After passing several side rooms, Xu Yuan arrived at the top floor by a window overlooking the river. He stood there in a white feather cloak, looking down at the bustling night scene of this major southwestern stronghold.
In the northern part of the city, the Drunken Immortal Tower was one of the tallest buildings around. From the top floor, he could see nearly half of Stillwater glowing with life. The nightlife here was lively. This world had no streetlights, but small inscription lamps engraved by the authorities had been set along both sides of the roads.
Looking down, the Drunken Immortal Tower stood right by the Goldtide River.
Even in winter, this water-town carried a damp chill. The common folk crowded the streets in a noisy blur, shouting, haggling, hawking their wares. Pleasure boats moored for the night drifted gently across the Jinhuai, and below the tower, the hostesses, dressed in dazzling finery, kept drawing the eyes of passing men.
For the Drunken Immortal Tower and the Misty River Pavilion in the south of the city to stand on equal footing with the official Bureau of Music and Entertainment, they naturally had their own special appeal. After all, most of the women at the Bureau came with status attached. It was not just their looks. Their clothes, their styling, every detail was seductive in exactly the right way.
Xu Yuan suppressed the stirrings in his heart, took a deep breath, then turned and sat cross-legged on the bed. If his body could not handle it, then he had to be disciplined. No drinking. No women.
After more than half a week of cultivation and recovery aboard the black eagle pavilion, this body, which that wastrel had thoroughly run into the ground, had improved quite a bit. But some things could only be healed slowly over time.
The Third Young Master had spent his days popping pills and fooling around in brothels, and the worst part was that the pills were some third-rate garbage bought by his pack of lackeys.
Xu Yuan had no idea how strong the effects were supposed to be, but the side effects were absolutely real. Taking them every day had left hidden damage in his organs. Every time he thought about it, he felt the Third Young Master really was an idiot. No wonder he got used as a stepping stone by the player-controlled protagonist and ended up humiliated.
If he wanted drugs that badly, he could have just asked his eldest brother for some. Even if it earned him a beating, Xu Changge still would have given them to him.
His organs had been overloaded for a long time. If his family had not been wealthy enough to keep him supplied with rich medicinal meals and tonics, Xu Yuan figured he would already be lying in a coffin waiting to be buried.
Still, most of those lackeys were dead by now. Ever since he had been kidnapped by Ran Qingmo, Xu Changge had personally come to Stillwater, and nearly all the useless followers around the Third Young Master had been killed off by him.
He could not kill his own little brother, but when it came to the trash hanging around that brother, Xu Changge showed no hesitation at all.
Xu Yuan had no particular comment on those methods. After all, those people had tricked the Third Young Master into stealing quite a few antiques and paintings from home and selling them off at dirt-cheap prices. Most of it had probably ended up in the hands of those lackeys in the end.
But whatever the case, Xu Changge's actions had indeed created a very real problem for him now. Going by the plot timeline, that protagonist should have already left Burial Village on the frontier of the Great Flame Empire and should be arriving in Stillwater soon.
And Xu Yuan wanted to act in advance, to make a few preparations before that happened, but right now, he did not even have a single useful person at his disposal. At the most basic level, he could not even manage to find the plot protagonist somewhere in this enormous city.
Lackeys were lackeys, sure, but when it came to dealings with every sort of shady, low-level crowd, all he had to do was give the word and they would get it done neatly for him. After all, no matter how much of a wastrel the Third Young Master had been, he was still the third son of the Chancellor. There would always be people eager to come groveling on their own, never mind the fact that this idiot had been extremely generous.
Quite a few gang leaders in Stillwater, merchant scions, even some people from the City Defense Office, had all been the Third Young Master's so-called close friends. If those people were still around, finding someone in a city this large would not have been a problem at all. But Xu Changge had slaughtered the whole lot of them in one sweep.
And after seeing what happened to that batch as a warning, who would still dare cozy up to him at the risk of getting chopped apart by his brother?
Have Ying'er do it, or Zhou Chen? Yeah, fat chance… Xu Yuan felt he might as well just wash up and go to sleep. And ever since getting off the black eagle pavilion, he had not seen Ying'er again. She was probably squatting in some random corner right now, secretly watching him.
His eyes darkened in thought. He lightly tapped the edge of the wooden window with his fingers, then let out a long sigh. No one to use. Looks like he could only have the manor's newly replaced guards handle it. The only question was whether this new batch would actually listen to him, the Third Young Master...
After assigning the task, Xu Yuan had a spirit-locking array set up in the room, and for the next 20 days, he did not step even once out of the top floor of Drunken Immortal Tower. If he ran into problems with cultivation, he would go ask Zhou Chen, who was staying on the top floor and growing thinner by the day from wine and women.
Zhou Chen's chatterbox nature made him a far better teacher than that iceberg of a woman surnamed Ran. Most of the problems Xu Yuan encountered were easily resolved.
With a famous teacher guiding him and all kinds of medicinal pills backing him up, despite having cultivated for less than a month in total, Xu Yuan smoothly stepped into the ninth rank.
Just like the last time he broke into a rank, there was another crisp pop, and the bottleneck inside his body shattered without putting up the slightest resistance.
Feeling the changes in the surge of source qi within him, Xu Yuan opened his eyes in satisfaction and let out a soft laugh.
This Innate Dao Physique really did break through as easily as eating and drinking. For an ordinary person with decent talent, going from no cultivation at all to the ninth rank usually took about a year. He on the other hand had made it in less than a month.
He lowered his eyes and clenched his hand into a fist. What had once been only a few faint strands of blood-colored source qi could now wrap around his entire hand. Then he unfurled the fist into a palm and watched the eerie crimson source qi in his hand shift and reshape itself however he pleased.
The fullness brought by that surging energy made Xu Yuan bare his teeth in a grin.
So this...is what power feels like? The thought flashed through his mind, and Xu Yuan shook his head with a mute laugh. Damn... that's so chuuni.
He pulled in all those random thoughts, sent out his soul sense, retrieved the source crystal at the center of the spirit-locking array back into his Sumeru Ring, then remained seated and breathed in every last trace of liquid source qi in the room before finally letting out a long breath.
He had been wholly absorbed in cultivation. More than half a month had already passed since he sent those guards out to gather information, so it was about time he checked on their progress. Besides looking into the plot protagonist, he had also ordered them to find out whether any of the pleasure houses in Stillwater had recently trained up a new top courtesan for her debut.
With that in mind, Xu Yuan called toward the door in a clear voice, “Someone go bring Xue Yong to me.”