My Junior Brother is a Hidden Boss

Chapter 10: Money Works

The next morning, Ye Tianyi ruthlessly dragged Lu Changsheng from the sweet embrace of sleep.

True to his terrifying promise from the day before, he was taking his Junior Brother out for mandatory morning cultivation. In the blink of an eye, they had already bypassed the gates of the Cangyun Sect.

“Senior Brother, even if we are commencing a new training regimen, is there a need to be so aggressive about the timeline? The sun hasn’t even clocked in yet!” Lu Changsheng complained, rubbing his bleary eyes.

“The foundation of the day lies in the dawn, and the foundation of a life lies in diligence! As Cultivators of our generation, we must naturally embody relentless effort. Previously, with Master absent and Eldest Senior Brother obsessed with his own Dao, your discipline was tragically neglected. From today onward, I shall personally oversee your progress!”

Ye Tianyi declared, his voice ringing with unshakeable conviction.

Lu Changsheng was utterly speechless. They had let him free-range graze for ten whole years; suddenly dropping a micromanaging supervisor on his head was a severe violation of his established cultivation-rest balance.

“How about we table this initiative until Master returns and let him personally oversee my progress? There is truly no need to burden you, Senior Brother!”

He figured pushing the responsibility up the corporate ladder would make Ye Tianyi back off.

Instead, his Senior Brother’s expression turned deathly grave.

“Junior Brother, there are certain classified matters I originally intended to disclose when the time was right. Since you have brought him up, I shall reveal the truth to you now!”

“What truth? Is Master finally kicking the bucket?” Lu Changsheng’s expression stiffened.

Ye Tianyi shook his head, hesitating for a long moment before speaking in a hushed tone. “Originally, I was acting as Master’s escort on his worldly travels. But two years ago, Master abruptly vanished!”

“Vanished?”

“Indeed. I scoured the mortal and spiritual realms for two years without uncovering a single trace. I had no choice but to return to the Sect empty-handed. However, this matter is under a strict gag order. Lest we invite hostile takeovers, only the absolute upper echelon of the Sect is aware of this!”

Ye Tianyi spoke with profound solemnity.

Lu Changsheng, however, was struck entirely dumb.

Back in the day, he had just been minding his own business, walking down the street, when a crazy old man literally fell from the sky. The old geezer had aggressively marketed him as having ‘peerless bone structure’ and being a ‘one-in-a-million Cultivation prodigy,’ relentlessly badgering him to become his disciple.

When the sales pitch failed, the old man just straight-up kidnapped him and hauled him up Qingyun Peak. ‘What a waste of my massive mortal inheritance. God knows which distant relative liquidated my estate.’

He had eventually made peace with the kidnapping. Since he was already here, entering the Cultivation startup scene wasn’t the worst career pivot. If he successfully leveled up, wouldn’t he be able to comfortably tyrannize a local territory?

What he completely failed to anticipate was that on his second day on the mountain, the old man dumped him onto his Eldest Senior Brother and immediately absconded on a ‘traveling sabbatical.’

This sabbatical had lasted ten consecutive years. The old bastard gave zero consideration to the psychological trauma of leaving an eight-year-old child to navigate the cutthroat corporate culture of a Xianxia sect alone.

Not to mention, he was saddled with this absolute black hole of a physical constitution.

Lu Changsheng wanted to weep but lacked the tears. He had survived a decade of paranoid risk management to reach adulthood, only to be hit with the news that his Master had officially gone missing in action.

‘What kind of doomed pirate ship did I let myself get drafted onto…’

For a moment, his heart was a swirling cocktail of complex emotions. Ultimately, what was the actual net difference between having this Master and not having him? Zero.

Ye Tianyi, utterly blind to his Junior Brother’s internal existential crisis, continued his dramatic monologue.

