“Fang!”

Mei burst into my workshop and interrupted me in the middle of making a pill. I lost my concentration, and the pill collapsed, wasting a set of Rank 3 ingredients.

“You need to get downstairs, now!”

I didn’t wait for her to explain. If she was going to, she would have already done it. When I arrived at the landing for the second floor, I heard loud shouts and accusations. I rushed out and saw two guards in Pavilion uniforms hauling SuYin away.

“Stop!” I shouted.

They didn’t even spare me a glance. Looking at them in qi vision, I saw that they were high-level Masters, but their foundations were shoddy. I ran forward, grabbed one of the men by his shoulder, and threw him away.

“Stop,” I growled.

“Back off,” the remaining man barked. “Don’t interfere in Pavilion business.”

“And what business involved hauling an attendant bodily through the halls?”

“What’s going on here?” asked a mocking voice.

I turned to see Deputy Manager Liu approaching us. He had a wicked smile on his face.

“That’s what I want to know,” I snarled.

“Guardsman?” asked Liu with a lilt.

The guard looked at Liu. “This attendant was seen attacking a guest on the steps while wearing a Pavilion uniform. We are bringing her to you for punishment, sir.”

“My, my, that is serious,” chuckled Liu.

“SuYin, what happened?” I asked.

“It was Gou,” she cried. “I was just outside, and he ran up and tried to grab me. I had to fight him off.”

“You attacked the disciple of one of the city's most renowned alchemists?” gasped Liu. “That is a serious crime.”

“Yes, sir,” confirmed the guard I had thrown away. He walked up and glared at me. “Alchemist Gou approached this beast, and she suddenly attacked him.”

“Guards of the Pavilion saw an attendant getting attacked, and instead of defending her, you work to frame her?” I said through gritted teeth.

“She wasn’t attacked,” he smirked. “The honored alchemist simply invited her elsewhere for a conversation.”

“SuYin, let’s go find WuJing, this is his mess to deal with,” I said, moving to pull her away.

“No, it isn’t,” said Liu. “I’ve heard enough. As Deputy Manager I hereby expel this woman from the Blue Wind Pavilion and ban her from ever entering again.”

“Oh,” I asked with an evil smile. “You do, do you?”

“Yes,” Liu stated with confidence. “It is my duty as Pavilion Manager to help the meritorious prosper and eliminate the evil.”

“Good, very good,” I nodded then turned to SuYin. “You don’t work here anymore, so you don’t need to listen to him. Come, let’s go find WuJing.”

“Find me for what?” WuJing asked, walking up to our group.

“To beg for her job,” mocked Liu, “but my decision is final.”

“Fang?” WuJing asked.

“I need to get her a room in the Pavilion, that should be manageable, right?”

Liu barked in laughter. “Not on your life!”

“He’s right,” agreed WuJing, “getting her a room is against the rules. Instead, we need to move you up to a suite on the fourth floor. It’ll have a side room where she can stay. Come with me and we’ll get it sorted,” he said as he moved to guide us away.

“Stop right there,” snarled Liu.

“Do you have any instructions, Deputy Manager?” asked WuJing.

“Yes! She is banished, guards, take her away!”

As the guards began to move, WuJing spoke up again. “I didn’t know a Deputy Manager had the authority to banish a Pavilion member’s personal disciple. That is interesting news. I’ll have to report to Secretary Jiang that I had not been informed of the change.”

“What?” asked Liu, his eyes widening.

“Yes, I must do that. I must also ask him why Pavilion guards did not defend a member’s personal disciple and instead protected her attacker. I would really like him to explain to me when that change was implemented.”

“She isn’t—”

“She is,” snapped WuJing. “And it was officially recorded long ago.”

“Let’s go,” I said to SuYin in a calm voice.

With WuJing’s threats, Liu no longer dared to stop us.

