One of the many things about life on modern day Earth that too many people take for granted is just how many entertainment options are readily avaible, even if you don’t have much money.

  Between streaming services, social media, the steadily declining cable, games, and even e-books, anybody with a decent phone has access to millions of hours of entertainment without even needing to get off the toilet seat.

  To go from that to a world that doesn’t even have radio…

  It’s easy(ish) to ignore most days, because I’m hardly ever alone. I’m either training with Xiuying, chatting with Meng Yi, or on one of the few odd outings I’ve been on since waking up here.

  But then there are other times, like right now, when it isn’t so easy to ignore.

  As I’ve already said, I’m not much of a reader, and while I’d managed to lose myself in my books earlier, Lang Bao’s visit had changed that.

  I don’t feel like reading anymore, which, unfortunately for me, leaves me with nothing to occupy myself.

  I still try of course. Reading, that is. As they say after all, beggars can’t be choosers.

  After a fruitless hour spent staring at pages that only stare back though, I sigh, slumping back onto my seat.

  “I miss TikTok,” I whine.

  And, yes, I know that it was brain rot, but by Heaven it was entertaining brain rot.

  Honestly, at this point, I’ll happily watch ‘Keeping Up with The Kardashians’, or some other ‘reality’ TV slop. Anything just to see a screen with moving pictures again.

  I’m an addict in withdrawal and I need my fix.

  I sigh again.

  As is the st resort of bored men everywhere, I head to the window, hoping to find something, even if only a bird to help ease my boredom.

  Unlike my bedroom, which has a balcony that hangs over a massive cliff, the library looks out into the garden.

  Well, calling it a garden doesn’t exactly feel right, because while it has trees and flowers, they’re so obviously ornamental that the whole thing comes off as artificial. Which, to be frank, is quite a feat for a garden, seeing as by their very nature, gardens are artificial.

  I watch the garden for a few minutes, taking in the open, unused space, the evergreen type trees that will never bear fruit, even the gardener going around trimming everything to maintain a specific shape.

  This isn’t a garden. Gardens should be… well, not wild per se, but at the very least they should feel alive. This feels like a pstic pnt.

  What’s the point of a garden if I can’t go out there to pick some berries, or pluck some apples right off the trees? What’s the point of a garden if the trees don’t explode with flowers in spring?

  A few minutes more of watching and I begin to wonder if there’s something I could do about it.

  Well, that’s a dumb question. Of course, there’s something I can do about it. It’s my garden. Old Xian is likely the one who told them to have it this way to begin it, probably because it appealed more to his lifeless soul.

  Suddenly, I have to know. Is this Old Xian’s artistic choice, or did he not care one way or the other, and the gardener had simply gone with whatever?

  Curious, and also eager for an escape from my current boredom, I head out to the garden.

  By the time I reach him, the gardener has been joined by a young boy of maybe fourteen I usually see with him, his apprentice I suspect.

  I approach from behind the big man, putting me in his blind spot, but the boy spots me, and his quick bow makes Dai Lim, the gardener, turn and bow too.

  “Hey,” I say. “How’s the work?”

  “It goes well, Young Master,” Dai Lim says.

  “Good, good,” I say. “So, uh, you’ve probably heard about my recent memory troubles, I’m guessing.”

  The only way he could not have heard about that is if he literally just crawled out from under a rock. And probably not even then.

  Still though, I figure it might be best to ease into the topic, as it were.

  “Yes, Young Master,” Dai Lim says, looking both curious and a little uncomfortable with the direction the conversation seems to be taking.

  “Good, good,” I say again. “So, anyway, there’s something I was wondering, and since Meng Yi’s currently… unavaible, I figured you’d be the best person to ask.”

  Dai Lim’s head dips lower. “I’ll help in whatever way I can, Young Master,” he says seriously.

  Maybe even too seriously.

  “Uh, it’s not anything too important, really,” I say, a bit taken aback by his seriousness. “I’m just wondering, the design for the garden, whose idea was it? Was it mine?”

  “Yes, Young Master, it was yours,” Dai Lim says. “Do you wish to change it?”

  Dai Lim’s question takes me by surprise, then I say, “Yeah, I do. I was thinking we could get rid of all these trees and repce them with some fruit trees instead. Use up more of all this open space. Pnt some berries, some vines, maybe some herbs and spices if we can find them. Go for a more natural look, you know?”

  Dai Lim nods in understanding as I speak, then says after I finish, “That sounds like a fine idea, Young Master.”

  Unable to help myself, I ask, “Do you really think so, or are you just saying it because you work for me?”

  Dai Lim blinks in surprise at my words, while his young apprentice ughs.

  The boy cuts it off immediately, looking a little scared, but when I smile at him, he smiles back tentatively.

