AWACS - An American With A Chinese System
Copyright© 2025 by PT Brainum
Chapter 44
I drove back while sending all my negative points, and a good chunk of my positive points into the next level:
0/80,000,000 (106) Level
8,930,000/800,000,000 positive points
69,643,592 neutral points
0/800,000,000 negative points
29 Active Skills
26/27 Passive Skills
47,605 Bonus Neutral Points
I had a few skills I could upgrade:
Passive Upgrade Available:
脚踏实地 feet on solid ground (3/4)
笑里藏刀 daggers hidden in smiles (1/2)
高山流水 Alpine mountains, flowing water (2/4)
雷声大, 雨点小 thunder huge raindrop small (3/4)
宾至如归 guest arrive as if to return (1/4)
苦尽甘来 bitterness finishes sweetness begins (1/4)
好人好事 a good person does good deeds (1/4)
Active upgrade Available:
人山人海 people mountain people sea (1/3)
度日如年 to pass a day as if a year (2/4)
卧虎藏龙 crouching tiger, hidden dragon (1/4)
鱼目混珠 pass off fish eyes as pearls (2/4)
玉不琢不成器 jade not cut without tools (2/3)
丢三落四 drops threes and leaves out fours (2/4)
自相矛盾 self correlation spear shield (1/3)
省吃俭用 economize carefully eat frugally (3/4)
I asked Scribe which upgrade would help me fix things with Mo, he didn’t offer any blinks. I asked him what upgrade would help me with the boat purchase.
Economize carefully eat frugally blinked once, as did pass off fish eyes as pearls, and daggers hidden in smiles. Frugal was the one that I hadn’t successfully used yet to save 90% when paying cash, fish eyes was the counterfeit skill, and daggers showed me my favorability rating with people. Nothing too exciting there.
I asked him what upgrade would bring me the most amount of fun, jade not cut without tools, feet on solid ground, and people mountain people sea all blinked. That was interesting, because those were already kind of fun to use. Jade was my cutting and molding skill, feet on solid ground was my grip and frictionless body skill, and people mountain sea let me get through crowded conditions faster. It was also one that, if upgraded twice would help me get out of bad situations.
I asked Scribe what I should do with my Passive Skill option, and he had an unexpected suggestion:
Pick a New Passive Skill:
~雪上加霜 add frost on top of snow (0/2)
~班门弄斧 Ban’s door play with hatchet (0/4)
~乱七八糟 seven chaos eight bad (0/2)
~洛阳纸贵 Luoyang paper is expensive (0/4)
~箭在弦上, 不得不发 arrow in the middle of the bow must be used (0/4)
I picked the one that he was blinking madly:
班门弄斧 Ban’s door play with hatchet (1/4)
- let me try, borrow a single mastery ability of any expert you have met, will not be able to use ability at the experts level, but will have near journeyman ability, lasts 1 hour, can use once per day
That sounds fun, I tried it using Aida’s ability, and immediately wished I had written a different letter to everyone involved in flowergate. I also knew that she could write such a better letter than I could, even with this skill. I think that was a part of the skill showing me just how far her level of mastery was from my temporary level of near journeyman.
I let the skill go early, I felt too stupid to keep holding onto it. I sent an apology email to Aida, and promised not to do such a thing again. Then I went thru my emails, as I wanted to see if there were any messages.
The boat people in Hamburg were willing to give me a tour, and asked about when I might be available. I checked the time, and saw that it was 7 pm there. I sent an email letting them know I could come by the office Wednesday morning about 10 am. That would be 1 am here.
I checked my to-do list for the day. Plant a field, figure out a reservoir plan for hydro power on the island, check out tunneling into the obsidian deposit, take a nap before my Germany flight. I also needed to spend some time figuring out the terracing between my two mountain ridges, and building a gazebo over the obsidian tunnel.
I started on the hydro plan first. I carefully looked at my island map, using my prospecting skill to try to find a source of underground water. If there was already a natural aquifer that I could tap or even adjust to top off for use, that would be much easier.
I found two, one around 300,000 cubic meters, that was nestled up on the inland side of the obsidian deposit, on the south side of the island. The second was 30,000,000+ cubic meters and just below the surface on the inland side of the ridge that made up the western side of the island. That made it practically perfect. I summoned a ruler, and marked out a path for the water. It would be about 200 meters of tunnel to hit the aquifer near the bottom, and it would still be a hundred meters above Gudgeon Harbor. With the proper hydro generator it could be an awesome waterfall.
I pulled up Google to find out just how big 30,000,000 cubic feet was, and about spit out my coffee. More than 224 million gallons should be enough water to power something, all year long.
I found a company in Germany to ask about hydropower, and sent them the specs I had on the potential via email, asking about the cost and options for generation.
I also sent an email to Anthony to let him know what I had found.
Feeling like that was a successful check mark on my to do list, I headed outside to start carving the first terrace. I cut out a level section on the eastern slope, opposite the RV space, and then continued back and around the inside of the ravine, until I had a rectangular U shaped flat area, at least fifteen feet deep. I left the stone in place, just cutting from the top down, and the side inward to cut out the wedge of rock, and adding a vertical cut every couple meters to give me manageable pieces.
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