A relatively young man stood proudly within the Flowing River Sect treasury, eyeing the entrance for any incoming clients. Although he would be thirty years of age this year, his complexion was no worse than a teenager, and his robes belonged to the inner sect.

Hatanaka Hachiro was finally placed in charge of supervising the treasury!

As a Foundation Establishment inner-sect disciple who normally worked under Hideaki Akiyoshi’s supervision, his opportunities for promotion were few. In the infrequent cases that Hideaki Akiyoshi was absent from the treasury, he would have a vice elder at the Core Crystallization stage substitute for him, not Hachiro.

This decision was not an unusual or loathsome action, as it was natural to have someone with greater authority and power supervise the primary location and management of the sect’s wealth. Such a person would ensure that there was always somebody with appropriate backing to handle unforeseen difficulties, disruptive altercations or complex, technical issues.

While stories and anecdotes amongst mortals often depicted cultivators as entities with a higher moral code of conduct and ethics like a Buddha, this was far from the truth. Cultivators were just as ambitious and greedy as mortals, often moreso, sometimes crueler and wilder, especially in pursuit of their goals.

This discrepancy between rumors and reality stemmed from a combination of an inferiority complex by mortals that viewed cultivators as dignified deities that occasionally graced them with their presence and the fact that mortals rarely held anything of value to a cultivator which would entice their greed.

It was because of these truths that made the younger disciples insufficient when dealing with the stronger, older disciples and external merchants who were not afraid to throw their weight around.

So it came as a pleasant surprise to Hachiro when he, instead of the usual crisis deterrent, was put in charge by the well-respected Tributary while he left to make his report to the First Elder.

Of course, after he thought about it for a while, Akiyoshi Hideaki’s decision was not that strange.

The treasury had fewer and fewer visitors coming in the past few days, so the employed disciples were doing less work and more standing around than anything else. Additionally, nearly all the vice elders were flitting around the sect or locking it down in search of the Rusty Robber. Even Hachiro agreed that having a vice elder supervise the desolate treasury would truly be a waste of resources.

As the eighth son of a middle class merchant family in Ryuga and one of Hideaki’s top aides, he was a better fit than his other brother disciples that he worked alongside. So while there was a bit of envy and tongue-clicking, no one threw a tantrum.

Sadly, as expected, no one was coming to trade in credits.

Hachiro wanted to impress elder brother with some good results but that did not seem feasible, so he settled on plan B—making sure nothing untoward happened. As long as he could report that everything was well, perhaps elder brother would rely on him again in the future.

It was taught within his family that such rare opportunities could foster trust out of nothing, an important chance for any and all businessmen.

This was no time to be greedy nor was it time to be complacent!

Sensing something approaching the entrance of the treasury, Hachiro gazed outside to see a spear carrying a bag flying towards him.

A carrier! Oh Heavens, it was a carrier!

He could barely contain his excited trembling.

The carriers were usually owned by the influential and rich disciples who could afford to splurge their credits for a bit of showboating and convenience. They would order dozens of low-tier spirit stones or sometimes, if it was an older disciple, a middle-tier spirit stone. Pair their status with the First Elder’s guarantee and even elder brother must handle the carriers with the utmost care and convenience, for even their lives could be forfeit if something went wrong.

The treasury would be lucky to receive a couple of carriers a week, and there had been months where no carrier showed up. With this, not only would Hachiro have something to report to his elder brother, but it would be an important, and most likely lucrative, transaction!

The spear entered the treasury and was about to head to one of the clerks who was doing some light meditation behind a desk when Hachiro intercepted it. He would settle this one personally.

He walked to an empty desk while reaching for the keystone and paper request in the bag. He noted the cave number in one of the logbooks.

2-303?

This should be a cave located on the outer perimeter of the sect, usually owned by an outer-sect disciple or servant. Where would such a person get a carrier? Did an elder lend them theirs?

He threw his doubts to the back of his mind before looking at the receipt. It was not one of the magical receipts that required a signature before revealing its contents but a non-magical sheet of paper with an item and number jotted down.

10 low-tier spirit stones?

A cost of one thousand sect credits which would not be worth mentioning among the requests of other carriers but this was an amount outer-sect disciples and servants would have to save for upwards of two years.

Hachiro paused to ponder the possibilities before reaching an epiphany.

Sometimes, the disciples formed groups to consolidate their points and gamble on who would receive all of it. A third party of higher standing, often a vice elder, would draw one keystone from a bag holding all of them, and then he would transfer all the credits to that keystone before revealing the engraved number.

Perhaps the third party went the extra step to purchase the spirit stones with his carrier before awarding them to the winning party.

