How Can a Transmigrator Not Have a Cheat!

Night. A bright moon, sparse stars. Yizhuang. The bedroom of the west wing. Beside the desk, under dim candlelight. 【Name: Liu Xiu】 【Age: Eighteen】 【Realm: Hundred-Day Foundation Building (40/100)】 【Affiliation: Maoshan Sect】 【Arts: Shangqing Maoshan Great Cavern True Scripture (Entry), Green Satchel Qi-Observation Art (Great Completion), Mayi Physiognomy (Great Completion), Lesser Liuren Palm-Divination Method (Great Completion)】 "My talent in fate calculation seems a bit too high... but what my master is skilled in is thunder arts..." Liu Xiu, seated at the desk, curled his lip, picked up the brush, and quickly crossed out the attribute panel he had written by hand on the paper. Then he tore the sheet off, stuffed it into his mouth, chewed a few times, and swallowed it. "Qin Amei's matter is settled for the moment. Next, sit and wait to collect the money... then wait for a cheat..." Liu Xiu frowned, thinking. To think that he, a dignified transmigrator from Blue Star, actually had no cheat. That would not do. If he later ran into a fellow from back home who did have one, how humiliating that would be! "No. I have to come up with a cheat..." Liu Xiu thought it to himself. He knew his talent in cultivation. It could only be called middling—neither good nor bad. This could be seen from his present realm of Hundred-Day Foundation Building. A hundred strands of spiritual power, and in twenty days of cultivation he had barely managed to refine forty. One could see his talent was ordinary. An average of two strands of spiritual power a day. At that pace, it would take him fifty days to finish Hundred-Day Foundation Building and reach the realm of Refining Essence into Qi. First, a word on the cultivation realms of this world. Once Shi Jian took him as a disciple and taught him the Shangqing Maoshan Great Cavern True Scripture, he learned how the cultivation world divided its realms. They were, at the very start, Hundred-Day Foundation Building, which laid the foundation, and after it Refining Essence into Qi, Refining Qi into Spirit, Refining Spirit and Returning to the Void, and Refining Void and Merging with the Dao. After merging with the Dao, one was an immortal. But what kind of immortal, exactly—that, Liu Xiu did not know! Nothing for it. His master had not said. Shrug.jpg. "Or else... hand-craft a cheat?" A thought stirred in Liu Xiu. He felt the idea was a little unrealistic, a little too fantastical. But then he thought of that evening, eating at the restaurant with the Third Master of the gambling den. After they had eaten roast duck passed off as roast goose, he felt reality was the more fantastical of the two, and what he was thinking no longer seemed quite so fantastical. Besides, a person had to have dreams! With no dreams, what difference was there from a salted fish! "Look into it first, and try..." While keeping the books, noting the expenses and income of today's affair at the Qin household, Liu Xiu pondered where he ought to begin with his cheat. He thought and thought, and, feeling he had no lead, pinched his fingers and calculated with his Great Completion Lesser Liuren Palm-Divination Method. "Eh? Someone from home is coming? Such a coincidence?" Liu Xiu raised a brow at the hexagram he had calculated, murmured inwardly that he understood, and began looking forward to tomorrow. "Say, is my talent in fate calculation this high because I know the broad course of the future?" Liu Xiu's thoughts ran every which way. He put away the account book and began the day's evening liturgy. Liu Xiu rose, left the bedroom, and came to the door of the ritual room. By moonlight and dim candlelight, he looked at the rather crude ritual room, which enshrined only portraits of the Three Pure Ones and statues of the Three Mao True Lords. To be fair, Liu Xiu felt this was not as it should be. After all, this old—old yet ever firmer, firm as a boulder—master of his cultivated thunder arts. By rights, they ought to enshrine a few immortals and gods of the Thunder Ministry. "Is there another ritual room inside Master's room?" Liu Xiu turned his head and glanced at the room pressed right against the left side of the ritual room—that is, Shi Jian's bedroom. He was not thinking of sneaking in. At least, after he had seen those mosquitoes that tried to bore into Shi Jian's bedroom get shocked until they crackled and fell to the ground, he had thoroughly given up the idea of sneaking in. Next came the usual offering of incense and the evening liturgy. Yes. It was not only monks who did evening liturgy. Daoists did evening liturgy too. The course of the evening liturgy was complicated to tell in full. Put simply, it was chanting the Eight Great Divine Spells, then intoning the Three Scriptures of Salvation from Suffering and reciting the Nine Precious Declarations. These procedures, in Liu Xiu's view, were no different from the office drones and beasts of burden of later ages. Anyway, he felt there was no difference. The reason was simple! Take chanting the Eight Great Divine Spells. It corresponded exactly to the whole staff gathering at quitting time to shout the closing slogan, roaring out in one go the grievances of overtime, clients going out of their way to make trouble, and the friction with coworkers—all those vexing things—and forcibly pumping oneself back up. As