novelraw Chapter 122: I Didn't Let Enough Slip
Chapter 122: I Didn't Let Enough Slip
Gu Yanzhi arrived in a brocade official uniform, list in hand.
Li Qiuchen didn't know a great deal about the administrative structure of the Great Chu Empire, but from what the locals had told him, the court had established a dual-office system in the northern frontier, the Garrison Office and the Internal Affairs Office.
These two offices operated independently above the local administrative apparatus, answering directly to the central government.
Tu Feiyun's Garrison Office was primarily responsible for training troops, guarding the frontier, and suppressing regional prefectures.
Gu Yanzhi, meanwhile, served in the Witchcraft and Divination Division of the Internal Affairs Office, a name that was a mouthful, so everyone simply called them the Internal Affairs shadow operatives.
The shadow operatives' principal duties were to monitor local affairs and gather intelligence.
Nobody knew when Gu Yanzhi had joined the Internal Affairs Office. The revelation was even more unsettling than the exposure of the chief senior brother's Medicine Master's Blessing.
Who knew what she had been writing down in that little notebook of hers?
Now that she had finally shown herself, the list she brought shattered every last remaining hope of getting off lightly.
The list named twelve inner hall disciples in total, including Chief Senior Brother Murong Feng. All of them were required to surrender their weapons and spirit tools and accompany Gu Yanzhi to the prefectural government to be interrogated and investigated by the Internal Affairs Office.Running was an option, of course, but running at this moment meant becoming a wanted criminal and a disowned disciple.
The alternative was to submit quietly and give an honest account of one's situation.
Gu Yanzhi had left her junior brothers and sisters plenty of time to run, but nobody ran.
Mainly because Murong Feng hadn't run.
If the chief senior brother wasn't running, the situation clearly wasn't severe enough to warrant it, and there was no reason for anyone else to run either.
You didn't have to trust in the chief senior brother's character. You could trust in the quality assurance that came with the Medicine Master's Blessing.
Though many people worshipped and prayed to the Medicine Master, most of them understood deep down that the Medicine Master's blessing only favored those who saved themselves, meaning those who never abandoned the hope of surviving. The will to live and the fear of death were two different things. Many people in the past who had sought immortality had never grasped this distinction. They spoke of seeking long life but in truth were simply afraid of dying. And the more afraid of death you were, the less the Medicine Master cared for you.
Li Qiuchen's name was not on the list. A figure of his apparent standing, someone who had only just begun Qi cultivation on the surface, was beneath Senior Sister Gu's notice.
The absence of one other name was rather more surprising.
"What do you mean, you want me to serve as acting chief?"
Yang Wenping was completely thrown.
Shouldn't I be on the list?
"This is something I arranged with Yanzhi. I agreed to go along with her arrangements, and in exchange she agreed to leave you behind to hold the fort in my absence."
Murong Feng's tone was sincere.
"Senior brother, I..."
Yang Wenping was so moved he was nearly in tears.
"But I haven't reached Foundation Establishment."
"I know you haven't. But among all the junior brothers and sisters, your approach to scholarship is the most rigorous and your breadth of knowledge the widest. It was you who first noticed signs of the Ghost Scribe's activity this time. The others might not have even known what a Ghost Scribe was."
Murong Feng's expression turned serious. "The most important quality for the inner hall's chief disciple is not cultivation level. It's judgment. When something like this arises, even if you can't resolve it yourself, you should be able to identify the rough shape of the problem."
"Your private research into altering cultivation methods, and enticing junior brothers and sisters to cultivate spiritual roots, those are serious matters. Though I'm not exactly in a position to lecture you about them, of course. As chief senior brother, I'll be taking responsibility for the main part of this, including your share. I hope you can recognize your own mistakes and then redeem yourself through merit, holding the inner hall together until I return."
"If you do well, I'll consider recommending to the teachers that you be given the cultivation method for a second-grade Elixir Viscera."
Yang Wenping stood there stunned for a moment, then his face flooded with color. He straightened his cap and bowed deeply to Murong Feng.
"Senior brother, rest easy. While I am here, no scoundrel will dare lay eyes on the inner hall!"
Having settled things with Yang Wenping and taken his leave of the teachers, Murong Feng gathered his belongings and made his way to the inner hall's gate.
Gu Yanzhi was standing outside with her hands clasped behind her back. When she saw Murong Feng approaching, she raised an eyebrow and said, "You're truly going with Yang Wenping as acting chief? You're not joking?"
Murong Feng nodded. "Not joking. He's the best fit."
"Because he's ruthless enough?"
"Ruthlessness is an indispensable quality in every generation's chief disciple."
Murong Feng smiled. "The air in the county school is too clean. The junior brothers and sisters spend all their time buried in books. They've never been through the brutal fighting of the ancient cultivators, and the illusory realm trials here in Yun County aren't enough. Their minds are still too simple and not mature enough. When something actually happens, they can't handle it."
"You'd better not let the teachers hear you say that."
"I'd say it in front of the teachers too."
A moment of silence passed between them, and then both smiled.
Murong Feng and Gu Yanzhi departed, and with them went nearly half of the inner hall's Qi Refining disciples.
Yang Wenping being named acting chief disciple was something nobody had seen coming.
Everyone went to the teachers with questions, but the teachers offered no comment, simply ordering everyone to focus on their studies.
The position of chief was a matter of convention, not a rule written in black and white.
If you thought he wasn't up to it, go challenge him directly. Win and the position was yours.
But challenge Yang Wenping?
The very idea was absurd. Nowadays just looking at the man made people feel like something was crawling around inside their bodies.
