How to Assassin-Proof Your New Home

Once that discussion was over, the Emperor actually teleported Chi from the Palace and to the estate that was to be her new home for the next three hundred years. The seal for the teleportation had appeared beneath her feet infused with the Emperor's qi caught Chi's attention that she did not prepared herself for the experience. That was a mistake she was not going to give into for the rest of her second life.

The first thing Chi did was dry heave. Since she was a spirit, Chi did not have anything to vomit out. That was good since she did not like the smell of bile. The second thing she did was took a look at her surrounding; it made her want to vomit for a second time. The Emperor must be punishing her because this was not an estate - it was a monstrosity.

The estate reminded Chi of those haunted Victorian houses. The kind of haunted house with walls that were eroded for nearly a hundred years, with the tall weeds and wild flora all over the yard, visible holes on the roof, and peeling paint. She was pretty sure the inside was going to be worse with a field of dust and dirt, broken furniture, and questionable smells. There was a good chance that it would be better if Chi demolished the estate and build one instead.

She has plenty of information and DIY videos to access but the main problem was having the skills to pull it off. In her old life, Chi could simply use her smartphone to find an agent, designer, construction company, inspector, and any other people needed for creating a new home. Here, she has no connections or any way to find someone to help her. It gets worse because she has to rebuild a home for a prince. A prince who was only allowed one guard for security.

For several minutes, Chi allowed herself a pity party which consists of her muttering curses to the Emperor and his family. Then she took a deep breath before setting up a playlist consisting cheerful music with morbid lyrics such as Nat King Cole and James Dean's 'Dog House' and Betty Hutton's 'Murder, He Says' to Maroon 5's 'Misery' and Hanson's 'MMMBop.' First step, she was going to make an inspection to see if there was anything salvageable.

Her first assessment of the estate was correct - it was a piece of shit. The floor consists of broken tiles and wooden boards, the walls had cracks and holes, sunlight enter through the holes in the roof, and the furniture was nothing more than a pieces of useless junk were more what Chi thought the Cold Palace would be like instead of some estate. There were only a few pieces of furniture that could be used in several DIY projects channels, however not enough to fully furnish half of a room.

She has only three days to make this estate habitable - F her life.

Taking a deep breath, Chi closed her eyes and began mentally list out what she needed. Almost immediately, answers began to pop into her head as she listed out the problems. Answers that were fantastical and unreal compared to her Internet cheat. Powerful explosive techniques flashed through her mind when she thought about destroying the estate and then intricate designs popped up when Chi thought about security. She realized that those designs were runes and seals. In fact, many of the solutions to her problems seem to come from the Magical Library/Forbidden Room, however Chi swore that she never read the books on seals and runes.

What the hell happened when she blacked out from the peach wine?

Deciding that she would solve that mystery for later, Chi started to plan. For the rest of the day, she was going to design a new home, destroy the old estate, and then hunt down for the materials. Day two will spent on setting up the security, making the new house, and putting up the amenities. Day three was going to be spent on making furniture and finding enough food to prepare a small feast to cheer up her new boss.

Taking a deep breath, Chi felt for her qi and let if flowed over her. The qi followed her will and in a moment the white clothing she wore for over a thousand years changed into a black tank top, gray zip up hoodie, black yoga crop pants, and black running shoes. It feels good to be wearing modern clothes and Chi did a couple of stretches while marveling at the feel of her new clothing. Then she gather her shoulder length hair, twisted it, and laid it length wise on the back of her head. With a small bit of qi, she let go and her hair stayed put as if a hair comb had bind it. After shaking her head a few times, Chi was pleased to see that her hair stayed in place.

Next, she concentrated on amassing her qi to the tip of her right index finger. When enough was gained, Chi placed it on the underside of her left forearm. A small seal imprinted on her skin and she started to curse from the pain of it but did not stop. The pain grew intense and she started to snarl and stomp her feet as the power kept on feeding the seal. It was a few more minutes before Chi stop feeding power into the seal and started to wave her left arm as if moving it would make the pain go away. When the pain finally decreased enough to be bearable, she looked over to see the seal slowly disappear into her skin.

