Chapter 14

Chapter 14: It's All Your Money—The Female Emperor Returns! Innate Realm Third-Tier!

【These Aperture-Opening Pills, however, cost half again as much as the Energy Condensation Powder.】

【If taken every day, you would likely have to sell off more family assets again.】

【Before this, you had already sold off over a million silver taels' worth of assets.】

【Although you are the Guardian King's only grandson, constantly selling off his assets will invite ridicule.】

【And if word reaches the Guardian King's ears, the old man will likely be displeased.】

【After all, Zhao Shi-zhong has a reputation for frugality.】

【Even if you are going to squander, you should at least exercise some restraint.】

【You swore that if you sold off any more assets, you were no better than a dog.】

【3 days later—sold!】

【And what was sold? The very assets themselves!】

【As for reputation, you couldn't care less.】

【Even if the old man flew into a rage, the worst you'd suffer would be a scolding.】

【But a cultivation speed that was too slow—that, you simply could not endure.】

【And so, you threw yourself once more into the grand and sweeping enterprise of asset liquidation.】

【The sight of it made the head guard, Dian Cheng-feng, shake his head repeatedly.】

【Hopefully the Guardian King returns soon—otherwise, the family coffers will be completely emptied by you sooner or later.】

【Of course, seeing you sell off assets so openly, the other collateral bloodline members began following suit one after another.】

【Over the years, Zhao Shi-zhong's direct blood relatives had been assassinated down to only a scant few.】

【These collateral bloodline members, though children of his brothers, were likewise doted upon by him in ordinary times.】

【The other servants in the manor had no way of dealing with them.】

【But when you heard of it, you flew into a towering rage.】

【That was all your money!】

【Every bit they sold was a loss to you.】

【TMD—you'd already been generous enough just feeding them all these years, and now they dared steal from you?!】

【You immediately had Dian Cheng-feng place those individuals under house arrest.】

【Naturally, they refused to accept this and demanded to see you one after another.】

【Your cousin Zhao You, in particular, screamed the loudest—claiming that since they all shared Zhao Family blood, what gave you the right to confine them?】

【You granted their wish and met with them.】

【Then, right before all of them, you slapped Zhao You unconscious with a single strike.】

【After that, they finally didn't dare say another word.】

【Having dealt with those few money-stealing troublemakers, you returned to secluded cultivation.】

【4 months later, after consuming several hundred Aperture-Opening Pills, you successfully opened 365 major apertures!】

【You broke through to Innate Realm Second-Tier!】

【The next step was to fill all the major apertures with Golden Crow True Energy.】

【This, too, would be a time-consuming process.】

【You tested it—filling a single major aperture required consuming one percent of your total energy.】

【That didn't seem like much of a drain on the surface.】

【But that figure was based on you having shattered the Postnatal Peak Realm and expanded your Cinnabar Field tenfold, with your inner energy likewise increased tenfold.】

【For an ordinary Innate Realm Second-Tier martial artist, filling a single major aperture would consume one-tenth of their total energy—a truly terrifying expenditure.】

【Even with your massive energy reserves, you would need to increase them by at least 3.5 times before you could fill all 365 major apertures.】

【Only now did you truly feel the difficulty of the martial path.】

【Just the first 3 tiers of the Innate Realm already demanded such an enormous investment of effort.】

【For an ordinary martial artist without wealth, lineage, or talent, it would likely take 20 to 30 years of unrelenting cultivation just to have a hope of breaking through a single tier.】

【And the cruel reality was that 99.9% of ordinary martial artists would die trapped within the Postnatal Realm, never breaking through to the Innate Realm in their entire lifetimes.】

【Even those who reached this point by some stroke of fortune would find their ceiling essentially sealed off from the start.】

【To say nothing of the Purple Mansion Martial Venerables, Mystic Core Realm Martial Venerables, and Dharma Form Martial Saints that came after.】

【Those powerhouses were essentially monopolized by great aristocratic families, renowned orthodox sects, and the imperial court.】

【Unless a rogue cultivator possessed extraordinary talent, they simply could not reach that level.】

【After breaking through to Innate Realm Second-Tier, just as you intended to head over to the Intoxicating Fragrance Tower to relax with a few old acquaintances—】

【An uninvited guest arrived without warning.】

【It was none other than your long-absent fiancée—the future Female Emperor, Xiao Yue-huang!】

【Before, she had shared a night of spring wind with you in exchange for your agreement to dissolve the engagement.】

【As for the rest, she said she could handle it herself.】

【But the difficulty exceeded what she had imagined.】

【At the very least, the Qian Emperor's side was not so easy to budge—he said he still needed to see the attitude of Old Man Zhao.】

【After all, with the man fighting his life out on the front lines, canceling the engagement with someone's only grandson back at home would inevitably hurt morale.】

【Xiao Yue-huang had come this time to have you personally write a letter, proving that it was you who did not wish to honor the engagement—not her.】

【That way, the negative impact could be minimized.】

【Upon hearing this, you nearly leaped to your feet.】

【It was clearly Xiao Yue-huang who wanted to dissolve the engagement—and now the whole blame was being shifted onto you? Did you have no dignity?!】

【Xiao Yue-huang said with disdain: "You've been selling off your household assets in droves—what dignity do you have left?"】

【Those words left your face burning red.】

【Strange words began tumbling out of your mouth—things like "no choice," "what's Grandfather's is yours"—and the like.】

【But no matter what, you simply refused to take the blame.】

【Unless…Xiao Yue-huang accompanied you one more time!】

【Xiao Yue-huang shot you a glance and told you that you were dreaming—last time she did it to resolve a karmic debt, and since you had personally agreed, the debt was already settled. As for the formal dissolution of the engagement that came after, it held little importance to her, and she warned you not to try to threaten her with it.】

【With that, she turned and left.】

【You stood there feeling rather bewildered.】

【What karmic debt?】

【In any case, since Xiao Yue-huang was so stubborn, you'd let her stay stubborn—if she had the nerve, she could simply never step through the gates of your king's manor again.】

【Still, her visit had somehow killed your desire to go see the old acquaintances at the Intoxicating Fragrance Tower.】

【Infuriating as she was, one had to admit—her charm was real. Compared to her, other women seemed like common wildflowers, and you temporarily lost all interest in them.】

【With no interest to speak of, you simply went back to cultivating.】

【You found that the longer you cultivated, the more addicted you became.】

【Perhaps this was the sense of security that came with power.】

【A sense of security—it wasn't exclusive to women.】

【You, the great philanthropist Zhao, needed it just as much!】

【This round of cultivation lasted a full half a year or more.】

【After consuming thousands of portions of Energy Condensation Powder, you finally filled all 365 major apertures within your body.】

【You successfully broke through to Innate Realm Third-Tier!】

【Your total energy volume more than tripled.】

【And with the cooperation of 365 major apertures, your combat power grew geometrically.】

【The price, however, was that your reputation as a prodigal son had grown even more resounding throughout the capital.】

【As the saying goes—selling off the family land without a shred of guilt!】

【Even Xiao Wei came to complain to you—his father, Prince Liang, had warned him that if he squandered like you, he'd have his legs broken.】

【You were at a loss for words.】

【It really wasn't squandering.】

【In the past, since you were unable to cultivate, Old Man Zhao had not left many cultivation resources at home—mostly just gold and silver.】

【Later, when you set foot on the martial path, you cultivated a sacred-grade cultivation method with a staggeringly high consumption rate.】

【And you still had to maintain the expenses of the several thousand people in the Guardian King's Manor.】

【Meanwhile, the old man on the front was completely unreachable.】

【You had no choice but to squander.】