A drum this beautiful definitely couldn’t be left on the ground, so Li Xiang built two special stands for it. This time, he didn’t use the precious Red Fir Wood, opting for ordinary Birch Wood instead. He found some suitable timber in the woodshed.

One was shorter, allowing the drum to be placed flat, while the other was taller, for setting it up vertically. The drum could be played in either position. To protect it from the rain, he also built a pavilion and added a simple plaque that read "War Drum Pavilion."

The plaque was just a polished slab of wood. He bought a large calligraphy brush and wrote three large, flamboyant characters on it. After some thought, he also carved a small seal out of a radish and stamped a red mark with it.

It was all just practice work. Aside from the bullhide drum and his elegant calligraphy, everything else—the drum stands, the pavilion, the plaque, and the radish seal—looked rather crude. Even the top and bottom edges of some pillars and the plaque still had unsmoothed bark on them, giving off a primitive, tribal vibe.

But that was exactly the style he was going for.

He threw the seal away after a single use.

Li Xiang took out a small piece of Red Fir Wood. This type of wood was quite hard, so he carved another seal from it. Despite its hardness, it was still wood, so it wouldn’t last for more than a few uses either.

He mused that someday, if he could find a piece of high-quality jade, he would carve a proper, official seal. He could, of course, just order a custom one online, but that wouldn’t be nearly as charming.

Finding it all a bit too rudimentary, Li Xiang decided to give the "War Drum Pavilion" a few more upgrades. This included paving the ground, building proper steps, and adding some hooks to the drum stands. He would tie the various Drum Sticks into pairs with string and hang them on the hooks. That way, anyone who wanted to play the drum could freely choose their preferred pair of sticks.

He had high hopes for this backyard. Once spring arrived and the flowers bloomed, he planned to plant more flowers and greenery. He also wanted to open a coffee and milk tea shop, hoping to turn the place into a viral tourist destination. The only problem was its remote location; he had no idea if anyone would actually come.

But Sichuan Province had plenty of wealthy people, in the county seat and the provincial capital. Even the capital wasn’t that far—just over 200 kilometers, a two or three-hour drive.

Besides, the area around Li Family Village was scenic, a great place for "getting good shots," with plenty of potential as a natural tourist attraction.

In some southern villages, there were quite a few such viral coffee shops nestled in the countryside. They were said to be doing very well, earning several million a year.

For instance, one shop in a rural part of Zhejiang Province once sold 8,818 cups in a single day. With a cup of coffee typically priced around 30 yuan, that meant their daily sales reached about 260,000 yuan.

As for the cost of the coffee, hehe, it was naturally negligible. When the time came, Li Xiang could partner with He Zhixiang, the coffee merchant from Yunnan Province. He could get his beans firsthand from the plantations—direct from the source, high-quality, and inexpensive.

Domestically grown coffee beans from Yunnan Province were in no way inferior in quality to those from imported regions. Many famous brands like Nestlé, Starbucks, and Luckin Coffee all used beans from Yunnan.

If he successfully drew in traffic and the number of tourists grew, it would also bring more foot traffic to the village and increase the villagers’ income.

Besides coffee and milk tea, there could also be snacks prepared by the villagers, local specialty products, authentic farmhouse cuisine, and so on.

Although the village election meeting wouldn’t be held until the "dīng wine" ceremony during the New Year, Li Xiang was still somewhat confident he could win the position of village chief.

Even if he didn’t become village chief, as an internet celebrity—a "big shot" with over two million followers—and a homesteading vlogger, it wouldn’t do for his backyard to lack "class."

In modern society, the only way to quickly "cultivate prestige" was to become an internet celebrity. Any other path would be too slow.

In ancient times, before raising an army or undertaking other great endeavors like political reform or entering the imperial court’s inner circle, one had to "cultivate prestige." Only with enough renown could you raise your arm and have followers flock to your banner.

If no one even knows who you are, who’s going to seek you out and support you when something big happens?

Therefore, nothing he did was ever without a purpose. He came from a poor background with no connections. Even if he were to take the civil service exam now and get into the system, he wouldn’t get far. Many people spend their entire lives as low-level clerks.

