, not the heavens. It's the same reason they hid the fact that they were harvesting trees.
Basically, the problem is that inner worlds are ridiculously valuable, and by far the most common form of them is a stealable ring. IIRC something bound to a person like Yonghao has is so rare that Shanyi didn't even think they existed. So right now they are trying to build a farm in their inner world, and that requires a lot of materials. But if they buy a lot of materials, obviously more than they can carry, and then those materials just vanish, the obvious explanation is that they've got an inner world to transport them in. And if people get a hint that they have such an inner world then they'd be extremely happy to murder them in the hopes of stealing it. So they need to get their materials without anyone knowing they're gathering them if they want to survive the experience.
- Location
- Earth
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I just like the banter in this story, and Yonghao's development from victim to willing participant.
Heavenly injustice.
This luck is kinda plot-relevant, in the sense that—
—but it's mostly just fun.
How did you expect a woman who "breathes mysteries" to react to a new mystery, Yonghao?
I like that, despite her rhetoric, Shanyi pushed Yonghao's boundaries without actually trying to shatter them.
I'm with Yonghao on this one. People are good at identifying what they feel, and even better at inventing rationalizations for why they feel that way—even if those rationalizations are demonstrably unrelated to the feelings they justify.
It's a good idea to try, but it's not guaranteed to work. Especially if you literally just think and assume your first answer is correct, because how could you not understand what's going on in your own head?
It sounds like Yonghao eventually came up with a decently accurate answer, with a little prodding and guessing from Shanyi.
- Location
- Earth
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Canvas tarps aren't impermeable, so it's not a permanent solution. Shanyi would have to wash the sap out regularly.
That said, I imagine it could hold sap well enough that she wouldn't need to wash sap out of her pajamas.
That said, I imagine it could hold sap well enough that she wouldn't need to wash sap out of her pajamas.
dhasenan
always lowercase
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Hm, maybe they can boil down some pine sap to make tar and impregnate a canvas tarp with it. Then it's not permeable (but they'd still have to scrape the sap off it periodically so it doesn't fall).
Interlude: One Thousand Fortunes Of Wang Yonghao
Winged_One
Head Engineer of ATHENA
- Location
- Low Earth Orbit
Author Note: Want to read ahead? You can find some patreon-exclusive posts, as well as FOUR more chapters, over on my patreon, for a low price of 3$. That's right, despite being busy with a move all last week, I finally started to get back to the backlog.
I also have a discord server, where I post memes I make about FSE, and occasionally discuss some plans and worldbuilding details.
This chapter has a bit of an experimental style, based on the novel Thresholder by Alexander Wales.
I also have a discord server, where I post memes I make about FSE, and occasionally discuss some plans and worldbuilding details.
This chapter has a bit of an experimental style, based on the novel Thresholder by Alexander Wales.
Let's start from the beginning. When I unlocked my spiritual root, I was nine years old, living in an orphanage. I think it was in the Violet Springs city? Or maybe it was Blue Waterfalls…
I am pretty sure there was some kind of color and something about water. There was definitely a big river passing through it.
At least a lake. Some body of water.
Okay, fine, I am not very sure, but that's the best I have.
How do I know I was nine? No, I didn't have any papers. A year after I left I met a cultivator with an age-measuring technique. He wasn't from a sect though.
Shanyi, you are distracting me again. You wanted to talk about sects.
So. For the first year, I actually didn't leave the city. I thought I lucked out into a good life - I mean, if I could be a cultivator, I could become rich, right? Food for days, good beds… Not like the orphanage. Well, didn't turn out this way, and the reason was this beastmaster sect. They were growing these giant, rideable sea horses, and once in a while there would be a race that local loose cultivators could take part in. If you won, they'd even accept you into the sect.
No, I don't remember the name of the sect. It's so hard to keep track.
Right. Like I said, there was a river. So, like an idiot, I signed up for the race, got a raceseahorse, and started training it up. And of course the seahorse turned out to have a special bloodline, though I wasn't suspicious of that sort of thing at the time, so I came to the race giddy from knowing I was going to win. Imagine my shock when this guy from the sect shows up and demands I give him "his" seahorse.
Shanyi, I was nine. How good were you at reading people when you were nine?
