Chapter 305

By the time the auction is set to open, the hall holds nearly a thousand people with not an empty seat, and every private room above it is sold; Fang Yuan and Bai Ning Bing claim one with their purple thorn tokens. Through the curtain, Fang Yuan watches the crowd trade opinions on Ju clan’s ruin, some pitying, some indifferent, one comparing it to the three clans wiped out together on Qing Mao mountain a few years before. Shang Qiu Niu, Shang Yan Fei’s eldest son at thirty, walks in first to a wave of greetings and takes a private room of his own. Shang Chao Feng and Shang Fu Xi follow together; Fang Yuan already knows the pair as the third of Shang clan’s young-master factions, Chao Feng bold and running the Gu battle zone, Fu Xi refined and running the auction zone. Shang Pu Lao, Shang Suan Ni, and Shang Bi Xi arrive next and choose to sit in the hall rather than a room, the eighth, ninth, and tenth of Shang Yan Fei’s children, allied into the second faction. Pu Lao runs the brothels, Suan Ni the restaurants and silk stores, and Bi Xi, who wields the turtle tire Gu, fights with the strength of ten turtles. ^{ch. 305}

Fang Yuan reads the whole field of young masters this way: Qiu Niu alone at the head of the first faction, the three below him forming the second, Chao Feng and Fu Xi the third still gathering strength, and the rest, Shang Ya Zi isolated, Shang Chi Wen ambitionless, Shang Pi Xiu too scheming to trust, sitting outside all three. He cannot compete with any of the three factions directly. His plan runs through her instead. Her forced awakening leaves her with only a C grade aptitude, no foundation at all rather than a weak one, and a mother from Zhang clan, which stands close to Wu clan and carries old grudges against Shang clan, a political weight she carries from birth. By his own memory, it took her six years to rise to young master before; this year’s assessment is his chance to shorten that. ^{ch. 305}

Just then she arrives, walking hand in hand with Shang Chi Wen, and the two of them join Fang Yuan’s room, greeted at once as Brother Hei Tu and Sister Bai Yun. Over two years, Shang Yan Fei’s man triumphing heaven Gu and a store of precious Gu worms have carried Shang Xin Ci’s aptitude from a bare twenty percent D grade to fifty-nine percent C grade, one step below B grade, and she studies on her own initiative to please him further. Shang Chi Wen privately judges Bai Ning Bing every bit as cold as her reputation says, and judges Fang Zheng just as arrogant in his own way, undefeated since reaching third inner city and having turned down banquets thrown for him by Chao Feng, Qiu Niu, Pu Lao, and others. Running the battle stage herself, she knows Fang and Bai’s record better than most: no losses since they joined, and fame that already rivals the two rank four Gu Masters Ju Kai Bei and Yan Tu; having no ambition of her own, she never sent them an invitation. Shang Xin Ci sits by Fang Yuan and asks, worried, about his fight with a Gu Master named Teng Jiu Long, and he waves it off lightly, naming only Ju Kai Bei and Yan Tu as anyone in the battle stage worth watching. His confidence dazzles Shang Chi Wen and moves Shang Xin Ci’s heart again. ^{ch. 305}