The journey back from the Broken Tooth Ravine was marked by a lighthearted, peaceful rhythm.
With the slaver threat dissolved, Xiao Hei remained in his compact retriever form, trotting ahead with his tail held high and his nose eagerly testing the pine-scented breeze. Su Ling’er walked beside Lin Xiao, her three snow-white tails swaying behind her with easy majesty, her glowing violet eyes taking in the ancient groves of iron-bamboo with wonder. Every few paces, she glanced down at the little semi-clear azure slime bouncing smoothly over the moss beside her boots. Her heart still shook with deep respect.
They emerged from the dense bamboo defile onto the sun-dappled terrace beneath the huge Primordial Spirit Willow. Then, the rich, savory aroma of caramelized pork belly and simmering wild turnips greeted them like a warm blanket.
Down by the stone hearth, Tie Shan was vigorously stirring the five-foot red-bronze wok with an iron spatula the size of a war shield. His golden titan arm caught the afternoon sunlight. It shone with fine, detailed sharp-angled runes as he casually flipped eighty pounds of sizzling meat with a flick of his wrist. Beside the pool, Old Ba had stretched his wrinkled neck out from his mossy shell, humming a slow, gravelly river tune. Meanwhile, Xiao Long danced through the turquoise water. He leapt into the air to spray playful arcs of silver mist over the weeping willow fronds.
The moment Tie Shan turned around and saw Su Ling’er, the titan bear froze in mid-stir.
His jaw dropped so low his braided beard swept the dark rock stones. His fiery amber eyes widened to the size of tea saucers as he took in her three amazing, ruby-tipped white tails and the ghostly sky pressure humming around her poise.
“By the Titan of the Deep Earth...” Tie Shan rumbled, his voice like grinding millstones. “Lord Xiao went out for an afternoon stroll and brought back a Three-Tailed Celestial Fox Maiden! A noble of the Northern spirit courts!”
Tie Shan threw his head back and let out a bellow of joyous laughter that rustled the pine needles across the ridge.
“Welcome, sister! Welcome to the Clear Stream!” Tie Shan bellowed, wiping his brow with his gray-furred right forearm. Meanwhile, his golden titan hand expertly spooned a massive wooden bowl brimming with red-braised wild pork and tender turnips. “Lord Xiao’s safe hall doesn’t have fancy jade palaces, but by the heavens, our stew is the finest in ten thousand li! Eat, eat!”
Su Ling’er took the steaming wooden bowl with both hands, her elegant fox ears twitching at the sheer, unpretentious warmth streaming from the nine-foot titan bear. In the courts of the northern sects, servants and nobles alike bowed under layers of deceit and paranoid etiquette. Here, a beast sovereign capable of shattering mountains offered her hot pork stew with the genuine delight of an older brother.
“Thank you, Master Tie,” Su Ling’er murmured softly. She took a small, delicate sip of the rich broth. A soft hum of pleasure escaped her throat as the savory, honey-glazed pork melted across her palate. “It’s truly delicious.”
“Hahaha! Of course it’s! Lord Xiao seasoned the wok himself!” Tie Shan beamed, puffing out his massive chest.
While Su Ling’er savored her meal, her violet eyes began to scan the campsite.
Awakened by the True Name, her innate talent—[Divine Governance Mind]—operated like a fine, detailed cosmic counting frame, processing thousands of outside variables in the blink of an eye. She observed the makeshift bamboo lean-tos propped against the riverbank. The sacks of dried mushrooms sitting precariously close to the damp water edge. Tie Shan’s temporary forge spewing fine soot dangerously near the open cooking hearth. And the natural mountain slope behind them, which had no water ditches to redirect flash floods during heavy autumn downpours.
She set her bowl down on a clean flat stone. That turned toward Lin Xiao with an expression of thoughtful earnestness.
“Lord Xiao,” Su Ling’er said, kneeling respectfully beside his azure form. “If I may speak openly regarding the state of our encampment?”
