Coffin-Nail Transformer!

Good news: Shi Shaojian wasn't scorched! Bad news: Shi Shaojian had pissed himself... Liu Xiu barely held it in, head lowered, not looking at Shi Shaojian still twitching on the ground. Shi Jian checked Shi Shaojian, made sure he was all right, and looked at Liu Xiu, whose shoulders were shaking. To be fair, he felt the kid had spoken slowly on purpose! Fine. He thought it over and decided it probably wasn't what he imagined. Same as ever: this child was a good boy, loyal and filial both! "How exactly did you cultivate?" Shi Jian asked with a frown, full of curiosity and deep bewilderment. Soon, that bewilderment only grew deeper. In the west wing, in Liu Xiu's bedroom, Shi Jian stared blankly at a thing on the little table in the corner, hooked up to electric wires... a transformer?? "Mm. This ought to be the transformer, right?!" Shi Jian thought, his gaze shifting to a bundle of coffin nails on the little table, bound tight with cotton thread. Both ends of the coffin nails were wound with gleaming bare copper wire. Between each layer of copper wire lay window-pasting paper soaked in tung oil, keeping the layers apart, and from each end hung a long length of electric wire. This was the transformer Liu Xiu had cobbled together by hand. Coffin nails stood in for the iron core. They could gather magnetic force and let the two sets of copper wire transmit electrical energy between them. The cotton thread on the coffin nails was there to keep them from scattering. And to make sure there would be no leakage or short that wrecked the line, he had also padded every layer of copper wire with window-pasting paper soaked in tung oil and dried through, to improve the insulation. The worlds were different, but controlling voltage with coils was still the same. By controlling the coils, he had brought the voltage down to about fifty volts. As for why he had suddenly thought of hand-making a transformer to cultivate palm thunder—simple. The narration cheat, of course. Time went back to when Shi Jian taught him the thunder arts! "Heh heh heh! This old wretch who won't die has finally brought himself to teach you the thunder arts. Day after day he guarded against you in every way and sent you off to chores and odd jobs, too stingy to teach you even half a scrap of Daoist arts..." "...You looked at what the Shangqing Jade Pivot Palm-Thunder Secret Instruction says—that the human body is a small heaven and earth—and at sensing the rhythm of thunder until the two resonate and connect, and your heart suddenly grew clear..." "...Orthodox methods insist you grind away at refining your own inner thunder, a waste of time and effort. Who are you? Why should you stick to the rules? Better to find another shortcut. Build a simple transformer with your own hands, borrow the electricity running through the city's wires to draw in outer thunder, skip those grinding steps of inner refinement, and speed straight to the power of thunder. Just you wait. The day you temper palm thunder with mortal electricity and succeed, you're going to dazzle those two, master and disciple, until their dog eyes go blind!" To be fair, this cheat was really useful! Liu Xiu muttered it silently to himself! "This is a transformer?" Shi Jian still sounded less than certain when he asked. For no other reason than that the thing on the table looked far too crude and rough. "Yes. This is a transformer..." Liu Xiu explained how a transformer worked. Shi Jian didn't really follow, but he nodded all the same. "Oh, oh. But how do you know how to make this?" "I studied in the provincial capital..." Liu Xiu said. He wasn't lying. His original body really had studied in the provincial capital—only for one semester, and then the original body's parents were gone. As for what came after... better left unsaid! "Oh, oh..." Shi Jian nodded to show he understood, then asked, even more puzzled, "But... how do you use this to help cultivate the thunder arts?" "..." "..." The bedroom went suddenly silent! Shi Jian's old face reddened under the look Liu Xiu turned on him. He coughed into his fist. "Ahem. I'm just curious!" Hm? Why did he feel he'd heard this before! Thinking of it, he remembered the last time they returned to Yizhuang. Liu Xiu had asked him something, he had explained