Chapter 5: The Rich Lady

The three of them pieced together the recent chain of events, but they still felt like something was missing—a crucial link that refused to connect. For now, they could only confirm that the Demon Realm was plotting something monumental. As for what exactly, they had no leads.

“Female Lord, it’s time for the meal,” Liuzhu said softly. She had slipped in unnoticed and made sure to announce herself from the corner of the corridor.

Shang Si looked up instinctively toward Nan Jin, but before she could say a word, he threw up both hands in surrender. “Forget it, Shang Si. I’ve got lunch plans with Hua Qiu. You know what she’s like—if I ditch her, I won’t hear the end of it for weeks.”

The Ghost Generals of Yedu shared more than a mere sovereign-and-subject bond with Shang Si. In public, they addressed her as Female Lord, but behind closed doors, they were as close as siblings.

“Mm. Go on, then,” Shang Si replied. She could already picture Hua Qiu’s pouty anger, and a helpless smile tugged at her lips.

That left just one person to share the meal with her.

Lu Shiyuan wasn’t surprised when Shang Si’s gaze shifted to her. She curved her lips into a smile. “Then I’ll stay and eat with you.”

For cultivators in this world, sitting down to three meals a day like ordinary mortals was hardly necessary. They drew sustenance from the spiritual energy of heaven and earth, inhaling and exhaling it with every breath, long freed from such mundane constraints.

Yet Lu Shiyuan clung to the ritual of it all, a stubborn remnant of her past life as a modern woman.

She was puzzled, though. Even lowly disciples from minor sects like her no longer needed daily meals—so why would someone like Shang Si bother?

That confusion evaporated the moment she laid eyes on the feast spread before them.

Ah. Ordinary people ate food. A favored daughter of heaven like Shang Si? She ate money.

Every single bite was worth hundreds of spirit stones!

Human joys and sorrows rarely aligned, however. Midway through the meal, Shang Si didn’t forget to ask after the earlier incident. “I heard about what happened on the main street from Nan Jin. Someone from Sword Spirit Sect was injured—how bad is it?”

“Nothing serious, but they’ll probably need to stay in Yedu for a while to recover fully before heading out,” Lu Shiyuan replied offhandedly between bites, her mind clearly elsewhere. “Conveniently, the annual Yedu Auction is coming up soon. They can stick around and enjoy the spectacle.”

Shang Si gave a soft hum of acknowledgment, and the topic died there.

She usually dined alone, rarely with company. Having someone across the table today left her in a daze.

How many years had it been since she’d last done this?

Shang Si ate with refined elegance, and Lu Shiyuan quickly noticed she was quite picky about her food. She’d take a single bite from many dishes and then move on.

Such an eccentric personality, right down to her discerning palate.

Lu Shiyuan, by contrast, devoured everything with relish. Her enthusiasm was contagious—even Shang Si, who had started out with little appetite, found herself eating a bit more.

“You always eat with such… relish?” After observing for a while, Shang Si set down her chopsticks and ventured the question, her tone measured as she chose her words. A spark of curiosity glimmered in her eyes.

Her mood had lightened, and so had her voice.

She meant nothing more by it—just genuine surprise that Lu Shiyuan enjoyed Yedu’s cuisine so much.

After all, while the two of them presented as a newlywed couple to the world, that was far from the reality.

Hearing Shang Si phrase it so delicately, Lu Shiyuan belatedly felt a flush of embarrassment. She admitted candidly, “Well… Sword Spirit Sect is a small sect. With over a hundred people to feed, we barely have any spare spirit stones for anything else. Even when we do cook, it’s just some wild rabbits to tide us over.”

Whether forging spirit tools, buying pills, or anything else, it all demanded heaps of spirit stones. Dishes like these—each one worth hundreds—were beyond her wildest dreams.

Truly, poverty had limited her imagination!

Sword Spirit Sect wasn’t without powerful elders to hold the fort, but power didn’t magically fill their coffers.

By the end of the exchange, Shang Si had pieced it together: limited resources, plain and simple.

Her thoughts drifted to the scroll Nan Jin had delivered earlier, which meticulously recorded every detail of the street brawl.

Including the moment when Ling Yuan, provoked by words from Sword Spirit Sect disciples, lashed out and injured one.

She had seen it clearly: Lu Shiyuan tossing a low-grade spirit tool—forged from who-knew-what cheap material—from her storage space to block the attack.

It had shattered like a child’s toy. No surprise there.

It seemed the Sovereign Consort she had just welcomed home was rather short on funds.

In the span of a few breaths, Shang Si’s mind had raced through all this.

Lu Shiyuan, seated across from her, was probably too stuffed to eat another bite. With great reluctance, she set down her chopsticks on the rim of her bowl.

Now sitting properly, she had regained her ethereal, otherworldly grace from before the meal. But inside, she was already hatching a little plan.

Lu Shiyuan figured that from now on, at every mealtime, she could find some excuse to swing by Shang Si’s place and share a meal together.

She was still mulling this over when Shang Si suddenly pulled a magician’s trick, materializing a ring in her palm and sliding it across. “Here, take it.”

The dainty Spirit Ring looked utterly ordinary on the outside, but anything Shang Si deigned to offer was guaranteed to be no everyday trinket.

Just as Lu Shiyuan opened her mouth to ask, Shang Si spoke up again. “Use what’s inside for now. It should cover your daily expenses for getting around Yedu City.”

Lu Shiyuan accepted the Spirit Ring and sent a thread of her divine sense probing inside. Her hand gave an involuntary tremble—from sheer excitement.

Ah!

Her slender brows furrowed slightly, though her eyes gleamed with delight. “This isn’t right, is it?”

Her coy reluctance only made Shang Si think she truly didn’t want it. “You don’t like it?”

“Fair enough. The spirit treasures and artifacts inside are a bit low-grade, but it doesn’t matter. Once your cultivation recovers a little, I’ll swap them out for better ones. For now, even high-tier spirit treasures would be beyond your control.” The beauty with her exquisite features creased her brow as she spoke, plainly dissatisfied with her own offering.

In the end, she took back the Black Iron Token from Lu Shiyuan and imprinted a fresh strand of her divine sense onto it.

So meticulous, so considerate in every detail.

Lu Shiyuan, who had scraped by in poverty across two lifetimes, suddenly found herself backed by this powerhouse. She felt light-headed and adrift, as if her feet were sinking into clouds of cotton candy, everything unreal.

But the woman’s very next words yanked her back to sharp reality.

“Shiyuan, from now on, if you run into danger outside, don’t toss away those low-tier artifacts anymore.” Shang Si turned to her, her gaze a tangle of emotions. “Your life comes first.”

The unspoken message: Don’t be so cheap.

“…” Lu Shiyuan was utterly speechless.

Was she clinging to some high-tier artifact?

She didn’t have any to begin with!

After lingering a while longer in Dawn Splendor Hall with Shang Si, until the attendants entered to clear away the remnants of the meal, Liuzhu hurried in clutching a few orange-folded reports.

“Female Lord.” She shot a glance at Lu Shiyuan, who sat quietly off to the side, but said nothing more.

Shang Si’s eyes, however, zeroed in on those orange reports in her hand.

“What now?” Her smiling face flipped from sunny skies to gathering storm clouds in a heartbeat, turning cold and stern. The crisp jingle of bells rang out once more, clinking discordantly—much like Shang Si’s turbulent mood.

Lu Shiyuan’s keen eyes caught Shang Si giving her left hand a subtle flick just before reaching out for the reports from Liuzhu.

She couldn’t help curving her lips in a secret smile.

This habit of flicking her hand whenever she got annoyed was just too adorable.