"This better work." she muttered before picking up a small rock. After tossing it a few times, Chi made a small movement with her hand and the rock disappeared from sight. However in her mind, she was able to find the rock laying around in the vast expansion of her dimensional pocket space. A tiny bit of qi later, the rock appeared in her hand again. Chi practiced this a few times before smiling at her success.

The seal she had branded herself with was something that came from the Magical Library/Forbidden Room. While this seal and its variants were used to make objects into storage containers and that there had not been a known case of a living being using the seal on themselves; Chi believed that as a spirit she was not considered part of the living and decided it would be convenient to place the seal on herself. This way, she would not have to worry about losing her stuff.

It may hurt like hell, but at least she could now store the usable bits of the estate before destroying it.

The next couple hours was spent running around and finding the hidden treasures of the dump like property. If anyone could see Chi, it would look like she was moving around like the super fast superheroes seen in movies or television. For her, it was like taking a few steps and she was at her destination.

Most of the stuff she saved were unbroken tiles, pieces of good wood, shiny bits of crystal and glass, old weapons that could be melted down for something better, couple of porcelain basins, and some bricks.

Once she found everything that was useful, Chi contemplated about how to destroy the estate.

She was torn between blasting it out of existence just to see if she could or to be more subtle about it. The pro for the first choice was that it would be really cool. The con was that Chi had no idea if her blasting could just be contained with the estate alone. For all she knew, she could end up destroying a neighboring village or two. She was probably going to need to visit said villages for supplies in the future.

With a disappointed sigh, Chi sat on the ground and began to expand her qi upon the estate. Her ability to use qi was getting stronger and possibly being perform incorrectly compared to the norm in this world. The abundant amount of qi that Chi developed for over a millennia was being used by will power alone instead incantations or techniques. What she wanted, her qi responded naturally and Chi was content to leave it as it is despite the vast amount of know how from the Magical Library/Forbidden Room.

The moment she felt her qi had covered all the building structures of the estate, Chi pressed her will upon it and a slight vibration began to rise from the ground. It grew slowly and steady until it became a minor earthquake shake with a heavy buzz in the air. In the distance, her ears could pick up the sound of stone crumbling and wood splintering. With the slow and steady pace that she set upon destroying the estate, Chi decided that now would be a good time to watch fantasy movies to get some ideas - starting with J K Rowling's 'Harry Potter' series.

Watch was actually too strong of word; Chi mostly skimmed parts of the movies that focused on the household side of things than the actual plot. She kept doing this with several other movies from Disney, Universal, and other various movie studios. When Chi finally looked up from her research, the once decrypted estate was nothing more than a pile of ash and gravel mixed with sand. Then using her qi, she had it separated into piles before storing it all in her dimensional space. All that was left was a large bare patch of land.

Getting up, Chi brushed off the imaginary dirt from her pants and began planning on the design. Using her Internet cheat, Chi stole multiple blueprints, pictures, and designs that came from luxury Asian homes and spa retreats. Pulling up multiple windows, she cut and paste until it was a collage of blueprints and photos for each part of the new house.

The design of the mansion/house was created with one main body consisting the foyer, living room, dinning room, library/study, and an open air courtyard at the front. At the back was where the kitchen, laundry room, sun room, and a couple of small guestrooms would be situated. The second floor would be where the prince's bedroom and bath was going to be built along with a smaller set for the guard. There would also be a set of guest rooms at the other end of the second floor. For any other additional guest, she would have a small guest house built somewhere near the main estate.

That was the main blueprint for the house. Anything more, Chi would just wing it. Right now, it was time for her to gather the materials. For a job of this size, she was going to pull out for some audiobooks instead of a playlist of music. She was going to listen to Agatha Christie's Miss Marple mysteries. There was nothing like a good story where an old lady outsmarts everyone around her.

