Clear of the schemes, unknowingly trapped in the urn
Jia Fu walks into the crowd and asks the young Gu Master to explain himself, then turns to Jia Jin Sheng for confirmation, but Jia Jin Sheng only turns his head away and snorts. After a silent pause, Jia Fu rules against his own brother, apologizes to the young Gu Master, and has a follower hand over five money bags of a hundred primeval stones each, double the two hundred and fifty the young Gu Master had lost. He adds that a genuine Black Boar Gu, though only rank one, is rare enough to sell for around six hundred primeval stones, so no one should expect to buy one for two hundred and fifty. The crowd cheers Jia Fu as a model of the righteous path, while Jia Jin Sheng’s expression turns ugly and he storms off through the back of the tent. ch. 45
Watching this, Fang Yuan decides the image wall in the Flower Wine Monk’s cave, the Photo-audio Gu recording that loops the truth about the fourth generation Gu Yue clan leader’s ugly acts, is worth selling to the Bai family or the Xiong family, the other two clans on Qing Mao Mountain. He judges that selling it himself would be too dangerous, since his weak cultivation could get him silenced on the road, and that even a successful sale risked exposure, which would at best get him expelled from the Gu Yue clan once its higher ups learned of it. Selling instead to an outsider merchant passing through the village and gone again within a day is the safest route open to him. ch. 45
That night, back at the wine shop, Jia Jin Sheng drinks cup after cup to drown his sorrow, and Fang Yuan finds him there and offers to help him deal with his brother. Jia Jin Sheng is suspicious of how Fang Yuan knows about the dispute over the family’s assets, and Fang Yuan recalls from memory that the Jia family head, before he died, had his sons Jia Fu and Jia Gui each lead a caravan and split the inheritance by results; the two competed for six or seven years without a clear winner, and after their father’s death the rivalry escalated into a Gu battle that killed them both and broke the family’s fortune. ch. 45
Jia Jin Sheng suspects Fang Yuan was sent by Jia Fu to trap him and nearly refuses to listen, but when Fang Yuan turns to leave and threatens to take the offer to Jia Fu instead, Jia Jin Sheng chases him down and agrees to hear him out, declaring that whatever the risk, he is willing to bet on it. Fang Yuan then names his price, two thousand primeval stones with no haggling, and although Jia Jin Sheng calls it steep, he agrees once he reasons that reselling the goods to the rising Bai family, home to a promising A grade talent named Bai Ning Bing, could earn him at least twice what he pays Fang Yuan; he commits to the deal and asks to see the merchandise first. ch. 45