  Recovering, Dai Lim says, “I really do think it’s a fine idea, Young Master. My mother always said ‘the purpose of a garden is to feed one’s family’.” And his eyes widen with panic as though he just committed some egregious sin.

  “Not that Young Master has any problems feeding his family,” he hurries to add.

  I shrug. “Problems with feeding my family or not, I want a garden that does more than look pretty,” I say. “So, if you’re sure it’s a good idea, then let’s get rid of these trees today, and tomorrow you can look for the seeds we’ll pnt.”

  Dai Lim frowns. “Seeds?” he asks.

  “Yes, seeds,” I say, wondering if I pronounced the word wrong or if something else is. “I want as much variety as you can put on the nd without problems. Will that be an issue?”

  “Well, Young Master, if we’re pnting seeds then it will be years before many of them mature enough to bear food, and even besides that, there’s a matter of the work. Clearing out these trees will need a lot more men and a few more days at least.”

  “Oh,” I say, then smile. “Well, you don’t have to worry about any of that.”

  With a bit of focus and a warm glow, the grass around shoots up several inches in as many seconds.

  “You have a cultivator in your corner, Dai,” I say, ughing at their awed expressions. “With us the usual rules don’t apply. Now come, if we start now then we can have these trees cleared out in time for dinner.”

  “We?” Dai Lim asks, eyes widening.

  —?—

  I grab the freshly cut tree stump hard enough that my fingers crack into the trunk, then slowly, and with significantly less strain than I honestly expected it to take, I uproot it from the ground.

  Holding it up for a moment, I shake off the clumps of soft dirt stuck to it before setting it aside gently.

  “Wow, you’re strong,” the boy, whose name I’ve learnt is Hou Yahui, says, near starry-eyed.

  “Vegetables and exercise, kid. That’s all it takes,” I say.

  The boy stares at me, dubious but not wanting to doubt. “Really?”

  I ugh. “Of course not,” I say. “I’m a cultivator. I mean, vegetables and exercise are definitely good for you, but, unless you’re Popeye then no amount of vegetables will make you able to do this, unfortunately.”

  “Popeye?” Hou Yahui asks.

  “A man from a children’s story,” I say.

  Well, I think Popeye is for children anyway. My memory of it is quite foggy.

  The boy is quiet for a moment, then, with a wistful tone, says, “I wish I could be a cultivator.”

  I stare at him. Of course he does. Who wouldn’t?

  The main problem with becoming a cultivator though, is the money. Even just taking a person up to the fifth yer of Ignition costs a ridiculous amount of money.

  Without a wealthy family or sponsor at your back, your only chance is pretty much joining The Army.

  “Maybe you can join The Army when you’re older,” I say, not knowing the boy anywhere near enough to be willing to give him any sort of hope that I might be willing to sponsor him. “I understand they’ll take anyone with the talent for cultivation.”

  “Yeah, I know,” the boy mutters. “I already tried. Don’t have the talent.”

  “Oh.”

  My reaction is twofold, half from surprise that someone this one actually had his aptitude evaluated for military service, and the other half from sadness for the poor boy.

  I want to give him a line about how he doesn’t need to be a cultivator to be special, but I don’t. It would be beyond insensitive to say that while doing the work of a bulldozer with my bare hands.

  So, instead, I say, “I’m sorry.”

  The boy shrugs, trying to act like he isn’t as torn up about it as he obviously is.

  I don’t push.

  To distract him, I point to where Dai Lim is cutting down the next tree in preparation for me to uproot the stump. “Come on, he looks like he needs help.”

  Hou Yahui looks happy for the change of topic.

  Dai Lim clearly isn’t too comfortable with me doing such menial work, but he handles it well enough, and soon, as he gets progressively more tired while I haven’t even broken a sweat, he let’s me take on more and more of the work, until he pretty much becomes a supervisor, telling me what to do and how to do it.

  I lose track of time as I work, and it’s only the arrival of a familiar presence behind me that draws my attention from the trees I’m demolishing.

  I turn to see my Manager looking as rexed and beautiful as ever.

  “You’re awake,” I say happily.

  “And you are doing yardwork,” she says back.

  I ugh. “Yeah, I have some pns for the garden,” I say. “And I was bored.”

  Meng Yi’s eyes roam over me, from my bare feet, to my trousers rolled up to my knees, to my bare chest, courtesy of me taking off my expensive tunic so as to not get dirt on it. Her eyes return to mine.

  “Young Master Xian, I was asleep for a few hours,” she says, almost accusingly.

  I ugh again. “It was an eventful few hours,” I say. “Some guy even showed up, his name’s Lang Bao. He was hoping I would make him advance.”

  “You didn’t, did you?” she asks, genuine worry on her face.

  I give her a ft look.

  “I’m sorry,” she says, not sounding too sorry at all. “But, with you, one can never be sure.”