For a brief moment, Chi wondered if she should call herself a grandma. After that moment, she found that she was fine with the idea of being called a grandma.

With a quick jump and a shake of her body, Chi started to run lightly towards the forest and the mountains that were west to the estate. She was pretty sure she could get some free materials there.

***

Chi learned many things while gathering materials.

Cutting down a forest was easier than cutting down a single tree. Smashing boulders was fun; carefully mining for specific ores was not. Hunting for spiritual beasts was impossible if one's qi was too powerful and beaming out like an emergency signal.

That last part was the reason why her schedule was messed up by over half of a day. While the mistakes in getting wood, metal ores, and other earthen materials were easy to fix, the blood of a powerful spirit beast had nearly put Chi in tears as she could not find any living mammal within a ten kilometer radius of her position. It was embarrassing but she finally figured it out after cursing every living spirit beast and their mothers while everything around her turn to dust due to her lack of control with her qi.

She finally calmed down long enough to meditate and concentrated on restraining her qi into her center instead of letting it all out like the body fat from her mortal body. That ended up wasting a few hours, but Chi managed to keep her qi in control within a meter radius of herself. Not as good as keeping it under her skin; but beggars cannot be choosers.

When she finally got her qi mostly under control, Chi went on a killing spree for every powerful aura she could get her hands on. That led her to develop her own brand of martial arts - Bitch Slap Fu.

Bitch Slap Fu was actually ingrained into her memory from her mortal life. In the past, Lillian had taken a role as the typical evil hot girlfriend in some cheesy romantic comedy. One of the scenes contain a ridiculously hilarious slap fight between her character and the heroine's best friend which Lillian practiced hard with the timing on the slaps with Chi. They, of course, made mistakes and ended up really slapping each other in the beginning but got better at it that they sometimes made it a game when they got really bored.

This new martial art contained only one move - a slap to the face. Normally this would not matter much in a fight; but with Chi being a spirit, her enormous qi transformed into strength that was powerful enough to snapped the necks of every spirit beast she hunted. With each kill, she dumped the fresh killed beast into her storage space before going to the next target.

When she saw that the it looked to be noon of the second day did she finally stopped. Chi was glad that as a spirit, she did not need to sleep which allowed her to work through out the night. However for some reason, she did require it necessary to eat and drink at times. So far she was not hungry yet, but the amount of energy she was consuming to fix the house, it was possible Chi was going to need a feast afterwards.

Once she returned back to the empty bare land, Chi took out all the spirit beasts that she killed.

"Damn, that's huge." She mused to herself before picking out the most powerful beast out of the stash.

It was a huge liger beast with storm gray fur and blue tinted onyx strips. A beautiful specimen of the feline kingdom with the exception of the funny angle of the head. Chi quickly placed the rest of the kills back to the storage space to prevent any chance of decomposing. She studied the body for several long minutes.

There was a big reason why Chi was desperate for spirit beasts. Unlike herself, spirit beasts actually do have physical bodies which contain the basics of muscles, blood, and bones. The thing she needed was blood infused with qi to recreate the powerful seals for security from assassins. With the blood from the spirit beasts, Chi could infuse her own qi into the blood - increasing the power of the seals exponentially.

She sped watched every video on how to dismember animals that could be found and pulled up detailed zoology pictures for lions, tigers, and ligers. When she felt confident enough, Chi closed her eyes and her qi reacted immediately.

In an instant, the body of the liger type beast lifted in the air and began to peel itself apart. The fur with the skin slowly pulled itself from the body and the qi responsible for it began to cure the skin into leather while the fur was cleaned and brushed into a soft fluffy fullness. Then the blood began to drain itself from the body into the air until it grew to the size of a hot air balloon. Considering that the beast was easily over five stories high, the amount of blood being drain was natural. Next came the muscles or as one would say the 'meat'. They fell apart in chunks which quickly disappeared with the fur back into the storage space.