Hachiro extracted a thousand credits from the keystone that held a thousand and two credits before fetching ten low-tier spirit stones and placing them in the bag alongside the owner’s keystone and paper request that now held Hachiro’s signature of receipt. He then signaled the spear to fly towards the respective direction of the cave indicated by the keystone’s inscription.

The spear had several compounded enchantments placed on it that would guide it to either the treasury or a specified cave in the sect on its own.

He breathed a sigh of relief once he saw the spear disappear around the corner of the entrance.

While that amount of spirit stones did not impact individuals such as his elder brother and his master, ten low-tier spirit stones would cost him much of his savings.

Failure to fulfill the carrier requests in a timely manner would compel the First Elder to grant three times the request to the patron. Hachiro could count the number of times a carrier had not adhered to the elder’s guarantee on one hand, and none of them ended happily.

One time, it was an order of twenty low-tier spirit stones which resulted in a sixty spirit stone debt on the back of the Qi Flourishing outer-sect clerk that had made the mistake. It took that man several years to recover from the debt which resulted in the stagnation of his cultivation during his prime years, putting his future advancement at a greater disadvantage.

But even that could be considered a light sentence compared to the other instance Hachiro knew of.

A Foundation Establishment inner-sect disciple whom he was personally acquainted with had messed up an order of three middle-tier spirit stones, causing it to be late by three minutes more than what was permitted. Shortly after the First Elder was forced to award the patron nine middle-tier spirit stones, he destroyed all three of his peer’s dantians before having him tossed outside the sect’s gates.

Hachiro shuddered from the memory.

Last he heard of him, the poor lad was sleeping on Ryuga’s streets too dumb and weak to beg for food, so Hachiro asked his mortal family to give him some food from time to time.

Hachiro was brought back to the present once he sensed something approaching the treasury entrance once again.

A spear holding a bag was coming his way once again.

Did the carrier return?

Hachiro panicked as he worried whether something had gone wrong with one of the carrier’s enchantments. Proper protocol dictated that he promptly swap the spear with a second one in their inventory before sending it on its way. Even though the delivery would take an extra minute as a result, he still had plenty of time to spare.

He ordered one of the attendants dozing off behind the desk to fetch a spear before intercepting the carrier once more, but he quickly called him back once he noticed that the spear was not the same one as before since the spirit stones were absent and the keystone had a different cave’s inscription.

Hachiro trembled with excitement and disbelief.

It was another carrier!

Two in a single day was extremely rare. And within minutes of each other, this might be the first!

With this additional report, he would truly brighten elder brother’s day once he returned. Thanks to his elation, Hachiro completely disregarded the fact that the carrier came from another exterior cave…that is, until he read the paper request.

10 middle-tier spirit stones?!

Hachiro reread the paper while blinking several times to make sure he was not seeing things; then he rechecked the keystone to confirm the cave’s location.

A middle-tier spirit stone was a luxury most cultivators could not afford—a single one cost 1,000,000 sect credits.

For comparison’s sake, a low-tier spirit stone cost a hundred sect credits which would normally take a month or two of careful saving to purchase. It was for this reason that groups of servants and outer sect disciples would gather their credits and give a lucky one amongst them a huge boost at the cost of only one or two months from the majority.

But ten low-tier stones could not compare to even a single middle-tier stone, let alone ten! Even if some older, inner sect disciples and vice elders banded together to perform a similar gamble, it would be too difficult for them to amass 10,000,000 credits for a single person’s gain.

Moreover, a middle-tier spirit stone held Qi of much greater quantity and quality to the extent that one at the Core Crystallization could take several years to completely assimilate a single one.

Only the six elders or maybe Vice Elder Shirou could reasonably accumulate this amount of credits on their own, but they did not often make use of the treasury’s resources. And if one of them had made this request, why would the keystone belong to an unimportant outer sect cave instead of their personal cave?

Thinking about this, Hachiro was left with only one possible explanation.

It must be a prank!

Once he convinced himself with his deduction, he breathed a sigh of relief and was a bit annoyed that a prank came during such an important time for him. He decided he would report the cave to elder brother so that the perpetrator would get punished, but first, he would have to follow proper protocol.

Hachiro placed the keystone into one of the basic tribulatory demarcators (TD) and waited for the dial to point to the number so he could calculate the amount of insufficient funds for the receipt before sending it back.

This was not an unusual occurrence as many of the rich and powerful cultivators in the sect were in seclusions that could last upwards of years, so they were not always certain of the amount of credits they had. They would sometimes, intentionally or unintentionally, use their carrier to make a request which would either give them the spirit stones and items they desired or an accurate account of the credits left on their keystone.

Hachiro looked at the dial, and his heart skipped a beat.

