Chapter 327

At Shang Qiu Niu’s festival banquet, Shang Yi Fan toasts him as a role model while singing and dancing fill the hall. Shang Qiu Niu leads the first major faction among the young masters and is closely tied to Shang Yi Fan’s mother’s side, which would have left Shang Xin Ci pushed aside had she joined him. Wanting her two rank four experts regardless, he had already sent her an invitation of his own. A subordinate reports she has gone elsewhere, and Shang Qiu Niu’s gaze turns gloomy. Shang Yi Fan learns she has accepted Shang Chao Feng’s invitation instead and is briefly delighted, judging Chao Feng’s faction too pressured to rival Qiu Niu’s. ^{ch. 327}

Old steward Zhang corrects him. Qiu Niu’s faction is locked in a fight with Shang Pu Lao’s, so it cannot spare help against Shang Xin Ci, and her choice to sit outside that fight was clever. With two rank four experts behind her, any faction would take her in, and Chao Feng will definitely back her. Zhang also admits he has been spreading rumors to keep Zhou Quan, a former clan leader past a hundred years old whom Zhang calls proud and arrogant with ability ten times his own, from joining her. The rumors have already stopped Zhou Quan’s recruitment and stand to cost Shang Xin Ci prestige. ^{ch. 327}

In Chao Feng’s study, Shang Xin Ci, Fang Yuan and Bai Ning Bing meet with him. Chao Feng had not expected her interest in his third-ranked, low-key faction, given her rank one cultivation, weaker aptitude, and almost no foundation in Shang clan city. But with Fang Yuan and Bai Ning Bing at her side, accepting her meant indirectly gaining their help too, a temptation he could not refuse. Told she has already earned three hundred thousand primeval stones from selling Gu worms, he asks what comes next. She proposes an information-gathering business built around the battle stage. ^{ch. 327}

Chao Feng objects twice. He explains that demonic Gu Masters who prove themselves at the battle stage can become Shang clan external elders, a policy unique to Shang clan that has already produced three of the clan’s five great elders, and one that the clan guards jealously. He recounts a young master who opened a betting house on battle stage matches, earned five hundred thousand primeval stones in two days, and by the third day had it shut down and was himself demoted and exiled. ^{ch. 327}

Shang Xin Ci answers that her plan differs in kind: not betting on outcomes, but selling assessments of each Gu Master’s strength, worms and record, and forecasting important matches for a ranking the Gu Masters themselves would want to see their names on. Chao Feng is won over and offers to lend her his own people, though the narration notes his real aim is to plant his people inside her business and tighten his hold on her. She sees through it and declines, having already settled on manpower. He warns that Zhou Quan, over a hundred years old and unwilling to bow to a junior, will be hard to recruit, and that without capable subordinates her business could be destroyed or stolen by Shang Yi Fan. Fang Yuan speaks up: he already has a plan. ^{ch. 327}