“I reviewed the Sect’s historical archives. Master arrived at the Cangyun Sect over a century ago, seemingly suffering from profound amnesia. A little over a decade ago, he suddenly recalled a fragment of his past and insisted on traveling the world. The Sect deemed it a high-risk venture and assigned me as his bodyguard, yet I ultimately failed my duty and lost him…”

His voice actually cracked with genuine, agonizing self-reproach.

Lu Changsheng suppressed a sigh. It was obvious his Second Senior Brother was just a tragically earnest, straight-laced company man.

“Say no more, Senior Brother. Let us just focus on our cultivation!”

It was intended as a basic, empty platitude to de-escalate the trauma dump.

Instead, Ye Tianyi nodded with violent, terrifying enthusiasm.

“You are absolutely correct, Junior Brother! I must cultivate with everything I have. The moment I achieve Core Formation, I shall venture back out and systematically scour the realms until I retrieve the old man!”

“…”

Lu Changsheng was thoroughly defeated. It was glaringly obvious that Master had intentionally ditched his escort to go enjoy an unrestricted retirement, yet this naive fool was fully committed to hunting him down.

As they conversed, they touched down at the base of a towering peak-their designated destination.

However, staring up at the familiar ridges, Lu Changsheng felt a deep frown crease his forehead.

“You drafted me out of bed before dawn… just to drag me to the outer disciple proving grounds?”

Lu Changsheng stared in blank disbelief.

Located several hundred miles beyond the central hubs, this facility was exclusively zoned for outer disciple entry-level trials.

Sure, to the public eye, his cultivation was stalled at a pathetic third layer of Spirit Accumulation, failing to meet the core disciple benchmarks. But hauling him out here was a blatant insult to his dignity. At the bare minimum, he deserved access to the inner disciple VIP training zones.

Ye Tianyi leaned in, lowering his voice conspiratorially. “Junior Brother, you lack the classified intel. The Sect recently patched this zone and upgraded its hazard levels; it is entirely different from the legacy version. Furthermore, almost no one realizes that an Earth Spirit Vein is buried deep beneath this terrain. Even Eldest Senior Brother comes here to cultivate!”

Lu Changsheng sighed softly. He was well aware Eldest Senior Brother was here; the man had clocked in last night.

Furthermore, he had discovered that ‘hidden’ Spirit Vein years ago. He had already aggressively siphoned it near dry. Bringing him here now yielded absolutely zero ROI!

But he couldn’t be bothered to file a complaint.

While the zone’s natural resources were essentially bankrupt, it did offer premium isolation. Armed with a liquid capital of twenty thousand Spirit Stones, he could finally conduct a high-intensity, uninterrupted cultivation sprint.

Reaching their designated spot, Ye Tianyi stood vigil until he verified Lu Changsheng had officially entered a meditative state, only then taking a seat nearby with profound satisfaction.

Peeking at his Senior Brother through half-lidded eyes, Lu Changsheng felt a wave of helplessness. The guy was just a well-intentioned company man trying to help him hit his quotas.

Resigning himself to his fate, he fully activated his cultivation technique. Scaling up his power level was the only guaranteed insurance policy in this world anyway.

After all, having witnessed the brutal, high-mortality reality of the Cultivation industry-where a single misstep resulted in one’s soul being forcefully liquidated-he never dared to truly slack off. He was terrified of catching a stray heavenly tribulation and becoming a nameless statistic.

However, the agonizing reality of his situation soon set in. His physique devoured the twenty thousand Spirit Stones like a woodchipper processing paper. He was still leagues away from the ninth layer of Core Formation. Without injecting at least a hundred thousand Spirit Stones into his system, breaking the bottleneck was mathematically impossible.

‘If reaching the ninth layer of Core Formation requires this much capital, what kind of astronomical budget will Nascent Soul demand? Is the heavens actively trying to force me into the armed robbery sector?’

Lu Changsheng was drowning in fiscal despair.

The volume of Spiritual Qi his body demanded was grotesquely inflated. The raw energy he had just incinerated would have easily funded the ascension of two Void Transformation realm experts with capital to spare.

