"Senior, what happened?" Xiaolin asked, finding Gale comeback in dismay. She wore an apron above her clothes, doing housework in his stead. Supposedly, Grandma Yushen commanded her to leave, only when it looked Gale could take care of things on his own.
Gale clicked his tongue and told her about the event in short.
In the end, Gale couldn't convince the Oldman. Old Ran fumed for a few minutes and departed, reminding again not to carve the canal in his land.
Perhaps angering the old man was a bad idea as he was less likely to hear him out, but sometimes you had to go hard against a hell-bent opponent.
Gale made his case, which seemed to fuel Old Ran's anger, which meant Gale was just about right, and his words resonated with Old Ran's grievances.
Gale was certain the elder would figure out the advantages and disadvantages of his offer when he comes to his right mind. Gale offered almost twice that of the actual price of the property. To anyone, it was a steal.
However, this Oldman was living here for decades, though alone, his bones hadn't gone soft. In contrast, they seemed to have hardened as the Oldman became inflexible, living alone.
Old age tends to have this effect on people. Gale had seen his fair share of old fools who discarded a good life in their sheer arrogance and conceit.
Shen Xuan rebuked him after Old Ran left, fuming in anger. He also departed, citing he would talk to his father to convince Old Ran.
If that doesn't work, then he might just build his own water system. He was only using others for convenience, and he got to prepare the mansion defence. It got to take a couple of months if Gale wanted to do his best work in scripting.
Xiaolin looked troubled hearing everything out. It was in a way her fault, like how choking on food was the food's fault. Still, she wouldn't help but feel guilty.
"Don't worry about it," Gale said. "It's just water. I might be able to solve it within a couple of days. A motor construct isn't hard to build. I learned that when I was a novice."
"Really?" Xiaolin's expression was incredulous, probably thinking Gale was only saying that, so she wouldn't feel bad about herself.
"Sure," Gale said as they moved into the house. "I'll show you how."
Getting into the house, Gale brought out his scripting tools and ingredients. He was about to organise the items when he momentarily paused, his consciousness drifting inside the void-lock.
Xiaolin was watching those instruments with keen eyes when she found Gale standing idle as if a sudden enlightenment hit him. Apparently, it was not, as she heard him grunting.
"Senior?"
"I totally forgot about my Void-lock." He smiled, turning to her. It had been years since he used Void-lock as a weapon or tool, other storing items. "Looks like we can solve the water problem in a couple of hours."
"We can?" Xiaolin blinked as Gale showed her the weird spiral mark of the fate-lock. The one depicting the dimension space where he stored all the items.
"Yes," Gale laughed. "I can just carry around all the water in the void-lock. It would be easier than using a motor."
"Really? Isn't there any restriction on using such a power?"
Gale clicked his tongue. "The only problem is that my Void-lock is full of other stuff. I have to unload them before I can pour water into it."
With a simple flick of his fingers, Gale collected all the items he brought out and stuffed them into the void-lock. He looked around the room, pondering.
"I don't think your house is big enough to hold all the items," Gale said, earning a questionable stare from Xiaolin. "Well, we can store the spirit coins inside the house, as it has a working ward in place. As for the other unimportant stuff, we can stuff them into the farmhouse."
Luckily, only about ten percent of his space was spirit coins, or he might have to start laying warding formations around the farmhouse.
Gale flicked his finger again as a dark hole appeared in reality and out of them poured out hundreds of golden coins, each one glistening like the setting sun. With a few seconds, there were tens of thousands of gold coins.
"Senior," Xiaolin yelped, completely overwhelmed at the display. She had never really seen gold spirit marks previously, yet this foreigner was dropping them like common cabbages. "What are you. . .doing?"
"Close the window," Gale suggested. "Even though the ward will block overflowing energy getting out of the house, it might complicate things if others saw all this."
Xiaolin's eyes still stared at the coins. Only when the coins reached her feet did she notice she was charmed by all the energy raging around her.
Xiaolin skidded off and closed the window as she was told.
Gale watched how the energy flowed to her, curling around her carelessly and being sucked away unconsciously, as if it was only natural.
"I'm sorry," Xiaolin said, ashamed. "I didn't mean to."
She let out a deep breath and concentrated on not absorbing the energy. The thin, smokey energy still surrounded her, curling around her, as the process of not absorbing became harder.
"Xiaolin," Gale couldn't help but say, "you know you're one of a wonder."
The farm girl blinked.
"You never had a problem absorbing too much or higher-order energy, did you?"
Even though energy tended to always go from higher density to lower—like Iron energy flowing to copper, and then the copper flowing to natural worldly energy—the presence of so many gold coins could at least overrule the law a little. With the ward in place, at least half of the energy would stay at Gold level for hours. For Silver and Iron, it would be days and weeks, respectively.
ραпdα nᴏνɐ| сom "If I absorb too much energy, weird side effects tend to arise."
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Throwaway power stones, golden stones if you like the book . . .
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