Shi Shaojian proved in fact that 220 volts of electricity could not electrocute a "250"—a fool—to death. Aside from a bit of scorching on his hands, even as he lay twitching on the ground, his gaze stayed fixed on the transformer.
"......"
If you want one, just say so!
At worst, I'll hand-build you another!
There's still a basket of coffin nails in the rear-courtyard mortuary anyway.
Liu Xiu looked at Shi Shaojian twitching on the ground, white smoke rising off his body, and muttered to himself. He had long since let go of the neutral and live wires.
He more or less understood what Shi Shaojian was thinking. The man had cultivated palm thunder for a full eighteen years and never succeeded.
This talent wasn't even fit to look at next to an ordinary cultivator, let alone beside Shi Jian, who possessed an innate thunder-spirit body.
He could understand Shi Shaojian's urgency!
Also, to be fair, Liu Xiu felt that in the thunder arts Shi Shaojian wasn't firm at all—not the least bit solid as a rock.
Shi Jian, who had always doted on his son, did not look at Shi Shaojian this time. He looked instead at the transformer on the table and at Liu Xiu seated on the meditation cushion.
He looked back and forth between the two until Liu Xiu frowned, glanced at himself, then at Shi Jian, unable to tell what was wrong with this master of his. He only went on with what he had meant to say. "Master, actually, you can use the neutral and live wires to cultivate thunder arts too!"
Though this was his first time cultivating thunder arts, over the past thirty days he had spent every free moment steeped in the study.
He had more or less finished the Daoist canon he was allowed to read, and had gained a simple understanding of the thunder arts as well.
"Hm?"
Shi Jian pressed down the blankness in his heart and looked at Liu Xiu with doubt in his eyes. Seeing this, Liu Xiu continued, "Master, at a realm like yours, cultivating thunder arts should require gathering the thunder of heaven and earth, right?"
"Right. Once inner thunder is achieved, what comes next is gathering the thunder between heaven and earth to strengthen and nourish the five viscera and five thunders!"
"It's like this, Master. In the Dao Fa Hui Yuan, Five Thunders Chapter, I saw the notes you wrote down. You said thunder qi isn't there only when thunder rolls on rainy days, but at every moment—it's only divided into latent thunder qi and manifested thunder, right?"
Liu Xiu asked. At those words Shi Jian shook his head and said, "That wasn't something your master said. It was said by the worthies of the Daoist tradition. Your master only recorded..."
"......"
Master, you're being a real contrarian!
Having left the meditation cushion and stood, Liu Xiu muttered this inwardly, then answered Shi Jian's rigorous manner with a solemn nod of agreement.
Shi Jian's expression eased slightly. He paused, then went on, "In fact, besides the thunder that comes with rain, thunder qi exists between heaven and earth at every moment. There is only a difference in strength..."
In a word, the voltage wasn't enough!
There was electrical energy in heaven and earth, but set beside the thunder of a storm, the voltage of the natural thunder between heaven and earth was far too low.
As he spoke, Shi Jian gave examples. "In truth, in every double-hour of every day, thunder qi is naturally born between heaven and earth. The wood qi of the yin and mao hours gives rise to green-grass thunder; the flourishing fire of the wu hour gives rise to pure-yang thunder; the killing metal of the you hour harbors dry thunder; and so on. Every double-hour has its own yin-yang thunder qi for cultivators of the thunder arts to gather and refine. There is no double-hour without thunder. Most cultivators simply scorn how weak the hidden thunder of ordinary days is, so they wait only for thunderstorms to gather heavenly thunder all at once. That is why people mistakenly think thunder exists only when lightning strikes."
Having said this, and thought of this, Shi Jian froze for a moment and pointed uncertainly at the transformer. "You wouldn't be wanting me to..."
"Yes, Master, you can give it a try. I think this kind of thunder, however you look at it, ought to be stronger than those weak hidden thunders you wrote about!"
This was two hundred and twenty volts of electricity!
If that wouldn't do, he could wind on another copper coil later and raise the voltage to six or seven hundred volts. If that still wouldn't do, he'd keep winding copper coils.
Liu Xiu set the meditation cushion in place. Seeing Shi Jian stare at the transformer with his brows tightly knotted, he thought a moment and went on.
"Master, as I recall, the Five Thunders system divides the thunder between heaven and earth into five thunders: Heaven, God, Dragon, Water, and Sheling, right?"
"Right..."
Shi Jian nodded, and then saw Liu Xiu go on at an easy pace. "And Sheling thunder is called demon thunder because it doesn't obey the imperial decree, right?"
