The First Legendary Demonic Scholar

Chapter 119: Chapter 119: The Summons

Bo Fang was now looking straight at Shen Yuan.

Except it wasn’t quite the same expression Shen Yuan had grown accustomed to.

There was a flicker of something else beneath it—brief, almost imperceptible, gone before Shen Yuan could fully name it.

Surprise, perhaps.

Earlier before, Bang Fo had never even looked in his direction. He would always ignore him like he was an ant on the side of the road but now that very man was looking at him.

Shen Yuan lowered his head respectfully, keeping his expression carefully blank. "Senior Brother."

Bang Fo said nothing.

For a long second, he simply stood there, emerald eyes fixed on Shen Yuan with an intensity that made the air in the room feel several degrees colder, as though he were searching for something just beneath the surface of an ordinary servant’s face.

Then, without a word, he walked away.

Shen Yuan felt it instantly—that familiar, oppressive weight settling back over the estate, the surveillance technique reasserting itself with sudden, deliberate force, pressing into every corner of the household like a held breath finally released.

It had been absent since the night before, ever since Lin Xia had withdrawn it from this very room, and now it returned all at once, heavier than Shen Yuan had ever felt it.

Shen Yuan remained at his desk long after Bang Fo’s study door had clicked shut, the weight of that renewed surveillance pressing steadily against his senses like a hand was resting deliberately on the back of his neck.

Shen Yuan did not show any reaction on his face.

He simply resumed his transcription, brush moving in the same smooth, practiced strokes as before, giving nothing away to whatever unseen eyes now tracked his every movement.

’He looked at me like he was searching for something.’ The thought lingered as he worked, quiet and persistent beneath his composed exterior. ’Maybe he knew about the hatred Lin Xia had for me. Maybe he already knows what she had in mind and even that she came to see me.’

’Then it only means that he could link her disappearance to me. I don’t have power to tie up this loose end but he does not have any proof too.’

Whether that change had anything to do with Lin Xia’s absence, or simply some shift in Bang Fo’s perpetually inscrutable moods, Shen Yuan couldn’t say for certain.

But he filed the moment away regardless, another thread added to the growing tapestry of observations he’d been quietly weaving since his first day in this estate.

The rest of the morning passed without incident.

By midday, word had begun trickling through the household—not about Lin Xia’s disappearance directly, but about her replacement.

The oldest servant in the estate, a stooped, gray-haired man named Old Feng who had served the household longer than anyone could quite remember, had been summoned to Bang Fo’s study.

He emerged sometime later carrying himself with a new, unfamiliar authority, the modest badge of a head servant now fastened to his collar.

Whispers spread quickly among the staff.

"Where’s Lin Xia?"

"I heard she requested a transfer."

"No, I heard she simply left in the night. Didn’t even say inform anyone."

"Strange, isn’t it? She never struck me as the type to abandon her post without a word."

"Who knows man, maybe she is on a mission from the master himself."

Shen Yuan listened to the murmurs pass around him throughout the day, offering nothing, adding nothing, simply absorbing the shape of the story the estate seemed content to settle on.

No search was ordered.

No formal announcement was made.

Bang Fo, it appeared, had no interest in drawing attention to whatever had happened to the woman who’d managed his scribes for years.

’Either he genuinely doesn’t care’, Shen Yuan thought, watching Old Feng issue quiet instructions to a cluster of servants near the kitchen, ’or he does not want to attract any more attention to himself.’

Thinking about it, his thoughts drifted to the information he had come across before.

Either possibility unsettled him in its own way, though neither changed what he needed to do next: continue exactly as he had been, unremarkable but diligent.

—

The days that followed blurred together with the same quiet, disciplined monotony that had defined Shen Yuan’s entire month within Bang Fo’s estate.

He scribed documents.

He trained in secret during the estate’s nightly surveillance lulls, pushing his cultivation and techniques toward ever-greater refinement.

He listened, watched, and cataloged every scrap of information that drifted past him, piecing together fragments of the deeper conspiracy still coiled beneath the surface of this household.

Lin Xia’s absence faded into background noise soon enough, Old Feng settling into his new role with the same tired efficiency he’d shown for decades, and no further questions were raised.

Whatever secrets she’d carried to her end remained buried along with her, at least for now.

Bang Fo, for his part, never looked at Shen Yuan again with that same searching intensity from that first morning. If anything, he retreated further into his usual indifferent distance, rarely leaving his study, rarely acknowledging the servants who kept his estate running around him.

And so, one day at a time, the month drew steadily to its close.

—

On his final day of service, Shen Yuan was midway through his usual morning duties when a young servant approached him, voice hushed with the same nervous deference everyone in this household seemed to reserve for anything involving their master.

"Senior Brother Bang Fo wants to see you. In his study."

Shen Yuan set down the broom he’d been holding, expression carefully neutral despite the quiet, immediate spike of alertness humming beneath his composure.

’The final day. And now he wants to see me. What could it be?’

He made his way across the familiar courtyard, past the modest garden Bang Fo’s mother had apparently once tended, toward the study he’d first entered a month ago as a nervous, newly assigned attendant.

So much had changed since then—his cultivation, his understanding of this estate’s buried secrets, the quiet, growing list of threats he’d dealt with along the way.

He reached the door and knocked twice.

"Enter."

Shen Yuan drew in a slow breath, silver eyes settling into their usual unreadable calm, and pushed the door open.