Jia Jin Sheng

After that public apology humiliation, Fang Yuan finds him drinking at a wine shop and offers a secret deal tied to Qing Mao Mountain’s shifting power among Gu Yue, Bai, and Xiong. Jia Jin Sheng is wary of another Jia Fu trap, but he still follows to see the merchandise and agrees to a high price once Fang Yuan leads him out. ^{ch. 45} Fang Yuan chooses him over Jia Fu because weak cultivation and high caravan position make him easier to manipulate than the rank four brother. ^{ch. 46} Fang Yuan’s plan had been to use him as a temporary channel to dispose of goods, then connect onward to Jia Fu; the Flower Wine Monk inheritance forces that plan aside. ^{ch. 236}

Fang Yuan reads the family head’s caravan pairing as deliberate: put the weak, less cunning Jia Jin Sheng beside Jia Fu so the younger man learns his place, and so the head can watch whether Jia Fu is too overbearing to inherit clan leadership. Jia Jin Sheng never grasps that intent. He has merchant surface wit but little depth, which is why Fang Yuan calls him a wasted pawn once the killing is done. ^{ch. 47}

A year later, Jia Jin Sheng’s death has left Jia Fu awkward and passive in the competition for family assets. Word at Gu Yue village is that after returning home Jia Fu quarrelled with rival Jia Gui in public until the fight turned intense, and that pressure is why Jia Fu’s next caravan arrives early with investigators. ^{ch. 109} Tie Ruo Nan later treats the death as an asset-struggle case of only average severity for the Jia family, far below what would ordinarily pull a divine investigator off another job. ^{ch. 182}

Without Jia Jin Sheng, Fang Yuan still means to reach the later Jia family Gu fighting upheaval through Jia Fu instead, and Jia Fu’s recruitment token becomes the substitute admission path. ^{ch. 113}

Fang Yuan brings him into the mountain crevice cave and shows the Photo-audio wall of the Flower Wine Monk’s fight with the fourth generation Gu Yue clan leader. When the recording shifts into the Monk’s inheritance offer, Jia Jin Sheng plans to kill Fang Yuan and take the legacy alone. Fang Yuan strikes first with moonblades and beheads him in the cave. ^{ch. 46} The next chapter states plainly that Fang Yuan killed him the night before and cleaned the scene, then weighs the trouble that Jia family status will bring once the disappearance is noticed. ^{ch. 47}

After the body is gone, Jia Fu returns to interrogate Gu Yue over the missing brother. In the hall scenes that follow, elders treat the matter as a disappearance and press for proof, but no killer is established. ^{ch. 56 ch. 57}