Chương 55: Chapter 24 Part 2

Leaving the sweltering heat of the ballroom behind, Xuan Ji navigated the opulent halls of the Morvant Estate until she found the master study. It was a massive, wood-paneled room lined with towering bookshelves and centered around a heavy, imported mahogany desk. She took a seat in the plush, high-backed leather chair that had previously belonged to the traitorous Duke, resting her boots casually on the polished wood.

Waiting for her in the room, standing at rigid attention, were the surviving standard members of the Vanguard. There were twenty hardened mercenaries in total, their armor dented and their faces marked with fresh bandages from the brutal, desperate defense of the Vael Estate against the Blood Cult's initial raid. They looked incredibly nervous. They were used to standard Guild contracts, where a breached defensive line usually resulted in docked pay, revoked licenses, or a violent execution by disgruntled nobles.

Xuan Ji didn't offer a scolding. She tapped her heavy silver void ring against the desk. With a series of heavy, metallic thuds, twenty massive leather sacks materialized across the mahogany surface. The bags clinked with the unmistakable, heavy sound of pure gold.

"Fifteen men died holding the outer walls of the previous estate," Xuan Ji stated, her voice calm and absolute, echoing clearly in the quiet study.

"I have already secured their names from Vice Guild Master Durgan. Their families are to receive a severance of five thousand gold pieces each. Enough to buy a merchant ship and never work another day in their lives." The mercenaries blinked in stunned silence. Five thousand gold pieces was an astronomical sum. It was the kind of wealth that altered generations.

"The rest of you," Xuan Ji continued, tapping her ring a second time. A small pile of glowing, crystallized monster cores materialized on the desk, a mix of vibrant green B-rank cores and pulsing blue A-rank cores farmed from the upper levels of the Grand Abyss.

"You held the line when protocol dictated you should run. You bought me the time I needed." She gestured to the glowing loot.

"Distribute these among yourselves according to your physical capacity to absorb them. You fought for my house, so my house will ensure you are the strongest, most heavily compensated warriors in the capital. The Vanguard is officially permanently retained." The mercenaries didn't cheer; they simply stared at the woman behind the desk with a profound, terrifying reverence. In the brutal, cutthroat world of Elyndria's underworld, loyalty was often a one-way street demanded by the rich.

Ming Xuan Ji was establishing herself as a sovereign who actually took care of her people. After the stunned mercenaries bowed deeply and filed out of the study with their bounties, Xuan Ji stood up and walked toward the tall glass doors that opened into the estate's private training courtyard. Outside in the crisp midday air, Vice Guild Master Durgan, Axel the dark elf, and Garrick the shield-bearer were hard at work.

They had stripped off their heavy armor and shirts, their scarred, bandaged torsos gleaming with sweat despite the cool weather. The three veterans were meticulously drawing massive, complex geometric arrays on the cobblestones using alchemical chalk. Sitting in the exact center of each chalk array were the pristine, pulsing A-rank and S-rank Abyssal cores Xuan Ji had given them the night before. The sheer, condensed mana radiating from the gems made the air inside the chalk circles visually warp and distort.

Xuan Ji leaned against the glass doors, watching them with a critical, approving eye. Absorbing an Abyssal core wasn't like eating a health potion. It was a violent, agonizing process of forcefully injecting high-density, foreign ambient mana into mortal meridians. If they rushed it, their veins would literally explode. The chalk arrays were designed to filter the raw energy, slowing the absorption rate so their bodies could gradually adapt to the expansion of their internal limits.

If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it. Durgan looked up, catching her eye. He offered a firm, highly respectful nod, his face tight with a mixture of intense anxiety and deep excitement. They were preparing to shatter the ceiling of their mortal potential. Xuan Ji nodded back, silently wishing them luck on their "level up" sequence, before turning back into the halls of the estate. As she rounded a corner near the grand parlor, she nearly collided with Evanthe.

The fourteen-year-old girl was carrying a massive, towering stack of folded linen sheets that completely obscured her vision, wobbling precariously on her feet. A terrified estate maid was hovering nervously behind her, wringing her hands and quietly begging the young lady to put the laundry down.

