An Inherited Treasure

When they reached the entrance to Wutong Alley.

From afar, they saw a dense crowd packed outside their courtyard gate. They were all neighbors from Wutong Alley, carrying chickens, baskets of eggs, or sacks of grain. Everyone talked over one another, making it even livelier than visiting relatives at New Year.

"Oh, Lord Fu is back!"

Suddenly.

Auntie Pang was the first in the crowd to spot Fu Shaoping. She immediately dashed over and hastily bowed.

"Congratulations on becoming a Martial Suppression Guard, Lord Fu! May you rise higher with every step, like sesame blossoms climbing their stalk!"

With that.

Auntie Pang thrust the three feet of cotton cloth she was carrying into Fu Shaoping's arms.

In an instant.

Fu Shaoping was surrounded. Gifts filled an entire cart, and congratulations poured in by the basketful. Fortunately, Zhou Pan'er helped handle the well-wishers throughout, or his head would surely have exploded. Only after seeing off Auntie Pang, the last to leave, did they push open the courtyard gate and go inside.

Zhou Pan'er's younger brother, Zhou Xinxiang, came out of Madam Jiang's room carrying a medicine bowl.

He said to Fu Shaoping:

"Brother Shaoping, Auntie Jiang wants you to come to her room."

Then.

He added quietly:

"Auntie Jiang was furious when she heard you'd become a Martial Suppression Guard."

What had to come had finally come.

Fu Shaoping handed Zhou Xinxiang the food box and smiled.

"There's beggar's chicken inside, the kind you've been dreaming about. Go ahead and eat a drumstick first."

Fu Shaoping returned to his room and changed out of his flying-fish uniform into everyday clothes before heading to the main room. As he opened the door, the smell of medicine rushed into his nose. The moment he entered, he knelt before Madam Jiang, who was leaning against the headboard.

"Mother, I didn't mean to hide it from you."

"Hmph! You didn't mean to hide it? Then what was that crowd outside congratulating you for? You've grown up, haven't you? Now you know how to behead first and report afterward! Have you forgotten how your father died at Huang Family Slope?! Someone cleaved him in two while he was still alive! Your father was already at the third level of Body Tempering, and he'd worked at the Hundred Households Office for so many years, yet he still couldn't escape his enemy. You're so young, and you've only just entered the first level of Body Tempering. How many lives do you think you have to gamble with?"

Madam Jiang was truly furious.

After Fu Shaoping's father died in the line of duty, she had resolved never to let Fu Shaoping follow his father's old path.

The three-year deadline was almost upon them.

She had thought her son would live out his days as an ordinary person. Who could have imagined that, despite agreeing so readily, the boy would quietly go and settle such a momentous matter?

Madam Jiang gave him a thorough scolding. Seeing that Fu Shaoping only knelt there without offering a single word in his defense, her heart softened. He was flesh of her flesh, after all.

"The floor is cold. Get up."

The wood had already been made into a boat.

Nothing she said now would change anything.

Madam Jiang sighed and pointed beneath her bed.

"Move the wooden cabinet under the bed. There's a box buried beneath it. Dig it up."

Fu Shaoping froze for a moment.

His mother actually had a secret he knew nothing about.

What exactly was buried underground?

Curious and a little excited, Fu Shaoping fetched a hoe from the storeroom. After returning, he shut the door tightly and bent down beneath the bed. Once he moved the wooden chest aside, he saw that the earth there was indeed different from the older soil around it. A few strokes of the hoe took him three feet down. With a clink, he scraped the earth aside and unearthed a box made of fragrant sandalwood.

Fragrant sandalwood was a first-grade origin wood.

It would not rot even after thirty years underground.

Madam Jiang took a small gold key from her sleeve and handed it to Fu Shaoping.

"Open the box."

Gulp.

Fu Shaoping swallowed.

A box made of origin wood, paired with a specially crafted gold key-whatever it held surely had to be extraordinary.

His anticipation grew.

The gold key turned.

With a click, the gold lock opened.

When he lifted the lid.

A silk-wrapped bundle came into view.

Madam Jiang sighed.

"I had hoped you would live an ordinary life, safe and peaceful to the end. But now that you've set foot on the path of a martial warrior, a few more skills may help you stay alive. Inside is the most valuable thing your father left you. Go ahead and open it."

"Yes, Mother."

With mounting excitement, Fu Shaoping unwrapped the bundle layer by layer.

When he lifted the final layer of silk.

An ancient, yellowed book came into view.

Written prominently across its cover were the words "Notes of True Person Gu."

"This is..."

Fu Shaoping's heart raced.

Madam Jiang glanced at the ancient book with a complicated look in her eyes and spoke softly.

"Ten years ago, our family lived on the medicinal herbs your father gathered in the mountains. One day, while gathering herbs on Huanglian Mountain, he spotted a rabbit and followed it. Before he knew it, he had reached a hidden cave. He found this ancient book inside, and it was what set him on the path of martial cultivation."

If not for this ancient book.

She and her husband would not now have been forever divided between life and death.

Madam Jiang closed her eyes wearily.

"Keep this book safe. Don't show it to anyone lightly."

"Yes, Mother."

Seeing that his mother had clearly lost her energy, Fu Shaoping resisted the urge to leaf through the book. He helped her lie back down, then slipped quietly out of the room. After eating a distracted lunch with Zhou Pan'er and her brother, he hurried into his own room. Only after bracing the door shut with his desk did he excitedly take out the ancient book.

At the touch of the ancient book.

His surging excitement seemed to settle.

Its material was clearly different from ordinary rice paper.

He opened the first page and found the very Mysterious Tortoise Qi-Nourishing Art he was currently practicing. True Person Gu had created it himself, but it was only a second-rate cultivation art. Turning to the middle, he discovered another section titled "Ethereal Steps."

"It's actually a second-grade martial skill!"

Fu Shaoping was both shocked and delighted.

As far as he knew.

For Martial Suppression Guards of commoner origins like him, one way to obtain martial skills was to accumulate merit and exchange it at the Martial Suppression Bureau. Yet even the lowest first-grade martial skill required twelve ninth-rank merits-in other words, twelve completed missions.

The requirements for second-grade martial skills were even stricter: they demanded eighth-rank merits.

"I've struck treasure!"

Fu Shaoping calmed himself and read through the remaining pages. On the final page, he found a transcription of the Longevity Art, though only its opening portion had been written down. According to True Person Gu's notes, once the rest was completed, this art could take its practitioner all the way to the Origin Core Realm.

"True Person Gu really was an extraordinary talent."

Fu Shaoping turned his attention to the Ethereal Steps.

The Ethereal Steps contained thirty-six illustrations corresponding to thirty-six steps. According to the text, once he mastered it to perfection, even an expert at the ninth level of Body Tempering would be unable to get near him. It was an outstanding martial skill for escaping with his life.