"The Xu Household has risen to power faster than I expected!"
"I thought it would take at least forty or fifty years."
Zhou Qingfang mused inwardly, but his estimate had been based on how ordinary aristocratic clans developed.
The Xu Household, however, had taken an unconventional path, establishing a trading company that spanned all of Moon Lake Commandery.
It seemed utterly selfless, opening broad stairways of advancement for every aristocratic clan, but the benefits it gained from those clans were surely greater still.
Even if the other aristocratic clans saw through this approach, they could not imitate it.
After all, the Xu Household had put up real gold and silver. Those pills and magical artifacts were no shams.
The Zhou Household had neither an alchemy grandmaster with supreme pill-refining skills nor an artifact refiner who could reliably produce high-grade magical artifacts.
Getting one high-grade magical artifact out of a dozen batches of materials would already be a good result.
Whether high-grade pills or high-grade magical artifacts, the Zhou Household lacked enough even for its own disciples, so it naturally could not trade them away.
Zhou Qingfang was certain that the Xu Household would never stop here.
If it had yet to act, it must be waiting for an opportunity.
Now, it seemed that opportunity would be the emergence of a Foundation Establishment cultivator in the Xu Household.
Zhou Qingfang glanced at Xu Chuan's face again from the corner of his eye.
At this point.
Even if the Zhou Household wished to stop it, it could no longer do so.
Perhaps that had been true ever since the Xu Household became a cultivation clan.
The Xu Household has its sights on Moon Lake Commandery. Let this old man see how you intend to win my Zhou Household's allegiance.
After all, the