"Grandfather's estate?" Fang Ping'an's pupils contracted, and he could not help saying, "Dad, that four hundred thousand you gave me back then — didn't you say it was the last of your savings?"
Back then.
His business had failed and he was buried in debt, and at his most desperate it was that "wastrel father" of his who had put out a hand and put four hundred thousand into his account. That was what made his recovery possible.
Which was exactly why!
Even though for decades he had gone on believing his father had squandered his grandfather's fortune, he still respected him, and had brought him into his own home for his old age.
"That's my retirement money, and it's the deed money for this family's house. Was I supposed to tell you about it while I'm still alive?" Fang Zhiyuan snorted.
"Then back then?" Fang Ping'an was puzzled.
"Back then you were twenty-odd, fresh out of junior college, with your head full of your grandfather's words and nothing in it but how to get back to the New Moon." Fang Zhiyuan shook his head. "Did you never stop to think how much getting back to the New Moon costs? To establish yourself there you need a hundred million Star Coins at the least, and if you want to marry and have children the outlay is greater still."
"Your grandfather's estate came to eight million and some."
"Yes! He told me every coin of it was to go to you."
"But what made you think that you, an ordinary martial junior-college graduate in his twenties, could multiply it dozens of times over in the markets?" Fang Zhiyuan gave a cold snort. "If I'd handed you all of it then — never mind returning to the New Moon. Do you think you'd be where you are today?"
"And besides, did I never give you a chance to try?"
Fang Ping'an went quiet.
It was true!
When he had just graduated, his father had given him a million Star Coins, calling it what was "left" of his grandfather's estate after his own spending — and at the time he had resented his father for it in his heart, and thought him a wastrel.
Back then his ambitions had run higher than the sky; he had chased whatever looked like it made the most money — futures, energy, precious metals, stocks... At first he made a great deal, and turned a million-odd Star Coins into eight million and more.
His father had warned him once: paper profit is not winning.
He had not listened. In the end he traded futures on leverage, and borrowed money on top of that... and lost every coin of it, and came out owing a mountain of debt.
It was his father who gave him another four hundred thousand Star Coins to clear it.
It was precisely because of that one great fall that he had finally settled down, begun to learn management, and spent almost ten years working for other people... and finally chosen to open a supermarket, and built it up slowly to what it was today.
If his father had given him all the money then, the fall would have been far worse.
"Ping'an."
"Your grandfather thought little of me, and I really was good for nothing." Fang Zhiyuan sighed. "I truly am a man without ability. I did try, once. Later I understood: rather than force myself on, better to let myself off... Returning to the New Moon was not something I could do."
"And I didn't want my child carrying that weight either."
"You have more of a knack for throwing yourself into things than I ever did. But you're in more of a hurry than I ever was too." Fang Zhiyuan looked at Fang Ping'an. "So from the day you went out into the world, I told myself: between the two of us, you would decide the ceiling — but I would hold the floor."
"So I didn't gamble and I didn't whore."
"I put every coin away and told everyone I'd spent it all, which also spared us that crowd of relatives coming round with their hands out." Fang Zhiyuan spread both hands, smiling.
Fang Ping'an could not help smiling too, and then something ached in his chest.
He understood what his father had endured.
And he knew how hard it was to carry it that far — being called a wastrel and a good-for-nothing his whole life. That is not something an ordinary man can do. It takes real strength inside.
"Dad."
"If that's how it is, why are you handing over all of it now?" Fang Ping'an said quietly.
"It's your great-grandfather's money. Your martial talent wasn't enough — even if you'd gone to the New Moon I didn't believe you could hold your footing there. So I kept it from you." Fang Zhiyuan said it without dressing it up.
Fang Ping'an did not argue.
Violence is the source of every rule society has; power and money, so-called, are its derivatives.
And in this age, it was warriors who held the greatest violence.
The New Moon was a heaven for powerful warriors and nobody else... With money alone, unless that wealth reached a staggering scale, establishing yourself on the New Moon was near impossible.
