At sunset, Uncle Gu Yue Dong Tu and Aunt receive both nephews in the dim living room and hand each six primeval stones for refining their Gu. Uncle then proposes a formal adoption, since the couple has no children of their own, and asks whether the brothers are willing to become their real family. Fang Zheng accepts at once and calls them father and mother, and Aunt wipes away tears as she laughs. Fang Yuan only shakes his head, and says nothing. ch. 9
Uncle offers Fang Yuan two hundred primeval stones instead, framing it as support for living independently, but Fang Yuan still refuses and leaves the hall without argument. Once alone, Uncle and Aunt speak plainly: clan rule lets the eldest son inherit family property at sixteen, Fang Yuan’s parents left a fortune the couple has held since his childhood, and adoption would cost him that claim. Aunt frets that if Fang Yuan instead goes independent at sixteen, he keeps it. Uncle proposes catching Fang Yuan in a disqualifying mistake before he turns sixteen, and settles on sending the servant girl Shen Cui to seduce him and then cry assault, framing him as having acted wild while drunk. Aunt is delighted with the plan. ch. 9
Fang Zheng is led to a much finer room by the housekeeper Mother Shen, Shen Cui’s mother, and privately resolves to win the vital Gu competition and not disappoint his new parents. Fang Yuan, walking the streets with his wine jars again, reflects that in his earlier life these same relatives framed him through the servants and stripped his inheritance, costing him two wasted years of cultivation, and resolves not to repeat that loss this time. Storm clouds gather as he heads back toward the village outskirts to keep searching, since the family fortune stays out of reach until he is sixteen. Back at the house, Shen Cui brings hot water to Fang Zheng’s room and privately judges him, the A grade talent, a far greater prize to secure than his C grade brother. ch. 9