Lin Xiao hopped onto a polished cedar stump, letting out a relaxed ripple. “Please, Ling’er. You’re our Chief Executive Minister now. Speak your mind. What needs fixing?”
“Everything,” Su Ling’er answered plainly, though her tone remained gentle and respectful. “At present, this can’t be called a safe hall. It’s merely an open-air bivouac. The autumn equinox is less than forty days away. When the mountain frosts go down from the high peaks, the damp mist from the Clear Stream will seep into our bones. The grain and wild tubers will mold within a fortnight if kept on the dirt. Master Tie’s forge will choke our sleeping quarters with charcoal soot. If a sudden cloudburst strikes the western peaks, the water runoff will sweep straight through our cooking pots.”
Tie Shan scratched his braided beard, looking around the campsite with a sheepish grimace. “Well... She’s not wrong, Lord Xiao. When I was living in the ravine, I slept in a dry crack in the dark rock. Never thought much about roofs or mold.”
Lin Xiao nodded his jelly-like dome with deep, enthusiastic agreement.
“In my last life, we had a saying: A sound roof and a dry floor make a contented worker,” Lin Xiao declared. “I have zero desire to spend the winter shivering in a damp bamboo shack. I want warm floors, clean air, high ceilings. A wide wooden porch where we can drink tea and watch the snow fall over the river. We need proper mountain dwellings.”
Su Ling’er’s eyes lit up with brilliant amber sparks.
“Allow me, my Lord,” she said eagerly.
Reaching into the cold ashes at the edge of the hearth, Su Ling’er picked up a slender stick of charred iron-oak. She pulled over a broad, smooth cedar plank that Tie Shan had roughly split earlier that morning, laying it flat across two stones.
With swift, breathtakingly precise strokes, Su Ling’er began to draw.
Her hand moved with fluid, sharp-angled mastery. Lines of clean symmetry flowed from the charcoal tip. He formed a fine, detailed three-space-folding blueprint of a raised mountain residential pavilion.
“We must not dig into the earth or build inside damp caverns,” Su Ling’er explained. She pointed to the foundation pillars with her charcoal stick. “Caverns trap stale Yin-qi and cold moisture. Instead, we shall erect a raised post-and-beam pavilion anchored directly onto deep granite pier footings quarried from the cliff face. Raising the ground floor four feet above the loam allows the sweet river breeze to circulate beneath, keeping the timber fully dry and immune to ground rot.”
Tie Shan leaned over the plank, his fiery eyes tracing the joinery she had sketched.
“No iron nails?” the blacksmith murmured, impressed. “You’ve drawn linked wood slot-and-wooden peg joints. Dovetail tenons and through-lap braces.”
“Iron nails rust in the mountain mist and split the grain over decades,” Su Ling’er replied, her three tails flicking with pride. “Linked mountain cedar swells slightly with humidity, locking the timbers tighter together. The entire frame will act as an organic, flexible skeleton capable of withstanding severe earth tremors without cracking.”
“And what about the winter cold?” Lin Xiao asked, peering at the cross-section of the floor.
Su Ling’er smiled, her whiskers twitching with clever satisfaction.
“Here is the core design, Lord Xiao,” she said, sketching a network of hollow stone chimney pipes running beneath the main living pavilion. “We build a sealed stone burning hearth outside the living quarters, downwind from the bedrooms. The hot exhaust gases from the hearth will travel through underground stone channels beneath the raised cedar floorboards, heating the dense slate bedrock beneath our mats before venting safely through an upright chimney water chute twenty paces away. The sleeping floors will remain warm as summer stones throughout the deepest blizzards, with zero smoke entering the living space!”
Lin Xiao almost bounced off the stump with sheer joy.
An authentic heated stone bed system! Lin Xiao thought ecstatically. Warm floors, zero drafts, no smoke breath in, and dry cedar scent. This girl isn’t just an administrator. She’s a stone-built genius!