At least Chi could have a barbecue with grilled meat for dinner in the next few months.

Next came the organs which slowly extract themselves from the bones that protected them. Judging how healthy these were, the liger beast could have lived a few thousand centuries if it had been lucky and not been hunted by Chi. Those were also thrown into the storage space. Then it came down to the spirit cores of the beast.

The reason why this liger beast was the most powerful out of all the kills was due to the fact that it had mutated and grew two spirit cores. One was located on its forehead and the other was implanted on the sternum. Spirit cores are treasures for cultivators as they could be used to make weapons, increase their chances in breaking through bottlenecks, and can be used like batteries to power seals for thousands of years.

The only downside to spirit cores was that it was difficult to separate them from the bones. The theory on the creation of spirit cores was similar to that of pearls only they form not from sand being stuck in the membrane but from a tiny mutation in their bones. The difference between spirit beasts and normal beasts is the ability to access qi. The higher the control of qi, the more powerful the beast becomes. Unlike humans who cultivate qi through their medarins, spirit beasts cultivate qi through their entire bodies from the blood to the bones.

Thus, when a spark of high concentrated qi is created in their bones, this causes the qi to form itself into a physical manifestation which will grow itself into a spirit core - like a very powerful tumor.

Extracting a spirit core requires very skilled techniques since a single mistake could make the spirit core lose half of its power or even make it useless. Luckily, since Chi was using her qi to do all the dirty work, the cores were carefully extracted and also placed into storage along with the bones.

Now with the blood in the air, Chi rose in the air until she was about seven stories high from the ground. The blood had risen above her before it split itself into a set of seals that interlocked with each other. It was an impressive sight that grew magnificent as the blood started to change from the thick crimson color to a simmering gold as Chi poured as much qi into the seals.

The amount of power infusing with the blood was enough to paralyze an entire kingdom and it did as several populations of villagers could barely breath or fainted from the pressure. Several weak beasts had died from heart attacks and the more powerful ones hid in their dens and shivered.

In the far distance, powerful immortal cultivators felt the enormous aura and turned their heads in the direction. Some were worried about a new powerful warrior emerging from a breakthrough while others hoped that a new treasure had revealed itself. The Emperor had to use his own qi on his entire palace and city to hide the fact that there was a powerful spirit working to create a new home for his soon to be exiled son.

The moment Chi felt that the seals were at their limit, her arms spread open to the side before they met in a loud clap. The moment her hands met in a clap, the seals fell to the ground and buried themselves into the earth. The after effects on these actions caused the ground to rumble, groan, and shake for over two hours before the seals finally settled. She smiled as she tested the seals with her qi.

These seals would keep assassins away and would be impossible for an army of the best warriors from blasting the place into dust. Anyone that attempts to do mortal harm within the seals would be rendered paralyzed, blind and deaf until a key seal was placed upon them. That was the final protection. The first protection was that no one was allowed into the area until given permission. That meant no door-to-door salesmen could walk up to the front door. The second protection was a dome barrier that would block any qi attacks or even weapons trying for long distance assassination. The third protection was a security like qi system that would allow Chi to know where everyone in the estate is located within the seals.

Honestly, Chi would have loved to add in a weapons system, but her boss is the seventh prince and it would not look good if it was discovered that the estate contain enough fire power to take on an army.

Opening her eyes, Chi sighed and stretched out her body while ignoring the fact that she was standing on air. While she may be thousands of years old, the old mortal fear of heights pricked at her soul. Looking around her, she sighed at the bright blue sky and the white clouds. It was tempting to see if she could fly into the clouds and feel cold wet condense air, but she still had a mansion to build.

With a wide sweep of her arms, all of the materials she had collected appeared in the air with her. It created a tornado like effect of stone, wood, and earth.

Time to play Gustav Holst's 'The Planets' suite.