Fang Yuan, you are appointed as class chairman
The two injured guards are healed but left crippled and fired from the academy, while Fang Yuan avoids punishment and receives compliments instead, feeding a clan-wide debate over how a C grade could advance to the middle stage first. Villagers trade theories over meals and tea, from the Relic Gu’s small realm boost to speculation about a Liquor worm or an outside source of primeval essence, made worse by Fang Yuan’s silence on the matter. ch. 53
Within days, Gu Yue Mo Bei becomes the second youngster in the class to reach the middle stage, Gu Yue Fang Zheng follows only three hours later, held back by a shortage of primeval stones as well as the trauma Fang Yuan left him, and Gu Yue Chi Chen takes third place with help from Gu Yue Chi Lian’s infused primeval essence, a method usable only once every three days. ch. 53
On the fifth day the academy elder hands out subsidies and calls Fang Yuan forward first as the class’s first to reach the middle stage, giving him a money bag that Fang Yuan opens and checks in public, confirming it holds exactly thirty primeval stones. The elder assumes Fang Yuan is short on funds and expects that need to eventually draw out his secret, unaware that Fang Yuan already possesses a few hundred primeval stones of his own. ch. 53
The elder then names Fang Yuan class chairman, a post that pays ten primeval stones each time subsidies are handed out, but Fang Yuan declines it, telling the elder he lacks the wisdom for the role and asking whether the position is compulsory; the elder, startled since no student has ever refused it in his tens of years of teaching, admits there is no such rule. Gu Yue Mo Bei takes the chairmanship instead with his second-place result, while Fang Zheng and Chi Chen become vice chairmen receiving five primeval stones each, and the elder privately fears Fang Yuan’s refusal signals a rejection of the clan’s system altogether. ch. 53
