70 – Heavenly Golden Arrays

Back at the inn where Hanmei and the rest of the Jiushuang Sect disciples were staying.

“Which is why, to avoid causing another commotion, the City Lord has moved us to his residence for the time being,” I explained, relaying that Wanxia and Ningguang would be staying at the City Lord’s mansion rather than with the Jiushuang disciples.

“But wouldn’t Sister Hanmei be much safer staying within the City Lord’s mansion as well?” one of the Qi Refining disciples asked.

“The City Lord’s mansion is already full with guests arriving for the upcoming tournament,” I replied with the prepared excuse. “And besides, there are eight of you here.”

“Just keep her safe. The boys and I will handle some other tasks for the City Lord so we can obtain the permit to leave as soon as the tournament ends.” I glanced toward Hanmei’s room. The measures I had prepared earlier had already settled nicely into place.

“Very well. You do that. We can take it from here,” Qianxue said in a condescending tone. “Go away now. We need to let Hanmei rest.”

“Of course.”

The five of us then went down the stairs. Whether my prime suspect felt relieved or not, she showed nothing on her face. It didn’t matter. She couldn’t do anything substantial at the moment. If she was smart, she would avoid implicating the other Jiushuang disciples, they were more useful as cover and alibi. She would need a scapegoat instead.

I glanced toward Wanxia and Ningguang. Both of them would make perfect scapegoats. Not necessarily the ones who would accidentally kill Hanmei, though that remained a possibility, if Qianxue truly was the one who had attacked her.

“Before we leave, there’s one more thing,” I told the others, then went to sit at one of the tables. The same waiter from earlier approached.

“Can I still have that noodle?” I asked as I projected another massive bowl.

—

“Hmmm. That was delicious.” After finishing the bowl of noodles, we returned to the City Lord’s mansion.

It was finally around midnight. Huiran, Wendao, and I gathered in the living room of our guest house, while Wanxia and Ningguang had already retired for the night.

“Can you do the… bubble thing?” I asked Huiran. He immediately raised a privacy barrier around us. I needed to ask him how he created these later.

“Now then, can we all agree that the thief is connected to the attack on Hanmei?” Huiran asked. Wendao nodded in agreement.

“Assuming Hanmei wasn’t attacked by an unrelated party, it’s clear she overheard something she shouldn’t have,” I added.

“We already have a suspect, correct?” Wendao asked to confirm.

“Yes. Qianxue,” I said plainly.

The three of us had already been wary of her ever since I told them how she had lied about not knowing Wanxia and Ningguang were traveling with us. The timing of everything was simply too convenient. Hanmei’s poisoning, Ningguang’s sealing bracelet breaking. Either this was a pre-planned attack, or the perpetrator had been with us the entire time. The former seemed unlikely given how sloppily Hanmei had been dealt with.

If we assumed Hanmei was not the intended primary target, then the real target would have been Ningguang. The destruction of her sealing bracelet and how close she came to dying from her own constitution supported that. The fact that Ningguang nearly died from this alone suggested the perpetrator either knew about her Nine Yin Constitution, or that she had already been dangerously close to losing control, or both.

The plan looked sloppy now only because both targets were still alive and safe. For the moment. If I had not been present, both of them would likely already be dead. While Hanmei’s death would not have been our direct responsibility, Ningguang’s would have been.

“The easiest way to settle this would be to simply drag Qianxue somewhere and kill her,” Wendao said calmly, though it was clear he was furious about the situation.

“Yes, that would be quite easy,” Huiran nodded. All three of us had thought the same thing. “But that isn’t exactly an option if we also want the Liuli.”

Dealing with Qianxue was simple. The thief was another matter. Assuming Qianxue was the thief’s associate, killing her would only mean the thief remained trapped in the city, where the City Lord would eventually capture him. Personally, I would have been content leaving the thief to the City Lord and focusing on payback. Huiran and Wendao, however, wanted both the payback and the special exception the City Lord had promised. I had no idea how valuable that exception truly was, but it was clearly well above what had already been offered to us.

Then an idea came to me. “I think I have a plan.”

The other two leaned forward to listen. I laid out the plan. It was quite short. Both of them leaned back in their seats afterward.

“That’s your plan?” Wendao asked, barely holding back a cringe.

Huiran put a finger to his mouth as he thought, then smiled. “Tsk tsk tsk. The plan is doable, but it needs work, brother.”

He then put his own spin on it. A bit more convoluted, but it addressed and covered the flaws in my original version. Even Wendao, who still didn’t fully like it, at least agreed on the potential payoff.

“Any more objections or input?” I asked one last time.

“I have one. If this plan succeeds in its entirety, I would like to be the one to carry out the sentence,” Wendao stated his only demand.

I looked at Huiran, who had just finished writing the required letter. “The City Lord will undoubtedly agree to that.”

Huiran folded the letter and handed it to me. “Well, let’s take a break. We still have to prepare for the tournament.” He yawned and headed to his own room, followed by Wendao.

I went to my room and pulled out the token given to me by the Smiling Face Troupe. How was this supposed to work again? Just channel some Qi into it?

“What do you need, Young Master?” a voice spoke in the room the moment I activated the token.

I looked around for the source and found it within my own shadow. A pair of glowing red eyes staring up from the shadow of my head. I scrutinized it carefully. There did not appear to be an actual person inside the shadow, only a sliver of divine sense using it as a medium. Maybe.

