Lin Ming woke up late… which honestly felt like a true achievement in a world without alarm clock and an elder sister whose spiritual power could shatter doors. He found Yuya pacing his quarters, dressed to perfection and wearing a face of someone trying so hard not to explode.
"You are half an hour late for Sacred Morning Foraging!" Yuya hissed, grabbing him by his arm. "Lord Feng's appetite for morning dew-soaked seeds is highly precise! This is not some common pigeon, Brother Ming….this is a highly discerning Imperial Fowl!"
"Calm your nerve sis," he said rubbing the sleep from his eyes. "It's just 9:30 AM."
We're still in morning. I'll just tell the bird I had an unexpected meeting with my inner clock. It's an ancient concept."
He was still wearing his ridiculous green silk robes…the same one he had slept in mostly because they required the least amount of effort to look presentable.
"The Prince is watching your performance!" Yuya blurted, dragging his resisting weight towards the massive outer courtyard.
Sure enough, standing stiffly beside a fountain that sent water arching high into the air via what Lin Ming correctly diagnosed as permanent enchantment, was a tall, handsome man in heavy gold and scarlet robes.
This was Prince Heng. He had the face of a magazine model and the posture of a steel rod and next to him sat a massive peacock. Lord Feng was a bird that looks so-over- the-top it almost looked fake. its feathers shining with a brilliance so dazzling it looked as if someone had carelessly spilled an entire box of cut jewels across its enormous back, appearing, in Lin Ming's deeply felt estimation, less like an actual bird and more like an extremely arrogant chandelier that had suddenly developed an inflated sense of self-importance.
The Prince gave Lin Ming a chilly nod. "Brother-in-Law Ming. You are late. Lord Feng finds lateness highly distasteful. It disrupts his qi flow."
Lin Ming just offered a slight, lazy wave. "My apologies, Prince. I was busy engaging in some deep spiritual activities to cleanse of my inner consciousness, which unfortunately required me to lie down for an extended period. Very high-level stuff. You wouldn't understand."
The Prince looked skeptical but couldn't openly question "spiritual cleansing."
Yuya immediately cuts in, placing a small, highly ornate box into Lin Ming's hand. "Brother Ming is diligently focusing on his courtship duties, Your Highness. He is prepared with Lord Feng's preferred morning snacks."
"Snacks?" Lin Ming opened the box. Inside were three dried, shriveled insects and a small mound of extremely tiny, expensive-looking seeds. "Are you serious? I'm feeding this thing protein bars?"
He scattered the seeds on the floor, making it look like he's about to perform a ritual. Lord Feng responded by extending one tail feather, which gently batted the seeds away.
The peacock then fixed its large, knowing eye on Lin Ming.
The bird is judging me, Lin Ming realized. This is a level of passive-aggressive judgment I haven't seen since a food blogger reviewed my latte foam.
"Lord Feng says that your application of the seeds is scattered and reflects a lack of focus on the Path of the Small Grain," the Prince interpreted without blinking.
Li Ming sighed. "Tell Lord Feng I'm prioritizing The Dao of Minimum Effort. If he doesn't like the seeds, he can order takeout."
Yuya physically pushed Lin Ming away before the Prince could explode. "We must return to the residence, Your Highness! Brother Ming must prepare for his Basic Repulsion Seal practice. An unexpectedly intense schedule!"
Sabotage by Boredom
Back at the Lin residence, Yuya was furious. "You are deliberately failing! This morning was a disaster! You will now practice your cultivation, or I will use my full power to glue your robes to that meditation cushion for the rest of the week!"
Lin Ming flopped onto the silk bedding. "Fine. Repulsion Seal. I'll practice my 'repelling' strategy. I have a new idea for getting out of the peacock wedding. We're going to use the Power of Extreme Tedium."
"Tedium?"
"Yeah. The Prince's conditions specifically require me to read an approved, non-fictional text during the peacock's naptime. I need the single most aggressively boring, truly mind-numbing document known to existence, something so profoundly dull that it compels the bird to question the inherent stability of the entire cosmos. What's your equivalent of a dictionary, or maybe a 10-year budget report?"
Yuya's eyes narrowed. "The most tedious text known to the cultivation world is the Scroll of Ancient Manners. It is an 800-page treatise on the proper angle of the wrist when pouring tea. It has put Master Cultivators into a two-week coma."
"Perfect," Lin Ming said, seizing the massive, dusty scroll. "Maximum efficiency. I'm going to weaponize this thing."
