Dawn broke over the high ridges of the Grand Desolate Spirit Forest with crisp clarity, painting the mountain peaks in pale gold and rose quartz.
In the open-air pavilion beside the upper smelting terrace, Elder Lu Da stood before a broad table of split timber. His lustrous silver coat gleamed under the morning sun, his whiskers twitching with energetic focus as he smoothed out a wide scroll of cured birch bark. Across the bark, drawn in careful charcoal strokes with the sharp tip of his claw, were fine, detailed diagrams of mountain gradients, fluid vectors, and wooden water chute channels.
Standing across the table, Tie Shan leaned over the drawings, his slate-grey fur ruffled by the morning draft. The massive bear smith stroked his braided beard with a claw the size of a chisel, his dark eyes squinting at the counts.
“Look here, Elder Tie,” Elder Lu Da explained, his rich deep full of enthusiastic pride. “Your bear apprentices spend six hours every day hauling rough iron ore and timber down the switchback paths from the upper crags on wooden handcarts. The trail is steep, the carts break axles on the granite boulders. Your lads arrive at the forges exhausted before they even lift a hammer. But if we harness the mountain’s natural gravity and the river’s upper springs, we can bypass the road entirely.”
Lin Xiao, resting on a woven bamboo mat between two bowls of sweet steamed chestnuts, bounced up to get a better look at the drawings.
“A timber water chute transit network,” Lin Xiao observed, his crescent eyes widening in delighted recognition. “An raised wooden water channel using gravity flow and smooth runners. Elder Lu Da, this is brilliant! In my past life, timber camps and copper mines used water chutes like this to move millions of board-feet of lumber and heavy ore down steep mountains in minutes.”
Elder Lu Da bowed his head in modest thanks. “The Sovereign understands instantly. The natural drop from the Upper Iron Ridge down to the central foundry basin is four hundred paces over a five-half-mile run. If we build a raised trough of hollowed iron-oak planks, lined with polished river slate and fed by an artesian drain tube from the upper creek, the water current will carry timber rafts and ore barges directly to Elder Tie’s smelters in less than three minutes.”
Tie Shan slapped his massive star-iron palm onto the table, making the chestnuts jump. “By the anvil of heaven! Moving three tons of iron ore in three minutes without breaking a single wagon wheel? Why did we spend two hundred years pushing carts like pack mules? Elder Lu Da, tell me what you need. The bear clan will cut down half the iron-oak forest before lunch!”
“We don’t need to cut down half the forest, Elder Tie,” Lin Xiao laughed, his semi-clear body bobbing cheerfully. “We use fallen logs, seasoned timber, and keep the groves intact. Sustainable forestry is the foundation of long-term prosperity. Let’s build the prototype channel today.”
Within an hour, the construction effort was in full swing.
Tie Shan led forty burly earth-bear artisans into the lower timber reserves. Wielding huge bronze adzes, double-handed drawknives, and heavy splitting wedges, the bear smiths transformed massive trunks of fallen iron-oak into curved, linked troughs. Each section was twenty feet long, four feet wide. Then he hollowed out with curved bottoms to maximize water-flow speed while preventing cargo from catching on side walls.
Meanwhile, Elder Lu Da and thirty silver-furred otter warriors worked along the steep mountain ridge with astonishing agility. With their sleek, waterproof coats and newly awakened aquatic spiritual senses, the otters navigated the roaring mountain streams with easy grace. They surveyed the terrain with tiny care. They anchored heavy stone footings into the living rock along the mountain slope.
Where the water chute needed to cross deep ravines or rocky chasms, Tie Shan’s apprentices erected soaring wooden frame stands bound together with wood slot-and-wooden peg joints and pinned with hardened bronze spikes.
To seal the joints and ensure zero water leakage, Lin Xiao contributed a specialized touch. He tapped his Primordial Chaos Void. He blended a dense, rubbery sealant. An elastic resin derived from boiled pine pitch, crushed soap-nut wax, and a trace of his own non-Newtonian fluid. The otters smoothed the black sealant into every joint. That created a fully watertight, friction-free wooden water chute that snaked along the mountain contour like an emerald wooden dragon.
By mid-afternoon, Xiao Long coiled his thirty-meter form at the upper mountain springhead.
With a low, ringing hiss of water-qi, the azure horned serpent diverted a clean, high-pressure branch of the mountain creek into the head of the water chute. The cold mountain water rushed into the dry wooden trough with a roaring hiss, swelling into a smooth, three-foot-deep water chute current that surged down the mountain slope at breathtaking speed.