That's because you are insane. Anyways, you are right. Turns out the seahorse actually was misplaced from his stables, but I didn't know it at the time.
Like I said, I was nine. Of course I insulted him. So I don't give it back, enter the race, and then almost win it - but he sabotages me at the last moment, and I barely escape with my life. He very loudly swore he'd find me and kill me - something about how he would be gracious in allowing his seahorses to feed on my entrails, because that's the best fate trash like me can hope for. Or maybe he said something else, the threats are all so similar.
Why would I - no, I won't gamble that you'd be able to threaten me in a way I haven't heard before. First of all, you would lose. Secondly, I will never gamble with you on any subject for as long as I live.
No, I won't make a bet that I will never make a bet either. You'd say I lost right away.
So after the race I decided that I best make myself scarce and ran away from the city. I tried to survive in the wilderness for a while, but that…didn't really work. I still mostly avoided cities or sects for a long time.
No, I think I got that manual back in the city somewhere. It might have been the same ruins where I fell into a barrel of Asure Heart Cleansing Dew? There was also a cosmos ring with the drugs for it, I think.
I lost it somewhere. What, is the world fragment not enough for you?
Okay, that makes sense. Sorry. But I still don't remember where I lost it.
Anyways. Next time I ran into a big sect was when I was thirteen. They lived at the very edge of the empire, around one of the world tears, and called themselves the Sky Void Island Temple.
You've never seen one? It's a giant tear in space, blacker than anything you've ever seen. It consumes everything that falls into it, and spews out spiritual energy. A wind blows into it, growing stronger the closer you get, from all the air vanishing directly into the tear. After centuries of it, every last grain of soil had been scoured for many miles around, clean down to the world edges. You look out anywhere, and it's just the clear blue sky and the suns, like you are hanging in limbo.
This sect lived on platforms, tied down with heavy chains around where the world edge occasionally bent into a column, like in the middle of Reflection Ridge. They all practiced flight using these hang gliders, using the local wind to move around, and I got pretty good at it while I stayed with them. Because there was nothing else that grew nearby, they had to bring in new stuff all the time - especially soil - and did their best to grow their own food, though that wasn't really my job.
Yeah, they were good people. Really kind. I guess living in a place like that, you either all work together or you die. They are also who gave me the scroll for my Fluttering Wing Step technique.
Did I never tell you its name? Scarlet Dragonfly technique does sound fancier, I have to admit.
What happened? My fucking luck is what happened. World crack, completely unexpected. Half the people died immediately, and the other half when the chains shattered and the wind pulled the platforms into the world tear. I only survived because I could walk on air. My teacher was asleep when it happened, and by the time he awoke, he was halfway into the tear. Other people who mastered the technique tried to pull others out, but the winds were too strong. If there were any survivors, I've never met them.
You think I didn't blame myself enough? This is exactly why I don't want to meet people! Hundreds of people died and all because of -
Ow! Stop slapping me!
Ow! Ow! Okay, fine, fine! It's the Heaven's fault, not mine!
Did you really have to slap me?
On a second thought, don't explain.
Where? I don't know, somewhere in the south. I think it might have been outside the empire - I am not sure.
Map? No, I've never bothered.
Why would I look up a map? I just ask people where to go.
Save your frustrations, please.
How long? I don't remember. Around a year, I would guess.
Maybe. Let's move on. It's been a long time ago, but I still don't like thinking about it.
Thank you. Well, after that I've pretty much given up on cultivation. I'd get to a place, find something to eat and do, and then leave, and hope I could get ahead of the bullshit. This mostly didn't work. I don't remember where I headed right after the Sky Void Temple - maybe it was the Serpent River, or maybe it was the dwarfholds. I was really not in a good place.
There were a lot of sect encounters after that, but you wanted to know about ones that completely vanished… I think that only leaves two.
Do you know about the southern deserts? Right. Well, the stories and books can't tell you the whole picture. When they talk about the shifting sands, this is literal. There are these rocks, each as large as a hill, that move across the desert, and the sands are attracted to them like iron to a lodestone. I don't know why - these sands are not ordinary. Each rock is surrounded by a much larger hill of red sand, shifting and flowing in waves as it moves.
