Chapter 59

Riding the Treasure Brass Toad, which covers a hundred meters with every leap, Jia Fu and his caravan head back toward the merchant road under a round moon, and when a subordinate asks whether they should name a scapegoat for Jia Jin Sheng’s disappearance before facing the old master, Jia Fu instead tells him the story of Ren Zu’s Attitude Gu, arguing that rushing to investigate, interrogating the Gu Yue clan on the spot, and spending a rank four Bamboo Gentleman to test Fang Yuan have already shown his father the attitude that matters more than any confession. ^{ch. 59}

He tells his subordinate he now believes his brother Jia Gui arranged the disappearance and means to repay him in kind once he has proof, unaware that Fang Yuan is watching his party leave from a nearby hillside. ^{ch. 59}

Fang Yuan reflects that the trouble from killing Jia Jin Sheng is finally settled, recalling how he staged a dispute with the guards at the academy, revealed the Liquor worm to draw the clan’s attention, let the academy elder investigate him openly, played up his own rashness before the clan’s higher-ups, and let the Bamboo Gentleman’s failure under the Spring Autumn Cicada’s aura become his best evidence, so that Jia Fu leaves suspecting Jia Gui instead. ^{ch. 59}

He expects that naming the investigator Tie Leng Xue will buy him at least two to three years before anyone presses the matter further, time in which he expects to reach rank two or three cultivation himself, and closes the night reciting a verse about monkeys chasing the moon’s reflection in a well, vowing to become the real moon rather than its likeness. ^{ch. 59}