The First Legendary Demonic Scholar

Chapter 112: Chapter 112: Mission Impossible, Completed!

[Item Details: Profound Qi Condensation Pill (100% Purity)]

[Grade: 3 Star-tier, Superior Class]

[Effect: Instantly refines and purifies all Qi Strands currently held by the user, permanently increasing their absorption rate for future cultivation by 15%.]

[Effect: Grants a single guaranteed breakthrough to the next Major Realm regardless of current Qi Strand accumulation, with zero risk of deviation or backlash.]

[Effect: Cleanses minor impurities within the user’s meridians accumulated from cultivation techniques of mismatched attributes, reducing long-term risk of Qi deviation.]

[Note: Pills of this purity are exceedingly rare even among Core Formation cultivators, as most alchemists cannot stabilize Qi Condensation-tier pills above 80% purity without significant loss of potency.]

Shen Yuan glanced down at the stack of incriminating ledgers still resting on the desk before him, Lin Xia’s parting smirk echoing in his mind.

’She wants me dead. Bang Fo might already suspect something’s wrong with his "harmless" new servant. And now an elder capable of seeing through lies with a glance knows my face from a brothel I had no business visiting.’

A slow, humorless smile tugged at the corner of his lips despite the danger pressing in from every direction.

’Well then.’ He reached for his brush, dipping it carefully into the inkstone before pulling the first ledger toward him, expression settling into practiced, diligent focus. ’Let’s see exactly how deep this rabbit hole goes.’

’I’ve survived worse odds than this.’

...

Shen Yuan rose from the desk, setting his brush down carefully beside the half-transcribed ledger, and crossed the small chamber toward the shelves lining the far wall.

If this room was chosen for me, deliberately or not, then whatever the system wants me to find should be here.

He reached for the nearest scroll, unrolling it with quick, efficient movements, silver eyes scanning the contents at the same inhuman speed he’d once used to devour entire manuals in the Pavilion of the Nine Hells.

But it turned out to be a dud. Trade agreements and everything was legitimate business as much as it could get within the demonic sect.

There was nothing unusual, just some shipment manifests between the Hall of Secret Affairs and several outer sect merchants.

When he thought about it, it seemed nothing grand. It was not weird for the hall to invest in business they would find filled with potential.

He set the scroll on the table and reached for the next.

Correspondence between minor officials, discussing routine disputes over territory boundaries near the sect’s southern border.

Also unremarkable.

Third scroll. Fourth. Fifth.

None of them screamed secret on their own.

No damning confession, no smoking-gun revelation waiting to be plucked from the pile like a ripe fruit.

Just ordinary sect business, the kind of tedious administrative record-keeping that filled every bureaucracy in every world Shen Yuan had ever known.

’But that’s exactly the problem, isn’t it.’

He paused, glancing back at the embezzlement ledgers still waiting on the desk, then back at the shelves before him.

’The more normal these documents look, the more suspicious they are.’

Shen Yuan began working through the shelves with renewed focus, no longer skimming for obvious answers but instead cataloguing every scrap of information with methodical patience, cross-referencing details in his mind as quickly as his eyes could absorb them.

’Is this is?’

It was a shipment manifest that he found, dated weeks prior, noting a delivery of raw materials to Bang Fo’s estate under a supply category Shen Yuan didn’t recognize by name.

Even with his 3 star knowledge of the herbs and pills, he was completely stumped.

But he could get an idea what they could be used for. The ingredients had no effect on their own.

A brief note, half-burned at the edges as though someone had tried to destroy it and reconsidered, describing a "tolerance threshold" that had finally been "breached beyond recovery" in a subject, followed by a request for a fresh one.

"What is this about?"

Shen Yuan placed the scroll on the table above the select few ones he had separated.

He decided to look more around the place he found them in.

And beneath both of those, buried at the very back of the lowest shelf, there was a set of financial records unlike the embezzlement ledgers Lin Xia had handed him.

These one were smaller transactions, spread across dozens of obscure, struggling businesses throughout the outer sect and beyond, each one impossible to trace back to a single owner on its own.

Now this was suspicious. ’Why would they invest in failing businesses... unless it was a front!’

Shen Yuan laid them all out across the desk, silver eyes moving from document to document, drawing invisible lines between dates, amounts, and names that meant nothing individually but everything together.

He went still.

His gaze flicked back to what he found in one line particular. More precisely it was what he did not find.

There was no signature on this deal, only a single line was written as the identification of the person who authorized this document.

The river that stills does not grow. But once its stability is disrupted, all hell breaks loose as it rages above all.

A slow breath left him.

Something sharpened behind his silver eyes—not surprise exactly, but the quiet, focused clarity of a puzzle finally clicking into a shape he could see whole.

Shen Yuan finally connected every thread that had been slipping his hands till now.

And he was now staring at the dot that was origin of all the secrets in this place.

He said nothing. He didn’t need to.

He simply sat back, staring at the arranged documents for a long moment, expression unreadable, before beginning to gather them back into their original order with the same unhurried care he’d used to remove them.

A soft chime echoed in the back of his mind.

〈Ding!〉

──────────────────

[Mission Complete: Uncover the Hidden Secret of Bang Fo.]

[Two Secrets Uncovered.]

[Reward Available: Claim Now?]

──────────────────

Shen Yuan did not rush to claim his reward. His tainted silver eyes drifted toward the study’s closed door.

’Who would have thought, that there were not one but two secrets lying in this place. If I use this information correctly, I might just be able to get out of this place... alive.’