Transmigrated into a Grandpa, Embracing the Laid-Back Life

The thirty-seventh failure.

Su Ming gasped heavily, his forehead covered in sweat, his face somewhat pale.

Using water to simulate the characteristics of metal was far more difficult than he had imagined. Water’s nature is inherently soft; forcibly making it rigid was like trying to carve steel needles out of tofu—apply a little too much force and it would shatter.

”Wrong, the approach is still too narrow.”

Lin Yu sighed, his phantom figure floating to Su Ming’s side, looking at the puddle of water on the ground. ”You’ve been trying to change the ’shape’ of the water, wanting to turn it into a blade, into a sword. But is a blade or sword sharp because of its shape? No, it’s because of the material’s density and hardness.”

”Your spiritual energy is too ’loose’.”

Lin Yu pointed at Su Ming’s Dantian. ”The Like Water Art gives your spiritual energy endurance, but it also makes you accustomed to ’flowing’. Now, forget about flowing. Imagine your spiritual energy is a bowstring stretched to its limit, or a spring compressed to the bottom.”

”At the moment this ’Sharp’ character rune is inscribed, what you need to do is not ’draw’, but ’compress’.”

”Compress?” Su Ming murmured to himself.

He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and once again mobilized a ball of water spiritual energy.This time, he didn’t rush to outline the rune’s lines.

He controlled that ball of water spiritual energy and began to collapse it inward.

One inch, then another.

The originally fist-sized water sphere was compressed to the size of an egg, its color changing from transparent to a deep, dark blue.

Su Ming felt resistance; intense repulsive force began to generate within the water spiritual energy, as if trying to bounce his divine sense away.

”Not enough! Compress more!” Lin Yu shouted from the side. ”That little pressure isn’t even enough to water a spirit herb! Want to kill someone? Compress until you can barely control it!”

Su Ming gritted his teeth, veins bulging on his neck.

Shrink... for me!

The egg-sized water sphere shrank again, becoming the size of a longan fruit. This single drop of water now was a deep blue, almost black, heavy as a lead pellet, emitting a heart-palpitating fluctuation.

Now!

Su Ming abruptly opened his eyes, his finger rapidly tracing through the air—no longer that flowing, cloud-like drawing method, but with a resolute, almost vicious intensity as if trying to tear through the void.

”Sharp!”

As the final stroke fell, that water droplet compressed to its extreme seemed to find a vent.

Whoosh—!

There was no earth-shattering explosion, only an extremely faint yet piercingly sharp whistle that seemed to stab through the eardrums.

A dark blue thread flashed through the air and vanished.

Thud.

In the corner of the meditation room, a three-inch-thick blue granite slate used for testing spell power silently gained a small hole.

The hole was clear through front to back, its edges smooth as a mirror, without the slightest crack or any flying stone fragments.

Su Ming stared blankly at that hole, his finger still maintaining the posture of inscribing the rune, trembling slightly.

In that instant just now, he felt one-tenth of the spiritual energy within his body had been drained, but the destructive power caused by this energy was more terrifying than the combined force of ten of his previous ”Water Bullet” spells.

”This is... the ’sharpness’ of water?” Su Ming murmured.

”That’s more like it.”

Lin Yu floated over, examined the small hole, and nodded in satisfaction. ”Although the accuracy is a bit off and the compression efficiency is just passable, this is the threshold of ’offensive combat’. Remember this feeling, disciple. True killing moves are never flashy light and shadow effects, but this kind—soundless, traceless, piercing through with a single strike.”

Su Ming let out a long breath and plopped down onto the meditation cushion. Although his body was exhausted to the point of death, his eyes burned with unprecedented excitement.

He knew he had finally driven the first nail into that plank called ”attack weakness”.

”Master, this move doesn’t have a name yet.” Su Ming looked at the hole, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.

”Since it relies on high pressure to penetrate and is silent...” Lin Yu stroked his chin. ”Call it ’Spirit-Startling Thrust’. A bit corny, but sounds decent for scaring people.”

”No.” Su Ming shook his head, his fingers gently rubbing the water stain on the floor. ”It originates from water and is extremely restrained. Let’s call it ’Dripping Water Force’.”

”Dripping water wears through stone, not achieved in a single day; but if this drop of water weighs a thousand jun, piercing stone is but an instant.”

Su Ming stood up, once again mobilizing the remaining spiritual energy within his body.