It was a TD with a dial that could measure up to 1,000,000 credits, and the needle pointed past the maximum.

The two other clerks who were present rose their eyebrows at the substitute supervisor who suddenly yanked the desk drawer out and pulled out a treasury storage bag. Without wasting a single breath, he took out one placeholder keystone, placed it in the TD’s exchange plate and pressed the exchange button. Then, he paused, eyeing the dial intensely.

His eyes widened.

He pressed the button a second time.

They widened even more.

He repeated this process until he had pressed it a total of ten times, and Hachiro’s eyes had nearly leapt out of their sockets.

The keystone still had another two hundred credits left after extracting the ten million credits for the middle-tier spirit stones…

Hachiro noted the completion of the transaction in the logbooks before securing the placeholder keystone back in the storage bag.

Even though the placeholder keystones and treasury storage bags were enchanted with multiple layers of protection and tracking that discouraged attempts of theft, he still felt the pressure of walking around with a fortune in his robes.

He was in a daze until the clerks staring at him caught his eye, and they pointed at the spear still floating in front of the desk..

Oops! He had forgotten to get the ten middle-tier spirit stones!

Hachiro pulled out the First Elder’s seal that Elder Brother Hideaki loaned him and held it up to gloat in front of the other clerks. They either rolled their eyes or looked away bitterly. Without delaying any further, he placed it in front of one of the bottom drawers in the desk.

While each desk had a couple of middle-tier spirit stones in the open-access drawers, the bags that held a greater number of them were locked behind the enchanted drawers and a vault in the back.

He pulled out ten middle-tier spirit stones and placed them on the table for a moment to show off a second time in front of the other clerks whom he usually worked alongside. They could feel a refreshing aura wafting from their direction that encouraged one to cultivate.

After placing the bag back in the drawer and carefully loading the spirit stones into the carrier’s storage bag, he noted down the model number of the spear and sent it on its way, only relaxing after he saw the carrier turn the corner and out of his sight.

With the model number in hand, he could look up whom they had sold the carrier to and how many years had passed since then.

While he was ecstatic to complete the transaction of a lifetime in the middle of his temporary supervisory role, he knew his elder brother would be more interested in the identity of the buyer.

Hachiro’s celebratory mood did not last long as the sight that followed left not only him, but also the clerks, dumbfounded at what was happening.

Scores of flying spears began flying into the treasury through the entrance, each clerk receiving half a dozen or more at the same time.

Hachiro was the first to regain his bearings this time.

“Call the others in here to help. Have one prepare the order while another verifies the amount on the stones!”

Due to the recent lack of activity, most of the clerks were in the back cultivating, but they were needed now. And with the number of carriers that had flown in, they could not wait to check the credits before preparing the requested materials; otherwise, they would not be able to process all of the carriers within the time limit.

Also, Hachiro was not born yesterday. Two at the same time might have been a coincidence, but this many carriers at once obviously came from the same source. He was certain they carried enough credits for all their purchases.

The treasury came to life with the clerk disciples scurrying back and forth, here and there, to and fro, gathering the appropriate number of spirit stones or finding a vacant TD to extract the sect credits.

At the beginning, almost every request was questioned and brought to Hachiro for approval.

“Brother, this one is asking for 1,000 low-tier stones.”

“This one wants 10,000 as well.”

“Brother Hatanaka! This one wants 100 mid-tier stones.”

“50,000 low, 500 mid here!”

The mind-boggling numbers kept on coming and kept on getting bigger.

Thankfully, Hachiro’s good foundation helped keep him calm. He circulated a breath of Qi and then approved the orders as they came. He even passed around the First Elder’s extremely important seal that he showed off earlier to the clerks so that they could save time unlocking the other drawers and access the larger quantities of spirit stones.

Eventually, the clerks stopped coming to Brother Hatanaka for approval as they noticed each absurdly extravagant request had sufficient credits.

Even though their cultivation stage allowed each of them to quickly and accurately gather hundreds of stones within minutes, they had to work together to finish all the requests in time.

Within ten short minutes, there were only a few spears left which would only take another minute or so to send them on their way.

Everything had proceeded smoothly up to this point, and Hatanaka was flying on cloud nine.

He had begun to worry that the treasury would be cleaned out, but within his past few years of working here, he learned of the true depths of the sect’s vault and the First Elder’s wealth. They were nearly finished with the carriers, and he knew the treasury still had sufficient resources to keep running smoothly afterwards although they might have to be frugal for a while until they replenish their resources.

Once he gave elder brother the good news, Hachiro had no doubt he would be given greater prestige and trust, perhaps even a promotion.

“Brother Hatanaka, you need to see this…”