He desperately needed to secure his Nascent Soul promotion. According to the ancient technical manuals, once the Myriad Tribulations Immortal Physique reached the Nascent Soul stage, the agonizing physical pain of baseline cultivation would cease. The only trade-off was mandatory, lethal Tribulation Transcendence audits at every subsequent bottleneck.

Boiling it down to the bottom line: he had a critical cash flow problem. The target figure was so absurd he couldn’t even calculate an estimated timeline for savings. At that precise moment of despair, the image of Ning Yuxin flashed across his mental dashboard.

‘As the sole heiress to the local monopoly, her discretionary funding must be practically infinite!’

A brilliant, highly unethical business strategy instantly crystallized in his mind. He silently masked his aura, slipped past Ye Tianyi’s perimeter, and stealthily made his way back to the Sect.

A few days had elapsed during his retreat. Ning Yuxin’s trial period for the ‘pill’ should have concluded, resulting in the successful manifestation of Sword Intent. It was time for a follow-up consultation to identify new avenues for ‘premium upgrades.’

Soon, Lu Changsheng blitzed back to the Sect, executing a high-speed insertion straight onto Qingyun Peak.

The moment he touched down, he spotted her slumped over a stone table. She was buried under a mountain of archaic manuals and bamboo scrolls, her face a portrait of profound misery and overwhelming defeat.

“Junior Sister Ning, did the product fail to initialize? That shouldn’t be mathematically possible!”

Lu Changsheng feigned confusion, though his senses had already verified the sharp, distinct hum of his transplanted Sword Intent firmly rooted within her meridians.

Ning Yuxin lifted her heavy gaze, letting out a pitiful sigh. “It was a flawless success!”

“Then why the tragic atmosphere? Is Eldest Senior Brother still ignoring your friend requests?”

“No!” Ning Yuxin shook her head frantically. “The moment I condensed the Sword Intent, Eldest Senior Brother’s entire demeanor drastically shifted. He actually sat down to personally lecture me on the Way of the Sword, transferred all of his personal cultivation logs to my care, and now schedules daily one-on-one tutoring sessions!”

“Isn’t that a massive win? You’ve successfully breached his inner circle! What on earth are you stressing over?” Lu Changsheng asked.

Based on his extensive profiling of his Eldest Senior Brother, the man’s attention span was strictly limited to the Sword Dao. He only registered the existence of rare sword manuals, ancient manuscripts, or fellow sword fanatics.

The strategy was clearly generating massive returns.

Ning Yuxin gestured desperately at the table. “But I have been staring at this highly technical jargon for days, and I cannot comprehend a single syllable! If this continues, and he audits my progress only to realize I haven’t advanced an inch, won’t he…”

Lu Changsheng instantly diagnosed her bottleneck. He casually picked up one of the heavy manuals and scanned the contents.

After a brief review, he nodded in professional agreement. “This is indeed highly advanced theoretical coursework. Without possessing a baseline proficiency of at least the fifth or sixth level of the Sword Dao, this is basically encrypted gibberish!”

Ning Yuxin’s anxiety visibly spiked toward panic.

Lu Changsheng waved a dismissive hand. “However, this is merely a minor operational hiccup. As long as your raw Sword Intent continuously upgrades, he will assume you are absorbing his lectures flawlessly. Your engagement metrics will naturally remain high, ultimately leading to organic romantic development over time!”

Ning Yuxin’s eyes lit up with renewed hope, only to instantly dim back into despair.

“But artificially inflating my Sword Intent is easier said than done! I am no peerless sword genius. How could I possibly force a rapid level-up in such a constricted timeframe?!”

She deflated completely, slumping over the table like a punctured balloon.

“Actually, there is a streamlined, premium solution for that as well!”

“Truly?”

Ning Yuxin jolted upright, her spirit instantly rebooting.

Lu Changsheng flashed a brilliantly predatory, corporate smile. “Money works!”