Within Lin Xiao’s mind, the Dao Spirit chimed with clean, exact satisfaction:
At the summit loading platform, Elder Lu Da’s eldest son steered the first test barge into the water chute.
The barge was an eight-foot raft of bound timber, weighed down by three tons of dense, dark iron ore freshly quarried from the upper cliff faces. As the retaining gate was raised, the water current seized the heavy raft.
WHOOOOOOSH!
The three-ton ore barge shot down the wooden trough like an arrow loosed from a siege bow. Guided by the curved bank baffles and cushioned by the zero-drag water layer, the heavy raft banked smoothly around three hairpin mountain turns, flying over the deep gap frame stand before arriving at the lower foundry pool five miles below.
SPLASH!
The barge glided into the decelerating holding basin, its driving force absorbed cleanly by a series of counter-current whirlpools designed by Elder Lu Da. Two bear smiths effortlessly caught the mooring line, their eyes bulging as they checked the cargo.
“Three tons of ore!” a young bear worker shouted toward the ridge, his voice echoing across the valley. “Not a scratch on the raft! Not a single stone lost! It took less than three minutes!”
An ear-splitting cheer erupted from both the mountain ridge and the lower foundry. Tie Shan threw his head back and let out a loud roar of laughter, lifting Elder Lu Da into a massive bear hug that left the silver otter chuckling and patting the smith’s armored shoulder.
“Look at that! Look at that marvelous contraption!” Tie Shan bellowed, wiping joyful tears from his fur. “The bears and the otters... We just built the fastest trade route in the southern provinces!”
Up at the summit platform, Lin Xiao observed the rushing water channel, his round sapphire mass wobbling with unrestrained excitement.
“Master,” Su Ling’er said. She walked up beside him with a teasing glint in her amber eyes. “I know that look. What are you planning?”
“Planning?” Lin Xiao said, his voice shaking with childish delight. “Ling’er, look at that smooth wooden curve, look at that roaring current, look at that glorious five-half-mile drop! If you think I’m going to build a five-half-mile mountain water slide and not ride it, you clearly don’t understand the deepest purpose of rebirth!”
Before Su Ling’er could reply, Lin Xiao took a running bounce.
SPROING!
Lin Xiao launched himself off the loading deck. He tucked his mass into a sleek, wind-cutting teardrop, and plunged directly into the foaming water chute current!
SCHWWWWWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOSH!
“WAHOOOOOOOO!” Lin Xiao’s mental laugh echoed across the entire mountain valley.
The water current caught his elastic form, speeding up him to faster-than-sound speed. He banked along the high wooden curves, the wind roaring past his sense outer edge as the green canopy of the forest blurred into streaks of emerald and jade. Every rise, every drop, every banked turn felt like the greatest amusement park ride ever conceived in any world, mortal or immortal!
Behind him, sixteen fuzzy little silver otter pups couldn’t resist the temptation. Squeaking with pure joy, the pups dove into the water chute one after another, their water-repellent coats turning them into sleek silver torpedoes as they chased their sovereign down the mountain water chute.
Five miles below, the foundry workers were still inspecting the iron ore. Just then, a blue streak shot out of the end-post water chute mouth.
SPLAT!
Lin Xiao splashed into the holding pond with a glorious, sixty-foot fountain of white spray. It bounced four times across the pond surface before settling into a floating azure disc, chuckling from every pore of his jelly-like body.
Plop! Plop! Plop! Plop!
One by one, the sixteen silver otter pups launched out of the water chute, landing in the pool around Lin Xiao with gleeful chirps. They swarmed over his floating blue dome, splashing water with their webbed paws and rolling over his elastic back in playful delight.
Tie Shan, standing on the dock with his hammer resting on the flat stone slabs, looked at the splashing sovereign, then down at the three tons of iron ore, and finally up at the majestic wooden water chute spanning the mountain.
“You know, Elder Lu Da,” Tie Shan said. He shook his head with a deep, fond smile. “Other sect sovereigns would execute you if you built something that turned them into a skipping stone.”
Elder Lu Da rested his webbed paws on his silver chest, his sapphire eyes glowing with deep warmth. “Other sect sovereigns rule through fear and blood, Elder Tie. Our sovereign builds a home where everyone has work, everyone has food, and even an old water otter can see his children laugh without looking over their shoulders. For a lord like that, my clan would build a water chute to the moon.”
Lin Xiao floated lazily in the sunlit pool. That let the otter pups balance a flat river stone on his crown.
“Next week,” Lin Xiao murmured happily, “we build a double loop-the-loop.”