  Pointedly, she eyes the garden, which, as can only be expected, seeing as we’ve been felling and uprooting trees for the better part of an hour now, is one huge mess.

  “This and that are not the same,” I argue.

  “Of course, Young Master. If you say so.”

  —?—

  Meng Yi stays with me while I finish the rest of the work, watching as I pack up the trees into one huge pile in a corner of the garden.

  Apparently, they can be used for firewood, and since we don’t use firewood, the manor using beast rank fire crystals instead, I tell Dai Lim to bring people over to cut them up and move them to town for anyone who wants them.

  That done, Meng Yi pulls me into the house to take a bath.

  After the bath, we eat dinner, and after that, we sit and chill by the firepce in one of the parlours.

  We talk about everything and nothing, and as we do, things move to the topic of The Auction earlier today.

  “Never been to an auction before,” I say. “It was nice.”

  “I’m sure it helped that none of the money you spent was yours,” Meng Yi says, a teasing smile on her lips.

  “It did,” I admit easily. “It really did.”

  She shakes her head with fondness, and we sit in comfortable quiet for a moment.

  “I would have been happy with a beast rank method,” she says after a minute.

  I nod. “I know. But, like I told you, you deserve better.”

  She says nothing to that, and we sit in more moments of comfortable quiet.

  “That was a brilliant pn, by the way, gifting the beast rank manual to Gu Chi.” She ughs a little. “I wish I could see his face when he received the news.”

  I ugh too. “Yeah, it must have been something,” I say. “Imagine that, just living your life one day only to find out that some random person gifted you something worth eight million gold.”

  “I don’t have to,” Meng Yi says, giving me another of those indecipherable looks that leave me feeling funny.

  I clear my throat and look away. “Well, I’m not really some random person to you, am I?” I say, for ck of anything else.

  “No, you aren’t,” Meng Yi agrees, then rises from her seat opposite mine and comes to sit beside me on my sofa.

  “Uh…”

  “May I see it?” she asks. “The manual.”

  “Oh, of course, sure.” With a moment of focus, I have the manual in hand, and I pass it to her.

  Meng Yi takes it reverently, running her fingers across the silver cover.

  “Path of The Crystal Web,” she says, reading out the title like they’re words of power.

  She spends almost a minute simply taking in the book, and I let her.

  This must be a major moment for her, and it would be highly improper of me to spoil it.

  “When I first convinced Xian Qigang to help me cultivate and I entered Ignition phase, I thought that was as high as I would ever go,” Meng Yi says softly, eyes not leaving the book. “Even in my wildest dreams, the most I dared to hope for was beast rank.”

  She looks at me finally, and I notice that she’s crying, tears pooling in her eyes.

  Before I can say anything though, she sucks in a deep, slow breath and looks back to the manual.

  Slowly, she opens a page.

  Natural curiosity draws my gaze to the open page and the words on it.

  Like with the Path of The Sun Emperor manual, the words on it look like every written nguage I recognize and yet like nothing I’ve ever seen.

  I feel it grip onto my qi, attempting to pull me into its vision, and, like a human flicking away an annoying bug, my cultivation smacks it aside, the sun in my soul fring with annoyance that I know isn’t mine.

  Okay. That just happened.

  While the manual fails to get a grip on my qi though, Meng Yi is well and truly ensnared, and I feel peasant rank qi flowing from the book into her.

  It’s changing her. Taking her qi like strands of threads and weaving them together into esoteric, complicated patterns that I can’t even begin to follow, much less comprehend.

  It’s like a tapestry being woven, millions and billions of threads coming together to form a cohesive whole and I lose myself in watching it grow.

  Feeling a strange siren call, I reach out with my qi, wanting to make contact with this beautiful, magical thing.

  My qi goes forth, not much, just the tiniest sliver. I don’t want to change this, I just want to be part of it.

  My qi stretches out, becoming a single thread itself, watching, waiting for the perfect moment to connect. I don’t know how I’ll know it, but there is an instinct guiding me. Like a voice that is not a voice. Talking without sound. Communicating without words.

  It’s—the moment comes and my golden thread of qi shoots out, connecting at the perfect spot that looks no different to me from anywhere else.

  The weaving tapestry of Meng Yi’s qi shudders, then the whole thing glows, reflecting and refracting and showing me that the threads making it up are themselves made of crystals. Crystals that now glitter with the light from a single golden thread.

  A golden thread now lost in the sea of billions of others as the tapestry continues to weave into existence.

  I’m tired all of a sudden, but I force myself to watch till the end, and finally, like a fg the size of a mountain being spread out to catch the wind, Meng Yi’s cultivation reveals itself to the world. Mighty and beautiful.

  “You go, girl,” I say, my eyes drifting close, but the smile on my lips remaining.

  Jackpot-kun