Chapter 161: Smearing reputation.

Chapter 161: Smearing reputation.The next day nothing noteworthy happened in the sect. Inner disciples cultivated as usual, but outer sect was bustling with everyone making plans about how to spend their newly acquired contribution points.

After sending Xiao Lian to arena to practice, Lee went to Hall of Knowledge to discuss his future employment.

As expected, Junior Elder Chen wasn’t an idiot and guessed his intentions to learn higher level cultivation techniques under the disguise of simply copying them.

They haggled for half a day, but in the end Lee was the one who technically lost. His previous contributions would be rounded up to be worth of total of fifty thousand contribution points, and while it was a fortune for an outer disciple, it was barely enough to get a decent level combat technique for Xiao Lian.

And that was the good part.

If Lee wanted to work for the library, he would be allowed to copy more advanced techniques and for that would receive measly two thousand points a month. It was barely enough to cover his basic necessities, but no matter how he tried, Junior Elder Chen didn’t budge. She was set on exploiting him to the fullest.

Lee didn’t know it was the punishment Elder Wang thought of because of Lee’s tendency to cause trouble.

The elder and Shen Rouya had a heated discussion on how to deal with him. Junior Elder Shen wanted Lee to receive some kind of actual punishment, but the elder was more inclined to help a young person grow their character, allowing to learn from their mistakes.

That is why he intended to award Lee, in case his burglary scheme worked out, with two months of cultivation time in the Ascension tower. Of course, if the elder knew it was decades too late to change Lee’s ways, he would’ve thought differently.



In the end, Lee was employed for a miserly two thousand contribution points a month. He would get free afternoons to practice combat techniques and higher quality food from the canteen junior elders ate at.

No matter how bad the haggling went, Lee knew he was the winner the moment Junior Elder Chen didn’t refuse the main object of the discussion – his chances of copying the advanced techniques. To Lee the rest was just a facade in order to not make his true intentions too obvious.

***

The second morning after the burglary started with a loud bang. Literally.

Bells across the sect alarmed both inner and outer disciples, and following those, the Hall of Justice issued something like a martial law and the sect went into a complete lockdown.

The initial panic and confusion was cleared up in the afternoon by news that something important has been stolen from Mission Hall. It was at the level of gossip and only the involved parties knew that the leak was intentional.

Since there were not that many items of grand importance that one could steal, disciples pretty soon figured out that someone had snatched the register and become the richest person in the sect.

Obviously the thief instantly became a laughingstock, because there was no way to spend excessive amounts of contribution points without arousing suspicion. Unfortunately the Mission Hall and Elder Leng turned into a target of ridicule as well.

Normally there was a healthy competition between the nine halls, and making fun of others was part of the game. This time, though, somehow it became much more intense, as if someone behind the scenes was fueling the fire.

The initial investigation that lasted for three days didn’t lead anywhere. Not being able to find perpetrators, the Hall of Justice issued a reward for finding the register – a whole three hundred thousand contribution points.

Everyone knew that finding the thief was a matter of principle, thus the fact that the sect remained on lockdown wasn’t a surprise.

There was a chance that the register had long left the sect, but most of the people didn’t think so. It was illogical to stash it somewhere far since the contribution points could only be used in the sect, and the people who stole it had to spend them bit by bit, transferring points from the register to their tokens.

During the next days Nethermoon sect was turned upside down, both inner and outer. Everyone was becoming suspicious of one another and the situation became so tense, that the smallest arguments transformed into challenges to fight in the arena with stakes being full search of the loser’s room.

It was ridiculous, but fun to watch, at least from Lee’s window in the library. Of course, for the first two days he and Xiao Lian passionately took part in the search, but similar to many others, gave up.

***

Things began to calm down when the register wasn’t found after half a month. According to the public opinion, Elder Xiao was working on a new register and things were supposed to go back to normal.

But then the old one was found.

An elderly maintenance worker, a sixty four year old outer disciple from the Sect Affairs Hall, found the item everyone was looking for. The problem was that after noticing the register hidden in one of the pavilions, the guy screamed from joy like a teenage girl meeting her idol, and the news spread so fast there was no way to do any damage control.

Although, there were people who didn’t intend to dig too deep to find the truth, few believed the scandalous fact that the thief was Elder Leng’s niece.

She lacked motive, had everything in life she wanted, apart from looks that is, and she never had an argument with her aunt. More importantly – half the sect laughed imagining how the plump girl climbed to the ceiling to hide the register behind the beam.

That is why much more interesting was to make theories that the Sect Affairs Hall was setting up the Mission Hall for embarrassment. It was only logical – an old guy with nothing to lose would find an item no one could for half a moth in the place no one thought of looking.



Many were surprised when the finder was actually rewarded with the promised contribution points, and instead of spending them on himself, gifted them away to his sister’s grandchildren who became outer disciples a couple years ago. The gesture was natural and selfless, and confused many. But that only increased the amount of conspiracy theories flying around.

Observing the events Lee realized that while technically he was the main perpetrator of the event, he was a toddler regarding to political schemes. People in the sect didn’t have anything better to do in their free time than gossip, and it was easily turned into a weapon.

Mission Hall’s Elder Leng’s reputation was destroyed almost as if she had been caught fooling around with a teenage boy. In the upper echelons everyone still treated her with respect, but she wasn’t deaf and heard the whispers and saw the ridicule in the eyes of disciples.

As it turns out, it wasn’t enough.

Several days after the register was found, the Healing Hall announced they had found a cure for the sect master’s condition. To synthesize the antidote and remove the poison from his body, large amounts of specific herbs was needed, but that part was only a technicality.

The grand scheme that the Mission Hall along with its secret allies planned, failed, and after getting better the man himself could deal with the people who tried to assassinate him after he was cured.

Lee didn’t like it. First of all he didn’t fancy the underhanded political methods in general. But what he didn’t like with passion was that the opponents were left alive after their plot partially failed. It would be normal in a civilized world, but here, where the strongest ruled, it was a mistake.

Despite the fact that there was no direct proof of Elder Leng being involved, Lee was allowed to perform the little stunt in order to smear her reputation. It clearly meant that Elder Wang knew she was one of the people behind the assassination, but didn’t have guts to do anything about it.

Lee didn’t know why – maybe the man was too soft, or maybe too weak. In the end, it didn’t matter. As long as Lee was left alone, he could continue his studies.

The problem was that after the Healing Hall’s announcement, the respective elders of each hall informed their disciples that in order to gather the necessary amounts of herbs, every single outer disciple will take part in the following mission. It was only going to be three days long, and consist of manual labor in a particularly unpleasant environment.