“Uncle Tie,” Lin Xiao said, turning toward the titan bear. “Can you quarry the stone footings and split the main cedar columns?”
Tie Shan slammed his golden titan fist into his palm with an ear-splitting CLANG that sent sparks flying into the dusk.
“Can I?” Tie Shan roared with pride. “Lord Xiao, give me three hours! My golden arm can split granite slabs cleaner than a jade slicer! I’ll have thirty foundation piers squared and trued before the twin moons reach the zenith!”
“And I’ll handle the care milling,” Lin Xiao announced. “We’re not going to spend weeks hacking at logs with dull axes. Dao Spirit, prepare the smooth-flowing hydro-cutting fine-tuning.”
A crisp chime sounded in Lin Xiao’s mind:
The campsite transformed into an engine of joyful, coordinated industry.
Tie Shan strode toward the western granite bluff. With his awakened Tier-3 Beast Sovereign strength and earthen affinity, he drove his golden titan claws straight into the bedrock like fingers plunging into soft cheese. He pulled out huge, two-ton blocks of dense grey granite. He carried them under his arms as easily as loaves of bread. He set them down in an exact grid according to Su Ling’er’s plumb lines.
Lin Xiao hopped from boulder to boulder, acting as the living spirit-level.
By allowing his semi-clear fluid surface to achieve total water-pressure balance, Lin Xiao could detect a tilt of less than a single tiny fraction of an inch across fifty feet. A stone footing sat slightly uneven. Each time, Lin Xiao whistled. Tie Shan delivered a gentle tap with his massive paw, seating the stone perfectly into the compacted gravel.
Next came the timber.
Xiao Hei, darting through the upper cedar forest, hauled fallen trunks of ancient mountain cedar down the slope using vortices of silver wind. As the huge logs were lined up on the riverbank, Lin Xiao took his position.
Compressing his internal water pool to three thousand pounds of pressure, Lin Xiao extruded a needle-thin, micro-high-pressure waterjet from his upper flank:
SSSSSSHHHHH-ZIIIP!
The smooth-flowing waterjet hissed through the cedar logs with terrifying, zero-drag ease. It sliced through bark, heartwood, and knots like a laser cutting through warm butter, producing four-sided load-bearing columns with surfaces so glassy and smooth they looked as though they had been planed by an immortal jade artisan. Dovetail mortises and linked tenons were carved out in seconds under the Dao Spirit’s tiny fraction of an inch guidance.
By midnight, beneath the radiant silver light of the twin moons, the central timber skeleton of the Willow-Bank Pavilion stood complete.
Rising twenty feet into the air beneath the protective boughs of the Primordial Spirit Willow, the pavilion spanned eight spacious bays. Massive cedar pillars rested securely atop polished granite piers, locked together by linked level beams that felt as unmoving as the mountain itself. Wide, sweeping roof edges extended eight feet past the walls to guide rainwater away from the foundation. Meanwhile, a raised cedar porch wrapped around the southern edge. It looked directly out over the babbling currents of the Clear Stream River.
The sweet, rich fragrance of fresh cedar heartwood and damp river stone filled the night air.
Lin Xiao hopped up onto the newly laid porch floorboards, letting out a deep, contented fluid sigh. The smooth cedar planks were fully flat, cool to the touch, and tough beneath his floating weight.
Su Ling’er stepped onto the deck, her bare feet enjoying the clean wood, her three white tails swaying gently in the night breeze. Tie Shan sat down on the edge of the porch. That let his massive legs dangle over the side, wiping sweat from his gray fur with a wide, toothy grin. Xiao Hei bounded up the low cedar steps, right away curling his black body into a neat circle at the entrance. Meanwhile, Xiao Long poked his horned head out of the river below. That let out a soft, celebratory purr of mist.
“Now this,” Lin Xiao said, resting contentedly in the center of the fresh cedar floor, “is what I call the beginning of a proper home.”