He then sent his servant, Jinzhu, to retrieve a small, life-affirming snack…anything, anything at all, that was not a dried insect before settling onto the floor, pulling from his host body's inner robes a small, flat black object he had miraculously retained: a cheap, pre-paid smartphone. The screen was spiderwebbed with cracks, but it still, astonishingly, housed an impressive amount of precious modern data.
"Step one," Lin Ming muttered, powering up the phone. "See if I can download a few apps before the battery dies."
**The Poet and the Wi-Fi Curse**
Just as Lin Ming was attempting to open an ancient, heavily pixelated map on the phone, the main doors of the pavilion burst open…though without the divine lighting effects of the espresso machine.
Instead, a man staggered in. He was looking thin, pale, and dressed in surprisingly clean, yet disheveled scholar robes. He spotted Lin Ming, hunched over the glowing, rectangular slab, and immediately struck a dramatic, trembling pose, raising a hand toward the ceiling.
"Ah, my fellow seeker! The dawn of true enlightenment pierces the veil of the mundane!" the poet boomed, his voice echoing loudly off the wood paneling.
Lin Ming looked up, annoyed. "Can I help you, sir? We're not open for business."
"I have come seeking the Great Tea Master Li Ming! I hear whispers that your humble abode is a haven for those escaping the crass, material world! I have traveled three thousand li to witness your wisdom!"
Lin Ming squinted. "I don't know who told you that, but I mostly sell coffee and regret. And my name is Lin Ming."
The poet rushed forward, tears welling in his eyes. "It is you! The legendary Lin Ming, who speaks the truth of the ordinary man! I am Li Bai, the humble admirer of the Dao of the Common Thread!"
Li Bai? Lin Ming thought. Isn't that the really famous, drunk, Tang Dynasty poet?
"Look, Mr. Bai, I'm busy trying to avoid a forced marriage to an exotic bird. Can you come back during regular hours?"
Li Bai ignored him, pulling out a delicate silk pouch. "I come with tribute! Please accept this humble offering for a cup of your legendary liquid of wisdom!"
Li Bai dumped the contents of the pouch onto the pristine wooden floor. It wasn't money. It was a chaotic pile of perfectly polished, stunningly crafted verses, written on small slips of jade.
"I accept only the highest value of art!" Li Bai declared proudly. "Each verse is worth a thousand taels of silver in the Capital!"
Lin Ming stared at the pile of expensive, useless poetry on his floor. "Sir, I can't pay my rent with jade haikus. I need cash. Or a working credit card machine."
"Cash is vulgarity!" Li Bai scoffed, taking a dramatic sip from an invisible cup. "True payment lies in the sublime rhythm of life!"
In that precise moment of grand artistic pronouncement, the small smartphone in Lin Ming's hand which had been straining its obsolete circuits to grasp at a non-existent network signal didn't just go dark, it went spectrally, unnaturally cold, the entire device going completely inert.
Lin Ming shook it, swearing under his breath. "What the…..?"
Li Bai then struck another pose, lamenting his struggle for artistic integrity. "Alas! The world rejects my form! Though I yearn for the infinite spring, my delicate art is cruelly cursed by the mundane rhyme!"
THWACK.
One of the pavilion's large burning light orbs violently shattered, sending glass shards onto the floor.
Lin Ming looked from the shattered light, to the dead phone, to the drunken poet who had just finished a rhyme.
"Hold on a sec," Lin Ming said, slowly standing up, the pieces clicking together like a terrible clockwork mechanism. "When you say 'cursed by the mundane rhyme'... do you, perhaps, mean that every time you successfully finish a rhyming couplet, you accidentally and violently break a nearby electrical appliance?"
Ele…what? Li Bai beamed, mistaking Lin Ming's panic for scholarly appreciation. "Precisely! My essence is too potent for this low-grade reality! It is a curse upon my very being!"
Yuya, who had been listening in the hallway, now swept in, her composure utterly annihilated by the fresh wave of spiritual vandalism.
"Li Bai! You are an agent of chaos! You have broken a priceless enchanted lamp!"
"Lady Yuya!" Li Bai cried, spinning to face her. "Worry not! I shall write a verse of apology, a symphony of sorrow and grace!"
He immediately began to pace, eyes glazed over with poetic fervor. Lin Ming knew what was coming. The poet was about to inadvertently commit an act of vandalism that would ruin his last connection to the modern world.
"Jinzhu! Get the bucket! And Lin Bai! I swear, if you rhyme before I can get this phone to safety, I'm going to feed you to the peacock!" Lin Ming yelled, lunging for the dead phone.
The curse was confirmed. The first customer had arrived. And the Wi-Fi..if it had ever existed was doomed.