"What price must I pay?"
Yan Wu kept his voice extremely low. He was certain the old monster lurking in the shadows could hear him.
He had once been the young manor lord of Divine Fist Manor and had met masters whose martial arts had reached the pinnacle; within a radius of thirty feet, they could hear even the buzzing of mosquitoes and flies.
"You are quite good. There is no such thing as a free lunch in this world."
Zhou Yi quietly raised his assessment of Yan Wu by another level and said slowly, "I need you to join the Brocade Guard, climb as high as you possibly can, and become a Thousand-Household Officer!"
A Brocade Guard Thousand-Household Officer controlled the intelligence of an entire prefecture. Though his official rank fell short of a provincial governor's, his authority was not much less.
"Senior, do you wish to control the imperial court?"
Yan Wu needed to guess the old monster's intentions if he wanted to preserve his life—and obtain greater benefits.
When his father had taught him martial arts, he had also told him many strange tales from the martial world. Most of them concerned old monsters with bizarre tempers and perverse dispositions. One had to be exceedingly cautious when dealing with them.
"What is there in a mere imperial court worth this old man's coveting? The imperial throne may be a treasure in others' eyes, but to this old man, it is less than dog shit!"
There was a trace of madness in Zhou Yi's voice. "The only thing in this world worth pursuing is cultivating immortality!"
Yan Wu's thoughts raced. From every sentence and every word, he tried to form a picture of the old monster hiding in the dark.
Powerful, arrogant, indifferent to power, nearing the end