Chương 148: Why You Shouldn't Sign Things Without Reading

East Rutherford, New Jersey Leo climbed out of his VR pod and blinked out the window. Five minutes ago, he had been standing on a mountain with a Tier Three spirit vein pulsing beneath his feet, discussing saving tens of thousands of lives with a Gold Core elder who had been cultivating since before Leo's grandparents were born. Now he was in New Jersey. A chorus of car horns drifted through his window. Leo walked over and looked out at Route 3. Rush hour.

Thousands of cars sat bumper to bumper, inching toward the Lincoln Tunnel in the gray morning light. Brake lights stretched toward the horizon in an unbroken red line. A few flying vehicles drifted overhead, their owners sipping coffee and checking phones while the formations did the work. They passed over the traffic jam without slowing, heading toward Manhattan or Newark or wherever people with money went in the morning.

Most people couldn't afford the spiritual qi to commute by air, so they sat in traffic instead, crawling toward jobs that would never pay enough to lift them off the ground. Leo watched the cars inch forward for a moment, then went to find his computer. He sat down at his desk. The chair creaked. His computer took thirty seconds to wake from sleep mode. Leo opened his email and started typing.

To: Vivian Xin, Mike Ross, Kevin Miller, Arthur Higgins Subject: Gustav Mountain Update + Assignments Body: Team, Quick update on what happened after the ruins. I'll keep it brief because most of you were there for the important parts. Lord Flockfeather commissioned me to build a defensive installation in the Savage Mountains. The Beast Kings are giving us a mountain with a Tier Three spirit vein. Mike already named it Gustav Mountain, after that German railway cannon he won't shut up about.

Zhang Wei is on board as our general contractor for the APC side. He's bringing the Ammo Sect's manufacturing capacity and his contacts among the refugee communities. We're also building a settlement inside the mountain. Long story, but basically if we don't build housing, people are going to camp outside our walls anyway, so we might as well do it right. Here's what I need from everyone: Leo paused. His fingers hovered over the keyboard. Vivian first. That one was easy.

She had been managing his schedule for months now. Training sessions, financial obligations, communications with the 'New York' Giants. Somewhere along the way she had stopped being his friend who helped with formations and started being the person who kept his life from collapsing into chaos. He typed: Vivian: You're logistics, planning, and finance. I need you to figure out how to turn a mountain into a fortress. Timelines, materials, labor, supply chains. Put together a plan and have Kevin relay it to Zhang Wei.

We have millions of bushels of spiritual wheat to work with. Don't be afraid to make mistakes early. Kevin: You're communications. You relay information between the team and our ingame contacts. When Vivian finishes a plan, you translate it into terms Zhang Wei can work with. When Zhang Wei has questions, you ask Vivian what to do. You're the guy who makes sure everyone can talk to Vivian even though she's going to spend all her time training her divine sense. Mike's assignment was obvious.

He was the one who had come up with the idea to turn the mountain into a giant artillery cannon. The original Gustav Cannon had been one of the largest artillery pieces ever built, a railway gun so massive it required a crew of over a thousand men to operate. Its most famous deployment was against Sevastopol, a fortress city sitting at the intersection of two Tier Four spirit veins. The Soviet defenders had layered formation after formation over every bunker and battery. So the Germans brought in the Gustav.

The gun fired shells weighing over seven tons. Each shot delivered peak Gold Core level kinetic energy using nothing but mortal iron and propellant. The spiritual expenditure was minimal because most of the power came from chemistry and physics rather than qi circulation. Day after day, the cannon bombarded Sevastopol, forcing the defenders to burn high-tier qi reinforcing barriers faster than their spirit veins could replenish. Eventually, the defenders ran dry. The fortress fell.

That was the technology Leo wanted to bring to the Azure Profound Continent, mortal materials generating cultivation-level combat power. On Earth, spiritual qi was precious, so every technology was designed to minimize consumption. Cultivators in the Azure Profound Continent had the opposite problem. Qi was abundant, so they solved everything with raw spiritual power because they had never needed to conserve. The original Gustav had one fatal weakness.

