"It's all thanks to the Young Master. Yesterday he handed me over a hundred pills and told me to pass them out among the guards. He said that among second-rank medicines, these were the very finest Pills. I didn't believe it at first either, but after a single night, every one of them broke through. Even I shattered the shackle that had bound me and stepped into the fourth grade of Yellow Rank." Mo Yanjun's voice carried real excitement.

"Over a hundred pills that could push everyone into Yellow Rank!" Old Master Tang was utterly dumbstruck.

For a pill to carry that kind of potency, it had to be at least second-rank Middle Grade or higher. A single pill of that caliber would fetch forty or fifty thousand taels of silver on the open market at the very least, and over a hundred of them came to several million taels.

Even the Tang Family would wince at parting with that kind of fortune. As for Tang Yan, whose own pocket money he himself had cut off, there was no way the boy could have laid out such a princely sum.

In that instant, Old Master Tang's thoughts drifted once again to Tang Yan's mysterious master.

"Patriarch, by the Young Master's earlier reckoning, the stipends for these hundred and twenty men come to twenty-four thousand taels of silver every month." Mo Yanjun spoke with some worry at his side.

Old Master Tang of course remembered the reward arrangements Tang Yan had laid out that day to spur the guards on.

At the time he had assumed it would take these men who knew how many years to advance, so he hadn't worried in the slightest. Only now did he see how badly he'd misjudged.

An extra twenty thousand taels in monthly outlay was something the Tang Family could shoulder for now. But once these men climbed to the second grade, third grade, fourth grade of Yellow Rank, or even reached Black Rank, wouldn't the family's daily spending swell to a truly terrifying figure?

Yet Old Master Tang would never complain about having too many experts under the Tang banner. If anything, he wished every last guard were already a Heaven Rank master. He waved a hand. "These are nothing. With guards like these, my Tang Family can stand on undefeated ground and build still greater fortunes. The reward arrangements Little Yan set up before are to be carried out exactly as he planned."

After another half hour at the martial field, Old Master Tang clasped his hands behind his back and strolled out.

He couldn't quite put his mood into words; he only knew his feet felt light enough to float.

A hundred Yellow Rank experts! How much fighting strength had the Tang Family gained in a single night?

Lost in his daze, Old Master Tang lifted his head and realized this road led straight toward his grandson's residence.

Realizing it had been some days since he'd last spoken with the boy, he lifted his foot and headed for Tang Yan's courtyard gate.

Tang Yan's small courtyard.

Xiaocui and Zi Yun sat in two rattan chairs, chatting as they watched Tang Yan train.

Zi Yun had been a beauty from birth, her bearing extraordinary, and she carried an inborn nobility, the natural air of someone born above others. At first this left Xiaocui stiff and guarded, but Zi Yun's gentle, easy way of talking soon closed the distance between them.

When women talk, it only takes one of them to open a topic and the words flow on like an endless river. Before long, Zi Yun had pieced together seven or eight parts of Tang Yan's history.

But the more she learned of his past, the tighter her brows knit.

True, she had met Tang Yan for the first time only yesterday. Yet the decisiveness and precision with which he had directed her in battle were things no one could manage without long, hard study.

The Young Master Tang that Xiaocui described, though, was a thieving, loafing wastrel of a dandy, one who had only begun to change in the past month or so.

As a daughter of Purple Bamboo City, Zi Yun's eye for reading faces and people was no small thing. Looking at Cui'er's guileless, simple face, she was certain the girl spoke nothing but the truth.

At that thought, Zi Yun grew all the more curious about Tang Yan.

A man who could fool even the maid who'd served at his side for more than ten years, just what sort of monster was he?

Zi Yun's gaze settled on Tang Yan despite herself. Right now he stood in the courtyard, running through six very strange movements.

Each motion swept through an enormous range, and all of them looked thoroughly ungainly. Zi Yun half suspected that if Tang Yan put in any more force, he'd twist his body into a pretzel.

Not only were the six moves bizarre in posture, they linked head to tail. Once the sixth was finished, it returned to the very starting point, so that he cycled through the six without end.

Zi Yun counted herself a Heaven Rank martial artist, yet to perform Tang Yan's moves with such proficiency, it seemed, it seemed, might not be so easy even for her. Just what on earth were these six moves?

Tang Yan, of course, paid no mind to what Zi Yun thought. These six moves were the Six Extreme Forms he had created in his past life.

Every single form pushed to the absolute limit the human body could bear. And human Potential ran deep. To hold a movement at the body's very edge without doing harm to oneself, a single form had to draw on a great many principles.

What's more, each move could only be brought off by pouring out every last ounce of strength.

In this way, in the span of just half a shichen, the True Qi within Tang Yan's body could be drained utterly dry.

At that point Tang Yan would swallow a Pill and recover to his peak.

The True Qi in his Dantian emptied and filled, emptied and filled, and cycling through this again and again drove his cultivation upward with startling speed.

Fine as the technique was, only a rare few could endure it, and fewer still could ever master it. More to the point, something this good was not something Tang Yan would hand out lightly.

"So worn out!" After the True Qi in his body had been wrung dry three times over, Tang Yan finally halted his cultivation. The clothes on his back had long since been soaked through with sweat.

"You two, clear off. This young master is going to wash up and change." Tang Yan jabbed a finger at the two women by the door and crowed.

"Can't you change inside your room?" Zi Yun shot him a withering look.

"The cold water's right here. I'll just rinse off and change on the spot. Besides, this is my home, so whatever I say, you just listen." Tang Yan drawled.

"Your auntie is staying right where she is. Go on, then, change. Let's see you do it." Hearing the brat actually presume to order her about, Zi Yun's own temper kindled. She was a dignified Heaven Rank expert. When had she ever been ordered this way and that by some Yellow Rank pup?

What's more, she truly didn't believe Tang Yan had the gall to strip down and change right in front of her.

But clearly she had underestimated just how thick his hide was. With a single rustle of cloth, Tang Yan was left in nothing but half a pair of shorts.

"Ah!" Zi Yun let out a startled, delicate cry and froze where she sat.

"Heh heh, I told you to clear off ages ago, but you wouldn't. Now you've got to scamper away after all." Tang Yan gave a shameless grin, hoisted a wooden bucket, and was about to sluice the sweat from his body when the gate was kicked open with a crash.

"Yan'er, huh?" Old Master Tang, who had come hurrying over in high spirits, froze the instant he shoved the gate open.

His own grandson stood stripped to a single pair of shorts, and there in the courtyard sat a woman of extraordinary bearing. What in the world was going on here?