Chapter 317: Manager Chu Li
Mo Xingyao looked at the pendant. The green and red, yin-yang-like jewel embedded in it made her frown. Her spiritual sense was still working, but it became strangely obscured as it reached the area surrounding the pendant.
It was not as if the pendant was concealing her spiritual sense. It was more like a chameleon mimicking its surrounding environment to conceal its true form, or perhaps it was specifically hiding itself from something. She could not quite put her finger on it.
"What’s this for?" she asked.
"It’s called the Heaven Deceiving Pendant. It is used to conceal one’s cultivation, my lady. Think about it. When wearing this, we could send Nascent Soul experts into secret realms that only allow Foundation Establishment cultivators and below to enter. We could monopolize the resources within those secret realms with this invention."
"Very interesting..." Mo Xingyao smiled. She took the pendant from Manager Chu and flipped it back and forth, examining its details before asking,
"But why should we distribute this invention? Wouldn’t it be better for us to equip our own people with them and monopolize all the secret realms?"
This was the key question for Mo Xingyao. From a business standpoint, this was far more profitable than selling the items to others.
Manager Chu smiled.
"Hahaha, you jest, Lady Mo. We can’t do that. If we monopolized this thing, then the other factions would definitely find fault with us and try to cause us trouble. I don’t think we could resist the pressure or attacks from all of those people if they found out that we had these things and refused to share the benefits with them."
"You’re right..." Mo Xingyao nodded in agreement.
"Then will you..." Before Manager Chu could finish his sentence, Mo Xingyao cut him off.
"But we should use a better method. Selling this en masse... I don’t think it will bring us much benefit. A good thing is better kept under control. If we regulate its distribution to our allies and use it to entice others to come to our side, we would gain both benefits and influence for the Sky-Severing Demon Valley and the Thousand Treasure Pavilion."
"You mean... you’re not going to approve this product?" Manager Chu asked, his face growing somber.
"I’m not going to approve the mass distribution of this Heaven Deceiving Pendant. What you suggested would bring us the least benefit."
She placed the pendant on the table and then asked,
"By the way, who was the one who made this? Which profound master created it? As far as I know, this thing should not be easy to produce."
"I’m sorry, Lady Mo, but I promised the creator that I would not sell his name to others," Manager Chu replied righteously.
Hearing this, Mo Xingyao could not help but smirk.
"Not sell his name to others? That is a very interesting choice of words. Does this mean the price wasn’t enough, or is that name forbidden, and saying it out loud would bring you trouble?" she asked, half joking and half serious.
As the CEO of the Thousand Treasure Pavilion, she knew exactly what kind of person Manager Chu Li was.
This was the man who had used her father’s strength and influence to build the trade association, the foundation of today’s Thousand Treasure Pavilion, promising that it would bring benefits to her father and his sect.
Yes, he had done as he promised, but the benefits he sent to her father were minuscule compared to the enormous profits Chu Li himself obtained. It was like giving a beggar a few scraps of change. It was not even 0.5% of the profits that he gave back to her father.
And her father was not good at business, so he never questioned Chu Li. He trusted everything Chu Li said whenever the man claimed that his merchant association was struggling.
Hell... compared to the investment and protection Chu Li had received from her father, the scraps of change he kicked back to him were not even one-tenth of what her father had invested in him.
She felt that this could not continue, so she took the matter into her own hands. She learned about business and all the knowledge she needed while continuing to cultivate.
When the opportunity arose, she and Yin Lan infiltrated the merchant association and checked all the ledgers. They found plenty of skeletons in Chu Li’s closet.
A deal was struck.
Chu Li would receive his own personal kingdom far away in the Vermilion Bird Province. In exchange, he would give up all of his authority and tell her about the various business deals they had with others, along with their customer lists and connections.
Otherwise, she would take all the evidence and go to her father, letting him deal with Chu Li himself.
She chose to do this because she valued the customer list and connections that Manager Chu possessed. At the beginning of the Thousand Treasure Pavilion, she needed plenty of connections and access to the markets necessary for the pavilion to sell its products.
