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A day earlier,

Great Bay Village.

A magnificent estate sat halfway up the mountain, its exquisite buildings rising one after another along the slope in an orderly yet varied arrangement, displaying an ancient, elegant beauty.

Step out through the estate gates, and the vast river-valley plain of Great Bay Village spread out before one's eyes, filling all who lived here with a sense of open-hearted peace and tranquil distance.

Yet,

inside the estate's main hall, a fiery atmosphere shattered the serenity of the mountain courtyard.

"Father! I refuse to accept this!"

A hot-blooded young voice echoed through the hall.

"The job of running and managing Great Bay Village was something we only obtained after greasing Master Lai Er's palm with eighty Spirit Stones!"

The young man in his twenties rose to his feet with fury written across his face. He slammed his hand down on the table, his voice full of indignation and rage.

"They promised us a ten-year term! It has only been six years, and with one offhand sentence they want us to pack up and get lost!"

"What kind of bullshit is this? Is there even any justice left in this world?!"

At this moment,

the young man whom outsiders usually fawned over as Second Master Shen, Shen Shaochong, was shouting furiously.

How could he not be angry?

To the direct-line descendants within the Shen Family, Great Bay Village might have been nothing more than a barren, godforsaken backwater far from the family's center of power.

But to collateral descendants like them, whose bloodline had already drifted unimaginably far from the main branch, it was an exceedingly rare and valuable foundation!

Great Bay Village had twelve mu of Spirit Fields. A normal harvest season yielded roughly twelve hundred jin of Spirit Grain.

As clan property, the Shen Family took a fixed thousand jin from every season's harvest, while the remaining two hundred jin of Spirit Grain belonged to them.

The cut was over eighty percent, and it might have looked as though they toiled all year only to end up working for nothing,

but in truth, this was an extraordinarily lucrative post!

Those twelve mu of Spirit Fields had never belonged to them in the first place.

The entirety of Great Bay Village was Shen Family clan property. They were merely managing it on the family's behalf.

Naturally, the family's cut would not be low.

Furthermore,

Spirit Grain generally sold for around ten jin per Spirit Stone.

That meant two hundred jin of Spirit Grain brought in twenty Spirit Stones.

And the Spirit Grain in the fields was harvested twice a year,

meaning an annual income of forty Spirit Stones!

What was more,

they did not actually need to farm the Spirit Fields themselves. The work was done by Mortal Realm martial men who had been seized, criminals sent here in exile, or those who voluntarily joined an immortal household in pursuit of an immortal opportunity, working hard in exchange for a single technique.

But regardless of their origins, in the eyes of cultivators, they were nothing more than lowly martial commoners.

If one was kindhearted, one fed them enough meat and fatty food to give them the strength to work, ensuring they would not be worked to death.

If one was hardhearted, or simply wished to save money, one could cut out the meat and fatty food altogether. If they died from exhaustion, one merely needed to send a letter to the Mortal Realm, and naturally a fresh batch would be delivered.

This could practically be called a business without capital,

bringing in more than forty Spirit Stones a year while doing nothing but lying down!

With such a family fortune,

who could possibly give it up so easily?!

Lastly,

once they left Great Bay Village, they would have no choice but to return to the Shen Family estate in Tiannan City and seek another path.

The Shen Family might have been huge, but within it, every radish already had its pit.

All the good positions had long since been occupied. How could there possibly be anything left for collateral clansmen of such distant bloodlines as them to covet?

If they returned to Tiannan City and found neither connections nor a position, they might have to end up like those impoverished Rogue Cultivators, venturing out to stake their lives!

No one could easily relinquish such a foundation!

"Great Bay Village is ours! No one is taking it away!"

"I'll take some men over there right now and break that brat's legs. Let's see if he still dares come and take over!"

Shen Shaochong lifted his chin and spoke with wild defiance.

Around Great Bay Village,

Shen Shaochong was the Second Young Master Shen whom the nearby minor cultivation households and small farmer-landlords scrambled to curry favor with.

Whenever he went out, a crowd of lackeys surrounded him, calling ahead and following behind.

Relying on the Shen Family's name, he had mixed well in the surrounding area and occasionally gained some extra profit.

But once he returned to Tiannan City,

returned to the Shen Family,

Shen Shaochong was jack shit!

Of everyone, he was the most unwilling to leave Great Bay Village.

That was precisely why,

after receiving a message from the old man while he had been carousing outside not long ago, he had rushed back almost overnight.

He wanted to persuade the old man not to hand over this foundation for nothing.

"Second Brother, don't act rashly."

At that moment, a steady voice spoke up, interrupting Shen Shaochong's rage.

"Great Bay Village is clan property. It cannot be considered our foundation; we have merely managed it for the family. Since the family has made its decision, all we can do is obey."

