Chapter 14: The Problem of Silver

Having heard Tang Yan's words before, Uncle Mo had merely felt they made sense — but now, thinking more deeply on them, he felt a chill run straight to his bones.

"Six months from now…" Uncle Mo said slowly, "the Tang Clan's position as the last of the Four Great Families in Yun City may well be moving up a notch."

"First, he provoked everyone and smoothly drew all their attention onto himself. Then he led by example, winning them over through virtue. Next, he dangled benefits before them, igniting their passion. Finally, he laid down the rules and took firm command of the guards." Old Master Tang paced back and forth, analyzing Tang Yan's every move step by step. By the time he finished, even he was startled by this monstrous grandson of his.

With soldiers trained this way, how could they not be formidable? Had things always been like this, would the Tang Clan ever have been eyed so hungrily by the other families?

Of course, what surprised Tang Ling most of all was the transformation in his own grandson.

This good-for-nothing scoundrel who had never applied himself a day in his life — how had he suddenly… grown up?

Tang Yan had no idea that his every move was being watched by his grandfather and Uncle Mo. At this moment, he was at the Training Grounds, pushing himself through an overloaded workout.

With a hundred-pound sandbag strapped to his back, he ground out push-up after push-up.

This time, Tang Yan drew upon his True Qi. A person's True Qi operates in a cycle of consumption and regeneration — once depleted, it replenishes itself. And with each overloaded session, the next regeneration would always yield more than before. This virtuous cycle drove faster and faster progress.

Of course, there was a downside: training this intensely over a long period would inevitably wear on the body's Meridians. But Tang Yan wasn't worried — the Pills he refined could more than compensate for any such damage.

The Tang Clan guards had originally assumed Tang Yan was acting on a passing whim, but when he actually began training in earnest, every last one of them was left utterly dumbfounded.

Their young master was simply too ferocious. Starting from morning, he had done push-ups under a hundred-pound load for a full two hours straight!

He rested for barely over an hour, then launched straight into a second round of training.

Was this really something a scoundrel with a shattered cultivation core could do? Even they, at the ninth grade of the Primary Realm, would be half-dead after two hours of push-ups under a hundred-pound load, wouldn't they?

And seeing Tang Yan push himself this savagely, the fighting spirit in the Tang Clan guards was completely ignited. If a man whose cultivation core had been destroyed could endure this, how could they — proud warriors at the ninth grade of the Primary Realm — afford to give up?

In an instant, the atmosphere at the Tang Clan's Training Grounds surged to an unprecedented high!

When the day was over, Tang Yan dragged his exhausted body back to his room. Rather than rushing into cultivation, he had Little Cui fetch several batches of medicinal herbs from the Tang Clan's medicine storehouse.

It was fortunate that the Tang Clan's estate was sizable enough to stock a considerable variety of miscellaneous herbs. This time, Tang Yan needed to refine a particular pill — the Meridian Tempering Powder.

Once Little Cui brought the herbs, Tang Yan stepped into his makeshift Pill Refining Chamber, skillfully sorted and purified the ingredients, and began the refinement.

The Meridian Tempering Powder was a lower-tier first-grade pill. Though its rank was not high, in this world, pills specifically designed to repair and temper the Meridians were apparently quite rare.

After roughly two hours, Tang Yan opened the pill cauldron and found a heap of fine powder inside. He retrieved a large porcelain bottle and packed all the powder into it.

Under normal circumstances, Tang Yan would have refined a higher-grade pill, but he had already been pushing himself all day — his True Qi was nearly spent — so he had to settle for the Meridian Tempering Powder.

Back in his room, Little Cui had already, as instructed, heated a large barrel of water. Staring at the barrel of bubbling, rolling boiling water, Tang Yan poured in most of the Meridian Tempering Powder. After a brief hesitation, he leapt straight in.

"Hiss—" As the scalding heat hit him, even Tang Yan's extraordinary willpower couldn't stop him from crying out in pain. After a long while he finally adjusted to the temperature, and only then did he close his eyes, take out a Spirit Initiation Pill, and swallow it.