"And just what exactly are you doing?" Xuan Ji asked, stepping smoothly into Evanthe's path. Evanthe peeked around the side of the massive stack of sheets, her dark eyes wide.

"Master! I... I was just helping the staff prepare the guest wing. Since Lithia is using the ballroom, we had to move some of the bedding, " Xuan Ji didn't say a word. She simply reached out with one hand, easily plucking the massive, fifty-pound stack of linens from Evanthe's arms as if it were made of feathers, and handed it to the relieved maid, who immediately bowed and scurried away.

"Master, I can help," Evanthe protested softly, looking down at her hands.

"I feel perfectly fine. The pain is completely gone. I have all this energy, and I just... I want to be useful. I don't want to be a burden." Xuan Ji sighed, recognizing the deeply ingrained trauma response. For a long time, Evanthe had been a political pawn, a hostage, and a victim of her own body. Now that she was healed, she felt a desperate, driving need to prove her worth. Xuan Ji placed a hand gently on Evanthe's shoulder, guiding the young girl into the grand parlor.

She gently pushed Evanthe down onto a wildly expensive, plush velvet sofa.

"Evanthe, your Yin-Yang core is perfectly stabilized," Xuan Ji explained, her voice softening into a rare, gentle tone.

"Your spiritual foundation is currently the most flawless, profound engine on this continent. But your physical flesh, your bones, and your muscles are still adjusting to that sheer density of power. You spent weeks dying of thermal shock. Your body needs time to catch up to your spirit." Xuan Ji reached over to a nearby mahogany side-table, picked up a thick, leather-bound novel, a collection of eastern poetry left behind by the Morvants, and tossed it into Evanthe's lap.

"As your Master, I am officially assigning you your very first Mission," Xuan Ji declared, crossing her arms and projecting absolute authority. Evanthe immediately straightened her spine, looking incredibly serious and determined.

"Yes, Master. I am ready. What is the objective?"

"Your objective," Xuan Ji said, pointing a finger at her, "is Extreme Relaxation. For the next seven days, you are strictly forbidden from lifting anything heavier than a teacup. You will not sweep, you will not carry linens, and you will not circulate your Qi for martial training. You will sit in the sun, you will read books, and you will eat pastries. Do you understand?" Evanthe blinked, completely bewildered by the sheer lack of suffering involved in the command.

"But... but Master, ""I am the Heavenly Demon, and my word is law within this estate," Xuan Ji interrupted with a dramatic, exaggerated scowl.

"If I catch you doing chores, I will double your relaxation time. Am I understood, Disciple?" A small, incredibly bright smile finally broke across Evanthe's face. She hugged the poetry book to her chest and nodded firmly.

"Understood, Master." Satisfied that her disciple was effectively grounded for her own good, Xuan Ji walked over to a massive, incredibly comfortable armchair by the parlor window and collapsed into it. She let out a long breath, finally allowing her posture to completely slouch. She looked down at the heavy silver void ring on her finger. With a mental flick, her gamer-honed mind pulled up the internal inventory of the sub-spatial ring. The sheer volume of raw data made her head throb.

She had hundreds of unrefined monster pelts from her initial forest journey. She had thousands of herbs, Wyrm scales, and other material from her week-long dive with Lynx. She had heavily damaged, cursed armor and weapons dropped from Death-Knights, and now, she had forty pounds of raw, mythical Ancient Gold Dragon scales that she needed to forge into Vanguard and her disciple gear.

To convert this massive mountain of raw loot into usable capital and equipment, she would have to spend days categorizing it by rank, visiting the alchemy guilds to haggle over herb prices, and standing over a blistering forge to craft the weapons. It was the most tedious, mind-numbing part of any RPG: Post-Raid Inventory Management. Xuan Ji physically groaned, letting her head fall back against the plush velvet of the armchair.

The mere thought of negotiating prices with Elyndria's stuck-up merchant class right now sounded infinitely worse than fighting a dragon.

"Nope, I should find someone else to do it for me." Xuan Ji muttered to herself, closing her eyes and letting the warm sunlight wash over her face.

"Inventory management is a problem for tomorrow. Today, I am doing absolutely nothing."