7 Strength, Agility, Money

In the modernized world, there was always an eternal question that every living human experienced at a certain point of their lives. It varied from person to person depending on their financial circumstances and familial background, but nobody was spared from the millennial dilemma that plagued the revolutionized society.

How did one make money?

Depending on the recipient of the question and the perspective, the answers were bound to differ by a large margin. The individual's response was clear and dry-cut, whereas for the modern corporate, there were a few complications.

Accountants and economists disagreed on the details and minor extrapolations of the individual's response, but they were mostly in agreement regarding the general perspective. To make money, and individual was required to perform a conversion of currency, one from a bartering or non-valued method of validation to that of hard, minted currency.

The concept could be interpreted through the example of selling off material objects and antiques for liquidation or cash returns, or offering metaphysical services in exchange for a direct cash recompensation. The process of conversion could be layered indefinitely prior to the final transformation into cash, and as long as the determined value exceeded that of the initial sum, the individual was considered to have "made money."

It was a biased equivalent exchange, of which items of equal true value were interchanged, but the assessed value was slightly biased towards one or the other.

Companies, on the other hand… constantly required money to function, and often more than it generated. Corporate functions, both domestic and external, required a constant supply of funds, from the first step to even the aftermath procedures.

"When it consumes an exorbitant quantity of funds with each passing second, and even recouping one's earnings costs a considerable sum – can companies truly make money?"

Xi Chen uttered a self-deprecating chuckle, and shook his head at the absurdity of the thought. He had witnessed many leap into the fire of modern business with the ideal of raking in a heavenly blessing filled with renminbi, only to burn themselves out of their ancestors' funds upon their first month of incorporation.

Had it not been for a stroke of chance and a well-timed maneuver onto his opportunity, Xi Chen wondered if he could have been labeled as one of the "fools" he had criticized earlier. The youth creased his brows over the question for a brief moment, then shook his head and walked away.

Behind him were the massive iron gates of Jiangbei University's central campus, and before him was the proliferating streets of the actual city.

"Rather… noisy indeed. It really doesn't change regardless of the perspective, ah?"

It wasn't even ten in the morning, but the streets were already filled to the brim with vehicles, angered drivers, and irritated pedestrians. From one end of the street to the other, Xi Chen saw nothing but lanes flooded with a torrent of metallic hoods and their shimmering layers of paint.

It was the legendary 'Jiangbei rush hour' once again, where all of the latecomers to work decided to hightail onto the streets to quickly rush to work and clock in before they could lose their first hour's pay for the day, only to realize that nearly everyone else had the same idea and thinking processes. As such, the traffic during this time of the day was incredibly horrible and worse than that of regular rush hours, yet the people refused to change their habits…

Xi Chen took one last glance at an angered man dressed in an impeccable suit thrusting his middle finger towards the rear windshield of the car before him, and resumed his walk on the sidewalk. He bypassed the alleyways housing all of the hawkers, street vendors, and marketplace stalls, and navigated through a set of intersecting streets until he stood before a decrepit building.

The wooden structures had long since rotted over time, and the listed owner either expressed little interest towards renovating the property, or was unable to do so. Either way, Xi Chen had trespassed the building's boundaries since he was young – not for the building itself, but the small forest behind it.

It was the only stretch of undeveloped land within the vicinity of Jiangbei, and the area was cluttered with trees of various variety. Avoiding the dense clutters of fallen leaves that had broken from their branches far too early, Xi Chen trekked into the conclave of the forest.

Here, he could be guaranteed of little to no surveillance by technology. The dense shroud of leaves, branches, and bark could fragment any transmission signal, disrupting any attempts at delivering a transmission with clarity. It was bad news for the average drone enthusiast or technology-geek, but a treasure boon for Xi Chen.

It was the perfect location to test the capabilities of the bowl of Heaven, without worrying about anyone discovering any peculiarities on his body.

"Keep it simple with the first one, don't try to call for something wild or uncalled for…"

Xi Chen placed down his bag onto the ground and took a deep breath to calm his nerves. With the faint chirping of birds and the rustling of grass accompanying the autumn wind serving as his impetus of meditation, the youth closed his eyes and envisioned the wooden bowl in his mind.

The wooden meditation bowl with its few grains of sand stacked upon the other in a neat pile…

"First attempt, I want <strength>!"

Xi Chen declared each word with determination and resolve, his voice unwavering in the slightest. With his perception directly focused onto the interior of the wooden bowl, he cast his wish into the bottomless depths of Heaven.

The grain of sand scattered from his fingertips, and clattered down the infinite curvature of the bowl until it came to a natural rest next to the base of the pile. Though the individual grains were far too small in size for Xi Chen's eyes to spot the symbolic writing on each one, he instinctively knew that the most recent grain he had cast was that of a Saint.

A wave of elation rushed through his body at the notion of obtaining strength, but quickly ebbed as time passed. As he stared at his spread palms, Xi Chen couldn't help but raise questions in his mind.

"What… exactly is strength?"

His body and sensations clearly felt no different from before the successful casting of the grain, nor did anything change when he randomly swiped his hand or flexed his muscles. Closing his eyes and lapsing back into a more calm, tranquil state, Xi Chen revised the words he had uttered earlier.

His thoughts demanded strength not unlike that of the immortal cultivators described in the fictional wuxia and xianxia novels that had taken the Internet by storm of recent times. The ability he had requested for correlated with their capability of handling objects of mass that far surpassed the capabilities of a human body, and could achieve speeds only achievable by internal-combustion engines.

Through his words, he had requested for strength. The broad description depicted the trait of being physically capable of handling weights of a certain degree, yet there was an alternate description that bordered on increasing the resilience towards physical change…

Could it be that since there were alternate definitions towards the concept, the bowl of Heaven could cast the grain of sand, but no phenomenon actually occurred?

"In that case… I want <physical strength, and physical agility>!"

As he carefully observed the changes in the bowl through his perception, Xi Chen noticed that there wasn't an additional grain of sand pitched towards the bottomless depths. Instead, the grain responsible for his previous call for <strength> flickered with a gleam of violet and golden light, and his heart resonated with the information that a faint change in its characteristics had just occurred.

…and when he moved his arms in a random effort, there wasn't much different, but if he were to direct his attention towards the movem –

Crash!

"Shit!"

Xi Chen yelped as he witnessed his palm shatter a nearby redwood trunk, scattering wooden shrapnel over his clothes and bag. Withdrawing his hand, he found there to be no injury – not even a bruise – but it was only when he glanced downwards that he realized the scope of destruction wreaked by the single strike.

The tall redwood tree that had once occupied a portion of his peripheral vision had now been obliterated into shards of wood and bark. From the roots and the tips of the leaves, everything had been fragmented into dangerous splinters and shards, and the focal point of impact had disintegrated into a finely ground powder rivaling those produced from professional grinding mills.

That… now... that was physical strength…

"Only, is there a method of controlling it? Since I also called for <physical agility>, then if I were to focus on my movements…"

Xi Chen's throat bobbed as he awkwardly swallowed whilst estimating the destructive potential of the bowl of Heaven. The sheer divine ability of granting a wish that was properly defined, combined with a mortal's dangerous and furtive thinking…

"Oh, could I call for a <Xuanyuan Sword>?"

Xi Chen muttered a random allude to the wuxia novels he had once read as a teenager. Recalling the mythical and omnipotent sword that the authors had all loved to toss onto their main characters, he threw the wish into the depths of the bowl…

…there wasn't any response.

"No Xuanyuan Sword then. Not even the authors knew what they were imagining when they wrote the words in – pretty laughable, no?"