"Even so."
"That girl Bai Qing really did bear you some remarkable children." Fang Zhiyuan said it with feeling. "Fang Yu especially... his character, his will, the way he acts — all of it first-rate."
"A pity he never awakened a Void Star Aspect."
"But his talent for skill is extremely high. He should be a match for those students at the key universities by now. There's still every chance."
Fang Ping'an could not help nodding.
Of the three children, the one most like himself was Fang Yu... and the rarest thing about him was that Fang Yu lacked the impatience and impulsiveness he himself had had at that age. The boy was steady.
"The martial path is the great road."
"At the most critical moment of their lives, it's time to stake the Fang family's savings too." Fang Zhiyuan spoke slowly. "As for you — don't sell the supermarket yet. However hard business gets, it can still be done."
"The moment you sell it, all you'll be thinking about is another gamble on stocks and futures."
No one knows a son like his father.
Fang Zhiyuan understood his own son far too well... What could multiply your capital several times over in the shortest possible time? The capital markets, naturally.
Fang Ping'an said nothing.
"With what I've given you, the money in your hands is enough to support their training for the next year," Fang Zhiyuan said. "Siyue and Xiao Long should be able to sign with a warrior conglomerate, and the school will have some rewards too."
Fang Ping'an nodded.
Wuling City produced a few dozen holders of Upper Aspects a year, and the eight great warrior conglomerates were generally willing to sign them early and provide resources to develop them.
The state gave a good deal in rewards as well.
But!
At the beginning, neither the warrior conglomerates nor the state would invest very heavily... After all, across the whole civilization, the absolute number of Upper Aspect holders awakening each year was far from small.
An Upper Aspect only guaranteed a ninety-nine percent chance of becoming a High-Rank Warrior.
Becoming a stronger Earth Warrior or Sky-Patrol Warrior depended on martial talent and skill, on character, on will, on any number of things...
Every one of them had to be good enough before you could walk all the way to the summit.
For instance, half of Wuling City's martial arts top scorers over the years had held only Middle Aspects — and there had even been one who had awakened nothing more than a Lower Aspect.
"And after that year?" Fang Ping'an was clearly worried.
Business was getting worse and worse.
He was afraid that a year from now, when he wanted to sell the supermarket, it would not fetch this price.
"Then we look at it again in a year." Fang Zhiyuan shook his head. "What's the hurry? You're not young any more, and sometimes waiting isn't the worst thing..."
"Siyue's and Xiao Long's foundation-building treasures — when you bring them back tomorrow, don't be in a rush to hand them over. Leave it a day."
Fang Ping'an hesitated, then decided to listen to his father for once. "All right."
"Good."
"Get some rest." Fang Zhiyuan turned and started up the stairs, talking as he went. "Your health comes first. Look at you — how old are you, and you've more white hair than I have..."
Fang Zhiyuan's voice faded away.
In the basement, a trace of a smile showed on Fang Ping'an's face.
***
Deep in the night.
Lying in bed in his reading glasses, Fang Zhiyuan stared at the chart on his tablet and muttered to himself, "That boy of mine really is in a hurry. Business? What business?"
"Eight million."
"Five million and change of it spent by me."
"But holding Star River Group shares long-term, these few decades... hasn't that earned several million of it back?" Fang Zhiyuan thought.
A wastrel? Genuinely!
Lying flat? Genuinely!
Meaning to be kept by his son in his old age? Also genuinely!
But he had never counted on all of it falling to his son. The share dividends, and the pension he had paid into over those last twenty years, were the real foundation of a comfortable old age.
The 5.1 million Star Coins he had handed over today were only the dividend savings of several decades... The shares were still in his hands.
As the civilization's foremost warrior conglomerate, the Star River Group's profits were exceedingly stable, so its share price barely moved and its dividends were relatively fixed. Plenty of speculators looked down on it.
"Old man."
"You didn't live to see it."
