System Only Gives Me Useless Gifts

Shang Cang sat on the bed and stared outside at the sunny sky. The chanted verses from his grandfather’s echoed melodically throughout the ward. It was a habit that never failed to calm him down.

A quiet ruffling sound from Li Yun’s hospital bed interrupted Shang Cang from his chanting. Only a few minutes had passed, but Li Yun’s eyes were moving rapidly around. Shang Cang wasn’t sure what to expect from a doctor who had called himself a practitioner, but the man had saved his life.

“Hey Cang, what’s up with Dr. Li?” Yang Kang asked as he walked into the suite.

“He’s taking a nap,” Shang Cang replied. He shifted his attention to Yang Kang. “Dr. Yang, has Dr. Li always been like this?”

“Napping randomly?” Yang Kang thought back to the earlier days of their residency. “He did nap a lot before, but I haven’t seen him napping in a while.” Yang Kang reviewed Shang Cang’s chart and saw that Li Yun had already filled out some of the paperwork. “Are you related to Dr. Li? I don’t think I have ever seen him specifically request a surgery before.”

Shang Cang shook his head. “He wanted to consult with me about my grandfather.” He didn’t want to bring up feng shui unless asked. He heard there were laws against the practice. “Does Dr. Li practice TCM?”

“He has his own clinic on Caoben Street.”

Yang Kang quickly checked up on Shang Cang and left. In another twenty minutes, Shang Cang turned to Li Yun and wondered if he should wake him up. However, before he spoke up, Li Yun opened his eyes.

“Where did you go?” Shang Cang asked.

Li Yun also turned to look at Shang Cang. The question suggested that Shang Cang believed Li Yun wasn’t sleeping but had traveled elsewhere. “Inside the compass?”

“What did you see?” asked Shang Cang.

“Some places similar to what you and your ancestor had been to,” said Li Yun. “I’ll draw up the artifacts and see if it’s something you recognize.”

Li Yun wanted to see if what he saw was different from what Shang Cang saw, or if the illusions were created by the stories and narrative he had heard. He borrowed a pen and notepad from the nurse and quickly sketched the red fire lantern. After five minutes, he revealed the sketch to Shang Cang.

Shang Cang eyes lit up, “I think it’s the same.” Shang Cang tried to recall the lantern it took a day of climbing the tree to get. “The detailing is very intricate, so I don’t remember exactly. But I think it’s the same, you really went there?”

Li Yun nodded. “I saw the Queen Mother, but it’s a strange experience.”

Shang Cang slid his hand over the compass and contemplated on what it met. “I think you should hold onto the compass.”

“Keep it for now, it’s your lineage. You might want to pass it onto your children.”

Li Yun needed more training if he planned to reenter the compass and defeat the Queen Mother. He didn’t want to experience the pain of dying in a dream. Luckily, he learned how to escape.

“I’ll talk to you later, for now. You need to stay in the hospital overnight for observation. You should be able to return back to your apartment tomorrow.”

“Thank you,” Shang Cang spoke warmly.

Li Yun left the suite and returned to his office to research his new ability. When he woke up, the system had congratulated him on completing Feng Shui to small perfection.

Congratulations for Comprehending Feng Shui to Small Perfection.

Jing Sonar Awarded.

Missions:

Comprehend Meridian to Pinnacle Perfection.

Comprehend Alchemy to Small Perfection.

Li Yun activated his new ability, Jing Sonar. A single ripple of qi emitted from his dantian. The ripple flowed through the entire office like typical submarine sonar. Li Yun saw all the spaces within a five-meter radius. The images appeared to be different variations of density and colors, almost like a temperature mapping, but Li Yun wasn’t sure. He could see people moving about two rooms away and walking about from the hallway.

It worked like his cognitive mapping ability using his senses but worked without being obstructed by walls and sound barriers.

Li Yun shifted his focus to the pencil in his hand. He could see the interstitial spaces of the wood fibers. The Jing Sonar weaved through the vertices and lattices of the wood structure. He couldn't see the molecular structure itself, but the spaces in between as the sonar bounced away from the molecular structures. Slowly, the sonar moved through the layered carbon lattices of the graphite. If he didn't already know they were carbon molecules, he wouldn't have been able to guess.

"Ah s***!" Li Yun dropped the pencil out of his hand. Out of all the crazy things he could do, it was at that moment he realized how crazy his powers were. Everything was finally sinking in. His hands shook with the sudden realization that everything that he was seeing shouldn’t be humanly possible. If what he was seeing allowed him to discern the molecular structure of objects, there were too many possibilitie. Possibilities that even he couldn't imagine.

He grabbed the glass in front of him. The crystals of the glass were more tightly packed than the wood fibers and graphite. The tetrahedra space of the structure was tightly bound together. Li Yun set down the glass and tried out the Jing Sonar in other objects. After investigating over two dozen objects, he nearly collapsed from exhaustion.

A question resurfaced in his mind. Was there a reason he had received the ability? From what the Queen Mother said, it sounded like she knew more than she was revealing. He wondered if she knew about his system. Why had the system given him such ability? What was the purpose?

Li Yun rubbed his glabella and lifted his bangs away from his eyes. "Now is not the time to think about questions that have no answer. I should figure out how to utilize this ability."

Before Li Yun left the hospital, he used Jing Sonar around Shang Cang’s room. As he had expected, the compass had a mystical glow.

“Shang Cang, in two weeks, you should be able to start work at the Shennong Factory,” said Li Yun. “Before you start your shift, I want to enter the compass again.”

“Is it really okay to work?” asked Shang Cang, he didn’t know the process to get a work visa was so efficient in China.

“It usually takes four to six weeks, but a friend helped out,” said Li Yun.

Shang Cang was amazed, it seemed like China had less bureaucratic red tapes than what he was used to. He had to deal with all sorts of paperwork and long wait time to enter the welfare program in Maple Country.

With Shang Cang’s settled, Li Yun could start experimenting with the Jing Sonar, but what should he focus on first? His eyes lit up as he remembered an invitation from his old friend, Elder Fu Yaoshi. It had been a long time since he went treasure hunting. With everything that had been happening, treasure hunting was the least important hobby on Li Yun’s list. It was fun and profitable, but it was also time-consuming.

There was a merchant group heading into town with new antiques and products. It would be beneficial to see if Jing Sonar had any effect on artifacts.