About 15 minutes laters, someone knocked on the private room on the top floor of Drunken Immortal Tower.
“Come in.”
After receiving permission, a young man in black fitted clothes stepped into the room. He was handsome, with a stern, unsmiling face.
The young man swept his gaze around once before it landed on the long-haired man leisurely drinking tea by the tea tray.
His black hair spilled all the way onto the floor. Xu Yuan did not even look at him, merely pouring tea for himself and sipping it at ease.
Seeing the Third Young Master putting on this pose, a flicker of amusement flashed through the young man’s eyes and vanished just as quickly.
Rumor had it that this Third Young Master liked imitating the Eldest Young Master’s manner. Seeing it in person, the rumors were indeed well founded. Unfortunately, it was no more than a clumsy cat copying a tiger.
He stepped forward, bent slightly at the waist, cupped his fists in salute, and lowered his head as he said evenly, “Third Young Master, we found one of the people you secretly ordered us to investigate.”
Xu Yuan arched a brow at that, took a small sip of fragrant tea, and replied in an unhurried voice, “Which one?”
A batch of the Xu Manor guards had been killed by Xu Changge, and another batch transferred away. The guards now serving him had been drawn from the entourage of his father’s adopted daughter, the one outsiders called the Fourth Miss.
Their job was to handle the basics of his travel safety.
Although Zhou Chen and Ying’er, two true experts, were protecting him in the open and in the shadows, he could hardly ask them to handle every trivial matter. Naturally, he still needed a group of capable guards to deal with the blind little pests who failed to know their place.
And Xu Yuan had happened to put these men to use, sending them to look into the whereabouts of that protagonist and a certain courtesan.
The young man in black answered in a low voice, “It is the courtesan you asked us to find earlier.”
So not the plot protagonist… Xu Yuan felt a little disappointed, but finding that woman still satisfied him well enough. He gave a light laugh and said, “That woman... is she at Misty River Pavilion in the south of the city?”
The young man shook his head. “No. She’s here in the Drunken Immortal Tower. Tomorrow is the day of her debut.”
Xu Yuan’s fingers paused ever so slightly on the porcelain teacup, then he let out a sigh. Great. Now the plot he knew had gone off the rails again.
In Azure Point, there had been many routes where the original Xu Yuan died in the Myriad Ascents Mountain Range, but there were also quite a few where Xu Changge managed to save him.
And after returning to Stillwater, among the various ways the Third Young Master could die, several of them were tied to this very courtesan he was now hearing about.
The reason was simple. He fought with the protagonist over her. The conflict kept escalating, step by step, until in the end, through a mix of chance and circumstance, he was beaten to death by the player-controlled plot protagonist.
Only, in Azure Point, this woman had clearly first appeared in Misty River Pavilion in the south of the city. And yet now she had turned up here instead, in the Drunken Immortal Tower in the north.
Xu Yuan had not gone once to the Misty River Pavilion, the place the Third Young Master used to frequent most, during this past month. He had stayed in the Drunken Immortal Tower the whole time, and somehow this woman had followed him here. It was almost as if she had come here specifically to spark a clash between him and the protagonist.
Of course, Xu Yuan knew it could not be something that simple. Most likely, just like Ji Qingyue, this courtesan had set her sights on him, the Third Young Master.
But this was not the time to dwell on that. He drained the fragrant tea in his cup in one go, then looked thoughtfully at the young man in fitted black clothes before suddenly asking, “How long has she been here?”
“More than half a month already,” Xue Yong replied flatly.
“More than half a month?” Xu Yuan let out a quiet laugh.
The moment he heard that answer, a thread of anger slowly began to crawl up in his chest.
This Xue Yong in front of him, along with the guards under him, had clearly not taken the matter Xu Yuan assigned to them to heart at all.
Xu Yuan had been cultivating on the top floor of the Drunken Immortal Tower every single day, and those guards had been stationed at the key entrances leading up to the top floor the whole time.
Xue Yong and the others were already inside the Drunken Immortal Tower. All they had to do was casually ask one of the courtesans. With the status of Third Young Master Xu Yuan as one of the house’s biggest spenders, there was no way the women here would keep it secret from him.
Help him find someone? Find my ass. If he had not asked about it himself today, he probably would not have gotten the news until tomorrow, when that woman officially made her debut and he saw her with his own eyes.