His only choice was to follow the example of the ancients and forge a different path.

As for the underground Shelter, he didn’t plan on building it so soon, because a super-flood was coming in a few years. The Apocalypse was approaching, and each coming year would be more disastrous than the last. This year’s heavy snow was just an appetizer.

If he built an underground base now, wouldn’t he just be waiting for it to be flooded?

After that great flood, however, there would be basically no more super-floods. Especially as the Apocalypse drew near and after it arrived, darkness and cold would set in. Most places would freeze over, and even the oceans would be covered by a thick layer of ice, making floods impossible.

’To deal with the flood, the best thing to do is hide in the mountains. When I have some free time, I’ll go take a look around up there and see if there are any existing caves I can expand and modify.’

Although Sichuan Province is a basin, even the lowest point of the "basin floor" has an elevation of 200–750 meters. Its terrain is much higher than some eastern or southern provinces. Take Yangcheng, for example. If measured from the "Yue No. 1" survey marker, its average elevation is only 6.6 meters.

Sichuan Province is mountainous with a high average elevation. It also has Kuimen, with its cliffs "a thousand ren high, as if hewn by axe and blade," acting as a "sea-draining gate." (Legend has it that Yu the Great, in his efforts to control the floods, chiseled open Kuimen to drain the sea of Ba-Shu.) As such, one normally wouldn’t need to worry too much about floods. But the super-flood coming in a few years was extremely rare; even in Sichuan Province, many areas were submerged. Not even Dujiangyan could hold it back.

The plains regions would be hit hard, especially in the north, where rainfall was historically scarce and they had almost no experience dealing with major floods.

’Sigh, I’ll just have to take it one step at a time.’ In truth, even as a Reincarnator, Li Xiang had no real solution when faced with the immense power of Nature.

Li Xiang composed himself and got back to it. He moved the Big Red Bullhide War Drum, the two drum stands, and the Drum Sticks out, temporarily storing them in a corner of the covered walkway. Then, he began the renovation work on the "War Drum Pavilion."

The scope of the work wasn’t large, so he did it all himself. There were still leftover red bricks, cement, and yellow sand from when he built the surrounding wall. Li Xiang took some out and started mixing cement to pave the ground.

The War Drum Pavilion was only eight or nine square meters. At his speed, the job was done in half a day.

Then, using his High-Density Blade, he shaved a smooth section onto the two fir wood pillars at the front of the War Drum Pavilion and wrote a couplet on them: "The soughing of pines in ten thousand ravines beats the war drum; a single majestic peak plants the battle flag."

The calligraphy was elegant, cutting three-tenths of an inch into the wood.

In fact, Li Xiang’s handwriting used to be average at best. But after becoming an Extraordinary Being, his fingers had become more nimble and his mind clearer. This led to a great improvement in many related abilities, such as calligraphy and even dancing.

Calligraphy was nothing more than control over the brush and an understanding of character structure.

The soft brush in Li Xiang’s hand moved with perfect control—lifting, pressing, pausing, turning back, dragging, flicking... Every twist and turn was effortless, more agile than a human tongue. It would have been difficult to write an ugly character even if he tried.

Of course, his characters only looked good on the surface. In terms of true calligraphic skill, he still lacked his own style and couldn’t be considered a master. To be precise, it was "jianghu style"—flashy but lacking in rigorous form.

Li Xiang had originally wanted to use Cinnabar Red Ink. The Red Book was associated with killing, which fit well with the "War" in War Drum Pavilion. ’What war is ever fought without death?’ A murderous aura was fitting for this pavilion. But his grandmother said red ink was inauspicious, used in ancient times only for beheadings, so Li Xiang switched to black ink instead.

In fact, red ink really was reserved for special occasions: marking the signs on condemned prisoners for execution, using Cinnabar to draw talismans to exorcise demons and evil spirits, writing letters in blood by biting one’s finger in times of extreme injustice and resentment, the Emperor’s vermilion-ink annotations, important red-headed official documents, a teacher’s corrections on homework...