"A thousand zhang define the momentum; a hundred chi define the form."
A thousand zhang referred to the broader scope.
A hundred chi referred to the finer details.
The feng shui burial classic concerned a small configuration within a larger pattern.
To create a complete feng shui configuration, one had to "look at the broader scope" and "work on the smallest details."
A small feng shui configuration was not necessarily easier to arrange than a large one.
Creating a feng shui configuration naturally involved more than a burial trick like "bury your ancestors upright, and your descendants will surely thrive." At the very least, one had to examine the mountains and waters. Those with greater ambitions even had to memorize the courses of several mountain ranges and the layouts of nearby cities.
Some schools even required calculating the rainfall and number of sunny and overcast days for the next few years, to guard against flooding, collapsing cliffs, and landslides.
So the burial classic was not particularly costly to learn, but its accuracy was not especially high. Human calculations could never rival heaven's.
Besides, even when yin-yang feng shui masters became court officials, these technical bureaucrats did not have the final say.
The famous Ding Ding incident involving water seepage at Kangxi's tomb in the Eastern Qing Tombs illustrated this perfectly.
Halfway through excavation, they had misgivings they could not voice. After construction, they had fears they could not express. Once the problem was discovered, they dared not speak plainly.
Speak up?
Speak up, and they would chop off your head. Were you, a lone feng shui practitioner, the only clever one among all the court's nobles and ministers? Weren't the dignitaries above you all supposed to possess exquisite insight?
Your entire family would be sent to Ningguta to serve the