Xu Yuan narrowed his eyes at Xue Yong and said softly, “Xue Yong, if I remember correctly, I ordered you to investigate this woman 20 days ago. She entered the Drunken Immortal Tower more than half a month ago, and only now, right before her debut, you bring me this news?”
Hearing that, the young man in black glanced at Xu Yuan, then silently bent at the waist and said, “This subordinate is incompetent. Please punish me, Third Young Master.”
That was what he said, but his voice remained flat, and his eyes stayed level with Xu Yuan’s.
Xue Yong did not care in the slightest about being called to account. The Chancellor had three sons and one daughter. Two dragons, one phoenix, and one rat. He belonged to the Fourth Miss. He had only been temporarily assigned to the Third Young Master’s side as a guard because of the kidnapping incident.
The Fourth Miss’s contempt for this third brother of hers was common knowledge throughout the Chancellor’s Manor. His job was to protect the Third Young Master, not to help him chase women. If he disobeyed orders, at worst the man would beat him a little. Fine. Let him hit if he wanted. This useless Third Young Master could swing a sword at him all day and still fail to leave a mark.
Xu Yuan sat cross-legged on the cushion, head lowered, idly turning the expensive porcelain cup in his hand. He said nothing for a long while. Experiencing it firsthand made him understand why the Third Young Master had been so touchy, so prone to impotent rage.
His status really was high, but it was only an empty title. Whether the people below listened to him or not depended entirely on their mood. And the worst part was that he could not do a damn thing about it.
Complain to his father? Because they would not help him find women, he was supposed to go whining about it? Yeah, right.
Of course, he could go mad and beat them. The men under him certainly would not dare strike back, but all that would do was make his own hands hurt.
A gap in cultivation did not care about status.
After thinking for a moment, Xu Yuan let out a sigh, then suddenly smiled. “Xue Yong. 22 years old. Peak sixth rank, Iron Body Realm. You should be stepping into the fifth rank before long. My little sister seems to value you highly. Not bad. A young genius like you really does have the right to be proud.”
Xue Yong narrowed his eyes, somewhat surprised that the man knew his cultivation level.
Under Xue Yong’s gaze, the Third Young Master across from him slowly rose to his feet and said softly, “But since you’re asking for punishment, fine...”
Xu Yuan quietly began circulating his cultivation art and walked toward Xue Yong with his hands behind his back.
That strange, lurid blood-red source qi began spreading across his palm. He did not know whether, with his freshly entered ninth rank cultivation, he could even break the defenses of Xue Yong, who had already reached the peak of the Iron Body Realm.
But the other man probably still thought he was an ordinary person and would most likely not bother activating any defensive skill. If he struck by surprise, he ought to be able to injure him.
He had to establish authority. Otherwise, subordinates like these, who answered his assignments but not his command, being useless would be the least of his problems. Life would only get harder from here on out.
Xu Yuan walked right up to him. Xue Yong still looked at the Third Young Master before him with the same indifferent expression. He wanted to see the man fly into a rage and make an ugly spectacle of himself.
Xu Yuan gave him a faint smile. Then the hand wrapped in blood-red source qi suddenly shot out from behind his back.
At that instant, time itself seemed to freeze. Xu Yuan’s hand had only moved halfway, when Zhou Chen, wine gourd in hand, abruptly appeared at Xue Yong’s side like a ghost.
Xu Yuan said nothing.
Zhou Chen shook his head at him. Then, with casual ease, he lightly slapped the right arm Xue Yong still had raised in salute.
The air fell silent for a heartbeat.
Xu Yuan clearly saw Xue Yong’s expression change from disdain, to shock, to outright terror.
“AAAAAAAH!!!!” A shrill scream tore through the entire Drunken Immortal Tower.
The tremendous force smashed Xue Yong flat onto the floor, and his entire right arm had already been twisted completely out of shape.
Zhou Chen, who had done all this, still wore the same smiling expression. He glanced at the blood-red source qi on Xu Yuan’s hand, then smiled and cupped his hands toward him.
“Congratulations to the Third Young Master on stepping into the ninth rank.”
Then he glanced at Xue Yong, sprawled on the ground howling like a dead dog, and slowly shook his head.
“A mere guard dares show disrespect to the Third Young Master. Tsk tsk… are all the people under the Fourth Miss this lacking in manners? Hah.”
After saying that, Zhou Chen looked toward Xu Yuan, his eyes curved in amusement, and casually asked, “Third Young Master, should this man be crippled, or killed outright?”