The academy elder tells a guard that Fang Yuan strikes only the sides of the neck, never the nape, because a neck strike faints while a strike to the back of the head can kill. None of the students on the ground are badly hurt, and the elder notes that the academy’s own treatment Gu Masters can heal what wounds there are. A guard warns that an unchecked brawl at the gates will damage the elder’s reputation, and the elder turns cold, reminding the guards that every student bears the Gu Yue surname and outranks them. He strips the guard who criticized Fang Yuan’s conduct of his post and orders a re-examination in half a month to choose a new chief, who will draw an extra half stone of pay each month. ch. 28
Elsewhere three girls raise blue light from their Moonlight Gu and threaten to shoot him, but Fang Yuan reminds them that using Gu inside the academy earns expulsion, and the light fades. He cuts down two of them, and the last collapses in tears and offers three to four stones from her pouch. Fang Yuan takes only one stone and lets her go. Watching from above, the elder judges her fit only for logistics work, never the battlefield. ch. 28
A last group arrives with Fang Yuan’s twin brother Fang Zheng among them, and Fang Zheng scolds him for beating classmates and urges him to confess before the elder. Fang Yuan agrees, then demands a stone from Fang Zheng too, and when his brother balks he warns that refusal ends the same as for those lying on the ground. The group pays up, and at Fang Yuan’s word they search the fallen students’ pouches themselves, one stone from each pouch. Across the whole class of fifty-seven, Fang Yuan collects fifty-six pieces of primeval stone, and with the twenty he started the day with, minus ten already spent on wine, plus his own allowance and reward, his total reaches seventy-nine. He judges extortion and plundering, needing no capital of its own, the most profitable business there is. ch. 28
