Chapter 323

Shang Xin Ci explains her idea: the Shang clan battle stage runs over a hundred bouts a day, and they can profit by gathering intelligence on the fighters, hiring known figures to predict bouts beforehand and critique them after. Bai Ning Bing, who has fought many of those bouts herself, calls it brilliant. Fang Yuan is startled: he ran the same scheme in his previous life at Wu clan’s own battle stage, where it drew huge profits at first before Wu clan moved against it, and his business folded within half a year. He credits Shang Xin Ci’s native talent for reaching the same idea he only had from memories of Earth, then shakes his head anyway. She asks if he thinks the idea is bad. He tells her the idea is good but will not work, and asks in turn whether she trusts him. She answers that he saved her life, so there is nothing not to trust. He tells her twenty days will triple her stones, and Bai Ning Bing wonders privately who he means to harm this time. ^{ch. 323}

On San Cha mountain, a border battle between the centuries old Zuo and Che clans is ending, tens of Gu Master corpses on the ground and seven fighters still standing. A wounded Zuo Wu Sheng orders the clan leader’s daughter, Zuo Chan Yu, to flee while he and two others hold the line, and Che You Yin refuses to let his own daughter, Che Qiao Xiang, join him despite her protest that the injury is only slight. A demonic Gu Master then climbs onto a rock, laughing; both elders name him on sight, the Pink Butterfly Gentleman, Kong Ri Tian, and dread rather than relief crosses their faces, because rank four cultivation and a known history as a serial rapist of virgins have made him hated and friendless. He scatters fragrant petals that turn into butterflies and strikes through the confusion, and after eight or nine exchanges he flashes away from the battlefield. Che You Yin and Zuo Wu Sheng sigh in relief at first, then cry out in fury: both young women are gone, taken unconscious in the chaos, one in each of Kong Ri Tian’s arms. Before he can act on his prize, San Cha mountain shakes and three light pillars, yellow, blue, and red, burst from its three peaks as a voice declares the Three Kings Inheritance open to demonic and righteous alike. Even Kong Ri Tian forgets the two women in his arms. ^{ch. 323}

Three days later in Shang clan city, Fang Yuan confirms from a document that the inheritance opened on the same date it did in his previous life. Even rebirth cannot easily bend the big events. He knows he must move faster once Shang Xin Ci wins the young master seat. This three king inheritance is unlike the single flower wine or white bone inheritances he took before, since it bundles three legacies into one place, enough, if he claims all three, to fill most of his rank four Gu needs. It is also a dangerous demonic inheritance, full of checkpoints and dog packs, one that in his previous life took half a year before anyone reached its end. There is no rush to go himself. Reasoning that entry needs specific Gu, he has already been quietly buying dog enslavement Gu, paper crane Gu, and exploding egg Gu on the open market, without committing everything at once. Five days later, once the inheritance news is public, he commits fully. He empties Shang Xin Ci’s hundred thousand, three hundred thousand just paid by Bai clan toward an earlier extortion of three million that Bai clan has now repaid almost half of, and Bai Ning Bing’s own funds, into a single bulk purchase. ^{ch. 323}