This time, a strange expression crossed Tang Yan's face. He had expected the Heaven and Earth Creation Cauldron to absorb the pill as before — but instead, the pill dissolved the moment it touched his tongue, converting directly into spiritual energy.

There was no time to dwell on it. Tang Yan sat cross-legged and focused his mind, circulating his Cultivation Technique.

Over the weeks that followed, Tang Yan truly left the Tang Clan guards in awe.

Everyone had assumed Tang Yan was acting on a whim — yet the young master stubbornly kept it up, and his daily training volume actually increased with each passing day!

A month later, Tang Yan's strength finally broke through to the eighth grade of the Primary Realm.

What excited him even more was that most of the Tang Clan guards he had been training had reached a bottleneck. Given the right opportunity, they were very likely to shatter their current barrier and step into the Yellow Realm.

If the Tang Clan could gain a hundred and twenty Yellow Realm guards, its overall strength would certainly no longer be ranked last.

That said, it wouldn't become the strongest either. On the martial path, the gap between realms is like a mountain between worlds. Within the Primary Realm, a warrior at the fourth grade might very well defeat one at the fifth grade.

But a warrior at the first grade of the Yellow Realm trying to defeat one at the second grade of the Yellow Realm — that was as difficult as climbing to the heavens. The higher one climbed, the greater the distance even a small gap represented.

The other families' Yellow Realm experts likely outnumbered the Tang Clan's by a fair margin. It wasn't that the Tang Clan's treatment of its warriors was lacking — on the contrary, the Tang Clan actually offered better compensation than most.

But many warriors believed the Tang Clan was caught in a storm and that pledging to the Liu Family or similar powers was far safer.

To give all these guards the chance to seize their breakthrough moment, the first thing Tang Yan thought of was Pills.

Spirit Initiation Pills were exactly right for this group's cultivation needs.

But over a hundred pills would require at least ten cauldron batches. Though at Tang Yan's level as a great Alchemist he could guarantee a hundred percent success rate, the herbs needed for ten batches would cost a considerable sum. By rough estimate, it would come to well over ten thousand taels of silver — and that was the biggest problem he faced right now.

The reason he didn't simply ask his grandfather for the money was that his recent changes had been far too drastic. If his grandfather pressed him for an explanation, he wouldn't be able to give one.

"I'll head out again and try my luck." After thinking it over for a long while without a solution, Tang Yan decided to go out.

He called for Little Cui, donned his white robe, picked up his folding fan, and the two of them — master and servant — set off outside.

"Master, the young master has gone out." Not long after Tang Yan left, Uncle Mo came to Tang Ling's study to report.

"Come on, let's follow and see." Tang Ling rose to his feet. "Go change into a disguise quickly."

In less than fifteen minutes, two plainly dressed old men slipped out through the Tang Clan's back courtyard. At a casual glance, they looked like nothing more than a pair of small merchants.

"Master, you're going in person this time?" Uncle Mo asked in a low voice.

"Hmph. Those bastards from the Liu Family have had people watching our Tang Clan from all sides. I don't even need to guess — it's that brat Liu Yuan, trying to get revenge for last time. But from now on, if anyone dares lay a finger on my grandson, I will personally raze their entire household to the ground!"

Hearing Old Master Tang's murderous words, Uncle Mo understood completely. Over the past decade or more, Tang Yan had been a good-for-nothing scoundrel who never applied himself, and the master had all but given up on the boy.

Yet who could have known the brat would suddenly turn over a new leaf — with all the makings of a prodigal son redeemed, worth more than gold. This transformation had filled Old Master Tang with boundless joy, and a deep sense that the family had a worthy heir at last.

If anyone were to harm Tang Yan now, the master would surely be unable to bear such a blow. Knowing Tang Ling as well as he did, Uncle Mo was certain that even if it meant mutual destruction, he would mobilize the full might of the Tang Clan to avenge his grandson.

This time, he could only hope that no one would be foolish enough to provoke Tang Yan again.