for intoning the Three Scriptures of Salvation from Suffering, in Liu Xiu's view it corresponded exactly to complaining in private with coworkers after work, cursing the client for a dumbass, and pouring out, in the form of "talking," all the resentment held in through the day and the accumulated humiliation. As for the last, reciting the Three Mao Salvation Declarations, that corresponded to writing the daily report and reporting to one's superior, giving a clear account of what one had done today and what problems one had met. It was not only at a job that one was a beast of burden. Become a Daoist, and one was a beast of burden all the same! "Eh? Why do I feel I've been a Daoist for nothing?" Liu Xiu made a sound of surprise in his heart. When he was not a Daoist he was a beast of burden; as a Daoist he was still a beast of burden. He suddenly felt he had become a Daoist for nothing. "But one can't quite put it that way. At least, as a Daoist, I don't have to face those dumbass bosses..." Liu Xiu comforted himself and began to concentrate on the evening liturgy. When it was over, he offered incense to the patriarchs once more. Then he came to the study next door and looked at the shelves, row on row of the Daoist canon, some thick and some thin, and all sorts of books that could be used in cultivation. "These bottom few rows of the shelves—you can look through them more when I am not here. Besides some of the Daoist canon, there are also methods of the Five Arts of Daoism in here!" Those were Shi Jian's own words. They were also the main reason that, besides cultivating the Shangqing Maoshan Great Cavern True Scripture, Liu Xiu had himself cultivated the Green Satchel Qi-Observation Art and other methods. Put simply, he had been left to free-range! "Keep reading... First get the acupoints straight. Otherwise, always moving spiritual power to cultivate by following memory, without even knowing which meridians I'm traveling, it always feels off..." Time rushed past. The night passed without incident. The next day, the sky was faintly bright. Bang! Bang! Bang... A knocking, not particularly urgent, came with a voice carrying a hint of ingratiation. "Is A-Xiu in?" "Who is it!" In the wing room, Liu Xiu, knowing full well the visitor was the original body's eldest uncle, called out anyway. He took his time getting up from the bed and dressing, and only after brushing his teeth did he go open the gate of the Yizhuang. There was nothing much to say of Liu Xiu's talk with the original body's eldest uncle. It was nothing more than this: the Liu family, knowing he had truly become a Daoist and had truly gained some real ability, had begun to make amends and win back the relationship from before. For instance, returning the deeds to those fields the uncles of the original body had seized. Of course, Liu Xiu did not take the so-called deeds. Nor could he be bothered with their claim that they had only been keeping them for him before. He accepted only the money the other had prepared, and a cicada-shaped jade pendant carved from white jade. "This jade pendant..." Something stirred in Liu Xiu's heart. He talked a while longer with the original body's eldest uncle, and only after seeing him off did he examine the cicada-shaped jade pendant in his hand and murmur inwardly. "A magic treasure? Well, then. It really was someone from home coming!" Holding it up to the sun, Liu Xiu looked at the jade pendant, which faintly bore a few hidden cracks. Somehow, he more or less understood the direction his research into a cheat ought to take. Also, don't misunderstand. His Liu family was no cultivation clan. This jade pendant was probably just something this eldest uncle of his had bought (picked up). Just as he meant to look carefully and see what type of magic treasure it was, he heard a nose-in-the-air voice rise behind him. "Junior Brother, who was that just now? Eh?" Shi Shaojian, coming in through the gate of the Yizhuang, let out a light sound of surprise. His gaze fixed on the cicada-shaped jade pendant in Liu Xiu's hand. Shi Jian, a step ahead of Shi Shaojian, raised his brows in astonishment. "This is... a Voice-Transmitting Jade Pendant?" "A Voice-Transmitting Jade Pendant?" At the words Voice-Transmitting Jade Pendant, Shi Shaojian instinctively reached to take the cicada-shaped jade pendant from Liu Xiu's hand. His hand had only just reached out when he heard Shi Jian continue. "Pity this Voice-Transmitting Jade Pendant is already broken. And it was originally meant to be a pair..." Shi Jian's voice brought Shi Shaojian's outstretched hand to a stop. He said, "Broken, huh," yawned, said, "Don't call me for the meal," and headed for his own bedroom to sleep. "Master, what is a Voice-Transmitting Jade Pendant?" Liu Xiu could roughly guess a little from the literal meaning, but he still asked out of curiosity, and along the way handed the cicada-shaped jade pendant to Shi Jian. Shi Jian took it, looked it over, and said, "A so-called Voice-Transmitting Jade Pendant is a magic treasure cultivators of the past refined in order to contact fellow Daoists..." Two Voice-Transmitting Jade Pendants could send voices across a thousand li in real time. But because of the times, this means of sending voices was already rarely seen. Nothing for it. For one, the spiritual qi of heaven and earth was growing thinner and