it all the way through, and Liu Xiu still hadn't understood. This very moment was exactly that very moment! Shi Jian's old face grew redder. Liu Xiu pretended not to see, and patiently started explaining voltage, current, and the rest all over again. "Oh, oh..." "Got it?" "Got it..." Shi Jian was about to speak, then shut his mouth and looked at Liu Xiu with no expression. Liu Xiu acted as if he hadn't noticed and turned toward the transformer. "I just used this transformer to convert the voltage into a safe threshold a human body can bear, to help me cultivate the Shangqing Jade Pivot Palm-Thunder Secret Instruction. At first I thought it wouldn't work. Luckily, the result proved I succeeded!" "..." Was it possible that you... hadn't succeeded either!? Shi Jian knit his brows. He didn't know how to explain Liu Xiu's present state to him. After a moment he said, "Cultivate with it, and let your master see!" "All right!" Liu Xiu fetched a meditation cushion and sat. His left hand took the transformer's neutral wire, his right the live wire, and he began cultivating the Shangqing Jade Pivot Palm-Thunder Secret Instruction. As Liu Xiu cultivated, Shi Jian saw wisps of thunder, black and sludge-like in texture, rise over his body. His brow creased. "Water-viscera thunder comes first... this kid's primordial yang is gone... Hm? Eh? Hm?" Shi Jian's expression slowly went blank. "Master, what's wrong?" Liu Xiu turned his head without stopping. Shi Jian said nothing. He only locked his brows, narrowed his eyes, and opened them again. Azure thunder-light flashed in Shi Jian's eyes. This was the Dharma Eye opening. Once it opened, he saw the five viscera, five qi, and five thunders inside Liu Xiu's body. He also saw, within Liu Xiu's kidneys, water-viscera thunder temporarily transformed by circulating the Shangqing Jade Pivot Palm-Thunder Secret Instruction. Yes—temporarily. By his estimate, this water-viscera thunder of Liu Xiu's would last only about twelve hours. "So this kid... has cultivated the Shangqing Jade Pivot Palm-Thunder Secret Instruction. But what he's cultivated is a temporary one..." Shi Jian muttered inwardly. The more he thought, the more his head ached and his Dao heart felt sick, sickened by the way Liu Xiu cultivated. The orthodox, proper way to cultivate the thunder arts was first to comprehend one's own small heaven and earth, then to ponder the changes of yin and yang, and only then to sense inner thunder, and by that gather and stir the qi of the five viscera until it gave birth to the five thunders. Only after the five viscera and five thunders were fully gathered, and inner thunder completely formed, did one sense outer thunder and harvest the thunder of heaven and earth. Put plainly: only once there was a thunder seed could one harvest the thunder of heaven and earth and let that seed sprout, take root, and grow. But Liu Xiu... As for the small heaven and earth, Shi Jian didn't know whether Liu Xiu had comprehended it. Of the qi of the five thunders in Liu Xiu's five viscera, though, he hadn't seen a trace. In other words, Liu Xiu had used a transformer and electricity to skip the prerequisite steps and gone straight to harvesting outer thunder. And... Shi Jian suddenly didn't want to speak. At least, once he saw a thunder seed of water-viscera thunder sprouting inside Liu Xiu's kidney because of harvesting outer... touching a live wire, he rather didn't want to speak! "Is this how the thunder arts are cultivated?" Shi Jian's heart sank into bewilderment. He had cultivated the thunder arts all his life, and for the first time he looked upon the Dao's engendering with doubt and confusion. "Master, did I cultivate it wrong?" "N-no... I don't think so..." The corner of Shi Jian's mouth twitched as he spoke, his heart full of blankness. Shi Shaojian, twitching his way to the bedroom door, was not blank at all. His eyes lit up at the transformer in front of Liu Xiu, thunder-light circling Liu Xiu's body! "This is mine... aaaahhhh..." "..." ×2 For a moment the scene was quiet and noisy at once. Liu Xiu, seated on the meditation cushion, wore a strange look as he watched Shi Shaojian, who had grabbed the wire at the power inlet, get shocked again, and scream. To be fair, his senior brother could really take a shock!!