“Su Qingxue.”
The name hung in the frozen air.
Su Qingxue stood beside her carriage, one hand resting on its jade door. She looked back at the thin boy in the muddy yard, and the crowd went so quiet that Qian Fan could hear the man on the roof trying not to sneeze.
Qian Xiaotian took a step forward. Then another.
He stopped in front of the Su Clan’s heiress. She was half a head taller than he was, and the frost around her feet crept toward his wet shoes.
He didn’t step back.
“Today,” Qian Xiaotian said, “you came to my home. You told my mother, in front of the whole city, what I’m worth.”
Su Qingxue said nothing.
“You might be right,” Qian Xiaotian said. “Today I’m just a Body Tempering 2nd Layer. Today, the stone was gray. Today I carry water for the stables.”
Somewhere in the crowd, Qian Wudi snorted. Three sides glared at him at once.
Qian Xiaotian raised his head.
“But don’t bully the young for being poor,” he said. “Thirty years east of the river. Thirty years west.”
The crowd sucked in a breath of cold air.
He actually said that infamous line, Qian Fan thought. Qian Fan’s mental bingo card lit up.
[Someone quotes “thirty years east of the river.”] Check.
He hadn’t even written that square down. It had added itself.
“Remember this day,” Qian Xiaotian said. His voice was still quiet, but now it didn’t shake at all. “Remember what you’ve said. Remember what the Qian Clan said. Remember who laughed.”
His eyes moved, very briefly, to Qian Wudi.
“Three years,” Qian Xiaotian said. “Three years from today, wherever you are, I will come stand where you’re standing. And on that very same day, I’ll collect everything that I’m owed.”
He paused.
“With Interest.”
The yard was dead silent.
I almost spat the youtiao I bought from the uncle beside us.
Then the crowd gasped so hard that the man on the roof finally lost his grip, slid down the tiles, and landed in the woodpile with a crash.
Nobody looked at him.
* * *
Su Qingxue studied Qian Xiaotian for a long moment.
Her face showed nothing. But Qian Fan, who had spent a lifetime reading customers’ voices on the phone (he also doesn’t know how that actually translated to being able to read faces, but he just accepted the fact), thought he saw something flicker in those winter-gray eyes. Not respect. Not quite. Something closer to surprise.
“Interest,” she repeated.
“Yes.”
“You have no cultivation. No talent. No backing.” She said it simply, the way someone talks about the weather. “And you speak of collecting debts in three years.”
“Yes.”
Su Qingxue was quiet for another breath.
“Three years,” she said. “Then I will be waiting, far beyond Wutong City.”
She turned and stepped into her carriage.
“Don’t be late.”
The jade door closed. The silver bells chimed. The white horses turned, leaving rings of frost on the ground, and the glowing carriage scraped its way back down the narrow lane, knocking over the same woodpile a second time.
* * *
The moment the carriage was gone, the yard exploded.
“Three years! Did you hear that?”
“Three years from a Body Tempering 2nd Layer? He’ll need three hundred!”
“With interest! Where did that Qian Lingyun’s son even learn a word like that?”
Qian Wudi laughed until his face turned red. “Three years!” he howled. “In three years, cousin, you might even reach the 3rd layer! And with interest! The stable boy has learned accounting! Will you charge me one copper for every bucket I’ve kicked?”
“Young Master Wudi is invincible!” the lackeys shouted, relieved to finally be allowed.
Qian Wanjin’s smile had disappeared. He strode forward and stopped in front of Qian Xiaotian.
“You foolish boy,” he said coldly. “Do you know what you’ve done? You insulted the Su Clan’s heiress in front of the whole city. If the Su Clan takes offense, the Qian Clan will suffer from your pride.”
“I didn’t insult her,” Qian Xiaotian said. “I made a promise.”
“You made a spectacle.” Qian Wanjin turned to the other elders. “From now on, this household’s conduct will be watched carefully. One more embarrassment, and I will review their stipend. I respect Qian Lingyun, and that will never change, but Qian Xiaotian, one more time you embarrass the Qian Clan and I will have no choice but to take action.”