"Besides, Father did not explain it clearly when he sent for you. The person forcing us out this time is no simple figure. He is one of the current Patriarch's sons. Though he is an illegitimate son, he is still the Patriarch's own flesh and blood!"

"We do not have the power to offend someone like that."

The speaker was Shen Shaochong's Big Brother, Shen Shaoguang.

Though unwillingness was also visible on his face, his fear was clearly greater.

He did not support confronting the other side head-on.

"So what?!"

"Being the Patriarch's son means he can ignore reason?"

"Besides, with the Patriarch's bloodline, no matter how poorly he fared, he should at least have been sent down to some town to live comfortably. Yet he came to a place this remote. That brat must be some disposable, abandoned illegitimate son. What is there to fear?!"

Shen Shaochong retorted, his neck stiff.

He looked as though he feared neither heaven nor earth and was determined to step forward and fight.

Still, his words lacked a measure of conviction.

The Shen Family had tens of thousands of clansmen, and the gap in status between the main branch and the distant collateral branches was immense.

No matter how little importance the newcomer received, he was still the Patriarch's son.

As for them, they were distant-blooded clansmen whose lineage had strayed so far that no one knew how many generations back it went, and who had needed to bribe Master Lai Er's steward to obtain a decent post.

If conflict truly broke out, it was hard to say who would win and who would lose.

For a moment,

the main hall fell silent.

Amid the oppressive atmosphere,

the two brothers turned their gazes toward their father, Shen Shiying, seated in the place of honor.

In circumstances like these,

only their father, as the head of the household, could make the decision.

Shen Shiying sat in the seat of honor. His tall frame carried the bearing of a coiled dragon and crouching tiger, while his face was hidden beneath a dark cloud, so gloomy it seemed water could be wrung from it.

There was no doubt

that he too was deeply displeased at losing the post of guarding and managing Great Bay Village for no reason at all.

But he understood very clearly as well.

An arm could not twist a thigh.

This position would ultimately have to be surrendered.

But how to surrender it while preserving as much of their own interest as possible required careful thought.

"Shaoguang is right. Since those above have made their decision, there is nothing we can change."

"But Shaochong is not wrong either. If a mere illegitimate son comes here and sends us scurrying away with our tails between our legs, where will our reputation be?!"

"After we return to Tiannan City, would any stray cat or dog be able to ride roughshod over us? Would we still be able to fight for benefits in the future?!"

As Shen Shiying spoke, a flash of viciousness passed beneath his grim expression, and a cold glint flickered in his eyes.

"Shaoguang, go empty out every last grain of Spirit Grain and every piece of gold and silver from the village treasury! Doesn't he want Great Bay Village? Then I'll give him an empty village!"

"And you, Shaochong. Judging by the journey, that brat should arrive tomorrow. When the time comes, take some men to the village entrance and find any excuse to give him a show of force!"

"Tell the others that our family is not some soft persimmon they can squeeze however they please!"

Shen Shiying's voice was filled with decisiveness and ruthlessness.

Compared with his two sons,

he had considered more, and considered it more thoroughly.

After struggling and clawing his way through the Shen Family for decades, he understood the nature of the clansmen today very well.

Once you exposed even the slightest weakness before others,

what awaited you would be countless hyenas rushing up from behind, eager to tear you apart and devour you!

They would test you again and again, until in the end they chewed you to pieces and swallowed you whole!

Through certain connections, he had already obtained a general understanding of the illegitimate son named Shen Changchuan who would soon arrive to take over.

Shaochong had been right. That brat truly was an illegitimate son who received very little attention.

His birth mother had merely been the daughter of a Mortal Realm martial man. She had only managed, through a few tricks, to win the Patriarch's favor for one night and luckily give birth to him.

Among the Patriarch's fifty-odd children, he was one of the least conspicuous and lowest in status. He had always been a tiny, transparent figure within the Shen Family estate, likely inferior even to some highly valued servant stewards.

The Patriarch probably did not even remember having such a son.

"His birth mother is lowly, and he himself is a disposable nobody within the family."

"If not you, then who else could be chosen as the target for establishing authority?!"

Shen Shiying thought to himself.

If tomorrow he swallowed such a stifling loss in front of an illegitimate son so insignificant and devoid of any factional backing, without showing any reaction at all,

then it was easy to imagine

that after they returned to the Shen Family estate, even more people would press down on them in the names of various young masters, carving them up like fat meat on a chopping block!

This,

based on what he knew of certain Shen Family members, was practically certain!

Therefore, giving a show of force and making their stance clear was necessary.

If things grew too serious, they could simply say it had been a misunderstanding between youngsters.

Of two harms, choose the lesser.

By now, Shen Shiying had formed a rough plan in his heart.

Of course,

he only dared act this way because he knew Shen Changchuan's precise background.

Had it been any other young master,

he would never have entertained such thoughts. He would only have respectfully escorted the person into the central courtyard in Great Bay Village's rear mountain, then promptly had his entire family get the hell out.