The door closed softly behind Liu Mingfei as darkness gathered at the edges of Liu Shiye's vision.
When Liu Shiye opened his eyes, the oil lamp beside him had nearly burned dry.
The room felt smaller than before, its shadows sharper, as though the world itself had settled into clearer boundaries.
He sat motionless for a long time. The memory of death lingered. His fingers tapped lightly against the wooden table.
'I was right…The bitch is poisonous. But I lived and she hasn't moved' Liu Shiye wrecked his brain.
"Cultivation determined strength, yes—but strength alone did not determine survival. If it had, I would have died fighting rather than fading unnoticed." He mumbled under his breath.
Someone weaker than him had controlled his fate simply by controlling circumstances.
Food. Medicine. Access. Time. The realization settled heavily.
Power did not always announce itself. Often, it worked quietly—long before conflict appeared.
"Time." he realized, "What if she's waiting for something. Or, she underestimates my access. I certainly lack the resources… Could it be Liu Feng? No…. She seemed confused by his change. But…What if…."
He lowered his gaze toward Ahmose's text spread across the table. He sighed heavily. Lines describing trade routes, commodity exchanges, and foreign markets suddenly read differently than before. What once seemed like merchant knowledge now resembled cultivation manuals written for an entirely different battlefield. With complete memories came his mother's teachings. Her art was business more so than combat.
With Memories and Ahmose's text, Liu Shiye began to grasp the world. Corpse Mountain did not survive on coin.
Coin meant little where survival depended on exchange. Resources were currency.
Salt preserved life. Iron forged weapons. Herbs prolonged cultivation. Grain sustained clans through winter. Those who controlled supply controlled decisions.
A slow breath escaped him.
"My predecessor pursued strength through brutality. No finesse, no strategy," he murmured, "while others pursued necessity. Liu Feng, Liu Mingfei, Xue Ruo. All of the tribe. All are enemies, giants."
"Leaving the tribe to hunt rare beasts would be suicide at my current level. Other forces prowled the mountains, and stagnation at the Third Body Phase makes me prey rather than a hunter."
Direct strength was unavailable to him.
But influence…
Influence could grow quietly.
"I don't need power first," he said softly. "I need position. If my enemies pressure each other, and battles remain in the shadows. I have time to build defenses and counter."
Money was only a symbol.
What he truly required was dependence—others needing something only he could provide.
His thoughts turned toward the tribe itself.
Festivals.
Trade caravans.
Negotiations between clans.
Every agreement shared one constant.
Liquor.
Crude fermented drink accompanied every gathering: alliances sealed with it, disputes softened by it, merchants persuaded over it. Yet the alcohol itself was weak, cloudy, inconsistent—more tradition than commodity.
His eyes narrowed slightly.
In Ahmose's writings, the current wine market was slim around the world. And isolation kept the market all but separate. But in truth, with increase in world trade, raw material wasn't an issue, the demand was the problem. And the demand for wine created similarly with no special traits other than taste, while taste for local flavoring for local pallets was the go to, made international wine trade nonexistent.
"Distillation." Liu Shiye smirked.
Not fermentation alone, but refinement through separation—heat guiding vapor, vapor returning as something purer, stronger.
A process simple in principle yet absent here.
He stood abruptly.
If cultivation is refined energy…
Distillation refined substance.
The parallel struck him with sudden clarity.
Stronger liquor required no dangerous expeditions. No cultivation breakthroughs. Only knowledge—and controlled production.
A resource no clan currently monopolized.
A product desirable across every social boundary.
"If I control the brew," he murmured slowly, "I control the gatherings."
And gatherings controlled information.
Influence.
Trade.
Protection.
For the first time since awakening in this life, Liu Shiye felt certainty unconnected to physical strength.
He did not need to become the strongest man in Corpse Mountain.
He only needed to become necessary.
The lamp finally sputtered out, the thin thread of smoke curling upward like a dying thought.
But Liu Shiye did not sleep.
He sat in the darkness long after the wick had gone cold, listening to the tribe breathe. Dogs barked in the distance. Somewhere, a drunkard laughed too loudly and was shushed by his wife. The wind pressed against the papered window lattice, carrying with it the faint scent of damp earth and livestock.
When dawn finally bled gray across the horizon, he rose.