She also knew that Chu Li had kept his truly valuable connections to himself, but that was the price she was willing to pay for a smooth transfer without bloodshed.
Otherwise, if she came to blows with this bastard Chu Li, the conflict might damage the foundation of the Thousand Treasure Pavilion, and she did not want that.
Afterward, she spent several years consolidating her power and finally founded the Thousand Treasure Pavilion on top of the foundation of the merchant association this bastard had built.
Under her policies, the small town quickly expanded in size. It became a city of opportunity and business, a neutral ground where the righteous path and the demonic path could trade and exchange resources.
So, all in all, Mo Xingyao knew the nature of this snake named Chu Li like the back of her hand. It was either that the price was not enough, or... it would cause him trouble if he were to reveal the name.
Chu Li smiled.
"You jest, Lady Mo. I wouldn’t sell anyone out, no matter the price. What kind of person do you think I am?" Chu Li said half jokingly.
Mo Xingyao also smiled, but it was the kind of smile she gave to someone who was lying straight to her face without a shred of shame, yet she still had to listen to it for various reasons.
’Okay... it’s definitely the kind of name that would give you trouble if you sold it, huh?’ Mo Xingyao thought.
She then chuckled and let it go. It was not something she needed to know anyway. A pendant like this could, at most, become a source of conflict between the factions. It was nothing she could not manage without knowing the creator’s name.
"Fine. I won’t pry into the creator’s name, but what do you need for the Thousand Treasure Pavilion to use this as one of our sources of leverage?" Mo Xingyao asked.
She viewed the Heaven Deceiving Pendant as the same kind of resource as the pagoda her husband had left for her to manage.
It would bring both wealth and influence to the Thousand Treasure Pavilion.
But instead of calculating or trying to negotiate, Chu Li made a disappointed face at the outcome.
"If Lady Mo won’t approve the sale of this pendant, then we have nothing more to discuss."
Chu Li immediately cut the conversation short and reached his hand toward the pendant on the table.
Before his hand could touch it, however, a sword suddenly reached his throat.
Manager Chu Li stopped. One inch farther, and the sword would have pierced his neck.
It was Yin Lan who had stopped Chu Li from reaching for the pendant.
"Why the rush, Manager Chu? Aren’t you going to negotiate a little? This is a great tool for us, you know?"
Chu Li glanced at Yin Lan, then retreated a few steps and held up both hands with a smile.
"If Lady Mo wants this pendant, I would gladly give it to you as a gift. As for my objective here, if Lady Mo cannot grant me approval to sell this, then it means I have no choice but to retreat," Manager Chu said, trying to smooth things over.
"Oh? How strange. You’re not even trying to gain some benefit from monopolizing the resources, or taking a share of the profits from the plan I’m going to propose to you?" Mo Xingyao asked, feeling both amused and curious about this man’s behavior.
"No, Lady Mo. If I can’t sell this, then there is no point for me to choose otherwise," Manager Chu said, a hidden glint flashing in his eyes.
"Let’s go back, everyone," Manager Chu instructed his entourage.
The group then returned to the entrance and left the way they had come.
A moment after Manager Chu had left, Yin Lan sheathed her sword.
"Young Miss... please order me to eliminate him. Keeping this man alive no longer serves our purpose," Yin Lan coldly asked for permission.
"No. Killing him is long overdue. He has already consolidated his power, and many of our customers also know him. If we were to kill him and the news got out, it would make our people wary of us. They might think that they could be next the moment they were no longer useful."
"I don’t want people to think that we see them as tools. It would be difficult to do business with the righteous path if that kind of reputation were to spread," Mo Xingyao explained.
"In my perspective, Young Miss... he’s too much of a liability for us to keep alive," Yin Lan said.
"That’s true..." Mo Xingyao paused, letting out a tired sigh. "So until he has done something detrimental to us or committed an unforgivable act, we can’t do anything to him. This is the downside of trading with the righteous path. We can’t just kill him. We need a sound excuse to do so," Mo Xingyao said.