My Junior Brother is a Hidden Boss

Chapter 19: As Long As The Price Is Right!

For several consecutive days, the mountain remained dead silent.

Lu Changsheng slept under the ancient pine tree, silently digesting the lingering agony of his breakthrough.

He had originally been running surveillance to see when the Xuantian Sect envoys would pack up, but the bastards had simply moved in, showing absolutely zero intention of checking out.

Zhou Qingyu maintained his usual cultivation routine, unmoving as a mountain through wind and rain. Ye Tianyi, still haunted by the recent incident where he nearly got his Junior Brother killed, refrained from bothering him and instead focused entirely on his own training.

After all, the Cangyun Secret Realm was on the verge of opening. Everyone needed to maximize their loadouts.

Ning Yuxin, on the other hand, visited every single day. She never interrupted his rest, merely standing at the periphery with a deeply conflicted expression on her face.

It wasn’t until Lu Changsheng fully rebooted his system and relocated from the old pine tree back to his quarters on Qingyun Peak that Ning Yuxin finally approached.

“Senior Brother Lu, do you have a moment?” Ning Yuxin asked softly.

“Business?”

Lu Changsheng glanced over.

He watched her step up to the stone table and take a seat opposite him.

After their recent collaborative sessions, she had grown somewhat accustomed to his presence, shedding her previously rigid posture.

“Did the Sword Intent hit a bottleneck, or is Senior Brother still ignoring you?”

“No, the Sword Intent has been scaling wonderfully, and extremely fast! Senior Brother Zhou has also been paying close attention to me. He visits frequently to discuss the Dao of the Sword!”

Lu Changsheng raised an eyebrow. “Then what’s the issue…”

Finally, Ning Yuxin bit her lip. “Ever since I began cultivating this sword path, I’ve felt that something is structurally wrong!”

“What kind of problem?”

Hearing this, he instantly perked up. He was a premium vendor with a five-star rating. After-sales support was serious business. If there was a glitch in the product, he had to patch it immediately to protect his brand reputation.

Ning Yuxin flushed slightly, averting her eyes. “It’s about… certain physical changes…”

“Irregular cycle? Did it stop entirely? Or did you and Senior Brother already hit a home run?”

Before he could even finish his diagnostic checklist, Ning Yuxin’s face turned the color of a boiled crab. She glared at him. “Senior Brother, what absolute nonsense are you spouting?! I just, I just…”

“Ah, a confidential medical issue!” Lu Changsheng nodded, displaying the utmost professional empathy. “How about I take your pulse and run a quick scan?”

“You know the medical arts?”

“I dabble!”

Ning Yuxin hesitantly extended her slender wrist. She was too mortified to describe the symptoms out loud. If he could diagnose the anomaly through her meridians, it would save her a mountain of embarrassment.

Yet, the exact millisecond Lu Changsheng pressed his fingers to her pulse, he nodded sagely and announced, “Oh, so you’re experiencing a suffocating tightness in the chest, accompanied by sharp pain and a tearing sensation of acute swelling!”

“You…!”

With a single sentence, Ning Yuxin’s flush deepened, burning all the way to the tips of her ears. She stared at him with wide, humiliated almond eyes. This was absolute social torture.

Wasn’t the whole point of the pulse reading to avoid saying it out loud?! He clearly understood the assignment, yet the moment he finished scanning, he broadcasted her symptoms to the entire mountain! What was the point of the stealth diagnostic?!

Despite her sheer mortification, she was profoundly shocked. Lu Changsheng’s reputation was utter garbage; he was universally recognized as a waste of space. Yet, he possessed the arcane skill to guide her sword path and possessed enough medical mastery to instantly pinpoint her meridian blockages.

Lu Changsheng retracted his fingers, his brow furrowing into a tight knot.

He had identified the system error.

On a fundamental level, Ning Yuxin’s Sword Intent was a direct spin-off of his own proprietary Sword Intent.

He had scrubbed his personal DRM signature from it, allowing the seed to incubate within her meridians and masquerade as her own power.

But its core source code was still a 1:1 copy of Lu Changsheng’s. His Sword Intent was absurdly tyrannical—a standard-issue mortal constitution simply couldn’t handle the hardware requirements.

Therefore, as the malicious code aggressively expanded and circulated through Ning Yuxin’s pathways, her hardware was overheating, resulting in physical micro-tears.

“What’s the verdict?”

“Minor bug!” Having isolated the root cause, Lu Changsheng waved a hand dismissively.

“What exactly is happening to me?”

“In technical terms, the Sword Intent you’ve generated is far too aggressive. Your baseline physical stats can’t support the load. Certain delicate meridian pathways are suffering from micro-tears, which is causing the localized inflammation.”

