Chapter 78

In the discussion room, the clan elders debate who secretly helped Fang Yuan cheat his way to first place, reasoning that only someone who already knew the exam’s contents, meaning the clan leader or the elders present, could have planted such a bag of tusks. They agree that whoever recruited him gains a hold on Fang Zheng through the blood tie between the brothers, since investing in Fang Yuan ties him either to the clan leader’s faction or to whichever elder’s camp claims him. ^{ch. 78}

Gu Yue Chi Lian privately wonders whether Gu Yue Mo Chen backed Fang Yuan despite Fang Yuan having killed a servant of the Mo family, while Mo Chen privately weighs recruiting Fang Yuan himself, since his opinion of Fang Yuan changed after Fang Yuan sent Gao Wan’s minced corpse, though he had only planned to make that move at the year end rather than the mid-year. Clan leader Gu Yue Bo knows he took no such action himself and reads Fang Yuan’s brazen lie as a signal that someone is now shielding him, narrowing his suspicion to the clan’s two other power centers, Chi Lian’s Chi family and Mo Chen’s Mo family, though neither elder’s expression gives him an answer. ^{ch. 78}

Gu Yue Bo orders the Dark Hall elder to plan retaliation against whichever outside clan sent the assassin, announces that he will personally teach the recovering Fang Zheng from now on, and, unable to identify Fang Yuan’s secret backer, rewards Fang Yuan an ordinary thirty primeval stones in his own name as a gesture of goodwill toward whichever faction is truly protecting him. ^{ch. 78}

Three days later Fang Yuan learns that Wang Da is dead. Jiang He tells him that the two young hunters who once helped him vanished in the mountains, while the hunter whose hand Fang Yuan broke died in an apparent suicide, and that he covered up all three deaths to protect his own record for failing to notice Wang Da’s three years as a secret demonic path cultivator. In thanks for staying silent, Jiang He offers Fang Yuan a standing fifty percent discount at his cousin Jiang Ya’s shop, giving Fang Yuan an unofficial ally and a hidden faction of protection that will shield his cultivation up to rank two. ^{ch. 78}

Fang Yuan can already feel the academy elder’s attitude toward him turning more amicable, and just over ten days then pass. Fang Zheng and Mo Bei both advance a stage, and Fang Yuan and Chi Cheng advance to rank one upper stage at nearly the same time, with Fang Yuan quietly dropping his extortion of the three and keeping a lower profile as his own strength grows several times faster than in his previous life. ^{ch. 78}