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

Setting aside their shock at Qian Shanyi's and Linghui Mei's brief performance, the rabbits seemed to be in good health. They had all grown up well, Yihao most of all, and seemed to have acclimated to their new conditions. Wang Yonghao's count was right on the money, and fifty-seven healthy bunnies were frolicking all across the grass of their little world, blissfully unaware they were all destined for the pot - or a jiuweihu's jaws, as the case may be.

And yet, fifty seven rabbits were far from sufficient. To stay well-fed, Linghui Mei needed to eat about one succulent rabbit every day; and since the rabbits took just under two months to grow to sufficient size, their population needed to be at least ninety rabbits - thirty that were just born, thirty that were one month old, and thirty that were ready to be eaten, when their time came, as well as the rabbits that were already pregnant with the next batch.

At least, that was if she were to spend the entirety of her time within the world fragment. Qian Shanyi suspected that this would prove necessary at some point - but for now, Linghui Mei would simply spend a bit more time outside, until their production could catch up with her demands. For now, Qian Shanyi simply moved ten rabbits into their breeding coop, and left them there to enjoy themselves.

Figuring out where to put those ninety rabbits was a problem for later. They were already starting to run out of good space to build the coops.

The beans presented a far more disappointing picture. Their harvest was left unshelled, the beans still stuck in dried up pods. Wang Yonghao didn't have any free time to process it properly, and simply stored it away in large glass bottles. Unfortunately, the pods weren't fully dried, and the glass had trapped the remaining moisture inside, so once Qian Shanyi had started going through it, she realised that a large chunk of what they had was already rotten.

Qian Shanyi didn't blame the man. Really, she'd have done the same thing given the circumstances, and surely made the exact same mistake. But it didn't change the fact that a good one sixth of their harvest had already gone bad before anyone realised it.

But they would learn from this little mistake, change their approach. Next time, they would store the pods in a place with plenty of airflow. The by far greater problem was that the harvest was simply too small.

Even discounting the rot, there simply weren't enough beans. Qian Shanyi checked and double-checked her math, but given the number of plants they had, their harvest was poor by the standards of a normal farm - and since that they were raising these beans in an environment of dense spiritual energy, it was simply unacceptable.

Something was wrong - and they didn't know what.

Qian Shanyi had personally inspected every single plant, and found little sign of any parasites or disease, or bugs chewing on the leaves, though neither she nor Linghui Mei was anything approaching an expert. The plants looked a little wilted, a few of their leaves a little yellow - but that was about it. In either case, a pathogen seemed somewhat unlikely - the spiritual energy itself should have fortified the plants against any foreign intrusion. Perhaps the ground was unsuited for crop cultivation, or it was too humid, or too hard - Qian Shanyi could only guess.

But the question of why the plants weren't productive enough could be left for the future. For now, they needed to process the beans they already had. Shelling them would make them far easier to store and cook.

Which left Qian Shanyi with the task of figuring out how to shell and winnow a good hundred and fifty kilograms of beans - or better yet, how to make a contraption to do it for her. After all, the bean plants should produce a new harvest every two or three months, and if she had to do it all by hand every time, she would simply go insane.

Once Wang Yonghao had reached Flowering Azalea Springs, he let Qian Shanyi and Linghui Mei out. Linghui Mei headed into town to do some shopping, while Qian Shanyi and Wang Yonghao's goal was that of Wang Tingting's parlor. In principle, Wang Yonghao could have ordered his seals alone - but Qian Shanyi felt it would go far smoother if she accompanied him.

"You seem surprisingly calm," Qian Shanyi noted once they reached the censorate, only to find a message saying that Wang Tingting had already moved back into her own, newly repaired parlor. It wasn't a long walk, thankfully.

Wang Yonghao shrugged casually. "It's not my first time getting a seal made," he said, "It's not that complicated."

"A sect seal is different from that of a loose cultivator," Qian Shanyi said. "She'd probably want to interview you, if nothing else. I hope you remember what we talked about, our sect's secrets."

The secret that their sect didn't actually exist, mostly.

"Yeah, yeah," Wang Yonghao grumbled. "It's my sect in the first place."

