Cao Yun was extremely cognizant of what his standing was like as the head of a small corporation, in front of a cultivator. Xu Yangyi might’ve not minded, but he cared otherwise. He didn’t want to pull his waistband up to his head for fun.

He bowed to the floor and shouted immediately, “This matter was clouded by my avarice. The Cao Family is willing to part with ten spirit stones and an additional 3 million to ask Mr. Xu to pardon our Cao Family this once!”

Xu Yangyi’s eyes shimmered. He didn’t care much for money, but he didn’t expect that Cao Yun would surprisingly be in possession of spirit stones!

“From where?”

“That thing… was our shareholder… I discovered early on that something was wrong with him… He was quite fond of gathering these stones. Afterwards… Afterwards, Manager Su told me that they were called spirit stones. I also collected them, but it’s incredibly difficult for me to gather them. In seven years, I only gathered ten pieces…” He looked nervously at Xu Yangyi. “I’d like Mr. Xu to please kindly accept this offering…”

Cao Mosheng didn’t dare say a word now.

Spirit stones… Shareholder… These things seemed to have opened a brand new door to him. Presently, he looked to Xu Yangyi’s gaze. Since the beginning, it was without the least bit shred of contempt, but now Xu Yangyi’s eyes were blazing with fire!

This was… an item from the legends… This item truly existed in the world! And… it was right before him!

Xu Yangyi didn’t speak. He was searching for the toad not only for his past grievance, but more importantly… for the toad’s long-term supply. Where had the resources for a whole seven years of Dew Congealing Grass come from?

This was what he needed: cultivation materials. No one was ever short of resources! Especially during the End of Days!

Daring to conspire against and even kill me. How many of these bullshit justifications can be explained?

His silence in Cao Yun’s mind only relayed a single piece of information. That he was dissatisfied. 

“Five million!” Cao Yun gritted his teeth. “Mr. Xu, the Cao Family isn’t a big company. In Sanshui City it’s still considered pretty good, but in the scope of all of Nantong Province, it’s considered nothing! Five million… is the greatest amount of capital I can transfer as the sitting chair! Anymore… and there won’t be anything that I can do!”

“Ten million!” At this time, a staunch voice rang out. Cao Mosheng gritted his teeth and fixed his eyes on Xu Yangyi unwaveringly. “Master! Accept me as your disciple! I will immediately sell off all of my inheritance shares! All together, it’s Ten million!”

The room went quiet in a flash.

Cao Yun’s initial reaction was the angry trembling of his teeth, but his second reaction was to go wild with joy!

“100 million!” His voice was hoarse, but his words could slice through steel. “Mr. Xu! As long as you are willing to accept my good-for-nothing grandson, I don’t need my shares, either! All that I am willing to sacrifice pools up to a hundred million!”

The thoughts of these two were polar opposites, yet at this moment they had completely charged after this opportunity together.

Cao Mosheng was a fashionable young master. Novels, movies, anime, and comic books, these were the pastimes that he loved. As a hot-blooded youth, how could he possibly not turn his gaze towards the stars? To not be envious?

Although Cao Yun and Cao Mosheng weren’t of the same era, Cao Yun understood… If the Cao Family could produce a cultivator… there would be no place they wouldn’t be able to go in heaven and earth!

He didn’t need his coffin money if he could supply Cao Mosheng an opportunity to rise! Before, he’d been scared and worried, but now his most base of instincts as a businessman to pursue benefit had swiftly steeled his resolve!

“Brother Xu!” However, Cao Yun’s determination was less than Cao Mosheng’s. The heir had already taken a step forward and placed a knee on the ground, cupping his fist in respect with exceptional sincerity. “Please accept me as your disciple!”

Xu Yangyi looked on at the scene before him, fairly surprised. He waved his hand, and the cup of coffee flew back from where it came once more. He said seriously, “I still can’t accept a disciple. If by chance we meet again and I’m able to take on a disciple, I’ll consider it.”

Cao Yun opened his mouth but dared not say anything else.

Sanshui’s Cao Family still lacked the prestige to discuss conditions with a cultivator. Xu Yangyi had already said he would consider it. If Cao Yun wanted him to leave behind a contact method or so on...

Perhaps the matter today was something money could not resolve.

“Deliver the spirit stones and money to the hospital. Tomorrow.” Xu Yangyi nodded. “I won’t look into this matter. But if we meet again in a similar way, seek your own fortune.”

“Yes!” The stone within Cao Yun’s heart was finally released in its entirety. He took a long relaxing breath and promptly answered.

“Alright, everything’s been said.” Manager Su stood up, not particular to any etiquette and opened the door for the Cao Family grandfather-grandson duo. “You two, I won’t be leaving your villa. However, little brother, I leave with you a single word of advice. If you even slip half a word of today’s events, I’m afraid the name of the Cao Family won’t exist anymore in China, even if Mr. Xu doesn’t care to look into it.” 

Cao Mosheng trembled from head to toe and quickly nodded. “I know!” He glanced at Xu Yangyi’s cool expression, with an incomparable reluctance to part ways. Gritting his teeth, he turned his head and then walked away. 

“Grandfather!” Upon getting into the private car, he said straightaway, “I’ve decided I will pay respects to him as my master!”

Cao Yun sighed deeply. “Mosheng… you know why I made you pipe down, right?”

