Chapter 193

Chapter 193: Who Owes Whom a Bow?

After Yu Zhi Yi returned to the city, she turned down the broker’s repeated pleas and went straight back to Yiluan Charity. She felt there was no need to visit the house again. She and the house on North Outskirts Street had a tie of fate now. All she needed to do was wait.

Steward Wu had ordered hot food made early. As soon as Yu Zhi Yi stepped into Yiluan Charity, she ate a fresh, warm meal. After eating, she began to sort her things. What she had brought out openly from Du Manor was her dowry from the Yu Clan. Her own private items she kept in a Spatial Talisman.

A Spatial Talisman is like a simple Spatial Artifact. It looks like a sheet of Talisman Paper, but inside there are dozens of square meters of space, enough to store many things. Back when she snuck out of Yu Manor to earn money, she hid the money inside the Spatial Talisman.

During her months at the Chancellor’s Manor, besides a monthly stipend of fifty taels, she had received many good items: Chancellor Du’s Jade Thumb Ring worth eight thousand taels; jewelry and prayer beads from Madam Yao; and one thousand taels of silver. Adding what she earned from Du Zi Heng, the total came to several tens of thousands of taels. Even after removing the part she meant to donate, more than thirty thousand taels remained. This did not include the hair ornaments, bracelets, and the jade paper.

She thought: [It’s a lot of money, but building a Golden Body Idol for the ancestor and supporting my master and the others might still fall short.] She remembered her master once saying the Heavenly Secret Sect was very poor. She and several senior brothers could barely afford food on the mountain. The ancestor had always wanted to set up a Golden Body Idol, but the master was too poor to make it happen. [Don’t ask. In their whole sect, not one person has the one thing everyone needs: money.]

Yu Zhi Yi felt sympathy. She knew what she lacked in her heart. Compared to her master and senior brothers’ poverty, what she lacked seemed small. [You can live without blood ties, but poverty can kill.] Poverty starves people and cuts them off from cultivation resources.

She looked at the five boxes she took from the very bottom of the Spatial Talisman and sighed. These were the gifts from when she became a disciple, things her master said the senior brothers had prepared ahead of time once they knew he would take a little junior sister.

Her first senior brother gave a piece of lightning-struck wood. The second senior brother gave a stack of talismans: simple Protective, Purification, Fire Command, Lightning Command, Water Command, and Wind-Control. Yu Zhi Yi could draw a hundred of those in one hour. The third senior brother gave a bottle of Alchemy Pills, the rare-in-the-mortal-world Qi Refining Pills; but the bottle itself was shabby and even had a crack, showing he was too poor to find a decent bottle. The fourth senior brother gave a set of plain, old-style robes, gray with dust. The fifth senior brother gave a peach wood sword. It was nicely made, but not worth much.

From this, it was clear her senior brothers were truly poor. Her master was poor as well. His entry gift to her was three Five-Emperor Coins.

Yu Zhi Yi had long wanted to send her earnings back to the sect so her master and senior brothers could live better. But in the past Yu Manor bound her, and later Du Manor bound her, and she could not be away for long. Now she had broken from both, and she could think about building up the sect. The only problem was that she had never been to the Heavenly Secret Sect and did not know its exact location. [Hmm. Should I run a divination?]

She was about to start when Steward Wu’s voice sounded outside the door: “Owner, someone from Ping Nan Duke’s Manor asks to see you.”

Yu Zhi Yi paused and said: “All right.” She had time, there was no rush. Now that she was bound by no one, once she saved enough leave days, she could properly ask the emperor for leave.

She went to the first-floor parlor and saw a powerful elder standing with his hands behind his back. His presence was heavy and strong; a faint blood-red haze clung to him. But beyond that blood-red, a golden light of merit flowed around him. Although she had not remembered his face at the palace banquet, Yu Zhi Yi still recognized him and said: “Duke Ping Nan, visiting so late at night, what brings you here?”

Duke Ping Nan’s sharp eyes measured the young woman before him. He had already seen her skills at the banquet, but he had not cared then. Near sunset, though, the coachman from the Duke’s Manor reported that his son had gone missing, and that before his disappearance he had argued with Yu Zhi Yi.

He spoke with the air of a duke: “Official Yu, your gift for foretelling is so great you should know why I came.”

Yu Zhi Yi kept her voice cool: “If you don’t say, how would I know?”

A middle-aged man at the duke’s side stepped forward and said coldly: “How dare you! You are only a fifth-rank physician. How can you behave rudely before the duke? Where are your manners? Did Yu Manor and that poisonous woman never teach you that you should bow when you see a duke?”

Yu Zhi Yi made a soft sound and asked: “Do I need to bow?”

The man was just about to say “of course,” when he saw something in her hand: a gold token, shining bright, with four large characters that read, “As if the Emperor is present.” His bluster collapsed at once.

Toying with the token, Yu Zhi Yi lifted her eyes and said: “If you have nothing to say, Duke, please leave. It is late, and I want to rest.”

Duke Ping Nan fell silent. He had no choice but to bow first. The middle-aged man blanched and hastily followed.

After bowing, Duke Ping Nan said: “I do have something I’d like to ask Official Yu to help with.” His cold pride seemed like a trick of the eye; he turned friendly in an instant and said: “Earlier you foretold my son would be in danger today. He failed to listen. I have come to ask you to act and bring my son back.”

Seeing he had finally learned to speak properly, Yu Zhi Yi put away the token and said: “Fair enough. My fee is one thousand taels per person. There are ten people, so ten thousand in total. Please pay first.”

Duke Ping Nan stared: “You and I serve the same court, and you still want money?”

Yu Zhi Yi looked even more puzzled than he did and said: “Duke Ping Nan, you are only a colleague. You are not my father, and you are not my son. Why can’t I take money? Did you think my Talisman Paper and my spiritual energy cost nothing to use?”

Duke Ping Nan had no reply.

Yu Zhi Yi asked mildly: “Or do you only want to save your son and not the others? If so, one thousand taels will do.”

“Save them,” he forced out between his teeth. All those people had entered the grove with his son. If word got out that he saved only his own child, he would be torn apart in public. Among them were the son of the Ministry of War’s vice minister and the daughter of the Grand Preceptor. If they made a fuss, it would be no small matter.

Yu Zhi Yi said: “For exorcism and divination I only take hard silver. When the money arrives, I set out.”

Duke Ping Nan ached so much he nearly spat blood. At the same time, in the grove, the young lord and his friends did spit blood. Not a figure of speech. Real blood. If time could turn back, they would choose to listen to Yu Zhi Yi.