# Chapter 108: Goods and Payment Settled
Zhao Rucheng did not rouse until well past noon. He shifted uncomfortably, intending to roll over and go back to sleep — but a nagging sense that he had forgotten something would not leave him.
Had there been, last night, a faint and cloying sweetness on the air? A whiff of something both sticky and metallic?
He sprang upright, threw on the nearest robe, and hastened out of doors.
Crossing the courtyard, he passed Jiang Wang, who was practicing his sword. Even in his hurry, he flung off a parting remark: "Third Brother, you ought to change your bedclothes — they've gotten terribly lumpy."
Before Jiang Wang could respond, he had already vanished.
"Hey!" Jiang Wang called after him, but the man was gone. He was frankly puzzled. "I replaced my bedding just at the start of the month."
He sheathed his sword and went into the bedchamber, searching the bed for a long while without finding anything amiss. Only when he finally threw the entire mattress aside did he discover, lodged against the bedboard, a tiny sliver of wood.
"..."
"Through two layers of padding, he could feel a splinter this small?"
"Perhaps that is what it means to be born into a grand household..."
---
The cloud cranes of the Lingxiao Pavilion did not fly about freely like messenger pigeons. In truth, they dwelt perpetually within the clouds, indistinguishable from the sea of mist. Dao-art power wrapped the messages, threading them through banks of white vapor, until — drawing near their destination — a wisp of cloud would be temporarily "torn free" and transformed into a cloud crane that drifted down.
Before that moment, even should one capture this power, the information within could not easily be unraveled; all one gained was a dispersing wisp of energy.
Thus did the cloud-crane message service count among the most secure of methods.
Ye Qingyu's letters usually arrived in the evening, just after dark had fallen and before the night grew thick. This one had been delayed by several days, for reasons she never disclosed.
The cloud crane flew in through the window. Jiang Wang reached out to receive it — but the crane veered aside and fluttered to rest before Jiang An'an.
"The letter is for me!" Jiang An'an giggled, setting down the copybook she had been practicing, and caught in her small hands both the cloud notepaper the crane dissolved into and an image-recording stone.
"Yes, yes, it is for you." Jiang Wang smiled with indulgence, moving closer to read it together.
Jiang An'an suddenly snatched up the letter and spun around, dashing for the door. "Not for you to see!"
"..."
Jiang An'an hid away in her bedchamber for quite some time before returning to the study.
"Where is the cloud crane?"
"I wrote a reply, and it flew back!"
Jiang Wang, who had been reading a Daoist scripture, turned his head. "Brother hasn't written his yet."
Jiang An'an shot him a triumphant glare. "That letter was written to me — it had nothing to do with you!"
He remembered when she had merely tacked a greeting onto his correspondence. In such a short time, she had engineered the pilfering of the crane, usurped the letter itself, and successfully taken his place as Ye Qingyu's pen-friend.
Jiang An'an then produced a small, adorable cloud crane to show off. "Sister Qingyu gave me a little cloud crane of my own too. From now on, whenever I miss her, I can just write to her directly!"
The message-bearing cloud crane was no simple cloud beast. It could track down its recipient and guarantee the safety of the letter it carried — a truly remarkable wonder. Why, even Du Yehu, that great and blustering lord, had to command a dull-witted common soldier to run back and forth delivering verbal messages! Such a treasure as a cloud crane, he had never even seen, let alone owned.
Of course, neither had Jiang Wang...
"Fine." Jiang Wang said sourly, "But if there's a word in your letter you don't recognize, or one you can't write in your reply, don't come begging me."
"Hmph." Jiang An'an pointed proudly at the copybooks on her little desk. "I've learned every single character in these calligraphy copybooks!"
"Remarkable, truly remarkable." Jiang Wang humored her halfheartedly before turning back to his Daoist scripture.
*Tomorrow I'll buy you new ones. Twenty copybooks!* he declared silently.
Jiang An'an took up her little brush and set about copying her characters properly.
Jiang Wang turned a page, then suddenly remembered the message Du Yehu had delivered that day. So, feigning unconcern, he asked, "An'an, do you ever miss someone? Someone about Brother's age, who left a while ago?"
"Who?"
"Oh, no one."
