Zhou Quan's shock
The old steward runs to Zhou Quan in a panic, asking for instructions as Fang Yuan tears through the manor. Zhou Quan wakes with a start, feels the rank four aura outside, and is stunned. He himself needed nearly fifty years to reach that realm, and this intruder is twenty. Zhou Quan weighs Fang Zheng’s standing: the purple thorn token, his ties to Shang Xin Ci and Shang Chao Feng, a fine of only forty-nine primeval stones for an earlier slave-market disturbance, and rumors that even Shang Yan Fei rates him highly. He decides he cannot afford to fight him, and orders his steward to pack for the shop instead. ch. 332
Wei De Xin spreads word of the confrontation as Fang Yuan leads his followers out of the manor and through Shang clan city toward the shop, drawing a growing crowd. He kicks the shop door down in front of the onlookers. A guard leader orders him to stop, citing city rules against forcing entry into a Shang clan shop. Bai Ning Bing answers by tossing him a bag of five hundred primeval stones, an advance payment for the damage still to come. The guards stand aside. ch. 332
Inside, Fang Yuan gives Zhou Quan a choice: submit or die. Too proud to bow before a crowd, Zhou Quan refuses and fights back, but his rank three peak stage cultivation and old injuries give him no chance against Fang Yuan’s rank four strength. The shop is left nearly half destroyed, and Zhou Quan ends up bleeding on the ground with broken bones, unable to move. Fang Yuan plants a foot on his head, giving off a dominating air, as three Shang clan elders arrive demanding an explanation. He states the rule himself, that killing inside Shang clan city would cost him the purple thorn token, has an elder confirm it, then crushes the token to powder in front of the crowd. Watching the fragments land, some even striking his own face, Zhou Quan is completely horrified by Fang Zheng’s madness, recklessness and insanity. ch. 332