Qian Xiaotian’s jaw tightened. In the doorway, Shangguan Yue’s hand closed around the edge of Qian Hou’s coat.
Qian Wanjin swept away. The elders followed. Qian Wudi and his lackeys followed them, still laughing.
The crowd began to drift apart, buzzing with gossip. Within an hour, Qian Fan knew that every teahouse in Wutong City would be repeating the words “three years” and “with interest.”
And almost every one of them would be laughing.
Not everyone left talking about the vow, though.
As the crowd thinned, Qian Fan noticed one of the Qian Clan’s servants hurrying back up the lane, pale-faced, toward the main gate. He caught a few words as the man passed.
“...the Su steward asked me who he was. The old man with the cabbages. He asked me twice.”
“Elder Qian Zhuo?” someone replied. “Why would anyone ask about him?”
“I don’t know! The steward said the frost didn’t even touch him. Said it was the first time in his life he had seen that.”
Qian Fan turned his head.
Elder Qian Zhuo was standing alone in the emptying yard, still holding his two cabbages. He looked down at them, then at the melting frost on the ground, then up at the sky, as if trying to remember what he’d come out to do.
Then he sneezed, tucked the cabbages under his arm, and shuffled off toward the storeroom.
Qian Fan watched him go and felt a small, uneasy prickle at the back of his neck.
He had a feeling that sneeze was going to be misunderstood too.
* * *
Qian Fan stayed where he was for a moment, while the crowd thinned around him.
He was thinking about the vow.
It was a good vow. A classic. Dramatic delivery. Excellent crowd reaction. Strong emotional hook. In any novel, it would have been the line that made readers subscribe,
But Qian Fan had spent his last life on the other side of the phone, and he knew how it would go down three years from now. And he’ll be there; he’ll be the one selling the sword that will strike and deal the final blow.”
He couldn’t help reviewing Qian Xiaotian’s vow the only way he knew how.
Three-year term, he thought. Clear due date. Named creditors. Stated intent to repay with interest.
No collateral. No late-fee clause. No penalty for default.
Amateur.
[Host, shall we send him a contract template? 😊]
Qian Fan almost laughed out loud.
For a boy who couldn’t afford a second bun, Qian Xiaotian had just signed the biggest three-year note in Wutong City. His creditors were the Su Clan, the Qian Clan’s main branch, the market vendor uncles and aunties, the cats and dogs who were curious about the noise, and every person who laughed. His collateral was nothing but his own future.
And if the stories he had read were right, that future was worth a fortune.
“Son,” Liu An said softly, tugging at this sleeve. “Come. Let’s go home.”
Qian Fan followed his parents out of the yard.
At the gate, he glanced back.
Qian Xiaotian was helping his mother inside. She was leaning on him heavily now that the crowd was gone, and Qian Hou’s coat hung from her shoulders like a blanket. Before the door closed, Qian Fan saw the boy pick up the clay bowl that had rattled across the floor and set it carefully back under the leak.
* * *
Inside the little house, Qian Xiaotian helped his mother back onto her bed.
She was shaking now. The gray mark above her heart had spread into a web of thin dark lines, and her breath came short and shallow. He pulled the blanket over her, then Qian Hou’s coat on top of that, then his own thin jacket on top of both.
“You’ll be cold,” she whispered.
“Don’t worry, Mother, I’m used to it.” Qian Xiaotian smiled faintly.
He lit the lamp and took out the wooden box. There had been three pills left after this morning’s dose. Now, as her shivering grew worse, he pressed one more into her palm and watched her swallow it.
Two left. Six days.
The cold had cost them an extra dose.
“Xiaotian.”
“Yes, Mother.”
“With interest,” she said. Despite everything, her mouth lifted. “Where did you learn to talk like that?”
He thought about it honestly. “I don’t know. It just seemed fair.”
Shangguan Yue laughed softly. The laugh turned into a cough, and he held the water cup for her until it passed.
“Your father made a promise like that once,” she said when she could breathe again, and her smile was full of love and nostalgia, just like every time she talked about him. “In front of people who laughed at him too.”
Qian Xiaotian waited.
