Chapter 243

The sixth Jin clan Gu Master Fang Yuan approaches values the borrowed goods at no less than fifty thousand primeval stones; lacking that many stones, Fang Yuan proposes a barter instead, and after hard bargaining the Gu Master agrees, having privately decided to deal all along and only talking to drive the price down. Impressed by a mortal who bargains without arrogance, the Gu Master offers him a shopkeeper’s post across three stores. Fang Yuan declines. ^{ch. 243}

Xiao Die finds out Fang Yuan has traded away nearly all the goods and confronts him in fury, certain he means to exchange them back. Fang Yuan answers coldly that the goods are his to use as he pleases now that Shang Xin Ci has lent them to him, and Xiao Die leaves rattled, vowing to report him. Other servants whisper that he has lost his mind; Fang Yuan pays them no attention. ^{ch. 243}

Fang Yuan judges Shang Xin Ci talented but green, only sixteen and doing business for the first time. Drawing on roughly a hundred years running caravans, shops, gambling houses and auctions in his previous life, he calculates that manipulating the goods honestly could raise their value seven or eight times by the time they reach Shang Liang mountain, a margin he considers the limit anyone can reach within the rules. He recalls that breaking those rules could earn over tenfold, outright fraud tens of times more, and that murder and robbery need no starting capital at all, but his goals on this trip keep him from any of it. ^{ch. 243}

The night before the caravan departs, a Jin clan Gu Master secretly offers to sell him Jinzan grass. Fang Yuan knows from his previous life that the grass feeds the golden silkworm Gu recipe that let Jin clan wipe out Huang clan and seize Huang Jin mountain a year later, and he senses from the offer that Jin clan has nearly finished perfecting that recipe now. He bargains the price down to a loss for the seller, then feigns distrust to press further, and learns the grass was dug up and sold in secret by the clan leader’s own son. ^{ch. 243}

Fang Yuan agrees to buy three carts of it, reasoning that stripping Jin clan of this stockpile will cost them years against Huang clan, while the resale will fund the Gu worms he needs at Shang clan city and impress Shang Xin Ci besides. He accepts the Gu Master’s price without further argument; that this go-between will land in trouble once the deal comes to light is, to Fang Yuan, not his concern. ^{ch. 243}