The Shovel System

The purple grass wrapping falls to the floor to reveal the immense Spade Dao Qi Condensation cultivation manual. Gold threads bind its glowing jade blue spine. Intricate gold and platinum spirit threads form beautiful abstract art on the covers that frame the palm-sized spirit artifact spade resting in the small depression on the manual's gorgeous cover. Mysterious words in an unknown language are etched into the jade and gold spade. The words shimmer with spade energy, lighting the tent with gentle prismatic glows.

Silent Wolf's eyes bulge, glued to the mysterious tome. His mind blanks as he doesn't notice that he has stopped breathing, his heart frozen in shock.

Quiet Bear gawks at the manual. She's never heard of anything that wonderous before.

Jackie extends his hand across the yurt, lifting the stunned Silent Wolf's palm. He places the hefty manual into the young man's hand, then uses his free hand to raise the teenager's other hand to the manual, ensuring that he has a good grip. Jackie eases the book down onto the lad's l.a.p, then draws his hands back, placing them into his l.a.p.

Silent Wolf's heart kick-starts with a deep hammer, his face turning beet red as his breathing becomes heavier and heavier. The young man heaves deep breaths before his mind starts again, utterly lost as to when the book arrived in his hands.

He absently stares at the book, his hands feeling the warm, lightly pulsing cover, the gentle spade qi refreshing his mind and spirit as it flows into his hands and up his arms. His pores open and he obtains a moment of true clarity and lucidity.

All the world's colors shine in vivid beauty as he has never seen before. He experiences the sensation of having witnessed the veil over the heavens being ripped away to reveal the truth, the dao.

Silent Wolf absently c.a.r.e.s.ses the book, the lines and etchings revealing themselves beneath his fingers as they stroke the surface. His head turns, and his gaze drunkenly wanders, staring far into the distance, peering past the near and into the far, beyond the veil of the false and into the distant truth of reality.

----------------

In the Abyss.

The immortal painting, Mountains and Streams, lays suspended in endless currents of primordial chaos. Darkness swirls and erodes across the abandoned art. The picture is faint, on the last flickers of its life.

There is a silvery glow in the brushstrokes depicting a vast purple grassy plane. The glow erupts at incredible speed and shrouds the nearly dead painting. The light seeps between the tattered and torn sections of the painting, filling in the lost art rapidly.

Minutes tick by in the abyss and the blinding glow dims and fades away, revealing the shimmering and profound painting in its full glory, the artwork is on an unfurled scroll suspended between two gigantic spades, which act as the spindles for the western style scroll.

The spade dao has tempered and reformed the crude and low-level laws of the painted realm's reality.

-----------------------

Strange and profound phenomena happen all throughout the world during this time.

Countless Daoists and magical beasts explode into blood-mist as their cultivation runs in reverse, too crude to bear the more oppressive, sophisticated laws. Storms rage across the lands, torrential rains, and violent, silvery-red lightning burning cultivators into ashes.

The divine might of the heavens presses down on the Twilight Sect. The large bodies of the mightiest and most ancient elders stand out on the peaks of their mountains, watching as the suppression grows heavier faster than anyone can react.

They witness the sect's protective formation groaning and trembling valiantly under the damning might of the heavens, warping and distorting. Then, they see cracks flash at lightning speed across the formation, glowing particles raining down and landing like explosive meteors.

The formation hadn't even lasted five minutes. The pressure of the heavens leaks through the cracks in the formation, oppressing everything inside the formation, even causing the mountains to sink several stories. The elders' legs smash into the ground with thunderous booms, before they smash down to their knees, sending avalanches of stone and boulders flying everywhere.

Hong-long!

The entire formation scatters as the weighty new laws smash into the ground, causing the heaven-spanning gigantic elders to implode in golden, bloody mists, followed by the sect leader, and all of the sect members, leaving only one person behind to witness the death of the Twilight sect.

Twilight Willow feels the new laws washing over her gently, c.a.r.e.s.sing her with their profound dignity, and she feels an echo of that being from beyond the abyss that she witnessed when that little old man exploded. But, she is too shocked, grief for her lost family and sect members filling her, to recognize it now. Tears well up in her old eyes, the pain pressing into her c.h.e.s.t with as much force as those laws that crushed her sect to death.

An old woman wails in endless grief throughout the mountains.

---------------------------

A smith furiously works with his bloodshot eyes glued to his newest, most magnificent creation. His tools move with more fluid precision and practice than ever before while he creates his most excellent magical tool. The old man, his white beard tucked under his apron, long hair tied up in a bun, douses the tool in earth fire, pulling out the glowing tool and hammers it, then works throughout the night, pouring his blood and qi into the artifact. Red and silver lightning flashes overhead and one bolt flashes through the door, striking just as the man's hammer lands.

The old man smashes into the wall, while the tool rumbles and shakes, heavenly lightning rolling across its surface. It floats into the air and hovers gently, revealing itself to be a mystical spade. The old man regains his senses and is utterly dumbfounded by the changes in the plate armor he was making.

----------------------------

A young witch busies herself refining potions, stirring rare and magical herbs into her cauldron while controlling the delicate heat from her fire. The stormy weather is perfect for making evil potions, and she certainly won't let this chance pass.

Boom! Lightning strikes through the window, and the cauldron explodes. A piece of the black cauldron smacks the girl and sends her toppling through the air, spraying blood from her lips before she crumples near the wall.

She manages to open her heavy eyelids after some time, painfully looking at towards the remains of her potion, only to discover a small pile of silver and red egg-sized glowing pills with spades inscribed on them. They smell fresh, and the pores of her body open up, her occult cultivation speedily growing while in their presence.

She groans, then says, "Yay me! Ouchouchouch."

-------------------------------

Strange phenomenon continuously occur throughout the world, many people have lucky encounters and their cultivation skyrockets, many cultivators mysteriously vanish, implode, or just drop dead. This is the night of Omens.

------------------------------

Jackie Lewin watches the intoxicated expression of his student. He then looks at his system and strokes his fluffy white beard while looking at the Attributes link. "I wonder what my attributes are."