The amnesiac girl tried to break out of her bonds, but it was futile. It was as if someone had drained all her strength from her, causing her to tire easily. After settling down, she properly took in her surroundings. Her eyes inspected the walls, where various torture instruments hung.

Whips, knives, chains, scalpels, and other sorts of fun toys were also scattered on tables next to her. She didn’t like the implications of that.

The door to the room slammed open, and her head jerked to face the source of the noise. A woman with short black hair and tanned skin stumbled in, followed by a man with long hair and gold and silver eyes.

“Don’t push me you little twat!” The woman turned around and pushed the man back out the door. “Stand guard.”

“I’m older than you! Who are you to call me a ‘little twat’?” Even from outside the room, the man’s voice sounded very clear and relaxing, almost melodic. Crossing her arms, the female faced the inside of the room again. Her mouth dropped open in shock.

“Holy fuck, there’s a girl in here!” She pointed a finger at the body strapped to a bed.

“What?” He popped his head back in, but went back out after seeing the girl, pulling the woman with him. “Lu Fei, she’s naked!” He hissed.

Lu Fei walked back in, pulling away from her partner. She gestured wildly to the girl on the bed.

“Shouldn’t we free her or something?”

“She’s probably one of the Purple Emperor’s concubines. Leave her alone!”

“No way. This room is sketchy as hell! There are torture instruments in here!”

“Um... Excuse me.” She spoke up timidly. Maybe those people could help her remember? They seemed nice enough, The woman named Lu Fei seemed to be, anyways. “I actually don’t remember anything. But I don’t think I’m a concubine. Do you think you could please release me?”

“Third Junior Sister, that is how you be polite. Even an amnesiac has better manners than you. Are you ashamed?”

“Siye, shut your fu-” She glanced at the person still on the bed. “-nny looking excuse for a face.” Lu Fei mentally patted herself on the back for that.

“Why do you bother? She’s already heard you cuss.”

“Whatever!” Lu Fei went over to the bindings, and with a quick slice from her sword, they fell apart, freeing the girl. Helping her up, Lu Fei twisted her head back to the doorway when she heard her Second Senior brother walk off. There was the sound of a body hitting the floor, and she abandoned the girl to rush out into the hall.

Yun Siye stood over a (probably) dead guard, systematically stripping him of his clothes. Lu Fei raised an eyebrow.

“What? She needs clothes.”

“Then at least tell me! If you die, First Senior Brother will penalize me.”

“And why am I risking myself for this girl? You just want to save her because you think she’s hot!” He gathered up the guard’s uniform, walking past his Third Junior Sister and back into the room.

“I don’t!” She denied. Lu Fei paused, then clarified. “I mean she’s hot, but I’m not saving her just because of that.”

“Then why are you saving her?” The truth was, Lu Fei was only saving the stranger because she was attractive. But she obviously couldn’t admit it, since she didn’t want to lose to her Second Senior Brother in a verbal argument.

“Personal reasons!” She followed after him, glaring at the back of his head. “You don’t need to know what they are.”

“Why can’t I? This is my life at stake.” Siye tossed the clothes to the girl, who had stayed seated on the bed. “Wear those.”

He didn’t stay inside, pulling Lu Fei back in. “Help her. As perverted as you are, it’s still more appropriate for you to help her put on clothes.” She sneered at him.

“Don’t call me perverted, you lecher.”

“Just hurry up already. We still need to find the last ring and put up those decorations.” Waiting outside, he muttered angrily to himself.

“I can’t believe I’m wingmanning and helping her pick up girls.” He scowled.

“Dammit, I don’t even have a girlfriend yet!”

...

Two figures appeared at the mouth of a large cavern made of green jade. One of them stumbled as they landed unsteadily on the ground, grabbing at the other person. With a look of disdain from the stable figure, the one stumbling towards him was tossed away from him.

“Don’t touch me.” Di Jinming bit out. “You’re filthy. For a goddammed water attribute, you have no sense of hygiene.” Di Tianzheng picked himself up from the ground, glaring at him.

“I was in prison! I went straight from prison to here, did you think that I had anytime to take a shower? And for a dirt type, you’re anal about cleanliness.”

This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

“My, My. It seems that in the period of time we’ve been separated you’ve become even more stupid. Don’t you remember that my body’s attribute isn’t my main one?” He said ominously. “Perhaps you need a demonstration to clear up your confusion. I may not be able to hear your thoughts, but I can still plant things into your mind. Maybe I should make you drop your pants everytime you see father. Or should I give you nightmares for an entire year?”

Tianzheng shivered. He wished desperately that his brother had been born with a water attribute spiritual energy instead of a mind attribute. Because their family’s cheat was potentially OP, there was another drawback to it. It had to do with the member’s main attribute of spiritual energy.

They couldn’t have more than one type of energy, excluding their body’s attribute. In addition, the single attribute they had was never the same as their bodies. The Di Clan would again, exploit this and pair up their clan members so at least one of them could feed spiritual energy of the same attribute to the other.

In other words, generations of having this ability led to them abusing it in every way they could to maximize their potential.

Tianzheng had the wonderful experience of being paired up with Jinming when they were younger, due to his main earth type spiritual energy. It was why he had built up a strong resistance to his mind tricks. Unfortunately, it wouldn’t completely cover all kinds of mental influences from him.

