The late afternoon warmth drifted through the bamboo grove. It carried the clean, pine-scented breeze of the high peaks. At the secluded river bend where the Clear Stream widened into a calm, glass-like pool, Lin Xiao floated on the surface of the water, gently bobbing against a cluster of emerald reeds.
Beside him, the little golden-veined carp leaped out of the water with an energetic plop, its gold-trimmed scales catching the amber rays of the sinking sun. It spun twice in mid-air before diving straight toward Lin Xiao. It plunged smoothly through his outer azure membrane with a soft, watery chime.
Within Lin Xiao’s clear blue body, the carp wiggled its tail in delight. It darted between the gentle vortices of his sky fluid, blowing tiny bubbles of purified oxygen that drifted upward and popped at Lin Xiao’s crown. To any outside observer, Lin Xiao looked less like a fearsome ancient beast and more like a cheerful, self-contained living fishbowl.
Honestly, Lin Xiao thought, gently pulsating his fluid to scratch the little carp behind its gills, having an aquarium built into your own stomach is surprisingly relaxing. It’s like having a pet fish and a heated waterbed at the exact same time.
On the mossy riverbank, Old Ba rested his heavy, four-hundred-year-old shell against the roots of a weeping willow, his eyes half-closed in post-sweet-potato bliss.
“Master Lin,” Old Ba murmured, his throat emitting a low, contented rumble, “the sun will soon go down behind the western crags. When darkness falls across the Grand Desolate Forest, the night hunting beasts wake up—iron-quill owls, shadow bats, and wandering ghost panthers. Does master intend to seek shelter in the upper tea shrine?”
Lin Xiao turned his ball-shaped body toward the bank. His panoramic vision took in the collapsed ruins of the stone pavilion fifty paces up the ridge. The shrine was picturesque, certainly. But sleeping inside a drafty, collapsed wooden pagoda full of hundreds of years of rotting rafters and spiderwebs didn’t appeal to his modern sensibilities.
If I’m going to live in this world, Lin Xiao reasoned, I need a proper campsite. Running water, a smooth lounge deck, shade from the noon sun, and a clean stone path where you don’t step on mud or sharp river stones every time you leave the pool.
“We’re staying right here by the water, Old Ba,” Lin Xiao announced. “A river creature belongs by the river. But first, we need a little renovation.”
Old Ba lifted his head, blinking slowly. “Renovation? Does master intend to summon an earthen mound with spiritual magic?”
“Nothing so crude,” Lin Xiao said with an amused ripple. “Just some basic domestic carpentry and civil layout. Stand back a few paces. I’m going to harvest some building materials.”
Contracting his mass, Lin Xiao rolled out of the water, his stretchy water’s skin shedding the river droplets until he was a gleaming sapphire sphere. He bounded across the pebbled bank toward the edge of the iron-bamboo grove.
The iron-bamboo of the Grand Desolate Forest was legendary among mortal fighters. Soaked with terrestrial metal veins, a single mature stalk was as dense as forged bronze. He needed specialized steel saw-blades or high-tier sword qi just to fell a sapling.
Lin Xiao paused before twelve towering, forearm-thick stalks of emerald bamboo that rose forty feet into the sky.
“Omniscient Dao Spirit,” Lin Xiao whispered internally. “Waterjet fine-tuning, please. Let’s make clean, razor-sharp forty-five-degree edge cuts.”
Pssssshhh-whistle!
A razor-thin needle of blazing bright azure water erupted from Lin Xiao’s front surface. Moving with blinding speed, Lin Xiao spun three complete rotations. The high-pressure smooth-flowing stream whistled through the humid air like a singing wire, slicing through the dense iron-bamboo stalks with easy grace.
Crack! Thud! Thud! Thud!
Twelve massive stalks snapped cleanly at their bases, toppling in a neat, parallel stack onto the soft loam. The cut surfaces were as glassy and polished as freshly sliced jade, with zero splintering or ragged edges.
Old Ba’s jaw dropped so low into the gravel that his leathery throat touched a dry reed. Iron-bamboo... Stalks that even human Foundation-stage swords struggle to scratch... Felled in the blink of an eye like tender scallions!
Lin Xiao didn’t stop there. Extending four thick, elastic blue tendrils from his outer edge, he seized the fallen stalks. With rhythmic care, his micro-waterjets trimmed the branches, hollowed out the internal bamboo ring walls. Then he split four of the thickest stalks longitudinally into wide, concave half-pipes.
“Let’s set up the water chute,” Lin Xiao said cheerfully.
He used his tendrils. He carried the notched bamboo segments to the upstream cascade where the Clear Stream tumbled over a natural three-foot granite shelf. He anchored the first concave bamboo water chute beneath the natural waterfall, elevating it on crisscrossed bamboo bipods driven deep into the riverbed gravel.
Gravity did the rest.
