My Junior Brother is a Hidden Boss

Chapter 20: The Cost of Doing Business

Although it was still early morning, Cangyun City was already bustling with vibrant activity.

Lu Changsheng and Ning Yuxin strolled along the main thoroughfare.

He was a frequent visitor to the city, often wandering its streets whenever he had time to kill.

Ning Yuxin, however, hadn’t stepped foot outside since arriving at Qingyun Peak. She had been entirely consumed by her cultivation, almost losing herself in the process.

Getting out for once, she couldn’t completely mask her excitement. After all, she was only seventeen or eighteen; her Dao Heart was not yet a placid lake, and the lively atmosphere still appealed to her mortal roots.

Lu Changsheng took his time, perfectly at ease. Gazing at scenes he had witnessed countless times, he sincerely felt that the vibrant hustle of the mortal world offered a far better return on investment than the mind-numbing monotony of Cultivation.

If I had to grind levels twenty-four-seven like Zhou Qingyu, I’d literally die of boredom.

“Senior Brother Lu, what exactly do we need to procure?”

“We’ll start by acquiring some Spirit Grass!”

Lu Changsheng declared, stepping smoothly into a premium apothecary.

“Immortal Master Changsheng! It has been quite some time. How may I serve you today?” A shop assistant hurried over, beaming a practiced, obsequious smile.

Lu Changsheng’s reputation preceded him throughout Cangyun City. He was infamous for his unparalleled laziness, yet having a peerless Sword Immortal for a Senior Brother ensured his name carried serious weight.

“Clear Spirit Grass, Essence Condensation Flowers, Spirit Accumulation Leaves, and Crimson Fire Roots. Do you have them in stock?”

“We do, indeed. What quantity do you require?”

Lu Changsheng paused as if making a calculated risk assessment. “I’ll keep the initial order light. Give me one hundred stalks of each. If we run short, I’ll place a secondary order.”

“One hundred… of each?”

The assistant froze, doubting his own ears.

“Is that a supply chain issue?”

“No, we have them! Please wait a moment!” The assistant spun around in pure ecstasy, sprinting toward the storage room and screaming, “Boss, we’ve hooked a whale!”

Combined, this inventory rings up to over fifteen thousand Spirit Stones. A massive transaction by any metric.

Ning Yuxin was equally dazed. These were all premium medicinal materials brimming with Spiritual Qi. She stared at him in utter disbelief.

“Senior Brother Lu, why are you purchasing such a massive stockpile of Spirit Grass?”

“To synthesize your Spirit Pills, obviously!”

“But with this sheer volume… how long will it take for me to metabolize them all?”

Lu Changsheng didn’t miss a beat. “This is barely a few days’ worth of inventory!”

“Consume all of this in a few days? Even an Essence Condensation expert’s meridians would violently rupture…”

It wasn’t that she cared about the Spirit Stones, but ingesting this much raw energy would cause even a Core Formation cultivator to explode, let alone someone at the Essence Condensation realm.

Lu Changsheng put on his most solemn, professional face. “Junior Sister, you don’t understand the industry. Pill refinement carries an inherent failure rate; success is never guaranteed. The Spirit Pills we need to manufacture this time are highly complex. Procuring extra raw materials is basic risk management!”

“So that’s the profound reasoning behind it!”

“Precisely!”

Hearing his confident explanation, Ning Yuxin swallowed her doubts. Given his flawless track record in her previous sessions, her faith in Lu Changsheng remained absolute.

She merely assumed her own understanding of alchemy was too shallow.

After the massive haul was carefully packed into holding bags, the duo exited the shop. They proceeded to raid another premium supplier, purchasing a hundred units of various heavenly treasures and earthly rarities.

The vast majority were luxury items packed with extraordinarily dense Spiritual Qi.

They swept through the market like a hurricane. In just half a day, they had burned through thirty thousand Spirit Stones!

Yet, as Lu Changsheng walked, his mental calculator was working overtime. Even with this massive order, factoring in ‘manufacturing losses,’ my net profit margin only sits around twenty-eight or twenty-nine thousand. That’s way below my quarterly projections.

But I’ve already ordered a hundred of everything. If I upscale the invoice any higher, I’ll cross the line from a savvy broker into outright scamming my client. That’s just bad customer service.

After running several financial models in his head, he turned to Ning Yuxin. “Junior Sister, are you interested in upgrading to our premium Essence Condensation package?”

“What package?”

“It’s a signature, comprehensive service developed by a certain Senior. Within three years, I guarantee you will reach the ninth layer of Essence Condensation. It includes a complete physical tempering regimen—while not quite at the level of a dedicated body cultivator, you won’t be far off for your realm. This tier includes a three-year supply of customized Spirit Pills, and I personally guarantee a breakthrough to the fourth layer of Sword Intent within that timeframe!”

As the pitch concluded, Ning Yuxin was utterly paralyzed by shock.

She was currently stuck at the ninth layer of Spirit Accumulation. Reaching the ninth layer of Essence Condensation in just three years meant clearing an entire major realm at breakneck speed.

Furthermore, obtaining a physique rivaling a body cultivator and, most crucially, achieving the fourth layer of Sword Intent in such a short window… it was simply miraculous.

In three years, she would barely be in her early twenties. Securing such heaven-defying achievements at that age would firmly establish her as an apex prodigy across the entirety of Cangzhou.

The temptation was absolutely intoxicating, a shortcut to instantly surpass countless so-called geniuses.

“Isn’t this… isn’t this defying the very will of Heaven?” Ning Yuxin stammered, unable to comprehend the sheer magnitude of the offer.

