The Nature of Cooperation

At the boy's final words, Nie Junyue merely tugged at the corner of his lips noncommittally. Before the smile had faded, he rose and walked outside.

A hollow promise meant to raise his own price—if Nie Junyue truly believed that, Immortal Guest House could never have grown to its current scale.

He acknowledged Qin Yi as a genius seen once in a century, but wasn't that monstrous girl the same? Falling ten years behind in this age of transformation was no trifling gap.

And even if he could kill her...

Standing before the carriage door, Nie Junyue lowered his eyes to look at his faintly trembling hand, then clenched it hard.

...by then, he did not believe the other party would be willing to offend that girl for the sake of him, her "old employer."

Nie Junyue did not mention the girl's characteristics.

Nor did Qin Yi ask.

As the carriage door opened, the autumn sunlight outside was just right. Beams of light cascaded down from the heavens like a waterfall. Before the main building of Immortal Guest House, people came and went—black-market merchants dressed in silk, inner martial artists carrying swords and sabers.

Upon seeing Nie Junyue in his scholar's robe, several people who had connections with him bowed from afar, but wisely did not come over to ingratiate themselves.

After briefly adjusting to the light, Nie Junyue stepped down from the carriage. The moment his feet touched the ground, Ruan Su, who had followed the convoy all the way on foot, came jogging over. Her breathing was even, without a trace of fatigue. After bowing to him, she went straight around him, crouching down to pick up the boy getting out after him.

Nie Junyue: "..."

"No need to carry me," came the childish voice.

"I can walk by myself."

"Really."

"Sis, don't always do this. I want to go into town on my own..."

Bang!

"..."

This time, the little brat refused quite decisively. The result was a bang on the head from his sister, after which she forcibly scooped him up in a princess carry.

Nie Junyue: "..."

Holding Qin Yi in her arms, Ruan Su politely dipped her head to Nie Junyue, then followed the nearby leader of the Iron Guards away at a jog.

Watching the plainly dressed brother and sister vanish around the corner of the building, Nie Junyue finally failed to hold it in and let out a quiet laugh.

Heh...

Had he not seen it with his own eyes, it would have been hard for him to connect the monster wearing human skin from inside the carriage with the little brat before him, who was nursing his aching head and silently shrinking into the girl's embrace.

After giving the steward a few instructions regarding the siblings, Nie Junyue returned to the elegant chamber on the top floor of Immortal Guest House. The moment he pushed open the carved wooden doors, he saw the desk piled high with documents once more.

Weariness surged through him like a tide, yet Nie Junyue still sighed and sat down, casually pulling out a document and spreading it before him.

That little brat had indeed struck precisely at his current sore spot. The development of Immortal Guest House was now entirely resting on one person's shoulders, and it was already leaving him breathless.

Thinking of Qin Yi again, Nie Junyue's gaze lowered slightly.

Ten years old...

What had he been doing at ten?

The light outside the window slanted inward, and the crisscrossing shafts of light revealed every mote of dancing dust.

As though possessed, Nie Junyue turned the document before him upside down, pushed it forward a foot, and fixed his full attention on the dense lines of inverted writing.

One line.

Two lines.

Three lines.

By the time he struggled through the fifth line, Nie Junyue gave up. He leaned back in his chair in exhaustion, then abruptly sprang up, crumpling the document into a ball in his fist and slamming it onto the wooden desk with a bang!

Wood chips flew from the heavy sandalwood desk, leaving a deep fist mark in its surface. The wind outside lifted the curtains. Only the middle-aged man's trembling, unwilling murmur drifted through the room:

"Why can't I keep up?

"Why... is the gap between me and these monsters always so vast..."

Two quarter-hours later,

The autumn wind swept up fallen leaves.

While Ruan Su had been taken away for questioning, Qin Yi slipped out of Immortal Guest House on his own.

As he walked through the bustling market streets, a burly man followed behind him. He had been sent by the proprietor, as part of the promise and transaction—both surveillance and protection.

The burly man trailed Qin Yi by roughly a step, his face cold, one hand resting on his saber hilt. Zhenbei was considered Yellow Bamboo Town's "commercial district." Most of its gambling houses and brothels only opened at night, so the morning crowds were not especially dense. Yet the man's gaze continued to sweep over pedestrians on both sides of the street, even the window lattices on the second floors of the shops.

A professional.

If the two bandits guarding him yesterday had possessed this level of skill, he might have needed to go through considerable trouble to escape. He might even have been killed on the spot.

By comparison, it was no longer surprising that the Zhou Family head's life had been taken by the proprietor so easily.

Before they reached a certain scale, a diligent and ambitious violent organization dealing with a rotten, loose violent organization was simply a blow from a higher dimension.

As he calculated inwardly, Qin Yi suddenly asked the burly man behind him, "Uncle, how much money has the proprietor authorized for me in advance?"

The burly man was clearly startled. The proprietor's instructions before his departure rang in his ears.

[If that kid asks you for money... give him an allowance of fifty taels. Of course, remember to report it when you return. I never told him about this.]

The burly man answered truthfully, "Fifty taels."

Qin Yi turned back in surprise. "Gold?"

The burly man's cheek twitched.

"Silver!"

"Oh..."

Qin Yi nodded, seeming somewhat disappointed on the surface.

Over here in Ancient Shu, the black-market exchange rate for gold and silver was roughly one to seventeen. If the proprietor had given him gold, that would have been what truly surprised him.

The other party was as pragmatic as Qin Yi had expected. A fool who bowed his head at the drop of a hat could never have developed Immortal Guest House to this scale.

Though the discussion had been pleasant, though the other party seemed to have already been convinced, neither side truly regarded the other as one of their own.

Now that a marriage alliance between the young proprietor and his sister was no longer possible, before Qin Yi designed the rudimentary framework of a brand-new Immortal Guest House for the proprietor, the investment promised to the siblings would be nothing more than an empty check.

Qin Yi's side was much the same.

Though he had promised to resolve the current pain points in Immortal Guest House's power structure, he had not actually done anything.

He could have used the past two days since waking up to give the other party a rough framework, but he had merely used a question of "greater righteousness" as a wedge to keep the old proprietor hanging.

Without powerful laws as protection, people's hearts were separated by their bellies. Both sides claimed not to care about last night's attack, but only they themselves knew the truth.

Both sides were observing each other, giving themselves time to prepare a way out. And in the foreseeable future, they would continue negotiating, continue playing games, continue probing each other's true attitudes and bottom lines...

During that process, he and the proprietor might break completely, but it was more likely they would reach some form of cooperation in the truest sense.

In the form of an essential transaction.

One side provided knowledge; the other provided wealth and goods.

As for the sort of limitless, one-sided investment that came with bowing one's head at the drop of a hat?

That was possible too. Qin Yi only had to have a child with the other party's daughter. By then, the old proprietor would probably shove even his underwear into the pot.

Back to reality,

These fifty taels of silver should have been the first goodwill the old proprietor extended to him, without knowing whether there would be any return in the future.

Of course, it might also have been bait meant to lure him into lowering his guard.

But no matter what,

None of that affected Qin Yi's ability to turn it into cash.

Ruan Su kept a tight grip on the money. These fifty taels were the largest fortune Qin Yi had received in his life.

He had to spend it before Ruan Su found out.