Crystal-clear, ice-cold mountain water rushed into the emerald bamboo water chute, singing with a brisk, melodic chime as it flowed smoothly down a sixty-foot raised aqueduct directly into a shaded, natural stone depression beside the weeping willow.
To complete the structure, Lin Xiao interlocked the leftover whole bamboo stalks into a sturdy, raised shade arbor over the stone pool, weaving broad wild banana leaves and fragrant jasmine creepers through the rafters to block the harsher glare of the sun while allowing cool mountain drafts to circulate freely.
Step one: raised running water chute and shaded lounge arbor complete, Lin Xiao thought with deep satisfaction. Now for the riverbank paving.
The natural riverbank was a chaotic mixture of coarse river mud, sharp broken granite, and decomposing reed mulch. For an ancient tortoise with feet like armored leather, it was passable. But Lin Xiao appreciated clean cleanliness and smooth surfaces.
Rolling into the shallow riverbed, Lin Xiao opened a wide vortex at his underside, vacuuming up four bushels of riverbed quartz sand, white kaolin clay, and water-polished river gravel into his Primordial Void Dantian.
Inside his internal void fire, the chaotic origin qi engaged with instant chemical smooth speed. The decomposing organic mulch was burned up into inert carbon dust. The fine quartz crystals were separated, melted, and recrystalized into uniform stone-glass marrow. And the white river clay was de-aired and blended into a smooth, self-leveling stone mortar.
Lin Xiao rolled back onto the bank. He opened a small nozzle on his lower outer edge. He extruded the molten stone-glass-clay mixture across a wide ten-foot swath flanking the shaded pool.
As the dense stone paste contacted the cool air, Lin Xiao followed behind. It rolled his heavy, impact-hardening body over the surface like a sky steamroller. The paste cured within ten seconds into a flat, mirror-smooth, non-slip quartz stone floor that glowed with soft, pearl-white moonlight under the canopy.
A ringing bronze chime rang within his mindscape:
Lin Xiao felt a warm, golden pulse radiate from his core. The assimilation of the quartz crystal lattice and refined stone-glass had diffused through his outer membrane, enhancing his load-bearing thickness. When relaxed, he was soft and squishy as warm mochi. When struck or stressed, his fluid specks interlocked into a diamond-slick crystal-clear barrier.
Also, his sight properties had evolved. He lowered himself into the newly filtered water of the shaded basin. Then, his refractive index matched the surrounding liquid with 92% sight transparency. To any hunting beast looking down from the sky, he was virtually invisible—a subtle, shifting ripple beneath the clear water.
“Xiao Long,” Lin Xiao called out mentally to the golden carp. “Try out the new slide!”
The little fish poked its gold-trimmed nose out of Lin Xiao’s belly, looked up at the raised bamboo water chute. Then he gave a joyful splash of its tail.
Swish!
The carp leaped into the mouth of the bamboo aqueduct, riding the roaring mountain current down the emerald water chute like a child on a water slide. It shot out the lower spout with a graceful leap, twisting in the air before landing cleanly in the newly paved, crystal-clear stone basin with a thrilled whoosh. It swam rapid, joyous laps around the shaded outer edge, sometimes surfacing to spit playful jets of water at Lin Xiao.
Old Ba carefully stepped onto the smooth quartz pathway. His ancient clawed feet, battered by four hundred years of sharp river stones, gripped the smooth, warm stone surface with sheer disbelief.
The old tortoise slowly lowered his chin onto the polished quartz. That let out a long, shuddering sigh of deep, pure comfort.
“Four hundred years,” Old Ba whispered, his voice trembling with respectful emotion. “Four hundred years have I wandered this river, sleeping in cold mud, hiding beneath rotting logs, constantly looking over my shoulder for human nets and poison arrows. Yet today... An open bamboo water chute carrying singing springwater, a shaded pavilion that blocks the burning noon sun. A path smoother than the white jade courtyards of the mortal emperor’s summer palace.”
Old Ba looked at the semi-clear blue slime floating peacefully in the center of the pool, the little golden carp resting affectionately against its squishy side.
“In all the sacred scriptures of the ancient beasts,” Old Ba said softly, “they speak of great sovereigns who conquer mountains with blood and subjugate rivers with terrifying storms. But true power... True divinity... Doesn’t conquer the world. It makes the world comfortable. It brings order to the wild and peace to the weary.”
Lin Xiao, gently bobbing in the forty-two-degree heat eddy he had set up in the corner of the basin, let out a contented mental sigh.
No mortgages. No quarterly property tax checks. No homeowner association notices complaining about the bamboo height. Just cool running water, a thrilled pet fish, and a smooth stone porch.
Now, Lin Xiao thought. He looked over at the dry firewood stacked neatly beside the willow, if I can just build a proper outdoor stone hearth, we can start thinking about dinner.