“No! I’m perfectly fine! The fall just before made me muddle-headed, it’s really nothing, though! I’m fine now!” He said quickly. “Please forgive me if I said anything that offended you earlier.” His brother eyed him unhappily, but let him slide. For now.

“Damn right it did. Now lead the way in.”

Tianzheng grudgingly took a step into the cave-

“Fuck!”

-and was promptly blasted away by an intense explosion. There had been a formation at the entrance of the Cavern of Scriptures, most likely to ward off intruders.

Di Jinming hastily dumped a bottle of Jade Lotus Dew on Tianzheng, carefully checking over his injuries. His chest had caved in and his organs had turned into paste. This kind of normally fatal injury was still minor to the people of his clan, so he didn't worry too much about his brother.

Within seconds, his organs had grown back and his bones had knit themselves together. Di Tianzheng's healing flesh was clearly seen by the naked eye, regenerating and creating a new layer of skin.

His clothes had also been disintegrated, so Di Jinming reluctantly took out a set of his own clothes. Waiting until his younger brother was finished vomiting out his ruined flesh, he cast a cleaning art to dump water on him and instantly dried him before finally giving him his clothes.

“I’m going to charge you for this.” Di Jinming informed him bitterly. “Since you’ve made me give you my clothes, and for making me see your face.”

“What? Come on, you’ll have to get used to it someday! Stop being so prissy about it.” Tianzheng complained. His makeup had washed off, revealing thin eyebrows and a pointed nose, along with an assortment of strong features. It was a clone of the face of their father, something Di Jinming found distasteful. Di Jinming’s eyes glinted, and he realized he had just given him another opening to punish him for talking back to him.

“To compensate me for the clothes and the trauma of witnessing your real face, you need to pay me back in jade.”

“What kind of jade?” He asked warily.

“Why,” Jinming drawled. “The jade right here, of course. The jade this cavern is made out of. And I mean this exact jade. It has to be from this place.”

“W-what?”

“Stop saying ‘what’? It’s irritating and it makes me think that you don’t know how to say anything else.”

“But-”

“Correction, it’s one of the two words you know. Stop sounding like some uneducated pleb, and get your goddammed mind on track.” Tianzheng shut his mouth, reordering his thoughts before speaking again.

“That jade is part of the cave’s structure. I can’t-” He was interrupted again.

“Then it’s easy, isn’t it? I even gave you a task nearby. See how generous I am?”

“...” Generous my ass! You wouldn’t be charging me anything if you were actually generous!

“Father will find out.” He argued. “He’ll know who did it.”

“And who is using their spiritual energy to take the jade? Me or you?”

“But he knows that I wouldn’t do it!”

“Does he?” He asked.

“Yes! He might even think that you were the one who made me do it since you’re the one who loves money the most out of all of us! You’ll screw up everything!”

“You’ll do it.” Di Jinming told him, his voice suddenly cold. “Especially when Liang wants to get back the huge sum of money he loaned you.”

“You know about that? How?” Tianzheng took a step back from him in shock. A couple months ago, he had blown all of his money at an auction trying to impress a girl. To cover it up, he had approached a well-known banker (the word was used loosely) to borrow money, intending to pay him back slowly with the excess of his monthly allowance.

“And Liang, angry that he hasn’t received the money,” Di Jiming flipped his hand, summoning a piece of paper. “Will evoke the conditions of their agreement,” He shoved the paper in Tianzheng’s face, which paled drastically, “Demanding a large amount of high-quality jade ore. In your panic and shame, you decide not to go to your clan for resources, instead seeking out a large deposit on your own. As you frantically search for an unknown source of jade, you lose hope with each place you explore, finally concocting a scheme to loot the Cavern of Scriptures. It’s the best place that you can think of, and even better, it’s not often visited.”

Tianzheng made a choked noise.

“Now, I said that I didn’t like it when you kept repeating the same word over and over again, but this isn’t much of a step up from that.” Jinming patted his back. "Don't forget about the interest. Twenty percent is good."

He made another strangled sound. Is this what you call foreshadowing? He even told me to invest in him earlier!

----------------------------------------

Bonus:

Murong Yingyue: What in the holy fucking, goddammed, shit-tasting, Satan-licking balls just happened in this chapter.

Author: ???

Murong Yingyue: You... you just blew me off like a minor character! I wasn’t even in this chapter at all. Not even a single mention!

Author: So? That might mean I’ll make you the focus of the next one.

Murong Yingyue: Please, you dug yourself a hole when you made my parents too OP. You’d struggle to make any real conflict arise without making it seem like an asspull. In fact, you'll probably  just gloss over the entire "fight."

Author: What’s wrong with glossing over the fight?

Murong Yingyue: You hack. Isn’t this supposed to be Wuxia? If you’re not banging someone, you have to be getting into fights and conflicts.

Author: That mostly applies to guys, though?

Murong Yingyue: Then I’d be going off to become a damsel in distress, then getting strong enough to beat the crap out of whoever targeted me while I was weaker than them.

Author: And building a harem?

Murong Yingyue: ...Shut the hell up, and don’t get any more weird ideas.