Combat Practice

Staring at the floor covered in ledgers and account books, Su Jinxuan fell into a daze. When she asked that question just now, she hadn't wanted an answer; she had wanted to deny the suspicion taking root in her heart regarding Mister Qin. She had prepared herself: no matter what evidence Xu Changtian produced, she would tell him, "Empty words mean nothing. For all I know, you fabricated this evidence." Yet now, those words refused to come out. There was simply too much. The Konghua Chamber of Commerce was a regional guild that could be considered mid-sized across all of Great Yan, and over a dozen years of accumulated ledgers formed a veritable mountain. Ledgers were not something one could fabricate out of thin air. Every credit had a debit, every inflow matched an outflow, and income and expenditure had to balance. Even if Xu Changtian possessed foreknowledge and had ordered their fabrication the very moment she was captured, it would have been impossible to forge so many ledgers in a mere ten days. Looking at Su Jinxuan's expression, Xu Yuan understood what was going through her mind. *Heh, if cooking the books were that easy, there wouldn't have been so many accountants taking the fall and serving time in my previous life.* Xu Yuan casually picked up a ledger from the ground, opened it, and flipped through the pages as he said offhandedly, "If you need Konghua Chamber of Commerce's false books to cross-reference, I can have the Black Scale Guards in the Imperial Capital transmit them over too." False books? Real books? Looking at the mountain of ledgers before her, Su Jinxuan felt her heart tremble slightly. If all of these were forged, Xu Changtian would also have to forge an equal number of false books. A project spanning millions of characters could never have been finished in ten days. "Are these... real?" Su Jinxuan's voice was faint, laden with profound bewilderment. Xu Yuan gave a direct sneer upon hearing this. As she looked over, he said with a playful smirk, "Of course they're real. But you believe it just like that? I thought you'd keep acting stubborn and claim these were from my Chancellor's Manor, merely tweaked and touched up over the past few days." A flame flared in Su Jinxuan's chest once again. Biting her lip, she asked, "Xu Changtian, what... what do you want?" "What do I want?" Xu Yuan gently tapped his fingertips against the wooden table in front of him. "I want to dispel every lingering doubt in your heart, of course. Wasn't that what you were thinking just now?" "..." Su Jinxuan fell silent. Shaking his head to the steady *tap-tap* against the tabletop, Xu Yuan spoke methodically: "Like I said, you can check the trading partners, locations, and dates in these ledgers yourself before drawing your conclusions." Su Jinxuan's eyes flickered for a moment. Without a word, she slowly rose, pulled a volume from the mountain of ledgers, returned to her seat, and quietly began reading through it. Seeing this, Xu Yuan did not press her. He sat quietly for a while, then rose and took his leave. All he had to do now was wait. Something a person had believed for over a decade was like a solid boulder, difficult to shake under normal circumstances. But once the seed of doubt took root on its surface, all that remained was to quietly wait for the seed to sprout and grow, splitting and shattering the boulder from within... Time flew by. Su Jinxuan's matter was merely an interlude in Xu Yuan's daily routine. Once handled, he put it out of his mind for the time being. After receiving the transmission from the Imperial Capital, Steward Li delivered all the medicinal pills Xu Yuan had previously requested that very day. However, the quantity of pills left much to be desired. Unlike Xu Changge, who had handed them out by the full bottle, the pills brought by Steward Li were piecemeal. Items like the Meridian Protection Pills and Guangling Pills didn't even fill a single bottle. If Xu Yuan cultivated without restraint, this small stash would likely be depleted in less than a week. Out of options, Xu Yuan had to readjust his cultivation pace. Without medicinal pills to nourish and protect them, overloading his cultivation method brought pricking pains through his meridians. Because of this, the days of immersing himself in cultivation around the clock were gone. Yet shorter cultivation sessions did not mean Xu Yuan sat around doing nothing. Though he possessed the previous owner's memories, that young master had been completely clueless about cultivation. He needed to read a vast number of texts to fill in the gaps, lest he find himself helpless when facing unfamiliar situations in the future. His daily routine gradually settled into four basic activities: Sleeping, eating, cultivating, and reading. Two days later, however, a fifth task was added to his daily schedule. Combat practice. Every time he finished cultivating and walked out of the Wuxuan Courtyard with Zhou Chen, he would pass by the martial grounds. Watching those muscular brutes trade flesh-and-bone blows in live sparring, a sudden impulse struck Xu Yuan to take the stage and test himself. For up until now, he had never truly fought someone of equal strength. His hands itching for action, he stepped straight onto the martial platform. When the Third Young Master stepped up, the bustling martial grounds instantly fell dead silent. With his terrible reputation preceding him, nobody dared to challenge him. Only after Xu Yuan repeatedly stressed that he would hold no grudges and offered a direct pill reward did an Eighth Rank Meridian Tempering martial apprentice finally walk up at an agonizingly slow pace. Xu Yuan was quite satisfied with his opponent's strength. The story's protagonist was also Eighth Rank at this point, but he could take on a whole pack of Eighth Rank Meridian Tempering guards from the Xu family single-handedly. Xu Yuan figured that even if he couldn't match the protagonist, beating this burly Eighth Rank fellow with the Blood Yuan Heart Calamity Art shouldn't be an issue. And then... And then, he lost. A complete defeat. Even with the formidable amplification of the Blood Yuan Heart Calamity Art, he was simply no match for the Eighth Rank martial apprentice. He had strength but couldn't bring it to bear. His opponent's punches and kicks came wave after wave, relentless as the ocean tide, and in under a minute, Xu Yuan was forced off the platform. Standing below the stage, Xu Yuan could sense that had the apprentice not held back out of fear of his status, a few moves would have laid him flat on the ground unable to get up. There were no mediocrities in this Wuxuan Courtyard. These guards walking the path of martial apprentices were no street thugs. Every single one of them was an elite chosen from among tens of thousands of commoner disciples at the Tian'an Martial Hall; it would not be an exaggeration to say they had crawled out from piles of corpses. At that moment, Xu Yuan suddenly understood just how impressive it was for the protagonist, Qin Mo, to slay a Seventh Rank guard of his family while still at the Eighth Rank. If he faced Qin Mo one-on-one right now, he would probably die in a single exchange. Without a word, Xu Yuan tossed down the reward and left. This reaction utterly stunned the burly Meridian Tempering man who had received the reward. He thought he was finished. A peak Sixth Rank Iron Body genius like Xue Yong had been killed on the Third Young Master's whim, let alone a petty Eighth Rank Meridian Tempering nobody like him. Waiting in apprehension until the next day, he saw the Third Young Master back at the martial grounds. This time, the Third Young Master brought an entire bottle of Bone Tempering Pills. Win against him once, get one pill. As Eighth Rank Meridian Tempering apprentices, they only received three Bone Tempering Pills a month. Under heavy rewards, brave men emerge. Soon, a second man stepped up, lured by the reward. A minute later, that man stepped down with a Bone Tempering Pill in hand. Knocked flying off the stage, the Third Young Master said nothing. He simply sat at the edge of the platform and meditated for half a quarter-hour to regulate his breathing, then stepped right back onto the stage. The area fell into dead silence. Amidst the quiet, the man who had already collected a Bone Tempering Pill took a gamble and stepped up once more. Soon enough, he collected a second Bone Tempering Pill from the scruffy middle-aged man at the edge of the grounds. Once the Third Young Master's rewards and promises were proven true, the atmosphere in the Wuxuan Courtyard steadily livened up...