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

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I love how human and relatable your characters are. It's often such a flaw in cultivation stories where the characters are like minmaxxing robots, but here even as they fulfill the cultivation tropes and story beats, they are still people and have actual lives and interests beyond just "power level go brrr".

The cats were an especially nice detail
 
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Chapter 87: Set Your Feet Upon Adventurous Decks New
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    • Author Note: Want to read further ahead? You can find FOUR patreon-exclusive posts, as well as up to NINE more chapters, over on my patreon.
    Thanks to all my patrons (FaintlySorcerous, Galestorm_Winds and 64 others)! If you are one and would like to be credited by name, please send me a message.
    I also have a discord server, where I post memes I make about FSE, and occasionally discuss some plans and worldbuilding details. You can also ask personal questions to the characters, and get their answers.​
    As Qian Shanyi and Wang Yonghao headed out of the Northern Scarlet Stream sect, her thoughts started to slow. Their talk with Liu Yufei was a balm upon her nerves, but once they left her chambers, all she wanted was to head back to the tavern and take a good nap. They had to make a final plan for their escape out of the town - for their escape from Fang Jiugui - and well-made plans did not tolerate exhausted minds.

    But as the saying went, a cultivator may strive but in the end, the fates decide. Just as they were crossing the courtyard, someone called after her.

    "Honorable immortal Qian! Please wait a moment!"

    Qian Shanyi glanced over her shoulder, and saw Scar, jogging her way, waving some letter in his hands. She breathed out in frustration. They were almost out of the gates of the Northern Scarlet Stream sect. Almost.

    "What is it?" she said with what she hoped passed for politeness.

    "Honorable immortal Fang had left a letter for you -" Scar said, coming closer, gesturing with it in her direction.

    To speak of the Heavenly bureaucrat…

    "Stop," Qian Shanyi cut him off, putting a hand on the pommel of her sword, and immediately turning around. "Now take three steps back. Quickly."

    "Uh -"

    "I do not like repeating myself," she said in annoyance, and flared her spiritual energy shield a bit. Scar finally jumped back as if he saw a snake, and swallowed nervously.

    Wang Yonghao coughed, and put a hand on her shoulder. "Shanyi, is that really necessary?"

    "It is," Qian Shanyi said. "I am not touching that thing with even a single finger. What if there is some powder on it that would stick to my skin, leave a scent trail?" She glanced at Wang Yonghao out of the corner of her eye, lowering her voice a bit. "Tell me I am being too paranoid."

    Wang Yonghao grimaced, slightly shrugging with one shoulder. "It could happen. Just don't stab the poor disciple over it."

    "Who do you think I am?" she said. "I am not Shizhe, to be that quick with my wrath." She nodded to Scar. "You. Open that letter and show it to me so I can read it from here."

    Scar looked uncertainly between Qian Shanyi and Wang Yonghao. "Honorable immortal Qian, honorable immortal Fang said it is for your eyes only…"

    "You can either open the letter now or throw it in a fire," Qian Shanyi said levelly.

    Another uncertain look, before Scar shrugged, and slid his finger through the letter seal, breaking it. He unfolded the latter, facing it towards her. It was, thankfully, short, and written in surprisingly clean handwriting.

    Fellow cultivator Qian,

    If you are reading this letter, you must have found some way out of my little trap. I commend you on your ingenuity, if not your wisdom. When I picked your case, I expected it to be a casual challenge, but it has evolved beyond these limits - and I always enjoy a good chase.

    I must apologise for invoking your parents. Your father is a good man, and was willing to sacrifice himself to keep you safe. He was alive and well when I left, and as far as I know, neither he nor his wife had faced any other pressure. I do not like to involve families, but it seemed the fastest way - though I did not expect you to stay so calm. I am sure you would agree to leave this behind us.

