Sudden wealth
Shang Ya Zi leaves saying he needs more time, and Fang Yuan reads the hesitation as a deal already decided. Two days later Ya Zi returns haggard and agrees to the earlier terms, drinking a toast of cheap rice wine before reading over the prepared agreement. The written price has climbed again, to nine hundred and fifty thousand, and Ya Zi slams the table in fury before his anger breaks against the reminder that the young master position is at stake. Fang Yuan concedes to nine hundred thousand, and Ya Zi, whose year in the post has only let him pocket about four hundred thousand of his own, accepts knowing the purchase will empty his savings. ch. 268
Ya Zi trusts no paper alone. He demands a poison vow Gu, a rank three consumable worm, to bind the deal. It bites each man’s finger in turn as he reads the agreement aloud, swelling on his heart blood, then explodes into red light that fuses into both their bodies once the vow takes. Failure to mean the words read would instead leave a puddle of stale blood, so the burst of light confirms the vow has held. Ya Zi hands over a primeval elder Gu, a rank three storage Gu shaped as a palm sized crystal ball that can seal up to a million primeval stones, holding a cloudy figure of an old man. Once Fang Yuan takes ownership the figure turns to face him no matter how the Gu is turned. Its expression separately tracks how full it runs: a frown when the stones inside are few, no expression at a middling amount, and a smile that grows as the total nears the cap. It carries eight hundred and seventy thousand primeval stones, six hundred thousand of it Shang clan trade credit and the rest Ya Zi’s own savings, with thirty thousand more promised in three days. Ya Zi also charges Fang Yuan six thousand six hundred primeval stones for the Gu itself, which Fang Yuan pays without argument. ch. 268
Three days later Ya Zi delivers the last thirty thousand, and Fang Yuan hands over the recipe, withholding only the bone flesh unity Gu as too valuable to sell. He separately sells the bone spear, spiral bone spear, and bone spike Gu for the previously agreed forty thousand six hundred and twenty. Fang Yuan’s holdings now stand at nine hundred thirty four thousand and twenty primeval stones, about nine hundred and forty five thousand once his other savings are added, against the fifty to sixty primeval stones he carried at this same point in his previous life. He divides the sum between the primeval elder Gu, his person, and the tusita flower against loss. Three days pass, and Wei Yang arrives with Shang Yan Fei’s invitation to a clan banquet. ch. 268