"Right. Sheling thunder is different from the other four. It is not under the jurisdiction of the Heavenly Court, and when it acts it need not wait for an edict from the Heavenly Emperor. It only has to keep watch over the land and waters of its own domain, and so the Daoist classics also call it demon thunder." Shi Jian nodded to show that this was correct.
Before Liu Xiu could speak, Shi Jian went on, "This thunder comes from loyal ministers and righteous men through the ages who gave their lives for the country. In life their breasts were full of loyal blood. After they died, the common people, grateful for their past merits, raised shrines and made offerings of their own accord. Thus a wisp of remnant soul did not scatter. Year after year they absorbed incense and votive power, and in time condensed a mass of thunder qi that belonged solely to their native soil. They—no, one should say the earth-deities—were also called gods... like the earth-god temple across the street...
"Of these gods, some are gods and some are not. The core distinction is three characters: on the register, or not? Get onto the Investiture register and enter the official roster, and you are a god, and a god's thunder is called Man thunder! Thunder that is not a god's is demon thunder!"
At this, Shi Jian's brows creased slightly. He didn't quite see what Liu Xiu's talk of Sheling thunder had to do with this circuit.
Thinking so, he looked toward Liu Xiu, only to see him ponder a moment, then look at him and say, "Master, may I understand it this way? The Sheling thunder of old was a kind of thunder qi formed when the common people offered worship to loyal martyrs and heroes, and their own incense and heartfelt thoughts gathered together!"
"...Mm. Right!"
The moment Shi Jian finished, he suddenly sensed his Dao heart give a warning. Every fine hair on his back stood up with a rustle. Before he could react to what was happening, he saw Liu Xiu point at the electric wires in the room and say:
"In that case, may your disciple understand it this way? The electricity flowing inside these wires is also Sheling thunder. After all, the laborers at the power plant exhaust every sinew and ounce of strength offering this electricity up for the likes of us common folk to use, while the electricity itself is condensed from the blood and sweat of their labor and their everyday fixations... What do you think, Master?"
With that, Liu Xiu said no more. Shi Jian looked at him without expression, the corner of his mouth twitching several times, then spoke.
"Well said. Next time, don't say it!"
"Oh..."
Liu Xiu pulled a face and let out an "oh" and watched Shi Jian walk expressionlessly out of the room. Then he looked on helplessly at Shi Shaojian lying on the ground, who had fainted at some point he hadn't noticed.
"I really don't feel I said anything wrong..."
"......"
Right, right, right, you're not wrong!
I'm wrong, all right!
Reaching the doorway of the ritual room, Shi Jian stumbled and nearly lost his footing. He could not understand what Liu Xiu was thinking at all.
But he did know one thing: Liu Xiu's palm thunder had been cultivated all wrong, and what was more... he was spouting heretical talk that defied the statutes of the Thunder Bureau.
Most crucial of all, the process by which Liu Xiu cultivated palm thunder, and that crooked heresy just now, seemed... not to have been wrong in the least.
The more Shi Jian thought, the more his head ached. Not only did his Dao heart begin to feel unwell, but he also had the sense that the Thunder Bureau would send down heavenly thunder to strike Liu Xiu.
The reason was simple. What Liu Xiu had just said already touched the offenses of contravening Heaven's fixing of the thunder name-registers, and of falsely claiming orthodox dharma.
The matter could be large or small. If small, nothing at all would come of it. If large... it was enough to earn a trip to Fengdu Iron Prison Mountain.
Otherwise he would not have told Liu Xiu to shut his mouth, even though he felt what Liu Xiu said rather accorded with the Dao... Shi Jian suddenly froze.
He hurriedly stopped thinking any further about whether Liu Xiu was right or wrong. He was afraid that if he kept on, he would be convinced by Liu Xiu's crooked heresy.
Head aching, a puzzled Shi Jian began to recall how it had been. "So why did I take him as a disciple in the first place?"
He couldn't quite figure out what, a month ago, he had seen in Liu Xiu that made him accept the boy as a disciple!
At the same time,
on a certain unnamed mountain,
an evil cultivator named Liu Xiu stared blankly at a meteor streaming with thunder as it plunged straight down at him from the sky.
"Damned old heavens, fuck... I only killed a few hundred mortals. All they lost was their lives, but what I lost was love..."
Boom—
A tremendous crash...
The evil cultivator Liu Xiu was utterly destroyed, soul and spirit scattered. High in the Ninth Heaven, only a man and a woman—one holding Lei Gong's hammer, the other a lightning drum—shared an awkward glance.
"Did we hit the wrong person?"
"N-no... we didn't, right..."
"Mm-hm, mm-hm, we didn't hit the wrong one..."
Chapter 7