    However, I must warn you. In my entire career, I have only let a few targets slip through my fingers. Despite your talent, you would not be the next one - and from this point on, I would treat you the same as I would a hardened demonic cultivator, not a naive sect runaway. To do anything else would be disrespectful, after you have already defeated me once.

    Until our next, and final, meeting,
    Fang Jiugui

    Qian Shanyi stared grimly at the letter. What in the Netherworld's name was his plan in writing this? To taunt her, make her careless? Why was it written in such a… conventional style, when Fang Jiugui spoke so strangely? What in Netherworld's name was going on?

    Was the part about her father even true?

    On a hunch, she sent a burst of her spiritual energy through the paper, focusing all her senses on it. It was subtle, very subtle, but she felt the flow shift, like water around a stone in the river bed, right at the center of the page.

    Of course it'd be there.

    "Yonghao, burn the damn letter," she said, turning around to walk away. Scar dropped it on the ground, backing away even further. "There really is a tracking talisman in it."

    If Fang Jiugui wanted her to play for real? She could play for real.
    Qian Shanyi headed back to their tavern in grim spirits. Wang Yonghao followed after her quietly - she told him not to discuss their plans out in the open, lest they be overheard.

    "So what really happened?" he asked once they were back within the confines of his inner world, descending down to the ground.

    Linghui Mei looked up from her work, hearing them enter. She was standing on top of the roof of their hut, using a spear shaft to turn over piles of cut grass, turning it over so that it would dry evenly, and make hay for the rabbits. She put down her spear, and hopped off the roof, heading over to greet them.

    "I almost lost, is what happened," Qian Shanyi said, speaking loudly enough to include the jiuweihu in their conversation. "Jian Wei was this close to just giving me up, the vengeful prick. He and Shizhe, two peas to a pod of suffering. Liu Yufei had to save me in the end - and even that by a hair. But he did give us one day to leave town, and exiled Fang Jiugui from his territory for two weeks, so I suppose there is that."

    "But that's good, right?" Wang Yonghao asked, confused. "I mean - you wanted some distance from him, and that's what we got. He can't even approach this town."

    "I wanted Fang Jiugui to stay here and us to leave," Qian Shanyi grumbled, as they got down to the ground and she got out of her harness. "Instead we stayed and he left."

    Linghui Mei helped her take it off, and folded up her rope with a little bow. "Even so, I am glad to see you return safe and whole, master."

    "You don't seem all that surprised I managed it."

    "I had no doubts you would manage to return," Linghui Mei said with another bow. "What I doubted was how much of yourself you would carelessly sacrifice to do it."

    Qian Shanyi squinted at the jiuweihu suspiciously, but stayed silent.

    Wang Yonghao cleared his throat, giving her a weird look. "You said you wanted Fang Jiugui to stay, but instead we stayed. Isn't that basically the same?"

    "Not even close," Qian Shanyi said, shaking her head, glad for an opportunity to move the conversation away.

    She gestured with one hand, drawing a crude glowing diagram in the air. It was a map of their town and its surroundings, with a wide circle around it. "Look, think of it like this," she continued, "We are sitting inside of an area that Fang Jiugui can't enter, so he is stuck circling around the edge. But we still have to leave. We have to cross through the edge. If Fang Jiugui guesses where we'll leave, he'd just catch us there."

    "Right," Wang Yonghao said, looking at her diagram. "So?"

    Linghui Mei frowned at her side. Perhaps she already realized the problem - with her history, all this tracking business must have been well known to her. "That is a lot of area, master," she said politely. "Cutting through a forest - it would take a good week to circle that much land on foot."

    "He won't be on foot. He has a flying sword." Wang Yonghao sighed.

    "It's worse than just that," Qian Shanyi continued. "There are only three sensible ways for us to leave Glaze Ridge - through the forest in the direction of Lakes of Peace, by following the river upstream into the mountains, or by following it downstream towards Emerald Grace, where it merges with the Golden Serpent River. Every other direction, we would be walking through a forest for days - there'd be nowhere for us to hide from a cultivator on top of a flying sword and no way to outrun him, and Fang Jiugui knows this."