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“It’s Manager Cai,” WuJing said when the three of us were alone in his office. “She’s wanted to get rid of him for years and is using us both as foils. She isn’t antagonizing him directly, he’s never liked me, and he’s targeting you to befriend Zhong. She’s just ensuring he doesn’t see certain information so that he’ll make a few terrible decisions, like sending a high-level Disciple against a newly ascended Martial Master.” He smiled at SuYin. “Congratulations, by the way.”

Stolen novel; please report.

She blushed at his words.

“What do we do?” I asked, getting serious.

“Do with what? This is Cai’s game, and you won’t stop her from playing it. You can play your own. Just decide what you want, and I can help you plan it out, but as far as Liu? Just keep doing what you’re doing. He can’t touch you, and now he can’t touch SuYin either. Mei and I are still vulnerable, but we can handle him.”

I nodded. “What about Zhong?”

WuJing laughed. “You can already take care of him by yourself, can’t you? Go ahead and make your move whenever you want. He believes he has connections, but they will disappear the instant he tries to use them.”

I looked at WuJing. I needed a serious reply. “You said you would help me plan my game. I just want my troubles in the city to vanish. What’s my play? Do I kill him?”

WuJing stroked his chin in thought. “Maybe. It’s the most direct, but it’s the most troublesome. No matter how careful you are, someone will know it was you, and his relatives will seek you out for revenge. These things quickly spiral out of control until you have to cut the weeds and eliminate the roots. Entire clans might get put to the torch. Instead, it would be better to let someone else carry the black pot and take the blame.”

“Any ideas?”

“Of course,” smiled WuJing, “how much do you know about poisons?”

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The answer, as it happened, was a suspiciously large amount. Back when I was experimenting in Rudy’s workshop, a sizable number of his herbs had a variety of poisonous effects. My first life in the workshop, they had said someone was poisoning the clan disciples, and that had to have come from somewhere.

I didn’t care too much about it back then, herbs were herbs and pills were pills. I just practiced with whatever was at hand, but it gave me a bit of in-depth knowledge about making poisons. The only time I had used this knowledge was when I concocted my fool-proof instant reset pill. Now, I had a new place to flex my muscles.

WuJing had a few ideas, but what we eventually settled on was something totally evil. My goal was to concoct a variety of pills that mimicked what Zhong could create but with an added, undetectable poison that would simulate a Low-Purity pill.

After examining and experimenting with a variety of poisonous herbs in the Pavilion, I couldn’t find any way to achieve this goal. While I could create some of the effects of pill toxins through poisons, I doubted anyone would mistake one for the other.

After putting everything down and walking away for a day, I finally realized the mistake I was making. I didn’t need some exotic poison to mimic pill toxins, I had plenty of pill toxins, I just needed to make it so that a cursory examination of the pills didn’t reveal it.

I created a regular Low-Purity pill and looked at it. The toxins were evenly distributed throughout the pill, so it was easy to tell its quality. Being very careful, I burned off the toxins on just the surface layer of the completed pill. This was much harder than normal purification since the energy had already been condensed and hardened, but with a Rank 2 pill, I was able to manage it, if barely. Still, the result was a pock-marked mess of a thing that no one would confuse for a proper pill.

Trying again, I first concocted a large group of Low-Quality pills, then, using a method somewhat similar to what is done with explosive pills, I used an extra set of herbs and divided its energy, sending a small portion to each pill to create a thin sheath around all of them composed of High-Purity medicinal energy.

The result was a pill that was slightly larger than a regular one, but unless someone looked closely, all they would see was a regular High-Purity pill. Still, it wasn’t enough.

Going back to the poisons, I created something with an effect somewhat different from the original plan. On the pill sheaths, I added a compound that would slightly affect a person’s mind, making it more difficult for them to realize they had consumed a pill filled with toxins. With luck, it would make the attempted framing all the more convincing in the end by showing that someone had clumsily tried to cover up what they did.

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I placed the pills on WuJing's desk.

“What do you think?” I smirked.

