Absolutely terrible!
Fearing his price-fixing scheme has been exposed, Shang Ya Zi panics: the higher a position in the clan, the harder its holder falls for breaking the rules, and his own authority is borrowed entirely from his father. He cannot see how two wanted demonic Gu Masters could matter to the clan leader, and he briefly considers killing them before ruling it out as suicidal inside the third inner city. ch. 264
Fang Yuan and Bai Ning Bing both act puzzled by the summons, and Bai Ning Bing privately doubts it is one of Fang Yuan’s tricks after watching his confusion look genuine. Wei Yang assures them it is a friendly invitation, and the pair agree to go at once. Desperate, Shang Ya Zi offers six hundred and fifty thousand primeval stones on the spot, but Fang Yuan now refuses to sell the recipe at all, only softening enough to say he will look forward to further talk once they return. ch. 264
Wei Yang leads Fang and Bai into the second inner city, whose stone buildings prove plainer even than the fourth inner city’s, a frugality Bai Ning Bing realises the Shang clan keeps deliberately to preserve its own vigor despite its wealth. At the clan leader’s private residence, Wei Yang tells them to help themselves to fruit while they wait, and leaves. No fruit, tea, or anyone else appears. Fang Yuan sits calm for two hours, grows restless and mutters to himself for two more, and by the sixth hour is pacing and demanding to know what is going on. Bai Ning Bing, unsettled by behaviour so unlike him, asks whether he offended the clan somehow; he denies it and, uneasy at being left alone in an empty house, proposes they go look outside. ch. 264
Watching them through a rising curl of coloured smoke that shows him a real-time view, Shang Yan Fei asks Wei Yang’s read on the two. Wei Yang judges Hei Tu frank and rash and Bai Yun shrewd and deep-thinking, and doubts both names are real. Preoccupied with his daughter and otherwise showing little interest in the pair, Shang Yan Fei still clearly senses a lofty character in them and privately judges them decent, but as a prudent man he waits for his investigators to confirm the truth before resting easy. He tells Wei Yang to test their abilities and stay close to them over the coming days, then returns to the documents piled up during his half month in closed door cultivation. ch. 264
Finding no one in the courtyard, Fang and Bai meet Wei Yang, who apologises that the clan leader is too busy to appear, cancels the meeting, and offers a banquet at Shi Tian restaurant, known for meals lasting past four hours across more than a hundred dishes, by way of apology. Bai Ning Bing eats little and tries without success to draw information out of the cautious Wei Yang. Fang Yuan eats and drinks heavily straight from the jar, his earlier anger gone, and Wei Yang finds him far more likeable for it than the water-sipping Bai Yun. Wei Yang drops the two back at Nan Qiu garden and promises to return the next day for a tour of the city. ch. 264