He sat in the darkness long after the wick had gone cold, listening to the tribe breathe. Dogs barked in the distance. Somewhere, a drunkard laughed too loudly and was shushed by his wife. The wind pressed against the papered window lattice, carrying with it the faint scent of damp earth and livestock.
When dawn finally bled gray across the horizon, he rose.
He did not dress as the heir of the Liu main line. No embroidered cuffs. No jade clasp. Only a plain outer robe, sleeves tied back with cord. He left through the side path rather than the main courtyard, stepping into the world as something new—not the arrogant young master people avoided—but a quiet observer, a hungry businessman.
The tribe stirred in layers.
Closer to the inner compound, courtyards were swept clean. Servants carried polished grain jars. Millet hung in neat bundles beneath overhangs, golden and orderly. The main clans controlled the best fields on the southern slopes, where irrigation trenches gleamed like silver threads in the morning light. Sorghum heads bowed heavy and red. Barley swayed in tidy rows. Every stalk there had already been counted, weighed, and in many cases pre-sold months before harvest.
Profit was predictable.
Power was measured.
He walked past it all without slowing.
The earth gradually worsened beneath his feet. Packed clay gave way to uneven ground. Houses leaned instead of stood. Roof thatching was patched with mismatched straw. Here, smoke was thinner, cooking pots smaller.
This was where overlooked things survived.
He found the small personal mill almost by accident—a crooked wooden frame half swallowed by creeping vine. Its grindstone was chipped along one edge, the wooden handle worn pale where countless hands had pushed.
An old man worked it alone.
The grindstone turned with a dry, patient rhythm. Crunch. Scrape. Crunch. A sack lay open beside him, spilling coarse yellow kernels onto a reed mat.
Liu Shiye slowed but did not announce himself immediately. He crouched instead, letting his fingers dip into the grain.
The kernels were fat. Sun-hardened. Rough against his palm.
Maize.
The laughter that nearly escaped him was sharp and disbelieving. In this world of millet wine and weak sour brews, this was treasure disguised as fodder.
"Uncle," he said lightly.
The old man did not stop pushing. His arms trembled faintly from long habits rather than weakness. "Mm?"
"This grain." Liu Shiye lifted a kernel to the light. "What do you use it for?"
The grindstone slowed.
The old man glanced sideways, eyes milky but not dull. He took in the plain robe, the clean hands, the bearing that plain cloth could not fully disguise.
"Feed mostly," he replied. "Chickens don't complain. Sometimes porridge, when rice jars are empty." He spat to the side. "Hard on the teeth. Not worth much. But Zhengqi merchants trade it with lesser folk in great amounts."
The grindstone resumed its scraping.
"How much?" Liu Shiye asked, voice casual, as if idly curious.
The old man barked a short laugh. "Two copper for a sack. And that's if you can find someone foolish enough to take it off your hands. It's a means of survival, nothing luxurious."
Two copper.
In Liu Shiye's mind, the numbers did not merely add—they multiplied. He saw crushed mash steaming in sealed clay vats. Saw fermented sweetness turning sharp. Saw a copper coil condensing vapor into clear drops.
Clear liquor.
Stronger than anything these tribesmen had tasted.
He kept his face smooth.
"I'll take twenty sacks."
The grindstone stopped entirely this time.
The old man straightened slowly, one hand pressed against his lower back. "Young master…" The title slipped out despite the plain clothes. "For what?"
"Experimenting," Liu Shiye replied, offering a faint smile that revealed nothing.
The old man searched his face for mockery and found none. Instead, he saw coins—real coins—withdrawn from a small pouch and placed deliberately onto the edge of the millstone.
Not thrown.
Not tossed.
Placed.
The old man's fingers hovered before gathering them. He counted twice.
"Twenty sacks," he repeated, as though testing the reality of it.
"I'll send boys to collect by tomorrow afternoon," Liu Shiye said. "If there's more available in nearby homes, I'll take that too."
The old man's brows knit. "No one buys this much."
"I do."
There was no arrogance in the tone. Only certainty.
Word traveled quickly among the poor—not through shouting, but through quiet door-to-door murmurs. Liu Shiye walked himself to several cracked earthen homes, ducking beneath low lintels, greeting elders first before speaking of grain.
He did not haggle downward.
He offered two copper per sack, and paid one in advance for every five promised.
The small advance was deliberate. Enough to create obligation. Not enough to draw suspicion from clan granaries.
