Contrary to his usual habits, Hou Niao stayed in the Minister of Justice Prefecture, cultivating his character and temperament. This puzzled many of the prefecture's old hands who knew him well. Why had this man suddenly changed his nature?
In fact, he was not spending all his time holed up in the prefecture. He was seizing the time to redeem as much of his merit as possible, especially for expensive material goods.
His excuses were that he was practicing some special swordsmanship, cultivation method, and so on.
He had a bad feeling. Things might well end with him being punished at this year's Shanmen Annual Assembly. That was nothing unusual for him, but his previous punishments had come with one advantage: he had been so poor his pockets jingled with emptiness, so they could only penalize his future without costing him anything in the present.
But he was no longer poor. He had considerable assets, especially the merit he had accumulated, and that was something he could not take away with him...
He could only cash it in!
He had seen that, throughout the sect's history, a large part of the punishment for erring disciples had been deducted from their merit. That was rather unacceptable to him. His simple attitude was: What's mine is mine. If you want to punish me, put it on my tab, and then we'll see whether you have what it takes to collect!
Spending his merit first and exchanging it for portable hard currency was his way of avoiding risk. In fact, with his present wealth and the Bai Trading Company backing him, he lacked no resources and had no need to count every penny like this. But when someone had been punished often enough, a rebellious streak developed: *I won't let you fine so