    She added three lines to her diagram, showing where they could head.

    "It's essentially a shell game, our odds are one in three," Qian Shanyi concluded. "At best - he decides to wait in one place, and once the day is up, he'd know we chose one of the other pathways. It would only take him hours to check, but those are the hours we could be getting further away. At worst - he chooses correctly and catches us then and there."

    Wang Yonghao grimaced, and groaned despondently. Linghui Mei looked at him in confusion, then back at Qian Shanyi.

    "I… don't understand," Linghui Mei said. "One in three - that is better than half? Besides, could we not simply hide out in the forest, and emerge days later? We should have enough food to last a week."

    Qian Shanyi snorted, nodding towards Wang Yonghao, who was starting to pull on his hair. "All good points. But it seems that Yonghao isn't feeling very lucky today."

    Linghui Mei frowned. "Oh."

    "Exactly," Qian Shanyi nodded, and cut her hand through the air, dismissing her diagram. "With Yonghao in the picture, the chance of Fang Jiugui guessing correctly is one hundred percent. And if we tried to hide - we'd be found for sure. So now we have to figure out how we could meet a building foundation cultivator that is already looking for us, and still slip right under his nose."
    Glaze Ridge had no proper port, not of the kind Qian Shanyi was used to. There simply was not enough traffic to demand one - the town saw perhaps a dozen ships pass along the river every day, most of them from towns further up in the mountains, moving metal ore for sale on the Golden Snake river. Half of them didn't even make a stop. Instead, there was a disorganised series of piers and anchoring posts, all belonging to different merchants and warehouses, loosely managed by the local river authority for reasons of taxation and documentation.

    All this meant was that finding a ship heading downstream, with a private cabin for two people, involved a lot of running around. The river authority had some scheduling tables - but they were incomplete and frequently out of date, due to delays, change of plans, and because submitting travel plans in advance of the route was only mandated for the larger ships. The merchants themselves knew better, or course, but were sadly not chained down to their warehouses - and had to be chased down first.

    It was a familiar enough exercise to Qian Shanyi, if made to run somewhat in reverse. She was used to finding a store that had the goods they desperately lacked from among the other merchants they knew in port. Here, she already knew who had the ships - she just had to find the merchants.

    The main problem was how strict her demands were. She needed a ship today, and ideally, it had to have a cabin - or at least enough space to put up some kind of tent for privacy. In a large port, this would have been simplicity itself - but in Glaze Ridge, with only a half a dozen ships to work with, she was quickly running out of good options.

    She had found a ship, and a fast one - but it would only set off the next morning, far too late for their purposes. She had reserved a place on it all the same.

    At least Wang Yonghao performed his half of the plan well enough. They met up shortly, during the day, for a quick lunch - but afterwards, they split up. His aim was to explore other ways out of the town - an occasional cart that might travel down the road next to the river, or something else they hadn't even considered. Qian Shanyi felt the ships were the best of all by far, but if she couldn't manage to arrange one, it would be good to have an alternative.

    Just as she was leaving a restaurant where she caught up with one merchant - who promptly informed her that his ship would be a week late, for reasons of needing repair after a river dragon attack - she spotted Jian Shizhe, together with a pair of other disciples from the Northern Scarlet Stream sect. The pest had been ineptly trying to tail her this whole morning - and while she had enjoyed giving him the slip so far, she felt it was starting to get a bit much.

    Deciding to handle the problem at the source, she headed right over.

    "Junior Shizhe, it seems our paths cross for the third time today," she said, giving him a courteous bow. It was actually the sixth, but she was pretty sure he didn't notice her noticing him half the time. "May I ask what brings us together on this auspicious day?"

    "Is a junior not allowed to meet his senior?" Jian Shizhe said with such a sneer that, were he not a direct disciple of a sect elder, it would have gotten him slapped. "Perhaps I was merely seeking instruction."

