Chapter 236

Puzzling over the contradiction, Fang Yuan digs deeper into his previous-life memory and works out the truth: Shang Xin Ci is the Shang clan leader’s illegitimate daughter, secretly fathered years earlier on a woman of the rival Zhang clan, and raised fatherless under her mother’s name. Forced into merchant work after her mother’s death, she was only acknowledged in public once her bloodline was confirmed at Shang clan city, where the clan leader, feeling he owed her, has covered for her mistakes ever since. This caravan trip, Fang Yuan realizes, is her very first journey as a merchant, before any of that has happened yet. ^{ch. 236}

Waiting for her to become clan leader is not worth it, Fang Yuan judges: even in the future his memory shows him, the Shang clan is ruined before she ever takes that seat, and the future itself can still change. What he actually wants is nearer at hand, once she is acknowledged as a young master and given her own share of the clan’s business to run. He needs a stable, safe channel to sell off the surplus from future inheritances, such as the extra Bone Spear Gu and Spiral Bone Spear Gu Bai Ning Bing now carries. His earlier plan to use Jia Jin Sheng for this collapsed when he was forced to kill the man over the secret of the flower wine monk’s inheritance. ^{ch. 236}

The Shang clan is a major power of the southern border, the text notes, righteous only on the surface and black hearted at its core. Their strength worries Fang Yuan too: such an ally might easily turn and stab him in the back. Shang Xin Ci is the exception, without any power base of her own, and Fang Yuan reads her youth and her kindness plainly as weaknesses he can use. He recalls a previous-life thief who swindled her again and again with the same excuse, until her patient trust in him, offered even though she suspected the lie, moved him to abandon crime and serve her instead. ^{ch. 236}

Bai Ning Bing teases that he has taken a liking to the girl, and jokingly offers to help kidnap her in exchange for the Yang Gu. Fang Yuan only points out that Bai Ning Bing is not, in fact, a man. ^{ch. 236}

That evening, as Zhang Xin Ci finishes her rounds, Fang Yuan leaps in front of her, and his burned eyebrows and missing ear startle her so badly that her maids scream in fright. Ignoring her furious bodyguard, Fang Yuan shouts at her to buy his goods. He throws away the steamed bun she offers and, in a wailing performance, claims he sold his old house to buy these leaves and has nothing left to live for if they go unsold. Watching from a distance, Bai Ning Bing marvels that she could never match his acting. Moved, Zhang Xin Ci tells her bodyguard, whom she calls Uncle Zhang Zhu, to give him three primeval stones. Zhang Zhu talks her down to two instead, warning that a bigger sum would mark Fang Yuan for robbery and draw every peddler in the caravan to her tomorrow. Fang Yuan takes the two primeval stones with trembling hands and thanks her, promising she will be rewarded for her kindness. ^{ch. 236}