“Befriending outsiders? Helping them slaughter the Qi heirs?” a clan elder roared, his palm striking the table with a crack that echoed through the hall. Tea slopped over the rims of delicate porcelain. “This is a betrayal of the balance!”

“He’s right!” another elder snarled, smelling blood in the water. “If you had eliminated both the Qi and Qin families and seized the secret realm for us alone, we would be honoring your ruthlessness. But sharing the spoils with the Wangs? It is a mark of weakness, Xiaotang. A failure of vision.”

Ji Xiaotang stood like a statue in the center of the chamber, her spine rigid. Born in a mortal city, she had always been the interloper in their noble halls. Despite her staggering talent, the inner circle saw only an upstart. Not a single Foundation Establishment cultivator rose to her defense.

“Ahem. That is enough.”

Ji Linfeng cleared his throat. The sound was thin, but it sliced through the bickering like a razor. The Golden Core Patriarch sat atop his dais, eyes heavy with the weight of centuries.

“Xiaotang’s choice was the only choice,” Ji Linfeng said, his voice resonant and cold. “The Wang and Li families were the strongest variables on that board. Had she not bound them to her, she would be a corpse rotting in the dirt right now. You all… you refuse to see past your own avarice.”

He sighed, the disappointment etched into his weathered features. He was old, and his delay in naming a successor had turned the clan into a pit of vipers.

He had chosen Xiaotang. With her dual spiritual roots and iron discipline, she was the only one with the potential to reach the Golden Core—a height the rest of these men could only view from the shadows. But the pack did not trust the wolf that hadn’t been whelped in their den.

“Cease this interrogation,” Ji Linfeng commanded. “Start thinking of our survival. I can shield you for a few years more, but what happens when my breath fails?”

The silence that followed was suffocating. The elders recoiled, the grim reality of their obsolescence finally piercing their ego.

“Speak! Have you all been struck mute?”

Ji Fushou, Xiaotang’s uncle, finally shifted. “Ancestor, when the Qi and Qin envoys come demanding their dead… what is the lie? If they suspect we culled their lineages, they will unite against us as they did the Huangs.”

“Strike first!” a younger elder barked. “Burn one house to the ground tonight. The other will fold!”

“Idiocy,” Fushou countered. “The scales are too even. We cannot decapitate a rival house quickly enough to prevent the other from striking our flank. If we move, they will assume we are hoarding the realm’s treasures. They will unite, and we will burn.”

“Then we sue for peace. Claim the beast tides took them. We hide Xiaotang and the survivors and play the fool.”

“Do you take our rivals for children?”

“Then what is your grand strategy?”

“Silence!” Ji Linfeng’s voice boomed. The sheer pressure of his Golden Core cultivation flooded the room, a physical weight that forced the elders to their knees. “Do you still have eyes for your Ancestor? Or are you all so eager for my seat that you’ve forgotten who holds the sword?”

The Patriarch’s hands trembled with fury. Useless, he thought, looking at the groveling men. Not one has the soul to lead. He reigned in his aura, his breath coming in shallow rasps. “This is finished. If any of you find your courage, bring it to me then. Xiaotang, Xiaomo… present the tithe.”

“Yes, Ancestor.”

The two stepped forward and upended their storage bags. A torrent of spiritual light flooded the stone floor—rare ores, pulsating herbs, and jagged artifact shards. The elders’ eyes flared with renewed greed, their fear forgotten as they gazed upon a decade’s worth of wealth.

“Register it all and disperse,” Ji Linfeng ordered. “Xiaotang, stay.”

When the heavy oak doors groaned shut, leaving only the two of them in the flickering candlelight, the Patriarch’s mask of rage crumbled.

“I did not expect a single journey to yield such a harvest,” he whispered, his eyes scanning her. “Foundation Establishment, Ninth Layer. You are on the precipice of the Core. This… this is the only gain that matters.”

Xiaotang bowed her head. She had suppressed her aura to fool the council, but nothing escaped the Patriarch. “Ancestor, my progress was bought with Jasper Moon Fruits gifted by Wang Hao.”