After picking one up and examining it, he grinned. “Perfect. It’s easy enough to tell apart when you know to look for it, but if not, I doubt anyone will notice a thing. I’ll get my people to take care of the next step.”

“Alright,” I said, “just let me know when it’s over.”

I started to walk out, but WuJing stopped me. “Be careful of Liu. This will hit him too, and he might take drastic measures if he realizes something is wrong.”

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Nothing out of the ordinary happened over the next few weeks. At least, nothing that impacted my life happened. For Zhong and his customers, it was a different story.

“Fang,” said WuJing, pulling me aside to talk, “we need your help. Secretary Jiang has assigned you a bodyguard, and we want you to go out shopping. Maybe shop for some herbs around town. Go to some of the poorer parts and try to pick up a good deal. That kind of thing.”

He wanted me to bait out an attacker. “Can I trust the guard?”

“Absolutely not,” said WuJing with emphasis. “There will be others watching from the shadows, though. As long as you don’t seek death, you’ll be safe.”

With only one life, this would have been a silly risk for me to take, but why not play it out and see what happens next?

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I was walking down the street of the slums near where I teleported into the city at the beginning of my life. Guard Ma was shadowing me, but he wasn’t being too obvious. When I saw an older man selling what looked to be relatively high-quality herbs down an alleyway, I decided to check it out. The setup seemed a bit clumsy, but I applauded the effort.

When I approached, the old man scampered off, he was surprisingly spry, and a cloaked figure walked out of the shadows.

“Do you know how much trouble you’ve caused me?” snarled an angry Manager Liu. “I don’t know what you did, but it had to be you. I’ve been disciplined for embezzling money and purchasing counterfeit pills. Zhong isn’t that good. It had to be you.”

It seemed WuJing’s plan to cast the blame onto others hadn’t fully worked. I could only hope an angry Martial Master killed off Zhong before he could reach the same conclusion Liu had.

“You’re going to attack me?” I asked with a smile. “You set this all up, but you know I have protection, right?”

Liu laughed. “Guard Ma, block the alley. Don’t let anyone see what’s about to happen.”

“Yes, sir,” said Ma.

As Ma walked away, I called after him. “You need to protect me from Liu. What are you doing?”

He completely ignored me.

“So naive. At least you won’t have to worry much longer,” said Liu with an evil grin.

“Well?” I asked the air. “Are you about done? He might really attack me soon.”

Liu laughed, then he rushed at me. I flipped on qi vision to keep an eye on everything. Liu wasn’t using any combat techniques, just using basic qi-empowered attacks, but he was a Grandmaster, and I was only a low-level Master. If it came to real combat, I didn’t expect it to last long.

I used my flashing movement technique to avoid his first blow, but Liu quickly followed up. He wasn’t trying to kill, only cripple. This gave me openings I wouldn’t have had otherwise. Employing my sole Rank 3 movement technique, I rushed toward the alleyway’s entrance. My goal was to get as close as I could to Ma, then flash away, but when I was nearly there, Ma’s qi spread out in front of me, and a wall of earth sprang up in my path.

“It’s not that easy,” cackled Liu. “There’s no escape. I’m going to enjoy making you suffer.”

He moved to attack again. A heavy fist slammed down. Liu crashed to the ground.

Secretary Jiang and two other guardsmen stood above the crumpled Liu.

“Attacking a Pavilion member, conspiracy, embezzlement, purchase of counterfeit goods. No matter what your backer says now, you’re done for,” said Jiang before turning to the guards. “Take him away.”

“You wanted me to get injured,” I said when I was left alone with Jiang in the alley.

“It would have helped,” he agreed. “Attacking is one thing, injuring is another. Crippling or killing you would have let us execute him immediately, but we wouldn’t have allowed that.”

“I see. Please don’t involve me in your plans in the future.”

I began to walk away, but Jiang stopped me with a question. “Are you sure?”

He handed me a large bag before passing me to make his way out of the alley. When he was almost gone, he spoke again. “We’ll need those back. They’re just a loan.”