When the Germans deployed it against Leningrad, cultivators on flying swords destroyed it before it could fire a single shot. Leo was betting that zombies couldn't fly. Hopefully. He added a sentence asking Kevin to verify that with Grandpa Shen, then typed: Mike: You're building the gun. This is your project. I'm staying out of your way. One thing: Gustav Mountain has ancient formation channels from the old defensive line buried in the bedrock.

Map them before we break ground so we don't mess up anything important. That left Arthur. Leo stared at the screen. He spent ten minutes trying to figure out if there was a role he could trust the old man with, until it finally hit him. He needed someone to check on the Everlasting Empire ruins. Arthur: Recon duty. Once every few months, I need you to fly over the Everlasting Empire ruins and scan for changes. Slaughter Qi activity, seal degradation, any sign that the Enlightened has been back.

Don't engage with anything. Don't open anything. Don't touch anything. Just look and report. Leo sat back and looked at what he had written so far. The assignments made sense. Everyone had something that played to their strengths. Now he needed to talk about timelines. Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site. He started typing again, then stopped. When did Gustav Mountain need to be finished? The obvious answer was before the invasion. But when was the invasion?

Leo thought about Monarch Cloudpiercer. The War of Western Unification had been dragging on for months. Cloudpiercer controlled the strongest army in the western provinces. He had Nascent Soul Lords on his side. He had outfitted his army with Tier Five formations. He had the Enlightened backing him. By all accounts, he should have pushed harder by now. Taken more territory. Forced a decisive confrontation. But he hadn't. Leo had assumed Cloudpiercer was being cautious. Playing it safe. Waiting for the right moment.

Now he wasn't so sure. The Enlightened also respawned. That was his whole thing. He was like Leo's team, except he had been playing the game for centuries longer and had already reached Deity Transformation. But respawning took time. At Deity Transformation, the cooldown was roughly three hundred and ninety days. Almost a full year. Cloudpiercer wasn't being cautious. He was waiting. It took a long time for the Enlightened to respawn and begin another attempt at cracking and freeing the Corpse Eternal down below.

Gustav Mountain didn't need to be finished by next season. It needed to be finished before the Corpse Eternal broke free, and nobody knew when that was. Could be five years. Could be fifty. Could be next Tuesday, but probably not. He added to the email: Timeline note: I've been thinking about how fast we need to move, and the answer is "not as fast as I originally thought." The only thing we have going for us is the fact that The Enlightened takes over a year to respawn.

The seals on the Corpse Eternal have held for millennia. Although the Enlightened has degraded the seal, I expect it to take many more years before the zombies are unleashed. This means we have time. Not infinite time, but we're not racing against next month's deadline. Build slowly. Build right. Don't cut corners to save a few weeks. If the amount of Slaughter Qi leaking spikes, or if Cloudpiercer suddenly changes his plan, that's our warning sign. Until then, we can proceed at a sustainable pace.

Leo read through the email one more time. It covered everything. The mountain, the assignments, the timeline, the monitoring plan. Everyone would know what they were responsible for. He hit send. The apartment was quiet. Leo leaned back in his chair and wondered what his own assignment was. He had just delegated work to the rest of his team, but Vivian handled his schedule. She had been handling it for months, and he had spent the summer following it without question.

The expedition to the ruins of the Everlasting Empire had interrupted things, but now he was back. He checked his email. Vivian had sent him an updated schedule a few hours ago. Leo opened it. The attachment was a spreadsheet. Color-coded. Cross-referenced. It covered the next six months in exhaustive detail. Each day, Vivian allotted him eight hours for sleep, four for cultivation, and eight for lifebonding with the unattributed slab of spiritual steel sitting in his apartment.

Every three days he would respawn ingame to undergo the divine sense press and increase his Si. He wasn't in a hurry to lifebond with the slab of steel. Over the summer he had spent eleven hours a day lifebonding with Sunshifter to finish the process in a little over four months. He had devoted all his spare time back then to accelerate the process and be combat ready. His other piece of equipment wouldn't be needed until the NFL season started next year.