“He gave you treasures? Multiple?” Ji Linfeng’s brow furrowed.

It was the bitter protective instinct of a farmer who had tended a prize cabbage for decades, only to see a wild boar trot into the garden and start making eyes at it.

“Tell me the truth,” he commanded. “The parts you left out for the fools.”

Xiaotang spoke. She described the hidden spirit vein, the desperate ambush, and the impossible, time-warped cultivation within the Flowing Yin Formation. By the time she reached the eighty-one lifetimes of the soul-meld, Ji Linfeng slammed his fist into the wood.

“That scoundrel!” he hissed. “How dare he bind you so!”

His eyes turned into flint. “What is in your heart, Xiaotang? Do you mean to desert your blood for this boy?”

“Ancestor, please,” Xiaotang knelt, her voice trembling but resolute. “I will not leave. But our souls were forged together through eighty-one lives. You must understand… I cannot forget. It is written into my very Dao.”

She looked up, meeting his hard gaze with her own. “But I have sworn an oath. I will not seek him until I have raised a new Golden Core to stand in your place. I will protect this family.”

Ji Linfeng closed his eyes, the silence stretching between them. If he chained her here, he would keep her sword but lose her spirit. And if he killed the Wang boy? Xiaotang would know. The hate would fester, and the Ji family would gain a mortal enemy in the Wangs.

“Fine,” he whispered, looking suddenly every bit of his centuries. “You have brought a king’s ransom to our treasury. You owe us no more. Perhaps… this is simply the path the Heavens have carved for us.”

He looked at the empty hall where his incompetent heirs had stood. “I trust your word. If you guard this clan for a century, it is more than these wretches deserve.”

He flicked a jade box toward her. “Your essence is turbulent from the climb. Do not rush the breakthrough. Polish your foundation until it is like glass. Here are two catalysts for the Golden Core. I hope to see you ascend before the light leaves my eyes.”

“Ancestor…” Xiaotang’s voice broke.

“Go.” Ji Linfeng waved a frail hand and turned away.

Wanxiang City pulsed with the feverish beat of trade.

While the Wangs moved to turn their spoils into liquid assets, Wang Hao reached out to Li Derong. The Matriarch, sensing the shift in the political landscape, agreed to join the convoy back to the mainland. She immediately unleashed her clansmen to buy every scrap of value they could carry.

Wang Hao, cloaked in a simple robe and a concealing hat, slipped through the crowds toward the Treasure Clarity Pavilion.

The moment he crossed the threshold, the female shopkeeper’s eyes lit up. She moved toward him with a rustle of fine silk.

“Daoist! You return at last,” she purred, her gaze searching his face. “Tell me you have more Beast Rearing Pills.”

Wang Hao offered a thin smile. “Today, I am here to spend, not earn.”

“Even better.” She swept an arm toward the stairs. “The private rooms are ready.”

Once upstairs, with premium tea steaming between them, she leaned in. “What does the Fellow Daoist seek?”

“Foundation Establishment Pills,” Wang Hao said, his tone flat and businesslike. “I require two.”

He didn’t need them for himself, but they were the ultimate lubricant for political favors. By buying them here, he also obscured the true source of his family’s growing power.

The shopkeeper tapped a polished nail against the table. “Stock is dangerously low… but for you? I can find a way. If you can provide Beast Rearing Pills in trade, the price will be manageable.”

Wang Hao produced ten bottles. “The last of my stock.”

She frowned, her mind spinning through the math. “For ten bottles… I can grant you one pill. You must still provide fifteen thousand Spirit Stones for the difference.”

Wang Hao reached into his sleeve and set two glowing, azure fruits on the table. “And if I add these?”

The shopkeeper’s breath hitched. She picked up one Jasper Moon Fruit, marveling at the soft lunar halo that danced around the skin. They were the product of the very seeds she had sold him years ago—seeds that should have taken half a century to bear fruit.

“Daoist,” she whispered, her shock giving way to intense calculation. “You truly are a man of deep waters. Tell me… do you have a mature tree? The Pavilion will pay a king’s ransom for the location.”