thinner, and the materials for refining Voice-Transmitting Jade Pendants were hard to find. For another, the cultivation world had taken to using the Thousand-Li Voice Transmission for contact at a distance—convenient and quick, needing only a puddle of water. "Oh, oh..." Liu Xiu nodded, thinking to himself that he had broadened his knowledge. Shi Jian hummed, asked a little about where the pendant had come from, and handed the cicada-shaped jade pendant back to Liu Xiu. "Although this Voice-Transmitting Jade Pendant is already broken, you can still keep it, and later use it to refine some other magic implement..." Seeing Liu Xiu nod, Shi Jian hummed, glanced toward the Ghost-Sealing Vault beside the ritual room, and raised a brow. "Has any business come in these past few days?" "There has been. But only the one..." Liu Xiu spoke of the Qin household matter, telling it from start to finish, including how he had deliberately frightened that Third Master of the gambling den. "Well done..." Shi Jian's knitted brows eased a little. Satisfaction showing in his eyes, he looked at Liu Xiu, who handled things far more smoothly than his son... his disciple. Though he was not very pleased that Liu Xiu had not beaten that Zhang San until his soul scattered. After all, the other had nearly cost a life. Liu Xiu did not know mind-reading, but he could read an expression a little. Watching Shi Jian's expression, he began, tactfully, to put in a good word for Zhang San. After all, he was no Tang Sanzang. Hearing that Zhang San had given that gambling dog A-Long a thorough beating, Shi Jian's brows lifted slightly, and he nodded, thinking to himself that he would let it go this time. "How has your cultivation been of late? Anything you don't understand..." "There is. Quite a lot!" Liu Xiu took a little notebook he had prepared from his bosom and handed it to Shi Jian. Shi Jian was silent a moment, took it, and looked at Liu Xiu with a strange expression. "...Not a bad habit!" "Hehe. The palest ink beats the best memory!" Liu Xiu chuckled, and seized the chance to start asking about matters of cultivation, and about the things he needed to understand in order to hand-craft a cheat. Right. He already knew where to begin in hand-crafting a cheat. Though he felt that if he actually managed to craft one, that would count as him being impressive. Time rushed past. In the blink of an eye, more than an hour had gone by. Shi Jian looked at Liu Xiu, still chattering on with questions, and felt both glad and helpless. Glad that he had taken a hardworking disciple. Helpless that this disciple of his... seemed to be reaching a bit too far. "Stop. Your idea is a good one, but... have you considered that this automatic divination you speak of does not actually exist... Even certain magic treasures still need someone to interpret the hexagram..." "Oh, oh. So that's how it is..." ............ Time hurried on. In the blink of an eye, it was the tenth day of the fifth month. Night. Yizhuang. In the bedroom of the west wing. "Condense!" Liu Xiu sat cross-legged on the meditation cushion on the floor, his hands forming the seal of a Treasure-Refining Incantation for refining implements, one Shi Jian had personally taught him. Before him, a white-jade cicada hung suspended in midair—though by now it ought to be called a narration cheat. He first took the white-jade cicada as physical hardware integrating a sound card, a graphics card, and memory. Then, using artifact refining as his flashing tool, he flashed into the white-jade cicada the Mayi Physiognomy and the Lesser Liuren Palm-Divination Method, which served as the computational logic, together with the Green Satchel Qi-Observation Art, which served as the tool for gathering data. Oh, right—forgot to say. Before he worked in the entertainment business, he had been a programmer, and had moonlighted as an electrical engineer. "Next is building the operating system!" Liu Xiu muttered inwardly, hung the white-jade cicada that carried the narration cheat about his neck, and connected to it through divine sense. "Hm? Why is there no sound? That shouldn't be." He was just finding it strange when a jammed, ice-cold mechanical voice sounded, then turned into his own voice, ringing in his heart. 【Heh heh heh. Don't think I can't see through that old bastard's little scheme. He long ago hid the Lightning-Rushing Thunder Fist manual in secret at the bottom of the cabinet in his bedroom. Once I steal this supreme art, no one in the entire cultivation world will be able to stand against me...】 "???" Why does this cheat of mine feel a bit like a villain? But I really am impressive!!! Even as Liu Xiu admired himself, the little man in his heart, at the sound of the narration cheat, put on the blank face of an old man staring at a phone on the subway. 【Heh heh heh. This old wretch who won't die really thinks I can't see the flaws in his Yizhuang formation! Before dawn tomorrow, at the moment when the yin and yang of heaven and earth trade places and clear qi and turbid qi separate, mix the prepared black dog's blood with a menstrual cloth and splash it on the eye of the formation, and one can break the restriction outright, charge straight into the bedroom, and seize the Lightning-Rushing Thunder Fist!】 "???" Wait— You can calculate even this? Liu Xiu's heart filled with doubt and incomprehension...