Eight hours a day would finish the lifebond process in six months, just enough time to be ready by the time NFL OTAs (Official Team Activities) started in late May. That left four hours for body refining exercises and physical conditioning. Leo knew he was far from NFL standards. His brief spar with Vince had taught him that. He had a long way to go before he could be considered average, let alone elite. Vivian had also scheduled his meetings. Most were routine.

One he was actually looking forward to was a session with Coach Harbach to explain the new forbidden formation Leo had learned, the technique that could forcibly ascend the lifebound swords of enemy flyers. He wasn't entirely sure it was legal. The only thing he knew was that by the end of next season, the League would create another Leo Chen Rule and ban it.

Just to be safe, Vivian had scheduled the meeting with Coach Harbach in late March, the day after the Annual League Meeting where the rules would be finalized for the 2030 season. He scrolled through the rest of the schedule. Another meeting caught his eye. This one was today. In three hours. In Pittsburgh. With Professor Vogt. Leo frowned. He didn't remember scheduling that. He searched his inbox to see what he had missed. He found an unread email from Vogt that he had received yesterday.

From: Professor Vogt, International Formations Institute, Carnegie Mellon University Subject: URGENT — Come to Pittsburgh Immediately Mr. Chen, The U. S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) has initiated an unannounced, formal review of the federal funds allocated to your project. As the Principal Investigator on record, you are personally liable for the documentation of these expenditures. I want to be very clear. You were allocated a four-year research budget. You spent it in four weeks.

I have been in academia for many years and I have never seen anything like this. I didn't know it was possible. The GAO didn't know it was possible. They called us because they thought there had been a data entry error. International Formations Institute Legal Counsel is stepping in immediately. You need to be at our main office in Pittsburgh by tomorrow morning so we can review your logs before the auditors arrive.

If you choose to remain in New Jersey, federal auditors will arrive at your residence to conduct the interview directly. I strongly advise you to get on a flight tonight. Sincerely, Professor Vogt P. S. Please do not bring Kevin. Leo stared at the screen. He had sent everyone home. He had closed up the operation. He had assumed that was the end of it. Apparently the federal government disagreed. Leo read the email again. Personally Liable. That was the most terrifying pair of words he had ever read.

Since when had he signed something that made him personally liable for all their expenditures? To be perfectly honest, he didn't even know how much they had spent. The whole grant was issued in units of spiritual qi. And he had signed every expense request. Hundreds of them, maybe thousands. Every single time, he had asked Vivian if she thought it was fine, and every single time, Vivian had shrugged and said, "Probably not." He had signed them anyway.

Leo made a solemn vow to never sign another document without reading it first. The vow lasted three seconds before he remembered that legal documents used words like "notwithstanding" and "hereinafter," and he revised it. He would at least skim the first page... no first paragraph in the future. He grabbed his phone. Leo: Vivian Leo: What is this meeting with Vogt about Leo: Why do I need to be in Pittsburgh in three hours Leo: What does Principal Investigator even mean?

Leo: Also I don't like the term personally liable. Is it too late to change that? Vivian: You signed the research grant application. Leo: We signed everything Vivian: No, you signed everything. I did not. I made sure to leave my name off of the application. This is all you and Kevin. Leo: Kevin??? Vivian: You made him co-investigator. He also doesn't read what he signs. Leo: Can you come with me? Help me figure out what's going on? Vivian: No. Vivian: I have a vacation scheduled.

Hiking in the Appalachian wilderness. No internet access for the next two days. Leo: Since when do you hike A picture arrived. Vivian, standing next to a wooden sign that read APPALACHIAN TRAIL. She was throwing a peace sign and sticking her tongue out at the camera. Her hiking boots looked brand new. Leo stared at the photo. Leo: Vivian please Leo: I'm begging you Leo: I will do anything Leo: Literally anything Leo: Name your price He waited. The messages sat with a single gray checkmark beside each one.

Undelivered. He called Kevin. Kevin picked up on the first ring.

"Did you get Vogt's email too?" Leo asked.

"What email?" Leo set his phone down on the desk. He was on his own.