7 – Einstein Would Be Happy to Be Alive
Outside the glass room, a burst of white mist rose up, so thick that no one inside could be seen.
When the mist cleared, the glass room was empty.
“Holy crap!”
“It’s really gone!”
“Einstein would be thrilled!”
“My god! Transmigration actually exists!”
“The novels weren’t lying to us!”
“…”
The second floor erupted into chaos, everyone shaken by this scene that overturned science.
Elder Xie let out a long, heavy sigh of relief.
He had been the one to lead this whole affair.
If Li Ziyin had merely gone mad from reading novels, and the energy stone was just some mineral resource she’d happened to find somewhere—with no transmigration involved at all—
Then he might as well have died a month ago.
Now, having seen it with his own eyes, he could finally report back and set his mind at ease.
Elder Xie patted Xie Rongyu beside him.
“You must treasure her more than your own life.”
…
“The water’s coming again!”
“Run!”
Turbid floodwaters came rolling in.
People dressed in animal skins fled in all directions.
Screams and wails filled the air.
The Transmigration System’s feature could automatically convert the languages of Alternate Dimensions.
In the past, when doing missions, there had even been electronic voice prompts from the system.
But this system, granted as a reward, only had the transmigration function.
So Li Ziyin had to figure out her surroundings on her own.
This was a wasteland—barren and desolate, with earthen huts scattered sparsely across it.
The flood in the river channel was already upon them.
Li Ziyin had no time to think. She lightened her body with a breath of qi and ran toward higher ground along with everyone else.
On the way, she came across a child in animal skins who had fallen down.
She scooped the child up without breaking stride and fled for their lives.
Animal skins, a flood, and a wasteland.
Could this be the age of the Great Flood of antiquity?
Li Ziyin’s body limited what she could do.
Sword Kinesis flight from the world of Cultivation—at least for now—was out of the question.
She could only touch her toes to the ground, leaping in a few bounds, and carried the child up to the mountainside ahead of everyone else.
Then she went back down and brought up several more of the weaker children.
This act of hers successfully drew everyone’s attention.
Once the people had all reached the mountainside, they thudded down on their knees before Li Ziyin.
“Immortal Lady!”
“Immortal Lady, please save us! Make the waters recede!”
“…”
Li Ziyin hurried to help them up.
But for every one she raised, two more knelt down.
She frowned and could only put on a stern face.
“Where is your chief?”
Since they lived in a settled community, there had to be a tribal chief.
She would speak with the chief instead.
Seeing that she was no longer deflecting them and instead wanted to see the chief, the people finally stopped crying.
An old man leaning on a tree branch, his back hunched, pointed at a mountain in the distance. “The chief and Yu are over there, trying to figure out how to control the flood.”
Who?
Li Ziyin wondered if she’d misheard.
Surely it couldn’t be the “Yu” she knew of?
A great flood, and “Yu.”
Put those two together, and it was only natural for her thoughts to run wild.
So Li Ziyin asked again, “Is Yu’s father Gun?”
The old man nodded. “Yes.”
After answering, he asked cautiously, “Immortal Lady, do you know Lord Gun?”
Li Ziyin smiled without answering.
But her gaze was complicated.
Legend said that Gun was an immortal descended to the mortal world, who stole the self-renewing soil, a treasure of the Heavenly Emperor. After he failed to control the flood below, Yao convicted him and had him executed.
The old man asked whether the immortal knew Gun—could Gun really have been an immortal?
And if Yao could kill even an immortal, wasn’t he even more powerful?
Li Ziyin became deeply convinced that this might actually be the age of myth.
But after she had someone take her to meet the current chief, Shun, along with Yu, she dismissed that idea.
Two mighty figures, two of the founders of Hua Nation.
One had double pupils—it was Shun.
One was heroic and martial—it was Yu.
Even dressed in animal skins, they could not hide their towering physiques and commanding presence.
But they were, unmistakably, just “humans.”
Li Ziyin let out a breath of relief.
Humans were fine. Otherwise, as an “intruder,” she might have met her end right here.
Besides, of Yao, Shun, Yu, and Tang, she had met two at once.
She had hit the jackpot!
Shun and Yu looked Li Ziyin over from head to toe.
Her Space Button held clothing from every era, but not a single animal-skin skirt from antiquity—
And she couldn’t exactly wear animal skins anyway.
So she had changed into the closest thing to this period: garments in the pre-Qin style.
Wide sleeves and flowing robes, sashes drifting in the breeze.
In the harsh primitive era, she looked positively ethereal.
“An immortal?”
Shun spoke first, uncertain and suspicious.
With Li Ziyin appearing in this manner, there was no denying it.
To spare herself the trouble of explaining, she could only tacitly accept the title.
“I can help you control the floods.”
Flood control was Yu’s specialty. Hearing her say this, he looked toward Shun.
Shun nodded.
Only then did Yu adopt a posture of seeking guidance from Li Ziyin.
“Please, Immortal, teach me.”
Li Ziyin evaded his bow, maintaining a measured distance.
“I need to know—what stage are you at right now?”
Since Yu had already taken up the task, surely the principle of “dredging rather than blocking” was already in use?
Yu invited Li Ziyin closer to look at the diagram he had drawn on a stone with a charred branch.
Black lines crisscrossed the surface, most of them covered by a mass representing water. The situation looked dire.
Li Ziyin asked deliberately, “This map… how was it made?”
Yu answered without much thought, “I personally led men to survey the land, along with knowledge passed down from the elders of previous generations.”
Of course.
The Great Flood era had dragged on far too long—Gun had labored nine years without success.
The wisdom of the ancients should not be underestimated; drawing a waterway map was entirely plausible.
Li Ziyin nodded, studying the waterways marked in bold lines, and the earthen “dikes” built along their edges.
Back then, Gun’s method had been to reinforce dikes on both sides of the channels, thickening and raising them year after year.
But the results had proven that this method was useless.
Seeing no sign on the map of newly dug channels for diverting the water, Li Ziyin deduced that Yu probably hadn’t yet figured out a solution.
She glanced around.
This mountain was presumably where the chieftains lived. Beside it stood a stone hut, with a few pottery jars nearby.
Next to the stone bearing the waterway map were two pottery bowls.
Presumably for Shun and Yu to drink from.
Li Ziyin rolled up her sleeves, picked up one of the bowls, and set it on the stone.
Then she took a bag of rice out of her Space Button.
Shun and Yu’s eyes went wide.
Ahem.
Li Ziyin wore the Space Button on her wrist, concealing it under her wide sleeves, so it looked as if she were fetching things from thin air.
The affairs of immortals were beyond explaining entirely.
She ignored their reactions, opened the ten-jin bag of rice, and poured it into the bowl. She kept pouring until the pottery bowl was full and slowly overflowing—and still she did not stop.
Shun and Yu’s expressions grew grave.
See that!
When too much rice was put into a container, it overflowed. When the water filled the river channels, of course it would overflow too!
Worried they might be slow to catch on, Li Ziyin set down the rice and said cryptically, “The bowl is too small. If it were bigger, it wouldn’t overflow.”
“!”
Yu, ever the professional, eyes suddenly brightening.
“Immortal, you mean… to dig open the river channels?”
Li Ziyin: “Why not guide the water to where you want it to go?”