Chapter 99: Chapter 99: Candy’s Information
"So what did you want to talk about?" Candy poured herself a huge glass of alcohol and drank it down in one gulp to calm her nerves without even offering one to Shen Yuan.
And from how calm he looked, she did not even need to offer him one.
She once again looked at his outfit and realized what she had missed before. Not only was he wearing the robes of the senior servant now, but even his cultivation was about to reach the same realm as her own.
Because of Shen Yuan’s robes, the guards even treated him with respect and bowed their heads all the way to the private room they were sitting in.
"I have been assigned a new task. I might not be able to come out and meet you for a while, so I decided to check up on you before I left." Shen Yuan spoke with a smile on his face as he trailed his fingers on the armrest of the chair he was sitting on.
"What kind of mission takes so—" She suddenly paused as if recalling something. The expression on her face shifted to horror and disbelief. "You are about to serve an inner disciple?"
"How did you know?" Even Shen Yuan was surprised that she could guess his task.
Candy set her glass down, though her hand didn’t quite leave it, fingers still curled around the rim like she needed something solid to hold onto.
"I used to live in the sect. Did I not tell you that? Before I ended up here." A humorless smile touched her lips, gone as quickly as it appeared. "I know how things work in the sect."
Servants don’t vanish from the outer sect for a month at a time unless they’ve been handed off to an inner disciple. Regular missions—herb gathering, courier work, sparring partner duty—those last a day, maybe three. A month means someone higher up wanted a servant kept close. And that only happens for one reason."
"Bang Fo," Shen Yuan said simply.
Candy’s face did something complicated then—flickering through disbelief, pity, and something close to genuine dread, all in the space of a breath.
"You’re joking." When Shen Yuan said nothing, only watched her with that same infuriatingly calm expression, her shoulders sagged. "You’re not joking."
"I don’t suppose," Shen Yuan said, tilting his head slightly, "you know anything about him."
Candy let out a breath that was half laugh, half something far more brittle, and reached for her glass again, draining what remained in one motion before she answered.
"Why is it always you?" she muttered, not quite a question, shaking her head slowly. "You walk in here after killing an elder’s son like you just took out the trash, and now you’re asking about Bang Fo like he’s just another assignment on a scroll."
Shen Yuan chuckled, low and unbothered. "Should I be more dramatic about it? I could faint theatrically if it would make you feel better."
"Don’t joke." Her voice sharpened, genuine irritation cutting through the exhaustion in it.
"Bang Fo is a disciple under the Hall of Secret Affairs. I know that he issues missions to the senior servants to help him with his scribing work. The work is copying documents, and he is supposed to do that work since it is an assignment from his master."
"But he pawns it off to others." Shen Yuan noticed how Candy spoke of him like she knew things the others did not. It was as if she knew the man or at least had information about him.
"Are those documents confidential? Are they the reason he kills his servant?"
"Not at all. They are not even the reason." Candy shook her head and let out a long, tired sigh. "The reason his servants end up dead is..."
_____
"Just be careful." Outside the pavilion, Candy waved Shen yuan off on his journey with well wishes. "Whatever you think you can survive."
Shen Yuan smiled before turning away.
The sun was still high overhead by the time Shen Yuan made his way back through the outer sect, the noise of the market district and training grounds fading behind him as he climbed the familiar path toward the servant dormitories.
He pushed open the door to find the room mostly as he’d left it—Chen Bo buried in his novels, Bei Zhu lounging on his bed, Lin Feng sharpening a short blade with more focus than usual, and Gu Ren sitting cross-legged near the window, a satchel of gathered materials resting beside him.
Four heads turned toward him at once.
"You’re back early," Gu Ren said, straightening. "I thought you’d be gone until evening."
"Change of plans." Shen Yuan crossed the room without ceremony, crouching beside Gu Ren and reaching for the satchel. "Show me what we have."
Gu Ren opened it without hesitation—the spirit-conductive thread, the vials of Bone-Knit Salve, the stack of talisman paper, and finally, wrapped carefully in cloth, a small handful of dark iron shavings.
"Got the cold iron this morning," Gu Ren said. "Bei Zhu traded three days of laundry duty for it."
"Worth every miserable hour," Bei Zhu grumbled from his bed, though there was no real complaint in it.
Shen Yuan sorted through the materials quickly, silver eyes cataloguing each item before tucking them away under his arms.
Then he stood, brushing off his knees, and looked around the room at all four of them.
"I’m leaving now," he said simply. "Not tomorrow. I have to leave right now."
The room went still.
"Now?" Lin Feng set down the blade he’d been sharpening, brow furrowing. "The scroll said the day after tomorrow. Bang Fo’s still in closed-door cultivation—"
"Someone has tempered with the mission scroll. Most likely someone who wants me to mess up in front of Bang Fo, giving him an excuse to mess with me."
"On the way here, I talked to the guard stationed at the gates of the inner sect and learned that I only have till midnight to report."
Lin Feng’s eyes widened in realization before "That son of a—"
___
After stealing things in the dormitory, Shen Yuan walked to the grand gates of the inner sect.
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