"I waited a few decades, and now at last it's come." Something dimmed in the aged face of Fang Zhiyuan. "Your money, spent on your business... I hope you'll look after those great-grandchildren of yours."
***
Three in the morning. The alarm went off, and Fang Yu woke on time.
"My skill is in Subtlety and my spirit is strong enough, so with the 《Deep Sleep Method》 the school teaches, five hours is enough to carry a full day's training." Fang Yu got up and dressed. "They say that decades ago, when the Primordial Star was first opened up, certain special drugs appeared that could let Low-Rank Warriors and even ordinary people go without sleep entirely, without damaging the spirit, so as to get the maximum training time."
"They called it 'not wasting your life'."
"Four more hours of training a day is more than a thousand extra hours in a year..."
The theory had been widely popular once.
It had been admired, too, and any number of key secondary schools and even universities had tried it, sparing no cost, releasing gas laced with those drugs into classrooms, dormitories, even the campus air... so that students would have more time to study and train.
In the short term it did work.
But afterwards the Blue Moon Alliance banned it outright.
"Before your own spirit reaches a very high level, sleep is the best rest a living thing gets... and no drug can make up for it," Fang Yu thought.
Besides.
Training required slack as well as tension; a person is not a machine... When martial skill hits a bottleneck, the breakthrough does not come from diligence and hard practice alone. Often it is after a long stretch of bitter training, in the loosening and the rest, that sudden insight breaks it open.
If grinding alone were enough, the streets would have been full of Subtlety warriors long ago.
"Even so."
"Effort doesn't guarantee success. No effort guarantees failure." Fang Yu rose, and before long he was in the basement, with only the dimmest of the lights switched on.
Stance work.
Once his sinews and bones were loosened, Fang Yu began pairing the breathing method with the Twenty-Four Basic Fist Forms to temper his body... and two hours later he moved on in order to footwork, and then to the blade.
Training divides into practice methods and fighting methods.
Stance work and the Twenty-Four Basic Fist Forms are both practice methods, laying the foundation solid; but in a fight to the death, the fighting methods are what matter.
Footwork and blade work were both extremely important.
"Hoo! Hoo!" Fang Yu held a long blade, and strand after strand of blade-light burst into being, the blade work drifting and elusive, impossible to predict.
This was one of the two blade manuals he was training now — 《Flowing Light Blade》, renowned for its speed.
Soon.
Fang Yu moved on to the other blade manual, 《Thousand Mountains Blade》. Every movement was measured and exact, the blade-light unbroken, like boulder after boulder rolling down in an avalanche, simply irresistible.
This blade art was built on sheer momentum, and set store by crushing an enemy with absolute force, openly and squarely.
"Against enemies who fight differently, I have to use different blade arts," Fang Yu thought. "My skill is at Great Completion in Subtlety, but that's only body and mind as one."
"My body technique is mainly control of the body, and that has reached Subtlety too."
"But blade work asks for body, mind and weapon as one, and it still hasn't reached Subtlety." Fang Yu thought it over. Bodily skill divided into any number of levels — the potential of the human body is limitless, after all.
According to 《The Martial Canon》, if martial skill could reach the very extreme of Inner Vista, driving the strength of every cell in the body, then even an ordinary person could put out a force of a thousand catties.
Whereas with things like blade work and spear work, the division was very simple.
Only three levels.
Basic, Subtlety, and Outer Vista.
"My body at Great Completion in Subtlety lets me put out hidden force, and the power of my blade work has risen sharply." Fang Yu had ambitions of his own. "Once my blade work enters Subtlety, my blade will turn far more mysterious, far harder to read, far harder to stop."
***
Around noon, for once, the whole family ate lunch together.
"Fang Yu, come with me." Fang Ping'an stood, and Fang Yu hurried after him.
The two of them went into the second-floor study.
"This morning."
"I went to the Star River Group's city headquarters." Fang Ping'an pointed at the large, lavishly finished case on the desk and said quietly, "This is what I've prepared for you."