Ning Yuxin glanced down at her chest, bewildered. “An aggressive Sword Intent?”

“My fault for not including that disclaimer in the initial user manual. This specific Sword Intent operates on a different frequency.”

“No wonder Senior Brother marveled at my sword talent, praising my Sword Intent as extraordinary!” Ning Yuxin experienced a sudden epiphany, her eyes shining with dramatic awe. Then, reality crashed back in. “But what is the treatment? I feel like I’m on the verge of breaking through to the second level of the sword path, but the physical backlash is intensifying exponentially!”

Hearing this, Lu Changsheng gave her a slow, calculating once-over as a brilliant business model formed in his head.

“Junior Sister, this is entirely fixable. It’s just a bit…”

As he trailed off, his gaze dropped back down to lock onto her figure.

That intensely focused stare made Ning Yuxin’s breath hitch. Every survival instinct screamed at her to stand up and create distance.

“Senior Brother… a bit what?”

As she asked, she silently routed Qi to her legs. If he tried anything untoward, she was going to sprint for the hills.

But Lu Changsheng just sighed. “A bit heavy on the wallet!”

“Huh? The wallet?”

“Exactly. Such a tyrannical Sword Intent requires a reinforced physical vessel to act as the server rack. Furthermore, your current cultivation base is lagging behind the software; we need to force a level-up.”

Ning Yuxin exhaled a massive sigh of relief, though confusion lingered in her eyes. “You mean I need to undergo body tempering and artificially boost my cultivation realm?”

“Precisely!”

“But I am not a Body Cultivator, and elevating one’s cultivation is not something accomplished overnight! My Sword Intent is already brushing the second level, and its power auto-generates every single day…”

Lu Changsheng nodded grimly. “Which is exactly why the overhead costs are so steep. We’ll need a massive influx of Spirit Stones to procure premium medicinal herbs and alchemy materials. The initial capital required is not a small sum!”

“So, as long as I have the funds, the problem is solved?”

“Money solves everything!”

He delivered the guarantee with absolute, unblinking conviction.

Are you kidding me? What can’t cold, hard cash buy in this world?

As long as the deposit clears, I’d grab a butcher knife and assassinate the Sect Leader of the Xuantian Sect myself! Upgrading her baseline stats and tweaking her cultivation is basically a tutorial quest!

Ning Yuxin cast her doubts aside.

“Then what is your required budget, Senior Brother?”

“I can’t provide an exact quote yet. We have to audit the market in Cangyun City. Commodity prices for spiritual herbs are subject to supply chain fluctuations. And as you well know, I’m doing this strictly at cost—no markup for my services!”

“Understood. Then I must trouble Senior Brother to escort me to Cangyun City tomorrow!”

Ning Yuxin currently possessed a staggering amount of blind faith in Lu Changsheng.

After all, from the initial installation of her Sword Intent to its rapid beta-testing phase, there hadn’t been a single critical failure, and the performance metrics were flawless.

She had forwarded her updated combat analytics to her clan. Upon learning she had successfully manifested Sword Intent and was pushing the second level, her father was ecstatic.

Especially when he reviewed the expense reports. Achieving such a massive leap in power for such a negligible sum of Spirit Stones was an absurdly high-yield investment. The clan patriarch was already drafting a proposal to send his son over for the same premium training package.

In her father’s eyes, this was the ultimate masterclass in high-ROI resource management!

“I suppose I can pencil you in.”

Lu Changsheng maintained his stoic facade, casually watching Ning Yuxin depart the courtyard.

However, the second she was out of render distance, his eyebrows shot into his hairline.

Wait, did she figure out I embezzled her funds last time, and that’s why she insists on doing the purchasing herself? That shouldn’t be possible! Lu Changsheng felt a sudden spike of corporate paranoia.

After all, the raw materials for her last miracle pill had literally cost him three Spirit Stones from the discount bin.

Rubbing his chin, he fell into deep thought. This girl is a walking ATM. I cannot afford to lose this client. It’s time to roll out the premium theater experience and show her some real proprietary tech.

Back in her own quarters, Ning Yuxin found her thoughts constantly drifting back to Lu Changsheng.

The more they interacted, the more the man completely shattered the public rumors. Previously, his garbage reputation had planted seeds of deep prejudice in her heart. But now, that aversion had evaporated. Spending time in his orbit didn’t feel repulsive in the slightest.

The rest of the night passed in total tranquility. The entirety of Qingyun Peak was cloaked in absolute, pin-drop silence.

Until the first light of dawn, when Lu Changsheng was already waiting sharply outside her courtyard, ready to escort his VIP client into Cangyun City.

…