"I'm not going to help you for free, it will cost you," said Kang Huilang.
He put his feet up on the table, along with an accompanying smug grin.
Yang Qing wasn't too surprised by his words. He would have been more surprised if Kang Huilang agreed to help him with no strings attached.
"How much?"
With how short of time he was, Yang Qing had already prepared himself to get fleeced. Luckily, he had the gifts from his ceremony, so he would be spared from paying out of pocket.
"Mmh, I think 10,000 middle-grade stones should do it," answered Kang Huilang, closely monitoring Yang Qing's reaction.
"Fine, but for that cost you will need to do something more, don't worry it's nothing strenuous and is something I've just thought up would be great for the test…"
Kang Huilang was surprised by Yang Qing's ease with which he accepted the charge. He had expected for them to go back and forth like they usually did before he finally settled for 7,500 middle-grade spirit stones, which was his real asking price.
'I should have asked for more.' Thought Kang Huilang in regret.
"What do you need?" asked Kang Huilang.
Yang Qing showed a devious smile as he explained the ins and outs of his ideas.
"Are you sure the institute will agree to it? I don't want to end up getting fined with you because you went overboard with your duties," said Kang Huilang.
"I think they will agree to it…" said Yang Qing as his gaze turned solemn.
"In terms of cultivation, while the quality of intake hasn't changed, other aspects seem to have been neglected.
Things are not the same as when we got in or the seniors before us… the world may seem safe on the surface but it has a lot of undercurrents and one of those undercurrents is charged toward us, Lai Lei and others like him are proof of it..."
A heavy silence ensued for a few seconds. Lai Lei's attack happened eight months ago and when news of it spread, it hit them heavily because they knew Lai Lei, they were close to him because he was the chief inquisitor under Dai Chen and they knew each other even during their Institution days.
It's one thing hearing a random colleague getting attacked but it's another when that colleague is also a friend. From that moment, the danger felt very real. Also, the manner in which Lai Lei got attacked added to it. He got surrounded by fifteen cultivators of which eight were half-step palace realm cultivators just like him except for the fact that they had used forbidden means to reach that level, which was why Lai Lei was able to escape the encirclement in the fast place albeit with a lost arm, leg, and a cracked dantian.
Though he survived, the attack showed there were people capable of forcefully creating half-step palace realm cultivators, and had the means and the guts to target those from the Order and also manage to hide their identities.
Every Order employee had an arrow in the dark pointed at them, and who knew how bad the next attack would be, if or when it happened?
"The people coming now need to be mentally for the storm that may come for us. If they're not ready, this is the best we can give them to protect their lives.
Since the attacks started happening, there have been cases of desertion from those in the outer core courts, and other departments that put its members in the field.
I don't fault them for running, when they came in, they came in for the glory that came from becoming a member of the Order but what they got is an increased threat to their lives because of their association with us. Some even left comfortable lives for it, and they haven't been at the Order long enough for them to willingly give up their lives for it…"
Yang Qing at some point took out vermilion wine and poured a cup for himself and Kang Huilang.
"Huilang this is why we need crazy people. Those willing to trade their lives for a shot at something selfish that the Order can give them. Isn't that why we came here in the first place?
We didn't have lofty ambitions of bringing peace to the whole Southern Continent or fighting for glory, we all wanted something from this place, thus we fought and clawed our way in and continue to do so to selfishly keep hold of what lured us in here in the first.
Here's to finding crazy people like us," said Yang Qing with a malevolent grin. He raised his cup towards Kang Huilang who was dazed but then showed a similar-looking grin.
"To the crazy ones," he answered as he clinked his cup with Yang Qing's, and then both downed their cups, with Yang Qing immediately refilling them after.
"I'll still need the 10,000 middle-grade spirit stones though," added Kang Huilang as he brought the cup over for a sip.
"Sure, no problem. I don't know why you keep up with the bets, it's not like you have ever won and worse you compete with guys from the administration hall.
There's no way you'd ever win against them," said Yang Qing with a pitying look.
"Even though I haven't won, it won't always be that way, I'm getting better and better at it, it's only a matter of time now, and when that moment comes, I'll show those bastards," Kang Huilang snortingly replied as a battle intent flashed in his eyes.
Yang Qing couldn't help but shake his head at this. Since their institute days, Kang Huilang developed the nasty habit of placing bets on random things such as the punishment Yang Qing would get from the instructors for his many incidents. Yang Qing even intentionally got in trouble at some point and tried his hand at it since the betting pool had enough money to buy him a thousand crimson pigs for a whole month. He lost that bet and ended up punished, and a few spirit stones light.
After they graduated, Kang Huilang's habits turned to bet on cases, more specifically random pop-ins. He and a few others from different departments would bet on different aspects such as how many random pop-in cases the outer core court will get, or guess the weirdest random case that may come in before it did.
Kang Huilang has been doing it ever since he was an outer core court judge and not once had it ever gone his way. Which was why he was always borrowing from them, along with offering tutoring classes to those from the institute at a cost.
Yang Qing shook his head in wonder at how many weird people were in the Order. There was Kang Huilang and his cohorts gambling on cases, Mao Yunru spending most of her income on information brokers, Zhang Qingge who paid thousands of fines due to her berserker shy nature, Dai Chen who funded a lot of amateur wine brewers in different parts of the continent in the hopes there was a diamond in the rough among them, thus guaranteeing him a lifetime supply of quality wine.
'Is there no one normal here?' wondered Yang Qing in worry.
He pulled his thoughts back into extrapolating the 108 steps of the autumn leaves cultivation art. With how little time he had, he couldn't afford to waste it in wonder at the oddness of the people the Order accepted through their doors.
This content is taken from (f)reewe(b)novel.𝗰𝗼𝐦