"But what I meant was more about the pressure points of your luck," Qian Shanyi continued, lowering her voice slightly. "You mentioned them before, places you tend to avoid. I would have thought a parlor would have been one of them."

"Yeah, it would be," Wang Yonghao said. He scratched his head, as if surprised at his own response. "I guess it just hadn't been that bad as of late."

A light frown flickered over Qian Shanyi's face. Something about the way he said it… It tweaked at something in the back of her mind. "Hmm," she replied noncommittally, "Let's hope that continues."

They soon came into view of the parlor - freshly renovated and open to the public. Where before was a simple stone wall encircling some hidden grounds, now stood a three-story pagoda, its walls covered in greenery, flowering under the spring sun. The flowers were planted with purpose - planter boxes and pots full of carnations, chrysanthemums, daffodils, climbing vines, irises and hydrangeas, spiral bands of different colors encircling the structure from the ground up to the roof. The entire building looked like a single enormous rainbow bouquet.

Xia Mengshan wasn't lying. It truly is beautiful.

"And where will we continue after this?" Wang Yonghao said, pushing open the doors.

"The same place we were already headed, I think," Qian Shanyi said. "But let us speak of it in the evening. Focus on our most honorable imperator for now. I do believe she grows her own tea, and it's incredibly delicious."

Wang Yonghao's sect seals took only a single day to be made. It was no wonder - the refiners Wang Tingting worked with already had the forms made, and there was no need to further verify their sect's existence.

His pseudonym seals would still take weeks, of course, but they could not risk waiting around for that long. Qian Shanyi would send a message to Wang Tingting later, to have them delivered by post. For now, Wang Yonghao would simply have to pretend to be an ordinary person, and use one of the seals they already prepared well in advance. It would not be perfect, but should still pass casual inspection.

And so they set off once again, on the road to the Solar Whirligig.

Qian Shanyi expected Wang Yonghao to argue more about their destination - if the sudden connection unnerved her, then she figured it would be terrifying for him - but he seemed upbeat, if anything. Perhaps he already expected danger around every corner, and so for once seeing a glimpse of it coming in advance was comforting.

But Solar Whirligig was still a good month and a half of travel away. Qian Shanyi's mind was occupied with far more immediate concerns - such as her little bean project.

The first step in dealing with the beans was to properly dry them. Initially, Qian Shanyi and Wang Yonghao planned to simply leave them out in the sun - that was how the books she read suggested doing it, after all - but that took weeks, and frankly, the ground in the world fragment was still terribly wet. Given that a good chunk of their first harvest clearly hadn't dried, this idea had to be abandoned.

Fortunately, she already had a solution - it merely needed to be expanded. Back when she was first designing the chiclotron, she already anticipated needing to dry things, and built a drying cabinet with that purpose in mind - supplied with air from the fire nodes, and with plenty of draft for air circulation. The cabinet was far too small to fit all their beans, but they had plenty of wood, and so building a larger one was an affair of only a single short evening.

The second step was the shelling, breaking the pods apart to release the beans inside. Linghui Mei said this was traditionally done by putting them in a basket and stomping on the shells until they cracked, and Qian Shanyi saw no reason to re-invent the flying sword. A large glass flask served perfectly well in place of a basket, and stomping didn't seem to take all that long.

Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site.

Which brought her to the last step: winnowing.

After the pods cracked, the dried, edible beans were mixed up together with the equally dried, but completely inedible shell fragments. They had to be separated, or else the beans could not be cooked. Once more according to Linghui Mei, this was traditionally done by tossing the beans into the air on a windy day - the light shells would blow away in the wind, while the heavier beans would fall back down to the ground.

There was just one little problem: there was no wind in the world fragment.

Qian Shanyi tried her second idea, of picking the beans out of the mix by hand for all of five minutes before giving up in frustration. She could not stomach having to do that every other month. She needed a better solution.

Back in Flowering Azalea Springs, while they were busy dealing with Wang Tingting, Qian Shanyi sent Linghui Mei out to buy her some wool, and a small spinning wheel to go along with it - she figured it would come in handy eventually. She could have made her own, of course, or even repurposed her rope spinning contraption - but frankly, it was incredibly rickety and a pain to work with even at the best of times. There was no substitute for a properly constructed tool.

