"Young master, all of this is the foundation our Chu Family has built up over so many years. Although we've been running at a loss these past two years, are we really just going to sell it like this?"
Inside the inn room, Steward Fu watched as Chu Ge brought out numerous property deeds, his eye rims red and deeply reluctant.
He had come up alongside Chu Ge's parents through thick and thin. In his eyes, these numerous property deeds were testaments to bygone days and were exceptionally precious.
Chu Ge could understand the old man's feelings, but he would soon leave Linyuan City to develop himself elsewhere, which also required wealth.
Moreover, clearing out some underperforming assets and exchanging them for high-quality assets over in the prefectural city was also a good investment and industrial upgrade. He had made up his mind long ago.
"Steward Fu, Linyuan City is too small. I have to step out into the world eventually. Selling off some loss-making assets will allow me to rebuild my development in the prefectural city. Don't worry, the ancestral residence and the inn are not going to be sold!"
He had long since decided in his heart that when he left, he would leave the inn to Steward Fu to run so he could spend his old age in comfort, which would be enough for the old man to live as a wealthy gentleman in Linyuan City—consideration as a reward for the other man's affection and loyalty.
Wang Youcai's steward smiled and said, "Old Fu, rest assured. My master isn't going to let your young master take a loss either. My master was originally only prepared to offer twenty-five thousand taels of silver for these assets.
As a result, our eldest young lady spoke up and added another five thousand taels, rounding it up to thirty thousand taels. This far exceeds the market price."
Chu Ge had not expected this twist.
A single kind word from that eldest young lady was worth five thousand taels.
Thinking of Wang Xiuyun's kind warning last time, he knew that some affection still remained between this woman and his past self.
He nodded slightly and smiled, saying, "Steward Zhang, thank you on my behalf to your eldest young lady. Now let's keep things straightforward—cash on delivery for the deeds. Do we need to go to the Wang Family?"
Although he still had nearly twenty thousand silver notes in his hands, with over ten thousand of it being stolen money, cultivation required far too many places to spend money, so naturally he would never turn his nose up at having more.
Steward Zhang laughed heartily and said, "Good! Thirty thousand silver notes isn't all that much to the master, and I've already brought them along.
After all, the plan our master proposed last time succeeded, and in three days the caravan will be setting out from the city."
"Oh? So soon?"
Although Chu Ge had been engrossed in his cultivation over the past two days, he had also caught some wind of it, knowing that Wang Youcai's guard force had successfully formed.
He just hadn't expected that they would be escorting a large batch of commercial goods out of the city so soon.
It seemed Wang Youcai was brimming with confidence.
However, to venture out of the city during such a tense and sensitive period where people's hearts were filled with trepidation—as long as it succeeded, the Wang Family guard force would make a resounding name for themselves, and subsequent wealth would pour in endlessly. It could truly be called seeking wealth in the jaws of danger.
Chu Ge thought of how the Thirteen Golden Spear Bandits had already been wiped out by him, which could also be considered indirectly helping the Wang Family.
As long as that Heaven and Earth Incense Cult stronghold didn't make a move, the Wang Family had a high probability of succeeding on this trip.
And with the Heaven and Earth Incense Cult stronghold being watched by City Guard Captain Tian Youji, Wang Youcai would not have chosen to leave the city without receiving a warning from the runners; this was perhaps the result of a prior agreement negotiated by all sides.
At that, both parties dropped the pleasantries and swiftly transacted.
Property deed transactions in this world were not cumbersome.
The buyer and seller simply needed to write out a transaction document and press their thumbprints, and the deal was considered complete.
Soon, Chu Ge received three ten-thousand-tael silver notes stamped with the red seals of the Great Zhou Bank.
"Alright, clear-cut money and deeds! Master Chu, once you've finished processing the accounts for these properties, I will come again to take over."
Steward Zhang smilingly and contentedly accepted the property deeds, leaving Chu Ge some time to handle things. Both sides were exceedingly happy.
Looking at the thirty thousand taels of silver notes in his hands, Chu Ge felt deeply emotional.
Whether these thirty thousand taels, combined with the over ten thousand taels he already had on his person, would be enough when he left Linyuan City in the future and headed to the prefectural city—he couldn't be entirely sure.
"Steward Fu, things have been quite chaotic outside the city lately, and the business environment isn't very good. Some people might find themselves tight on cash. Go ask those people from before who had old heirlooms whether they're willing to sell them to me."
Chu Ge pulled a thousand taels in silver notes from his breast pocket, handed them to Steward Fu, and instructed him.
Now that he was well-off in hand, the business environment outside had grown chaotic once more, and some people might not be having such an easy time of things.
Old heirlooms they were once unwilling to part with might well be up for sale now.
Steward Fu was startled upon hearing this, then broke into a smile and gave a thumbs-up. "The young master still has a talent for business."
This truly was a good time to acquire old heirlooms.
"Have Hei Gouzi take a look over at the fish docks as well, see if we can get lucky and acquire any spirit fish."
"Understood!"
