Chapter 4629 — The Second Steward

"Oh?" Shangguan Tianxia opened the box. Inside lay two things: an exquisite spirit-jade vial, and something wrapped in a piece of red cloth. His eyes lit up at once. "Star-Ink Milk? Infant Ginseng? This boy truly does not stint when he gives!"

Star-Ink Milk and Infant Ginseng alike were treasures scarcely to be found anywhere in the world, and their value did not diminish simply because a man of Shangguan Tianxia's cultivation had no need of them. Even if they availed him nothing himself, he could always pass them on as gifts—and beyond that, both could be used to refine still more advanced pills. By any reckoning, the value of Wei Zhao's return of courtesy was likely no less than that of his Dewtip Spirit Tea.

"Hehe, none of that is any trouble for our young junior brother!" Shangguan Lan'er raised her chin in smug triumph.

"Haha, well, let us see how far he can go. That will do, little Lan'er—since you gave the Ten-Thousand-Word True Word to someone else, you may make a fresh copy of it yourself. It is the ancestral learning of our Shangguan family, after all; we cannot simply let it vanish." Shangguan Tianxia watched his granddaughter with a hint of mischief in his eyes.

"What? A full ten thousand characters! Grandfather, you must be joking!"

"I am not joking. This weighty task falls to you. Write it slowly." Shangguan Tianxia's smile remained, but his tone left no room for argument.

"Oh..." Shangguan Lan'er wilted completely and trudged off toward the study. The Ten-Thousand-Word True Word—how long would it take her to finish writing that?

"Just as well. Let the girl temper her character a little." Shangguan Tianxia smiled to himself, then turned back to the gifts Wei Zhao had left and recalled what the young man had said earlier. All at once he snapped his fingers and spoke into empty air: "Bring me the files on Xu Lingchong and the whole crowd gathered under him. Assign some men to keep watch on them."

Coming out of Hualan Residence, Wei Zhao felt clear-headed and light of spirit—not only because he had drunk the Dewtip, but still more because he had obtained the Ten-Thousand-Word True Word. He had so far given it only a cursory glance, yet he already knew that this piece of calligraphy was no ordinary thing. When he found the time later to ponder it deeply, he was sure he would reap no small reward.

Back at the Azure Cloud Pavilion, Wei Zhao meant to begin refining pills at once, but to his surprise someone was waiting outside the gate of his separate courtyard—none other than Jia Mufan, the chief senior brother and steward of the inner sect.

"Senior Brother Jia, I trust you have been well." Wei Zhao cupped his hands in salute from a distance.

"And you, Junior Brother Lin. You have kept me waiting a long while." Jia Mufan came forward with a smile. This was the plain truth: he had come to call on Wei Zhao at first light, never imagining that Wei Zhao had not been home all night. For the chief senior brother and steward of the inner sect to wait two full hours outside a gate was a curious anecdote in its own right.

"Oh? Senior Brother Jia has business with me? Come, please, inside!" Wei Zhao hurriedly ushered him into the residence.

"Haha. Junior Brother Lin, you are the most watched prodigy in our Azure Cloud Pavilion. After such a long journey abroad, it was only proper that I, as your senior brother, come to look in on you. Would you not agree?" Jia Mufan said with a smile.

In truth, given Wei Zhao's present strength and standing, Jia Mufan—once he learned of his return, and above all once he learned that Wei Zhao had crippled Ma Dangfeng, a mid-Nascent Soul cultivator, in a single move—had meant to rush over the very first moment of the previous day. But Wei Zhao and his companions had been busy with their gathering, and no invitation had been sent to him, so he had tactfully put it off until today.

"I have put Senior Brother Jia to trouble. It was you who cancelled my delayed mission on my behalf, and Senior Brother Lu and Senior Brother Ku have said that when the conflict with Ma Dangfeng first broke out, it was thanks to Senior Brother Jia stepping in that matters were smoothed over. I have recorded that debt of gratitude on their behalf." Wei Zhao spoke gravely.

As he spoke, Wei Zhao set water to steep spirit tea. It was far from Shangguan Lan'er's professional handiwork, nor was it any rare treasure like Dewtip, but it was fine spirit tea nonetheless, and it still refreshed the palate and cleared the mind.

"Junior Brother Lin, you make too much of it. Lu Bianren and the others may be your senior brothers, but they are my junior brothers as well. Since the matter happened to fall before my eyes, it was only natural that I step in to stop it—otherwise I would have been branded a steward who holds his post and does nothing." Jia Mufan shook his head.

"Haha, be that as it may, I must thank Senior Brother Jia properly. To have a chief steward of the inner sect like you is a blessing for the Azure Cloud Pavilion." Wei Zhao smiled. Of the entire upper echelon of the Azure Cloud Pavilion, those he could bear to look at could be counted on one hand, and Jia Mufan was one of them.

"For that word alone, Junior Brother Lin, I shall have to bend my back to the task and serve till death." Jia Mufan laughed heartily, then said: "By the way, Junior Brother Lin, what do you plan to do next?"

"Plan?" Wei Zhao looked at him in bewilderment.

"I mean, have you any interest in taking up a post—say, second steward of the inner sect, or something of the kind? After all, with great power comes great responsibility!" Jia Mufan said, a meaning lurking beneath his words.

"Second steward of the inner sect?" Wei Zhao was taken aback. "Is that not Ma Dangfeng's position?"

"He is not suited to it." Jia Mufan spoke bluntly, without the least concealment. "Before you returned, he sat in that seat and no one could raise an objection. But now? How could he have the face to keep sitting there?"

"He has stepped down?" Wei Zhao understood at once. It was much the same as his own seizure of the Number One Residence of the inner sect: to this day no elder of the Azure Cloud Pavilion had come out to utter a word, the whole lot of them playing deaf and dumb. Those high-ups who had once proclaimed their support for Ma Dangfeng had surely shifted their ground the moment they heard of yesterday's affair. Truly, weathervanes in the wind.

"To be frank with you, yesterday I put a proposal before the council of elders of the Azure Cloud Pavilion: that Junior Brother Lin be made second steward of the inner sect. And the council nodded it through unanimously, from top to bottom." A note of mockery Jia Mufan could scarcely hide crept into his voice.

Recalling how those elders had behaved at the time, they were nothing but clowns capering on a stage—the same men who had once leapt and scrambled to hoist Ma Dangfeng into place were now falling over themselves to kick him while he was down. With such a pack holding the highest offices, if the Azure Cloud Pavilion could still prosper, then Heaven itself would be blind indeed!

Wei Zhao said nothing, only smiled coldly. These people had taken advantage of his absence to help Ma Dangfeng steal the Number One Residence, and that score was still unsettled—yet here they were, so eager to turn with the wind. Their eye for the way things were going was keen enough...

"I know full well that a post like this is beneath Junior Brother Lin's talents, but with your abilities it is no more than a stepping-stone!" (To be continued...)