The spinning wheel was of no use for her, at least at the moment - but the woolen string held plenty of promise. She built a square wooden frame, one with little pegs on the sides, and ran the string between the pegs, weaving it into a dense sieve.

Her hope was that it would be dense enough to hold back the beans while letting the chaff fall through, and it worked… for a short while. The chaff quickly caught on the woolen strings, got tangled in the fibres, and soon the sieve turned into a solid mess of wool and chaff, the holes blocked up completely, until it could filter absolutely nothing. Shaking the chaff loose did little to help - it stuck to the wool pretty well.

Qian Shanyi sighed. She had the foundations of an idea in front of her, but it clearly still needed work.

What she needed was something thin, strong and smooth, to make a sieve the chaff would not stick to - a metal wire, perhaps, though that would be far too expensive. If only she could -

Qian Shanyi snorted, as an idea came into her head - and then giggled, as an even better one came to replace it. Oh, what treasures her mind supplied sometimes.

"Hey, Mei?" she called out, setting her unfinished sieve aside. "Come over here, will you? I may have an idea for how to better let you pass as a human."

Linghui Mei was sitting all the way on the edge of the world fragment, practicing her dagger throws into a block of wood. It seemed that her losses against Qian Shanyi affected her more than she wanted to admit, because she asked Wang Yonghao for help the very evening they arrived in Flowering Azalea Springs.

He taught her how to throw a dagger differently - there was a way to toss it blade-first, instead of letting it spin and risk hitting your enemy with the handle, and she had been practicing it ever since, the rhythmic thumps of steel against wood resounding around the world fragment like a bizarre clock. Despite her concentration, as soon as Qian Shanyi called after her, she got up and headed in her direction.

"To help me pass as a human?" she asked curiously. "I don't understand. Nobody can tell me apart from a human."

"Only as long as you stick entirely to the human form," Qian Shanyi corrected her, "But that means you cannot use your spiritual tails, your strongest weapon. And if you do use them - there is a risk that some dog will catch your scent. It's a vulnerability, one I am unhappy with. But I think I found a solution, at least a partial one. Tell me - how do you feel about being a sheep?"

"How do I feel about sheep?" Linghui Mei asked in confusion. "I'm… not sure I ever had to think about them. Their meat is fine?"

"So you are fine with a bit of sheep action?" Qian Shanyi said, keeping her face impassive through sheer force of will.

"I suppose?"

Qian Shanyi let a small grin onto her face. Only a very small one, lest she spook her away.

Foolish, foolish disciple. Be careful what you agree to.

"This is humiliating," Linghui Mei hissed, her face beet-red and buried in her knees.

"Stay still or I'll end up cutting you," Qian Shanyi said, keeping a hold of one of Linghui Mei's tails with one hand. Her other held a dagger, one she was using to slowly shave the fluffy tail. A small pile of jiuweihu fur was already gathered by her feet, growing larger by the minute.

It sat right alongside a long braid of hair, identical to one that grew on Qian Shanyi's own head. She made Linghui Mei transform into herself, and shaved her head - her hair was strong and smooth, exactly the material she was looking for in her bean sieve. A full head of hair was far more than she needed, really - it should give her plenty of material to work with for many months to come. And if she ever needed more, she could simply shave Linghui Mei again.

"Only your degenerate mind could have ever come up with this," Linghui Mei snapped at her, pulling her out of her thoughts. Her hands grew claws for a brief moment, before they vanished again.

"My mind is fine," Qian Shanyi said, still managing to keep the laughter in - though even her composure was starting to fray. "I already told you my reasoning. I'll knit you a shirt from jiuweihu fur, and if some dog catches your scent - you'll have an excuse. If some of it rubs off on me, or on Yonghao, or on any of our things - well, that must be the shirt again. And if anyone questions why you have to wear it, you can tell them it's a sect secret, that it helps you deal with your special constitution, one that caused you health problems from birth. It's a perfect cover, one that nobody can question - at least not legally, not without violating the sect accords."

There were upsides and downsides to her idea, of course - even if it gave them an excuse, it also made them far more visible, if under a different light. Qian Shanyi wasn't sure if they'd ever resort to using it, not unless they also could find an excuse as to why the scent of the shirt seemed to occasionally vanish. But having the option would be far better than not.