“I did not think I would need your services so quickly. However, take this as a test. Do exactly as I say.” I then relayed my orders to the shadow.

“As you wish, Young Master.” The voice replied. “Now please place the letter upon the shadow.”

I tilted my head and did as instructed, astonished as the letter vanished into the shadow along with the presence of the Troupe contact.

Goddamn. Was that teleportation? A one-way mirror or door that used shadows? How the hell did that work? I examined the token again, scrutinizing it with my divine sense, and found a miniature array inscribed and hidden within it. I glanced on the array in its entirety.

CRACK!

“Fuck!” The token suddenly cracked and crumbled into dust. Safety countermeasures. I should have expected that something like this would exist here as well.

—

BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM!

Four tall stacks of books were set down on the table with heavy thuds. Each stack contained at least a dozen volumes, if not more.

“Array Formation, Talisman, Spiritual Plants, and Alchemy. These four will be the main topics of the Examination portion,” a Foundation Establishment cultivator with a thin, carefully maintained line mustache stated plainly.

My jaw dropped. All of this? Back home I had only needed to read about… three books at most to write my Bachelor’s thesis.

“Oh right, my apologies. I am Xuéhǎi (學海|Sea of Learning).” He cupped his hands and bowed politely. “I will be assisting in preparing you for your duties as the Master of Ceremonies.”

Xuehai had a refined and well-mannered appearance. He wore neat green robes embroidered with subtle wave patterns that seemed to shift faintly when he moved. His hair was tied in a clean scholarly topknot, and a pair of thin gold-rimmed spectacles rested on the bridge of his nose, giving him the air of a professional academic rather than a typical cultivator.

The five of us introduced ourselves and began selecting books from the stacks. I picked up a volume on Array Formation, Wendao took one on Talismans, Huiran chose Spiritual Plants, while Ningguang and Wanxia both reached for Alchemy texts. The two of them had offered to help prepare for the tournament as well.

The examination questions had already been prepared and finalized. Our current reading was mainly for background knowledge, as debates could arise during the examination depending on the circumstances.

I opened the Array Formation book and began reading. The early chapters covered the fundamental principles. How spiritual energy could be guided through carefully arranged patterns of materials, inscriptions, and natural terrain to produce stable effects. It explained the difference between temporary battle arrays and permanent formations, the importance of anchoring points, and how the quality of materials directly affected both power and longevity. Later sections discussed common defensive, concealment, and amplification arrays, along with warnings about resonance backlash when incompatible energies were forced together. Overall, it felt less like mystical nonsense and more like an extremely advanced form of engineering that used Qi instead of electricity.

Hmmm. No, wait.

Anchoring points as the motherboard… inscriptions and patterns as pathways and transistors… cultivator or fortification positions acting as either input or output. This was practically just a logic engine. Could I… port Doomed with this?

I quickly flipped through the other Array Formation books. There didn’t seem to be anything detailing the Demon Hunting Heaven and Earth Net Array. Was it too advanced for the materials available here? I had always wondered how effective that array truly was, given how easily we had dismantled it. Looking back, it hadn’t really performed any of the functions these books described. Either the array had been deployed haphazardly, or the cultivators forming it simply hadn’t followed the proper requirements.

After finishing the basic book, I pulled out another Array text I had been putting off reading for a long time. The Heavenly Golden Arrays. I opened it immediately and began comparing the contents.

True to its title, The Heavenly Golden Arrays focused specifically on the Metal element and using mostly Gold as the material. Rather than temporary battle arrays, it emphasized permanent formations. Most of them used particular types of metal to compensate for the absence of other elements: oxidized metals for Water, conductive metals for Fire, and common metals in general for Earth. The only element Metal could not compensate for was Wood. As a result, while Metal could be used to construct most of the arrays listed in this book and others, it could not form any array that relied on the generation and destruction cycles of the Five Elements.

Following the principle of how metals could substitute for other elements, the book also detailed methods for creating Qi containers to power larger and more permanent arrays. I still didn’t fully understand how the Water Qi container functioned, but the Fire Qi container operated almost exactly like a heatsink. What came next, however, made me deeply regret not reading this book much earlier.

Of all elements under Heaven, Metal is the Heaven’s Chosen.

The Heavenly Thunder can crack the highest mountain,

Strike the deepest of the ocean,

And split the oldest and most powerful of trees.

Only Metal can contain and control the flow of the Heavenly Thunder.

The illustration beneath that claim was unmistakably a battery array, designed to contain Heavenly Thunder. Below it were familiar wiring patterns used to control the flow of that thunder within an array, along with methods that could even exclude other cultivators from interfering with its operation. 

I nearly shed a tear when I reached the final page of the book. My hands tightened around the covers as the true value of what I was holding suddenly soared. The weight of the words settled deep in my heart.

On the very last page, without any room for doubt, was a complete schematic for a particle cannon. Accompanying it was a short note:

This will be the last of my projects in my lifetime.

I bid the future owner of this book to continue my work.

I could barely contain the surge of emotion and excitement. It felt almost like meeting a fellow American in this strange new world. Most of the heavy lifting in electrical engineering had already been done back in my homeworld. This book was exactly what I needed to translate what I already knew into this world’s systems, and to finally bring out the other weapon designs I had never been able to use before.

I will, you beautiful, beautiful soul.

I will.

~ Valarion