*An'an surely misses you, doesn't she? Eh, Du Tiger?*
---
At the Pavilion of Three Parts Fragrance.
In Miaoyu's chamber, Fang Zehou, the one who held real power over the Fang clan, sat upright in a chair, delicately savoring a cup of fragrant tea.
"How do you find it, Elder Fang?" Miaoyu asked in a soft voice.
Fang Zehou sniffed at the brew a while longer, then set the cup down.
"Nothing special." He seemed to be offering his verdict on the tea.
"If you have any conditions, you may name them." Miaoyu was not angered in the least; her smile remained radiant.
"No condition will move me." Fang Zehou rose and brushed the dust from his long robe. "What I cannot touch, I will not touch."
The world proclaimed him besotted with beauty, kneeling before Miaoyu's skirt. Had anyone guessed that here, in her fragrant boudoir, he would prove so unyielding in his refusal?
"Has Elder Fang forgotten, then, how the trade route through the Yun Kingdom came to be?"
Fang Zehou paused mid-step, then smiled lightly. "For the Yun Kingdom trade route, I am deeply grateful for the help of your Three Parts Fragrance Pavilion. But business is business, and I have paid every coin of the compensation agreed upon. Our goods and payment are settled — neither of us owes the other a thing. Surely the esteemed Pavilion of Three Parts Fragrance would not presume to take me hostage over this?"
"Of course not. If Elder Fang is firmly resolved, we will not press you."
"Thank you for your understanding, Lady Miaoyu." Fang Zehou sighed as he spoke. "Truly, it is not that I am unwilling to help you, my lady. But the situation in the Yun Kingdom is so tense these days that no one dares escort anyone across the border. Whoever that person may be, the risk is far too great."
Miaoyu smiled with alluring grace. "Elder Fang need not say more. Miaoyu understands completely."
"Lady Miaoyu is truly noble and far-sighted, with a bearing most extraordinary. Fang Zehou takes his leave; I shall come again to trouble you another day."
With a gesture of clasped hands, Fang Zehou departed.
Gazing at the closed door, Miaoyu smiled once more.
"If it truly were a transaction with the Three Parts Fragrance, then naturally your goods and payment are settled, and neither owes the other."
"But it was the White Bone Path that lent you their aid. How can you ever cleanse that debt?"
---
At the Wangyue Tower, within a certain secret chamber.
Fang Heling stood with his hands behind his back. "Are the arrangements all made?"
The steward, standing at his command, bowed his head. "The arrangements are made. But, young master, at present..."
Fang Heling cut him off with a wave. "Carry out my orders, and that is enough. I alone decide this!"
The steward had served the Fang clan for over a decade and knew very well the weight Fang Heling carried in Fang Zehou's heart.
But the matter was grave, and he could not keep the apprehension from his face. "It took us no small effort to open this trade route. This individual's origins are unknown — no one knows what crime they have committed. If the Yun Kingdom side should uncover it, our business would be ruined."
Ever since Fang Pengju's death, the Fang clan's prospects had been viewed with less favor than those of the other two houses. Nor had this stop there: earlier, the Swallow-Heart Human Demon had shattered the guardian formation of the ancestral hall and slain the clan's pillar of strength, the very keystone of its existence, and the whole Fang family's prestige now tottered on the brink of collapse. One could even say that nearly half of all its fortunes were sustained by this sole trade route that held exclusive access to the Yun Kingdom.
The Fang clan simply could not afford to gamble.
Yet the one who ruled the Fang clan now was Fang Zehou, and the title of clan head was merely waiting for the ailing old patriarch to breathe his last. Fang Heling, as Fang Zehou's legitimate son, was the heir apparent beyond any doubt; and he cultivated in the Inner Sect of the City Dao Academy. There was no resisting the words he spoke or the orders he gave.
Pressed so urgently, the steward had not even the chance to report the matter to Fang Zehou.
"To you, his origins are unknown. To this young master, they are perfectly clear. Rest assured — should any problem arise, I bear it."
With a few brief words Fang Heling dismissed the steward, then left the secret chamber.
Before long he stepped into a private dining booth, from which the clink of wine cups and the hum of conversation soon drifted out.
That day, he was hosting a banquet for his fellow disciples, and he knew nothing of any such matter.
Should anything truly go wrong, none of it could ever be pinned upon him.