Ever since Du Qi let his idle hands get the best of him and interfered in Su Li's rebellion—where she blew up mountains and tore down buildings—he had fallen completely into the trap. He had basically become the exclusive babysitter for the Beast Taming Sect.
Twenty-four hours a day, he barely had a moment of peace. He spent all day chasing after that Little Ancestor, cleaning up one mess after another that she left in her wake.
One day she would beat a Sword Peak elder into critical condition, and the next day she would nearly burn down the gate of the Beast Taming Sect.
Sometimes Du Qi wondered if she actually had fox ears or if she was actually the reincarnation of a house-wrecking dog. Day after day, she was either biting people or tearing things apart and causing trouble.
The Beast Taming Sect was currently an absolute disaster. Their accounts were empty, and their financial deficit was piling sky-high.
Many times, Du Qi would think in near-madness that they should just stop having the disciples laboriously sit in meditation and cultivate. Instead, they should all grab farming tools and go till the fields. At least that way, they could save up some grain.
With the constant chaos over the years, batch after batch of disciples had been lost outside. Even if they excluded the Foundation Establishment cultivators who could already practice inedia, there were still a whopping three thousand disciples left who needed to eat, drink, and live.
Three thousand mouths, opening for three meals a day. How could outsiders know that the Inedia Pills cultivators consumed daily weren't just conjured out of thin air?
The main ingredient was actually grain—a massive amount of solid grain. Yet, the input-to-output ratio of Inedia Pills was absolutely dreadful.
Take the most common ordinary rice, for instance. It took a whopping three jin of dry rice to refine a mere five Inedia Pills. And that didn't even include the various herbal ingredients and auxiliary materials that had to be mixed in during refinement, which also cost a fortune in spirit stones and silver to purchase.
A single, ordinary Inedia Pill was only enough to keep a cultivator from starving for one meal. A normal cultivator consumed at least three a day. If they ran into those cultivation try-hards who worked day and night, gritting their teeth to meditate in the dead of night, they would even need extra snacks. For them, four pills a day wouldn't even cut it.
A rough calculation showed that dry rice which could have fed an adult comfortably for three days would be squandered in a single day by these disciples once refined into Inedia Pills.
As the saying goes, misfortunes never come singly. Many nearby cultivators, relying on their cultivation, wantonly oppressed and plundered the common folk at the foot of the mountain. Over time, the food shortage among the populace grew increasingly severe.
Now on the market, it took a whole tael of silver just to buy a single dou of high-quality polished rice. It was so ridiculous that Du Qi's temples throbbed every time he looked at the grain prices.
Staring with dead-fish eyes, Du Qi looked at the mountain of documents and bills piled on his desk, each waiting for his approval and handling. An anonymous anger suddenly surged in his chest, making him wish he could just set the whole pile of files ablaze and burn them to ashes.
He forced down two pots of strong tea in a row before he managed to suppress the urge to throw up his hands and run away.
Falling into such a dilemma was, in the end, entirely a sin of his own making from before.
Ever since a certain “genius” with a pair of fox ears figured out the inner workings of the Dao Protector contract and realized it could forcibly bind Du Qi, he hadn't enjoyed a single day of peace.
Some might wonder: shouldn't Su Li be unwilling to see Du Yi right now because of his previous words? At a time like this, we might as well conduct a remote interview with a certain Void Refinement Sword Venerable who wishes to remain anonymous.
“Hello, Sword Venerable. What are your thoughts on the fact that Sword Peak almost turned into a volcano? Hey, hey, hey, don't hit me!”
And that was how it had played out. The elders of the Beast Taming Sect had been forced to once again dig deep into their life savings to compensate the Qingwei Sword Sect, paying to rebuild the destroyed houses and buildings for the Sword Sect disciples.