Linghui Mei raised her head, glaring Qian Shanyi in the face, searching for any sign of falsehood - but Qian Shanyi had long since trained to show no sign of her true feelings.

"Don't you dare tell Yonghao about this," Linghui Mei said, clenching her jaw.

"Of course I'll tell him," Qian Shanyi said, giving Linghui Mei an innocent look. She got to the end of the tail, and turned it over, starting from the beginning. It looked absolutely hilarious when it was half-shaven. "Why would I hide this?"

"Don't you dare."

"Who is going to stop me, mm?"

Linghui Mei snarled, and leapt onto her feet, tearing her tail out of Qian Shanyi's grasp and storming away. It blurred into smoke and ink, its shape dissolving, until it snapped back into existence - just as fluffy as before, all the fur having grown back in an instant.

"Wait!" Qian Shanyi called after her, laughter finally breaking through. "My dearest sheep, how could you abandon your pastor so cruelly?"

"You already have enough," Linghui Mei said without even turning around. Her other tail fished her dagger out of her belt, and lashed out, tossing it ahead of herself. It hit the edge of the block of wood ten meters away, and bounced off. "I have to practice."

Qian Shanyi laughed again and started to gather up the fur. She wasn't wrong - there was plenty of it to get started, to figure out how she could thread it into the woolen strings, ones that would give the shirt its structure.

Perhaps it was too early to ask Linghui Mei to wear a cute little cow bell. She'd have to give it a little bit more time.

A week had passed in quiet travel. Hopping from one ship to another, the Five Sealed Hills region quickly vanished into the distance behind them - and the threat of Fang Jiugui together with it.

Whenever they came to a town, Qian Shanyi would leave to visit the post office, to ask about the news and check the local cultivator almanac, to look for anything that might throw a wrench into their plans. Once, she heard of a tournament in town - and hurried back to their tavern. By the time she arrived, there was already someone asking for Wang Yonghao - it seemed that he had already been registered, perhaps by mistake. They left quietly through a window before they could be seen.

The time was, as usual, working against them. Qian Shanyi had found her thinking turning to statistics, even if it felt off to apply them so directly to her own life. Her deal with Jian Wei was to bring him twenty swords in six months, yet they were still short, and they'd already wasted a month and a half on making the seals. The Solar Whirligig was another month and a half of travel away - it only left them so much time to investigate the place.

On top of that, if Wang Yonghao's luck threw some coincidence their way every week or so, then all it took was a single mistake to throw all their plans into disarray. They had to keep rolling the dice, and hope that they never came up snake eyes. It was a terrible way to gamble - yet alone to live.

The most frustrating part was that geographically, Solar Whirligig was close - but it was separated from them by a desolate, sun-scorched, rocky desert, one so hot that not even grass could grow there. If either of them had a flying sword, then skipping across would have been simplicity itself, the risk of luck eliminated - but they had none, and so had to take the far longer way around. And so Qian Shanyi looked as hard as she could - for any building foundation cultivator that would agree to ferry them across, or any speedy demon beast sturdy enough to survive the journey.

It was, perhaps, down to luck that she had found her answer in a stack of pamphlets, left carelessly behind on the counter of one of the postal offices. She took one when the postmaster wasn't looking, and quickly made her retreat, heading back to their tavern.

"I've finally found a solution to our travel troubles," she said, entering the room. Wang Yonghao and Linghui Mei were already there - waiting for her to return. They already had a ship booked for the evening, and their stop in this town was meant to be quite short.

"What is it?" Wang Yonghao said, rising from the bed.

"This," Qian Shanyi said, slapping the pamphlet down on the table.

It was heavily simplified, and drawn in flat, single-colored ink, likely to make it more amenable to imperial copying techniques. At first glance, it looked like the image of a building, quite narrow and long, with rows of windows along each side - but below, one could see a row of wheels. A cart or carriage of some sort, with a strange construction.

And below the picture were a couple lines, in stylised script.

Fellow cultivators, have you encountered a bottleneck? Or are you seeking lands still left untapped? Look no further - the Steel Torrent Sect welcomes you to the Solar Whirligig, where all things are possible! Seek us out in the town of Sparking Sulfurium, and only three short days will stand between you and your new adventure!