Yang Wenping himself maintained a remarkably low profile. He had no apparent interest in gathering his junior brothers and sisters to deliver some speech about his elevation, and after Murong Feng left he disappeared from view as well, seemingly with no intention of making anything of his acting title.
He had almost no visible presence.
Then again, before anything had happened, Murong Feng had had almost no visible presence either.
If there was one person whose circumstances had changed the most conspicuously, it was Liu Huai'an, who had been through every extreme life had to offer.
He had been close to being pushed into withdrawing from school entirely, and then Senior Brother Yang had turned around and become acting chief.
After that, nobody dared direct any more mockery his way.
Of course, he didn't dare approach Senior Brother Yang himself either, and wasn't even sure whether there were hidden spiritual roots growing inside him.
After everything that had happened, Liu Huai'an became unusually quiet and kept very much to himself.
Not long after Murong Feng's departure, the inner hall held its end-of-term examinations.
The format and location were the same as the preliminary examination, though this time more subjects were tested. In addition to ritual propriety and ceremonial knowledge, history was also examined.
The questions on the papers were considerably more complex and penetrating as well. Anyone who hadn't been paying careful attention these past several months would have found them genuinely difficult to answer.
Beyond the written paper, there were additional trials outside the examination itself.
The examination hall itself was an illusory realm.
This time Li Qiuchen didn't hold back his score. He answered every question on the paper honestly.
He glanced over and found Tang Xiaoxue sleeping soundly.
Almost exactly the same scene as half a year ago.
Three days later the results were announced. This time there was no separate ranking for different tiers. All scores were compiled together on a single list.
Hu Caiyi was in high spirits. She had finally placed sixtieth this time, close to Tang Xiaoxue's ranking from the previous examination.
No longer dead last.
She looked for Tang Xiaoxue's name.
Forty-fifth.
On what grounds?
Hu Caiyi was stunned.
The two of them spent their days eating, drinking, and playing together. They read the same books. Whatever Hu Caiyi didn't know, Tang Xiaoxue didn't know either.
So how had she scored forty-fifth?
There had to be something shady going on. Something deeply shady.
Li Qiuchen's gaze moved to the top of the list.
Chen Nangsheng's result was still in first place, out ahead of everyone else by a comfortable margin.
Liu Huai'an's result in second place had collapsed dramatically, dropping all the way down into the top twenty.
And this time, second place was Li Qiuchen.
Li Qiuchen was neither surprised nor particularly pleased.
He had been doing a great deal of self-reflection and examination over the past few days.
Keeping a low profile and playing it safe were not wrong in themselves. The first time he had tried to hold back his score and it had gone sideways, pulling his result down this time would only draw more attention.
So where had he gone wrong?
He had gone wrong by not letting enough slip in the first place.
There were limits to what people could perceive.
At the start, he had assumed the Medicine Master's Blessing was the kind of unspeakable secret that couldn't be spoken of, and he had lived in terror that his little secret would be discovered and he would be taken apart for study.
After everything that had happened, he now understood.
His senior brothers and sisters had all been letting things slip too.
The distinguished chief senior brother, Murong Feng, carried Medicine Master's Blessing at a level no lower than his own, and had thrown out a full-scale Spring Restoration technique, pulling the dead back to life from every corner without a flicker of pretense.
Senior Brother Yang had been cultivating spiritual roots inside his junior brothers and sisters, and accidentally ended up cultivating himself into acting chief.
So what was Li Qiuchen?
What had that scoundrel Tu Feiyun been watching him so closely for all this time?
The details at either end were blurring together, but one feeling remained clear. He had the distinct sense of having been maneuvered into something.
After the end-of-term examinations came a holiday lasting a full month and a half.
Everyone returned to their own homes.
Many students who had stayed in the inner hall all year because the journey home was too far finally had the opportunity to go back.
The county school had a holiday. Li Qiuchen had no holiday.
He still had to stay home and attend to two young misses and their daily wants and amusements.
Students from wealthy families had their own special entertainment during this season, things like traveling south for leisure.
But given the incident in the fourth month, a great many of them had been confined to their homes with all planned outings cancelled.
Boss Tang had gone north. Boss Hu was recovering from his injuries. The two girls at home were effectively unsupervised, climbing trees and walls every day and running completely wild.
Looking after them kept him tied down.
But if he simply went off on his own, it wouldn't be fair given what their fathers had entrusted to him.
Li Qiuchen turned the problem over for two days and decided to try a different approach to managing the two young misses.
"Would you like to go out and do something?"
"Yes! Where are we going?"
Tang Xiaoxue didn't pause for even a fraction of a second, the question having entirely bypassed her brain.
She had grown up wild from the very beginning. This courtyard was no different from a prison to her.
Hu Caiyi was a little more hesitant. "Where to? It won't be dangerous, will it?"
"My hometown. Out in the countryside."
"What's fun about the countryside..."
"There are pheasants in the countryside."
"What kind of misconception do you have of me? I never said I need chicken at every single meal!"
Hu Caiyi could barely keep her composure.
"Well, I'll need to pack my things and bring..."
"Just the three of us."
"Huh?"
Hu Caiyi stared at him. "Not even the cook?"
A young miss raised in genuine comfort and ease, accustomed to having everything provided for her, with absolutely no capacity for surviving in the wild.
Li Qiuchen kept a perfectly straight face as he laid out his pitch. "Back home we have mountains, and in the mountains there's wild game. You eat whatever you find. Have you ever had flying dragon mushroom stew?"
"What's a flying dragon?"
"A pheasant."
"I. Am. Not. Eating."
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