    "Hm," Qian Shanyi said, glancing around at his flunkies. "If that is the case, shall we speak alone? I am not the senior of your juniors."

    Jian Shizhe gestured towards the other two disciples, and they bowed, stepping back.

    "It is gratifying, to see you follow my advice," Qian Shanyi said, as she and Jian Shizhe headed over to the less traveled side of the street. "I dare say you could have never even tracked me down if you were still working alone."

    Jian Shizhe's sneer grew wider, just as she expected it would. He was a very predictable creature, at the heart of it.

    "But junior Shizhe, now I would have you speak honestly," Qian Shanyi said, leaning against the wall of a house, and speaking quietly enough they couldn't be overheard. "What is it that you want with me?"

    She very much doubted Jian Wei sent him. He was here of his own volition - and Qian Shanyi had a good guess as to why.

    A defiant spark passed through Jian Shizhe's eyes. "Why should I tell you?"

    "Because I am still your senior, and still responsible for your instruction, all the way up until this very evening. And if you do not want me to officially assign you to stir latrines, you'd best tell me what you want with me."

    It was a weak threat, all things considered. She doubted Jian Wei would give any force to her orders anymore, and by the look in Jian Shizhe's eyes, he already knew it. But a senior was still a senior, and other people did not know about their arrangement. Openly defying her orders, ones given from her position as an instructor hired by Jian Wei, would still carry some sanction.

    Jian Shizhe did not answer her right away. His grin stretched wide, turning sadistic. "I heard about your meeting with that spirit hunter," Jian Shizhe said, confirming her thinking. "Heard you would be leaving town now. So I figure - perhaps we'd tag along, see where you head. Make sure that spirit hunter knows it."

    Qian Shanyi tapped her cheek in thought. "So that is how it was," she said. "Very well. I do not mind at all."

    "So confident," Jian Shizhe sneered again. "You would be caught for certain. Just as you deserve."

    "No, I simply think you are too incompetent to truly keep track of me," Qian Shanyi said honestly, knowing Jian Shizhe couldn't resist such blatant bait. "In fact, why don't I make it even easier for you?"

    She vaguely gestured towards the river. "I know for a fact that your sect owns a trading ship that will set off downstream in three days," she said, "get us a room on that ship and make it leave this evening, towards Emerald Grace. If you do, I'll swear I'll travel on it, in full sight of you. It would be that much simpler to observe me then, would it not?"

    She felt a spot of deja vu as she said it, but dismissed it. It was perfect. For the second time now, the Heavens were playing right into her hands. With Jian Shizhe there - they could sell their trick all the better.

    "You expect me to -"

    "As your senior, I expect you to follow orders. This will be your official task for today," Qian Shanyi cut him off, pushing herself away from the wall again. "That you work with others is good, but as a direct disciple to Elder Jian, you have power and responsibility that you are simply leaving by the wayside. So pull some strings. Get me that room, and we'll see if you have learned enough from my brief instruction."

    She stepped past Jian Shizhe, leaning close to his ear as she passed. "Or else I'd have to get creative," she whispered. "After all, if you are working against me, why should I not work against you? Can you endure a second humiliation, little Shizhe?"

    She walked away before he could respond, and did not look back.
    The night fell, and with it, the moons rose up into the sky. There were three times as many of them on this night, the sky as dotted as the cheek of a freckled jade beauty. They trailed alongside the edge of the world, their surface wet and glistening, shining down on the town that had finally found some uneasy peace after a week of terrible tension - and on three cultivators heading towards the river.

    And then, the moons began to spin. Slowly, at first, they spun faster and faster, their features blurring from sight as they turned into glowing disks of light. The droplets of water leaking from the moons were thrown off by the speed, spread out for thousands of meters, turning each moon into an enormous, gushing faucet, the flow of water growing and growing, yin spiritual energy bursting out, until the moons had vanished beyond thick curtains of torrential rain.