A woman with a baby tied to her back stared at the coins in her palm as if they might vanish. "You'll… come back for it?"
"Within three days," Liu Shiye replied.
"And if the clan asks?"
"Tell them it's animal feed for the Liu compound," he said calmly. "Which is not untrue."
She hesitated, then nodded.
At another home, a thin boy tried to lift a sack and nearly tipped backward. Liu Shiye steadied it with one hand, surprising both of them. The boy blinked up at him.
"Young master," the boy whispered, awed.
"Call me Shiye-ge if you must call me anything," he said lightly.
The boy grinned, gap-toothed.
By midday, he had spoken with seven households. By midafternoon, twelve. None of the quantities alone were large enough to trigger notice. Together, however, they formed something substantial.
A supply chain hidden beneath contempt.
By dusk, commitments reached nearly two hundred sacks, all at the same fixed low price.
As he walked back to find the old man at the mill, the sky bruised purple above Corpse Mountain. Smoke rose from cooking fires like low clouds. He passed fields of millet again—their owners confident, complacent.
They controlled the good harvests.
They had no idea what grew in the cracks.
Satisfaction warmed him—not the hot, reckless pride of his former self, but something steadier. He was not seizing power openly.
He was building it quietly.
For once, he was constructing something no elder had arranged, no rival anticipated, no clan ledger recorded.
And when the first drop of clear liquor ran from his still, Corpse Mountain would taste a future none of them had imagined.
"Say, Uncle…" Liu Shiye found the Old Man once again, "What should I call you?"
"Uncle Meng is just fine, lad" he replied.
"Mm, Uncle Meng, I want to store my stock with you," He began, "But I'm curious. One, for your price and secondly, what is it that Zhengqi trades with you all?"
Uncle Meng cut his eyes and made sure no one was around as he stepped closer to Liu Shiye, "Not Zhengqi, a Zhengqi man. He likes to collect the Blue Spotted Toads in the pounds over there."
Liu Shiye frowned, lancing at the pond, "How many?"
"However much you can carry. He then vanishes for the deep mountains. He's been around for a year now." Uncle Meng explained.
Liu Shiye noted this oddity then put it to the back of his mind. After a small negotiation with Uncle Meng, Liu Shiye took his leave.
_____________________________________
At that same hour, Xue Ruo stood alone in her private courtyard, eyes colder than the frost still clinging to the stone tiles.
Morning light filtered through carved lattice screens, breaking into thin geometric patterns across the ground. Every surface reflected careful order—trimmed bamboo, raked gravel, a koi pond so still it resembled polished glass. Nothing in the courtyard grew wild. Nothing existed without permission.
Including the people kneeling before her.
Two spies knelt with their foreheads lowered, robes damp where they touched the chilled stone. Neither dared look up. Even the servants stationed beyond the corridor held their breath, aware that silence here was not peace—it was warning.
Xue Ruo held a porcelain teacup between her fingers. Steam rose gently, curling past her unmoving face.
"He accompanied Liu Mingfei again?" she asked.
Her tone was even, almost soft.
That frightened them more than anger would have.
"Yes, Miss," one spy answered carefully. "Young Master Liu Feng has been seen escorting her near the river gardens for the past three mornings."
The faintest clink sounded as porcelain met saucer.
The courtyard fell utterly still.
River gardens.
Public grounds.
Not hidden meetings. Not accidental encounters.
Displayed.
Xue Ruo lowered her gaze to the tea, watching the surface ripple once before settling again. Her reflection stared back—perfectly composed, perfectly dignified.
Family arrangements were politics.
She had understood that since childhood. Engagements were contracts written in smiles and sealed with advantage. Love was irrelevant. Affection optional.
Respect, however—
Respect was mandatory.
Her fingers tightened slightly around the cup.
"Does he think me blind?" she whispered.
The words were quiet enough that the spies almost wondered if they had imagined them.
Her engagement to Liu Feng had not been born from romance but strategy. Her family's backing strengthened his claim within the Liu clan; his rising status secured her influence within Corpse Mountain. Together, they were meant to become an axis others revolved around.
Instead, he walked openly beside another woman.
A woman tied to Liu Shiye.
That detail mattered most.
Her gaze sharpened.
This was no longer merely a man's foolish indulgence. It hinted at factions forming, loyalties shifting, and—worse—public perception turning.