I say sands because there are different types. The local cultivators had a whole system, but I never learned it. Red sand was slow and predictable, mostly sticking to the rocks. Gray sand flowed quickly, like enormous waves or tides across the desert, shifting with every hour, sometimes flowing faster than an avalanche. Purple sand was light, and when the winds blew strong, formed tornadoes and hurricanes. Brown sand was called the hungry sand, because it clumped up into voids beneath the surface, ones you might never get out of if you stepped on top of them. But there were more types than this, and the sands mixed together as well. When you first looked out over the desert, you just saw the dunes, but after a while, you started to read the landscape.
There were not many people there, because the only reliable source of food was a certain type of beetle that buried itself in the sand, hard to harvest and harder to eat. I don't think that people went there because they liked it. I think most were demonic cultivators of one fashion or another.
It's not that simple.
No, it really is not that simple. I don't know what they did before, but in the desert they were just people trying to get by.
Well, it doesn't matter now. There were no traditional sects there, but rather, there were clans, formed around specific families. These clans mostly made their compounds within the rocks. People were fiercely loyal to their clans, because you couldn't live there without one, and not many could afford to pay a guide to lead them out of the desert, even if they had a place to go. Though I never joined one, I lived with one of them because I wanted a place to hide, and I figured it was about as far as it got. For a bit, it even seemed to be going well, though I never got close to any cultivators. The food was, like I said, terrible, but at least it was there.
The clan I was with lived in a rock that was heading towards another, that one with a different clan. The two started out friendly enough with each other, and even planned a marriage to bring each other closer together. But the closer the rocks got to each other, the less food there was - two clans harvesting beetles from the same area. Tensions rose. Then there was some kind of misunderstanding - I do not remember exactly what - and things descended into violence almost at once. Both clans blamed each other and started a war that got more and more bloody the closer the rocks got. I managed to mostly stay out - by that point, I was more familiar with how my luck worked, I suppose. In the end, the rocks collided, and both compounds were obliterated. Aside from a few people who fled well in advance, I do not think anyone else got out, not after their granaries and water storages were lost among the sands. Unlike me, they would have had to leave the desert on foot.
The last one was when I was exploring the eastern jungles. The fauna there is pretty scary, but most of it can't fly, so I was pretty safe. If you have ever seen a drawing of a flock of solar geese - let me tell you, the reality is far, far more terrifying. Anyways, I needed somewhere to get food, so I kept in contact with this one small sect in the area - they paid me decent money for killing the demon beasts. They were called… Sanguine Peak Pavilion, or something like that. Their sect compound was in the middle of the jungle, up on top of a small mountain. It was surrounded by a hundred meter wide wall of poisonous bushes - crimson like blood, making the whole place look like a giant flower.
I planned to stay there for at least several weeks, but four days into it, this ancient grandpa showed up. I don't know what hole he crawled out of, but he killed the sect elders, and then rounded up the rest of us and said he was going to pick out one cultivator who would be his direct disciple. He made us play games. Some were competitions of strength, others just normal games - cards, dice. Maybe he was weeding out the unlucky. Whomever lost a game, or tried to run was killed on the spot.
Of course I won all of them.
What did I do? Waited for him to fall asleep two days after it all ended, then picked out about a dozen biggest demon beast cores out of my inner world and made a crystal bomb. Not like they are hard to make, and I had a lot of experience over the years. Then I put it next to his face and blew his head clean off - wrapped in moth silk, he never even felt the danger. High building foundation or not, his brains still splattered all across the wall and ceiling, same as all the people he killed.
Yeah, that's why I keep my inner world hidden, in case I need to do it all over again. And it's why I try to stick to traveling in the Empire. Not many secret realms left here where one of those can crawl out of.
I guess I never thought about it. But if they were going to explode on their own, they would have done so already. And I guess my luck helps too, now that I think about it.
Ruthless? If I was really ruthless I would have done it before -
Ow! Fine, fine! I'll stop.
No, I don't like killing. But I got pretty good at running away, and sometimes ancient grandpas get in the way.
Anyways. I hope you'll figure something out while I take a break.
Thank you. It's fine. I just… need a minute.
I'll be back when I will stop thinking of all that blood.
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- Pronouns
- He
I like the way you can see the shape of Shanyi's complaining and responses by Yonghao's lines.
Also
Also
!!!