    The moonsoon had come.

    Qian Shanyi threw a sad glance back at the inner disciple of the Northern Scarlet Stream sect that was following after her and Wang Yonghao. The sad bastard didn't think to bring a coat. One of the moons was passing right over the town, the curtain of rain rushing directly towards them - the poor man was going to be completely soaked by the time they reached Jian Shizhe's ship.

    It was but a dark silhouette out on the river, the light of the lamps obscured by the rain entirely. The ship was long and flat - built to carry goods down the shallow river waters, with the top deck only half-filled with tied down crates and barrels. At the back of the ship stood a deck house, its top floor flat and open, where the no doubt miserable crew waited to depart.

    She pulled up her own leather hood and hurried on into the rain, her leather cloak hugging her body. Even through the leather, she could feel how freezing it was.

    Jian Shizhe waited for them on the gangway leading up onto the ship. "Finally showed?" he called out, having to shout over the rain. "I was starting to wonder if your words were nothing more than wind."

    "You sent a chaperone after us, didn't you?" Qian Shanyi said once they came closer, wanting to spare her own throat the exertion of shouting. "It would be impolite not to show. Now lead on, junior Shizhe. I want to see what cabin you put me and Yonghao into."

    Together, Qian Shanyi and Wang Yonghao stepped on the deck, throwing one last glance at the town that was their home for what felt like ages, before following Jian Shizhe towards the deckhouse. Around them, the crew was already springing into motion - raising the gangway, untethering the ship, and re-igniting the lamps around the sides.

    The ship had shuddered slightly as it started to move, the current finally free to carry it downstream. Their plan was set in motion, decisions made. Tomorrow evening, they would reach the border of Jian Wei's control, where they would meet Fang Jiugui once again - and either escape unscathed, or deal with the consequences.
     
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    • Hm. How does the Inner Space operate with mobile reference frames? It might be considered too big a risk since they can't peek out, but it does seem like the simplest method of not being found.
     
    Dark as Silver said:
    The inner space is anchored to Yonghao.
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    But he can go inside it and close the entrance. So if he goes inside his inner space and closes the entrance, will it reopen in the same place relative to the landscape, relative to the boat or perhaps somewhere along the vector of the boat's motion at the time of entry regardless of if it turned or accelerated in between the closing and opening of the Inner Space?
     
    The Froggy Ninja said:
    But he can go inside it and close the entrance. So if he goes inside his inner space and closes the entrance, will it reopen in the same place relative to the landscape, relative to the boat or perhaps somewhere along the vector of the boat's motion at the time of entry regardless of if it turned or accelerated in between the closing and opening of the Inner Space?
    Click to expand...
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    Didn't they already do this while floating down the river before they split up the first time.
     
    The Froggy Ninja said:
    Hm. How does the Inner Space operate with mobile reference frames? It might be considered too big a risk since they can't peek out, but it does seem like the simplest method of not being found.
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    Click to shrink...
    I assume they'd need a cabin or tent "for privacy," to hide the opening of Yonghao's inner world while Shanyi goes hide in there.

    Then, when cop Honorable spirit hunter Fang shows up, she isn't around anymore, and everyone is left to assume she somehow snuck off the boat, Fang might go search upstream... or tail Yonghao, but he's really good at getting himself lost on the other side of the continent through some improbable adventure. (which would fit the chapter title)
     
    Yeah, the phantom space is probably what the plan hinges on, but using the shell game analogy, it's like being able to hide the card in her sleeve, while the kitsune is being able to palm an ace.

    Both of them could hide in the space while she pretends to be someone else and gives them the all clear later.

    Though I still think that the real trick would be to try to trick him that they left, while they just go to ground in the city/space for a month or so.

    I forgot why she was so adamant about running away anyway? It's it just that she gets unreal gains from his luck?
     
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