“They didn’t laugh for long,” she said. “Always remember, you are your father, Qian Lingyun’s son,” his mother pointed at his chest. “And that the answer has always been within you all along.”
Then her eyes drifted toward the window, toward the dark hills beyond the city, and the soft look on her face slowly turned into something else. Something watchful.
“Mother?”
“It’s nothing,” she said. “Just the cold. Go to sleep, Xiaotian.”
He didn’t go to sleep.
He sat on the floor beside her bed with his back against the wall and counted the four bowls under the leaks out of habit, even though it wasn’t raining. He thought about the three spirit stones in the jade box, and eight years of medicine, and six days of pills.
He didn’t regret it.
He did the math anyway.
He would need money. Soon. More than what mending clothes and selling embroidery could ever bring in.
He just didn’t know where it would come from.
The answer has always been within you all along.
* * *
Dinner that night was quiet.
“That poor boy,” Qian Hou said, staring into his porridge. “And that poor woman. Standing in the cold like that. If cousin was still here, he wouldn’t let any of that happen.”
“You gave away your good coat,” Liu An said.
“She needed it more.”
“It was your only good coat.”
“Then it was a good thing to give away.” Qian Hou looked up. “Did you see her face, though? When he refused the spirit stones?”
Liu An was silent for a moment. “She looked proud,” she admitted.
“She looked proud,” Qian Hou agreed.
Qian Fan ate his radish and said nothing.
He was thinking about eight years of medicine sitting in a jade box, and a boy who wouldn’t take it because he hadn’t earned it.
He was thinking about a manual that looked like junk and was worth thirty silver taels.
He was thinking that the boy would never accept charity.
But a bargain was different.
* * *
That night, Qian Fan lay awake and stared at the ceiling.
Then he opened the System.
Show me Qian Xiaotian’s profile.
[Of course! 😊]
The golden line appeared again, stretching through the wall and across the dark compound toward the cracked corner where the poorest house stood. A panel unfolded beside it.
[Protagonist Profile: Qian Xiaotian]
[Type: Fallen Genius’s Son]
[New Tag: Engagement Annulled, Vow-Sworn! 🎉]
[Cultivation: Body Tempering, 2nd layer]
[Talent: Ungraded (Sealed)]
Then a second panel opened.
[Credit Check: Qian Xiaotian]
[Assets: 17 copper coins]
[Income: Irregular]
[Repayment behavior: Exceptional]
[Notes: Refused free money. Repaid a 1-copper radish debt in full. Honesty level: suspiciously high.]
[Risk Rating: VERY LOW]
[Available rate range: Minimum! 😊]
Qian Fan read the notes twice.
Repaid a one-copper radish debt in full.
Of course he had.
He was about to close the panel when a third one appeared on its own, flickering at the edges, as if the System itself weren’t quite sure what it was looking at.
[Anomaly detected.]
Qian Fan sat up in bed.
[Location: Customer’s chest, below the heart.]
[Type:???]
[Status: SEALED]
Sealed? Qian Fan asked.
[Correct, Host! Qian Xiaotian has a seal in his body that prevents Qi from accumulating and blocks his dantian. Whoever did it must be a powerful expert host! A future customer! 🤯]
Qian Fan stared at the word.
Sealed.
He had read this, too. A hundred times. A trash-talent boy who couldn’t cultivate, not because he was weak, but because something inside him was locked. A bloodline. A physique. A talent so powerful that someone had chained it away.
In every one of those stories, the lock eventually broke.
And when it did, the world shook.
Qian Fan lay back down slowly.
A sealed genius. A three-year deadline. Seventeen coppers to his name. A perfect credit score.
In one whole lifetime of sales, and the beginning of another, he had never seen a better customer.
Whatever golden finger he will be getting must be connected to his seal. And that golden finger might just be around the corner.
Before Qian Xiaotian ever finds it, I will have already cleaned up Wutong City thoroughly.
And I’ll be the one selling him his own destiny.
[First Sale quest: 5 days remaining! 😊]
Qian Fan closed his eyes and smiled in the dark
All right, he thought. Time to open for business.