”Again!”

...

In the side hall of the Administration Hall, the afternoon sunlight was filtered of its heat by the thick window paper, leaving only a layer of dim yellow light illuminating the dust motes floating in the air.

Su Ming sat behind a long desk piled with archives, dipped his fingertip in a bit of clear water, and turned a page of the yellowed ledger.

This was his thirteenth day as the Formation Peak Candidate Steward.

There was no expected wielding of power, nor was he immediately entrusted with any important task like repairing some ancient grand formation.

Laid out before him were the brief reports on material consumption for the past half-year from the three external halls under the Formation Peak’s jurisdiction: ”Refining”, ”Forging”, and ”Rune Drawing”.

”Steward Su, this tea has gone cold. Shall this humble one fetch you a fresh cup?”

The speaker was an old clerk from the Administration Hall, surnamed Chen, with a round face. When he smiled, his eyes narrowed into slits, and his hands were always habitually tucked into his sleeves.

Su Ming didn’t even look up, his gaze still locked on the line of densely packed numbers. ”No need. Elder Chen, why is the ’Fire Essence Stone’ consumption for the ’C-Type’ refining room in March thirty percent higher than in February?”

The flesh on Old Clerk Chen’s face twitched, then he offered an ingratiating smile. ”Ah, Steward Su, you might not know. In March, there was a late spring chill, the earth fire vein was unstable, controlling the heat when refining ores was difficult, so the scrap rate naturally increased a bit. This is all standard practice, standard practice.”

”Late spring chill?”

Su Ming lightly tapped the desk twice with his finger, producing crisp *tock-tock* sounds. ”But looking at the records for the ’D-Type’ room during the same period, consumption actually dropped by ten percent. Does the earth fire vein recognize people, only freezing the C-Type room but not the D-Type?”

A fine layer of oily sweat beaded on Old Clerk Chen’s forehead. He hadn’t expected this newly appointed young steward, ignoring the leisurely tea, to insist on wrestling with these tedious numbers. Usually, which of those candidate stewards didn’t come here just to pad their resumes? Who would actually verify them entry by entry?

”This... perhaps the D-Type room got a batch of new, good furnaces...” Old Clerk Chen hemmed and hawed, his eyes beginning to dart around.

Su Ming finally looked up and glanced at him.

That gaze wasn’t sharp, as placid as a pool of stagnant water, yet it made the lies on the tip of Old Clerk Chen’s tongue get forcibly swallowed back.

”Note it down.” Su Ming pointed to the blank jade slip beside him. ”March C-Type room consumption is questionable; requires cross-referencing the on-duty disciples’ operation logs and scrap weighing records for secondary verification.”

Old Clerk Chen forced a dry laugh twice, dawdling as he picked up the brush. ”Steward Su, this... isn’t this being too nitpicky? We’re all fellow sect brothers, water too clear has no fish, you know...”

”I am the steward; auditing the accounts is my duty.” Su Ming’s tone was steady as he lowered his head again and turned a page. ”I don’t care if the water is clear or not, but this ledger of mine must balance.”

In his Consciousness Sea, Lin Yu whistled. ”Tsk, this old slickster, trying to fool our ’data maniac’ with such low-level excuses? Disciple, look at that line for ’Red Copper Powder’ reimbursement, five hundred jin? Is this stuff used for artifact forging or for mixing into rice to eat?”

Su Ming mentally replied, ”Red Copper Powder is used as a combustion aid. The normal ratio shouldn’t exceed five percent of the main material. Here, they reported fifteen percent. The extra portion was either embezzled and resold, or their process flow is rotten to the core.”

”Obviously the former.” Lin Yu lay lazily in the ring’s space. ”This isn’t a ledger; it’s clearly a ’Map of Sect Rats Distribution’. But aren’t you afraid of offending people by investigating like this?”

”Finding out is one thing; reporting it upwards is another.” Su Ming inscribed a line of symbols only he could understand onto the jade slip. ”Having leverage in hand makes it easier to talk later.”

Only when the sun set in the west did Su Ming close the last ledger.

He rubbed his slightly throbbing temples and stored the compiled summary of suspicious points into his storage pouch. Old Clerk Chen had long since found an excuse to slip away. The entire side hall held only him.

The day’s work was tedious, monotonous, full of the smell of dust and scheming.

But this was exactly what Su Ming wanted—to understand how the blood vessels of this massive sect pulsed.