Spring comes after the winter winds
Fang Yuan turns in the golden honey wine at the internal affairs hall, closing the asset mission the middle-aged Gu Master in charge chose specifically to make hard for him. Pressed on whether he completed it alone, Fang Yuan says he did. He explains that the mission turned on luck: while scouting the area, he found a bear digging into a beehive and took the honey wine while the bear was occupied. The Gu Master records the account, closes the report with the evaluation Good, and tells Fang Yuan the family assets are still held by his uncle and aunt; the internal affairs hall will retrieve them, and he should return in three days. ch. 102
In the guest hall, the same Gu Master tells Gu Yue Dong Tu that nothing more can be done, since the result has already entered the internal affairs hall’s procedure and only the clan elders or the clan leader could still intervene. Aunt protests that the assets are theirs and that losing them would cost half their servants. Gu Yue Dong Tu strikes her to the ground and rages that the clan rules leave no choice. He takes the inventory list and swears to return every item on it, not a thing less, while vowing that even if the internal affairs hall is out of his reach, he can still deal with Fang Yuan himself. ch. 102
Three days later, Fang Yuan walks out of the internal affairs hall holding house and land deeds along with sold human contracts. The inheritance is larger than he expected: over ten mu of farmland, eight family servants, three bamboo buildings, and a wine tavern, one of only four wine-selling businesses in the whole village. Among the assets is a Nine Leaf Vitality Grass, a rank two healing Gu whose nine round leaves can each be torn off as a vitality leaf, a rank one Gu that heals instantly but leaves the person unresponsive to any other vitality leaf for the next hour. New leaves can be grown back by feeding the plant primeval essence, so Fang Yuan judges it his most valuable asset of all, a moving source of income that every Gu Master roaming outside the village needs to keep on hand. ch. 102
Fang Yuan reasons that this trade in vitality leaves is why Gu Yue Dong Tu, retired for years, is still known as the hidden elder with influence beyond the family. He weighs how far the clan’s system restrains Uncle and Aunt from moving openly against him, unlike on Earth, and concludes that with rank two cultivation already behind him, he can meet whatever they attempt. Walking the street in a winter wind, he tells himself that spring, meaning his new life, has already arrived. ch. 102