Watching Steward Fu leave, Chu Ge stood gazing out the window when a sudden stench of human waste drifted to his nose, causing him to frown slightly. Following the scent, he came out to the corridor outside his room.
He saw that the outhouse in the inn courtyard was reeking to high heavens at the moment, with a nightsoil collector in the middle of hoisting nightsoil buckets onto a flatbed cart.
This was to deliver fertilizer to nearby tenant farmers.
In turn, the tenant farmers frequently delivered fruits and vegetables to the inn as payment for the trade.
Watching that nightsoil collector—despite the reeking stench—radiating a beaming smile, he reflected that people came in all sorts of varieties, and the trades of the pugilistic world each had their own ways of making a living and their own faces.
The myriad facets of human life were already clearly displayed in this tiny Linyuan City.
An epiphany suddenly struck Chu Ge in his heart, and he felt as though a difficult problem within a certain technique that had long troubled him had finally been unlocked.
He returned to the desk inside his room, unrolled a piece of white sheepskin, opened his box of specially made assorted dyes, and swiftly set pen to paper, outlining and sketching.
Soon, a theatrical character's face dominated by yellow vividly emerged upon the paper, yet it looked somewhat similar to the face of the nightsoil collector downstairs just a moment ago.
This was the depiction of a face pattern from the Mysterious Left Path Arts of Shadow Puppet Opera Face Changing.
For the face patterns of face changing, one generally selected some unknown figures, including chivalrous heroes, ghosts, monsters, and the like.
Chu Ge had already mastered this technique before his time-travel.
Yet after crossing over, no matter how he tried to sketch the face patterns, he could never get the drawn patterns to undergo any strange mutations. They were utterly incapable of bearing otherworldly force, remaining like ordinary mortal objects without capturing the essence.
Yet the face he had just sketched so swiftly with a stroke of his brush seemed to come alive, brimming with vitality and possessing a distinctly different charm.
Chu Ge realized that he had experienced a sudden flash of enlightenment. His skill in sketching face patterns had greatly improved, and he had truly drawn a shadow puppet face pattern of an ordinary humble person, which could be used to infuse otherworldly force just like shadow puppets.
He did not operate it immediately, but instead first sacrificed the drawn shadow puppet face pattern into the Dragon Clock, handing it over for the Dragon Clock to appraise.
Shadow Puppet Face Pattern - Porter: Introduction: (A shadow puppet face pattern sketched using an ordinary grassroots commoner porter as a blueprint, usable for face changing. Face changing requires consuming a certain amount of otherworldly force to maintain. After face changing, one's appearance will be completely transformed, and one will possess the porter's fine qualities of resilience, satisfaction, and optimism, along with a certain resistance to negative emotions and external temptations.)
"Very good!"
A smile surfaced on Chu Ge's face as he retrieved the drawn shadow puppet face pattern, and then he came before the mirror in the room, placing the face pattern upon his own face.
The state presented within the mirror at first seemed as though he had put on a yellow theatrical performer's mask.
As a trace of otherworldly force was poured in from the Dragon Clock, the face pattern instantly and completely melded with his countenance, looking lifelike.
Chu Ge felt a wave of rippling movement across his facial features.
In the blink of an eye, the person before the mirror had turned into a porter, his weathered face webbed with a crisscross of wrinkles as if carving out the hardships left behind by life.
Yet he remained spirited, glowing with health, and filled with a sense of satisfaction and optimism toward life.
This was a face-changing technique far more authentic than a so-called human skin mask.
Under the reinforcement of otherworldly force, Chu Ge felt as though he had transformed into a completely different person. Within his soul, there was even a sense of optimism and peace, as if no dangers or hardships could ever make him yield, and no external temptations could readily shake his resolve.
Porter. If in the future I can draw more face patterns with such sudden spiritual inspiration, I should be able to skillfully execute the face-changing technique. From then on, I will have a variety of different identity disguises, transforming endlessly and making it very difficult to see through.
More importantly... the reinforcement of different spiritual states bestowed by these face-pattern identities can enable me to cope with different environments and crises.
Chu Ge flicked his sleeve across his face, and the face pattern vanished, shrinking back into his sleeve. He returned to his original appearance once more, eyebrows slanting up into his temples and eyes like stars.
Joy welled up in his heart, and he felt that the Five Mao Mountain Marvelous Skill was truly profound and vast.
In that world before his transmigration, he had only touched upon the surface. Upon coming to this martial arts world, however, otherworldly force caused these techniques to glow with brilliant new life.
He greatly anticipated exploring more in the future, and even combining the knowledge of this world to piece together the incomplete texts.
I wonder if this counts as carving out an alternative left path of my own, using this Dao to assist me in walking even further along the path of martial arts?
Chu Ge's persistence toward martial arts within his heart remained unchanged; after all, this was a path capable of tapping into the ultimate limits of the human body, one that perhaps in days to come would allow him to soar through the skies, tunnel through the earth, and attain long life and eternal vision... ... ... ((Esteemed patrons who like this can pin the book to the top and cast some recommendation votes))
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