Lu Changsheng waved a hand dismissively. “I admit the marketing pitch sounds a bit inflated, but I assure you, the product is one hundred percent authentic. We even offer a full refund if you fail to see results!”

To secure the funding required for my Nascent Soul IPO, I have to go all out on the upsell.

Having personally ground through these cultivation realms and min-maxed every single stat to its absolute peak, he knew the exact optimal path. He had reverse-engineered the entire process during his endless downtime.

Furthermore, Cultivation below the Nascent Soul stage was largely just a tedious grind of accumulating Magic Power. In his eyes, as long as a client wasn’t utterly braindead and had enough Spirit Stones to burn, power-leveling them was as easy as breathing.

It was infinitely easier than his own hellish progression.

“Then… what must I do?”

It was painfully obvious Ning Yuxin was entirely sold on the idea.

Lu Changsheng smiled brightly. “The onboarding process is incredibly simple!”

“I just need to have the money?”

“Exactly!”

“Then what is the exact quote?”

“One hundred thousand Spirit Stones?”

Lu Changsheng floated the number, suddenly feeling a spike of imposter syndrome. He feared he had over-leveraged his position; it was a genuinely astronomical sum.

After all, even if Ning Yuxin was a trust-fund kid, she wasn’t a total idiot.

One hundred thousand Spirit Stones was enough to destabilize local economies in Cangzhou.

The annual gross revenue for the entire Cangyun Sect was merely thirty thousand Spirit Stones…

“I’ll buy it!”

Ning Yuxin’s response was sharp and instantaneous, lacking even a microsecond of hesitation.

Lu Changsheng’s heart nearly vibrated out of his ribcage.

Ning Yuxin continued, “However, it might require a slight processing delay. I only brought a few tens of thousands of Spirit Stones when I left home, and I’ve nearly exhausted my liquid funds. I will need to transmit a message to my father to arrange a capital injection!”

“No rush, no rush! Good things take time!”

Lu Changsheng violently clamped down on his desire to laugh maniacally. I never expected angel investors to be this gullible.

According to his risk models, his Nascent Soul breakthrough would burn through a minimum of three hundred thousand Spirit Stones. If this contract cleared, he’d net a cool ninety-eight thousand, instantly clearing nearly a third of his ultimate funding goal.

“Come, let us continue our market research!”

Lu Changsheng declared, practically walking on air.

Ning Yuxin nodded, her own heart pounding with thrilling anticipation.

Hilariously, both parties were secretly gloating, utterly convinced they had just executed the heist of the century!

Securing the ninth layer of Essence Condensation, the fourth layer of the Sword Dao, and a body cultivator’s physique in just three years—all for a mere one hundred thousand Spirit Stones. From her perspective, this deal was practically highway robbery in her favor.

However, a tiny seed of doubt still lingered in her mind.

If Lu Changsheng possesses such a divine curriculum, why is his own cultivation stuck at the fourth layer of Spirit Accumulation? Or could it be… that the man standing before me is deliberately concealing his true depths?

She couldn’t fully untangle the logic, but she chose to trust him regardless. It was the very first time she actively suspected Lu Changsheng was a hidden dragon.

While she was lost in her dramatic inner monologue, Lu Changsheng had wandered into another boutique. His eyes suddenly locked onto a fiercely crimson medicinal herb, and a sharp, predatory glint sparked in his pupils.

I can’t believe a backwater like Cangyun City actually stocked premium hardware like this!

Staring at the blazing red Spirit Grass, he found it genuinely difficult to maintain his usual deadpan composure.

The shopkeeper hurried over, recognizing the VIP. “Immortal Master Changsheng, your eye for quality is unparalleled! This Crimson Spirit Grass is an exceedingly rare artifact. It is the sole specimen within Cangyun City, and you would be hard-pressed to unearth a second one in all of Cangzhou!”

“Rare indeed. I’ve been monitoring the market for this exact piece for years!”

Lu Changsheng was ecstatic. Every time he booted up his cultivation cycle, the physical toll of his physique was agonizing. He had recently decrypted an ancient alchemical formula to synthesize a Crimson Spirit Pill, a highly specific pain-mitigation patch.

After all, his predictive models indicated that the transition to the Nascent Soul realm would multiply his baseline agony by a factor of ten, if not more. It was a catastrophic system tribulation on his path to Cultivation.

Therefore, he had been aggressively seeking the materials to craft this countermeasure. The Crimson Spirit Grass was the core ingredient, notoriously difficult to source.

Once the Spirit Pill was successfully rendered, his survival probability for the upcoming tribulation would skyrocket.

Ning Yuxin was genuinely taken aback.

She had never once seen the usually apathetic Lu Changsheng display such visceral desire for a material possession.

The shopkeeper smiled warmly. “We are old business associates! Since Immortal Master Changsheng desires it, take it for a flat fee of one thousand Spirit Stones!”

Hearing this reasonable quote, Lu Changsheng rejoiced. Just as he opened his mouth to close the deal, an arrogant voice sliced through the tranquil atmosphere of the shop.

“I bid two thousand Spirit Stones!”

The group turned toward the disruption, spotting a young man in his mid-twenties swaggering into the establishment.

The newcomer was gaunt, his features falling far short of handsome and instead radiating a sharp, venomous arrogance. He was draped in an extravagant feathered robe that fluttered grandly in the breeze. As his eyes locked onto Lu Changsheng, a sneer twisted his lips, his gaze brimming with blatant, unadulterated provocation.

…