Cao Mosheng nodded deeply. “I’m sorry…”

“How could it be that I don’t want you to become his disciple?” Cao Yun shook his head. “You don’t know…Right now, you’re only curious. If you’re truly interested, you can get in touch with Manager Su… however, to be taken in as a disciple… Don’t cling on to such a thing too much… Their world is completely different from ours…”

He looked outside the window into the nighttime scenery, somewhat bound in a trance. “Sometimes… when you open a door, you discover that the world you thought you understood was only superficial…”

“Even now… I still don’t know what the hell that shareholder who ran off was…”

No one knew of their conversation. Xu Yangyi was none the wiser, as well. But at this very moment, the instant the door closed, a warm, delicate body had already pressed up against his own.

“Brother Xu…” Rosy lips gently blew at the side of his ear. On his chest, a hand as white as a Night Queen Flower faintly stoked his fire. “You should’ve guessed… what I, Su Lianyue, wanted to do… by inviting you to come tonight… right?”

Her hand wasn’t impulsive nor was it slow, yet trace by trace, strand by strand, she seemed to carelessly use the tip of her finger to gently scratch the pectoral muscles beneath Xu Yangyi’s clothes. As she arrived at his abdominals, she softly pressed against them, carrying a sweet smile. Her breath, fragrant like orchids, blew on his muscle tantalizingly. “The strength of your lower back must be quite good…”

A hand climbed up her neck, one that was thickly jointed, a man’s hand. Slender fingers caressed her sharp, snowy jaw, softly stroking it.

They were both adults. That which was conveyed was rather clear. There was no need to speak further. There weren’t any herbivores here.

Su Lianyue laughed faintly, not shy in the slightest. Her hand danced across the hem of his T-shirt neither slowly nor swiftly, and she pressed down mischievously on a certain subtle location. Like an arc of electricity, she softly traced the outline. Several seconds later, she giggled, “How large.”

“Satisfied?” Xu Yangyi laughed rottenly and propped his thumb against her lower jaw. Her head was like a white swan perking its head back and drawing a graceful curve. In the next second, he felt a hand dig into his trousers like a snake, pressing against a certain organ and fondling it closely.

Supple and smooth, soft and slender. Carrying a bit of an alluring aroma, she was nothing like him at all.

Su Lianyue smiled as before and gently closed her eyes as if she was waiting on something. However, what awaited her wasn’t what she was expecting. In the moment she closed her eyes, Xu Yangyi’s thumb was like a sword, stiffly pressed against her lower jaw with great strength. It made her lowly yelp out in pain.

Simultaneously, her wildly spasming hand was pressed down by Xu Yangyi at the place it originally should’ve been. She pursed her ruby lips and clawed out in retaliation, yet he simply remained unmoved. 

“However, I am dissatisfied.” 

Her body trembled, and as she opened her eyes, she saw Xu Yangyi’s incomparably cool eyes that were without an absolute wisp of lust.

“Your down payment is too great. I’m unable to accept it. Both of us have to consent, and there’s no way I’m footing the bill… If you think you can use your body to make me answer, sweetie...” Xu Yangyi nibbled on her earlobe, and his lower body forcefully pushed against her hand. He felt her satin-soft hand cup his arousal and said softly, “You wish for much.”

Su Lianyue’s eyes had long since become lucid and bright. In the same manner, she wasn’t the least bit lustful. Even now, there wasn’t the slightest relation between her appearance and clarity. 

“Then may I take my hand out?”

“You can free yourself in a moment.” Xu Yangyi half-leaned against the sofa, the crook of his mouth turning upwards. “Really, in my twenty-one years, only my hand has been there.”

“I really don’t see how. You’ve got the shameless potential,” Su Lianyue laughed coldly and took her hand out without a moment’s hesitation. She didn’t wipe her hand all, rather setting it down atop her jade thigh, gently caressing it. 

The silence brought with it an ambiguous lull.

“I was a student five years before you,” she said after ages. “Every time Heavens Law accepts several thousand people, only several hundred graduate. Where do you think everyone else goes?”

Xu Yangyi shook his head. Cultivation was the struggle of all things. The law of the jungle couldn’t be more obvious. He didn’t have the comfort of caring where the rest went.

Su Lianyue lit a cigarette, looked at the faint flickering of the cigarette butt, and suddenly laughed, “Just absorbing qi into the body eliminates 80% of people, and I… am among that 80%.” 

“And of these people… there are nearly a million cultivators in the cultivation world. Places that employ these people everywhere. Mr. Xu… I really do envy you… Really. You might’ve not met people like myself yet, eliminated cultivators, but you will meet them later on… We envy real cultivators like yourself quite a bit… It’s obvious that we’re standing right in front of the door and are only a step away, but to draw qi into the body is a distant step. It’s like the gap between heaven and earth.”

“I digress…” Silent for another minute, Su Lianyue seemed to steel her resolve. She stood up and extinguished the cigarette with her fingers. She looked at Xu Yangyi, looked at him deeply for several seconds and appeared to harden her resolve. Her hand quivered and grabbed onto her shirt button. “You must know, I’m not a prostitute.”

“Mhm.” Xu Yangyi nodded. Currently, the acuity of his five senses had surpassed imagination. It outstripped those of the same stage by a far margin. Thus, although he had sensed Su Lianyue’s actions were unrestrained moments ago, they… were shaky.

A shakiness that revealed she often didn’t do such things. Moreover, he hadn’t smelled the scent of another man on her body. This was the only reason he let her touch his root of life. He had never played the herbivore.

Clip… A button sprung off, a seamlessly fastened button that revealed a great expanse of her alabaster flesh like that of ivory jade illuminated under moonlight. [1]