When Su Li was blowing up the mountain with fire, she hadn't forgotten to give Du Qi a special “gift”—giving him a “Leslie curl.” It was truly fashionable~
Driven to a dead end, Du Qi, with a nearly numb smile on his face, directly sealed away all of Su Li's cultivation.
Poor little Su Li cried and threw a tantrum because she had lost her cultivation. “Wah-wah-wah-wah!” But obviously, Du Qi didn't buy it.
So, she started acting up. She specifically chose times when Du Qi was brushing his teeth, sleeping, or handling important business to activate that Command Seal... contract. The moment an order was issued, Du Qi would instantly be forced to stand at attention on the spot, completely losing control of his body.
One morning, Du Qi had just put the bamboo salt into his mouth, and his toothbrush hadn't even touched water yet, when the contract's command suddenly struck.
Although his cultivation was profound enough to forcefully resist the power of the contract, that brief moment of distraction caused him to swallow a mouthful of bamboo salt. It was so incredibly salty that he almost choked to death on the spot.
Another time, at the Hour of the Rat, when everything was dead silent, Du Qi was so tired his eyelids were fighting to stay open. Just as he was about to fall fast asleep and his mind relaxed, his resistance to the contract dropped to its lowest point.
Su Li slammed him with a command, forcing him to do a kip-up right off his bed, followed immediately by a burpee. He couldn't sleep at all. After just three days of this torment, Du Qi had deep dark circles under his eyes, looking like he had been severely sleep-deprived.
It wasn't that the two of them had sat down to negotiate afterward. But after several rounds of back-and-forth, Du Qi fully realized that negotiating with Su Li was like a scholar trying to reason with a soldier—there was just no talking sense into her.
No matter what reasoning Du Qi presented, as long as it didn't align with Su Li's wishes, the negotiations would end with both of them suffering. Su Li had firmly grasped the leverage to keep him in check.
Su Li had truly mastered the art of strategic deterrence.
Out of sheer desperation, to save his sleep, his teeth, and to prevent himself from being forced by the contract to run outside naked in the middle of the night while fast asleep, Du Qi, with tears in his eyes, signed a humiliating and extremely unequal treaty with Su Li.
For instance, he became the Beast Taming Sect's CEO—a position with no official title, no real power, but sole responsibility for cleaning up every single mess.
Furthermore, all the various compensations Su Li owed from causing trouble everywhere inexplicably fell entirely onto his head, adding insult to injury to his already zeroed-out credit score.
And he had to undo the restriction he had placed on Su Li's cultivation, allowing her to keep running out and being a mess-making machine...
Honestly, while managing the sect, Du Qi was completely dumbfounded.
He never expected Su Li's heart to be so big. The massive Central Continent Alliance was disorganized, with various factions harboring their own hidden agendas. Yet, she actually had the peace of mind to wash her hands of this pile of tough, messy problems and dump them all on him.
On normal days, everyone shirked difficult tasks, making it hard to make progress on any actual business. But the moment it was time to ask for money, everyone immediately thought of Du Qi.
He couldn't help but curse in his heart. What the absolute fuck? Am I the reincarnation of a money-printing press, or am I a spirit stone mine in human form? Just a few months ago, all his savings had been wiped out by Lu Yan's elemental storm. Where the hell was he supposed to get money?
Du Qi took a long, deep breath, repeatedly reciting mental reminders to steady himself.
Don't get angry. Absolutely do not get angry. Anger harms the body. I am a scholar. A scholar behaves with propriety and decency. I must never lose my refined composure...
Feeling highly agitated, he reached out and pushed aside the mountain of files in front of him, all of which were filled with various ridiculous bid requirements for the Joint Martial Arts Tournament of the Central Continent's major sects.
Gritting his teeth, he flipped to a new page, and his eyes landed on the latest report: Su Li had gone out for a stroll and set fire to another sect's ancestral tomb forest.
The string in Du Qi's heart that had been wound tight for so long snapped with a loud crack.
“Fuck this! I quit!”
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