Not that Fang Yuan was complaining, but when weighed against the difficulties and rewards of earlier missions and the rewards he had gotten then, this was rather disproportionate given all he had to do was go tell the elders what had happened.
The White Boar Gu, for example, was nearly as valuable as the Liquor Worm. And the Red Steel Relic Gu would easily sell for several thousands of primeval stones, even assuming that you could find one.
That was discounting the 4% boost to his aptitude.
Compared to everything else that had come before, this seemed exceedingly magnanimous given that he wasn't giving up on much by comparison.
'Am I missing something here?'- Fang Yuan thought. At worst, he was just giving up the Liquor Worm by telling the elders, though the system already took care of that by giving him one upfront.
The Bai and Xiong clans, despite how much they might value this information, would not give him an aptitude-raising gu worm in return for his effort. They probably did not even have a single one with them, for that matter. Such gu worms were extremely valuable, after all.
The decision was so clear as to be preposterous.
It made him feel that there was a dark secret regarding why the system was being so generous, either that, or he was missing out on something.
But try as he might, he could not figure out what was wrong.
He was one to trust his instincts, but regardless, he couldn't find a reason to turn down the mission.
He still had some of the Jade Emperor Bamboo Wine left, which was a bit of a letdown as he had no way to preserve it. It was unlikely that he'd find a buyer for it, and he could use it to feed the Liquor Worm- the issue with that was that normal wine would do just fine from that aspect. It was a waste, but there was little he could do regarding that.
He tried to cork it as best as he could before hiding it somewhere on the route where he might be able to pick it up later.
The sun was just about to crest the horizon in an hour or so as he made his way to the academy elder's house.
The guards looked at him, and one of them asked, "Fang Zheng- did you finally refine the Moonlight Gu?"
In the house, the academy elder was woken up by the guards.
"Oh- what happened? Did someone refine their Moonlight Gu already?"
It was a bit too early to see someone successful in their gu refinement, but with Fang Zheng's A-grade talent, it wasn't impossible.
"No, actually," the guard said, a bit nervous. "It's Fang Yuan, not Fang Zheng at the gate. He says that he found something important related to the clan, and that he wanted to speak to you about it."
The guard was a bit nervous as he didn't dare deny Fang Yuan and possibly miss out on some crucial piece of information, but at the same time, he was disturbing the academy elder's sleep. Naturally he was fidgety.
The academy elder frowned. "Alright, ask him to wait until I'm ready."
Less than half an hour later, he walked out to see Fang Yuan waiting patiently for him. It looked like the boy hadn't slept all night, with his hair in a tangled mess and the faint smell of alcohol about him.
"What's going on?"
"Ah, we might want to take this somewhere more private," Fang Yuan said.
The academy elder, was, at first, rather annoyed by all of this though his expression changed once he heard what Fang Yuan said.
That day, both Fang Yuan and the academy elder didn't show up to class.
That was because they were both in the cave where there was the Flower Wine Monk's Inheritance, along with the current clan head.
"So this is where he was hiding all those years," the clan head said. He glanced at the video playing on the wall, displayed by the Audio-Visual Gu.
After taking the video in, he walked over to the gu worm, squishing it with his foot easily.
Gu worms by themselves were quite fragile, usually only about as sturdy as an ordinary bug. Take the Spring Autumn Cicada for example, despite being the most powerful gu worm that Fang Yuan had owned in his entire life, could be squished by even a child. Unless the gu worm had defensive abilities they were rather easy to kill, displayed by how the clan head had squished the Audio-Visual Gu like a bug.
"Was there anything else in here?" the clan head asked Fang Yuan for the dozenth time.
"Only this," Fang Yuan said, taking out the Liquor Worm again.
Everyone knew that the Flower Wine Monk's vital gu was the Mist Perspiring Butterfly which he often used to enchant women. It looked like over the years, it had degenerated back into a Rank 1 Liquor Worm due to lack of food and was barely hanging on to life, which was why Fang Yuan had been able to lure it out.
"Mmm..." the clan head said, looking around, but also finding nothing. He then glanced at Fang Yuan.
Fang Yuan was sure that it would cross his mind to simply kill him just to keep this on the down-low, but there were a good number of reasons that he wouldn't do so. Foremost among them being, Fang Yuan was a budding B-grade talent, a future elder, and it was worthwhile to keep him around for that. Not to mention Fang Yuan had not shown or done anything that went against clan policies at this point.
As an extra precaution, however, Fang Yuan had roped in the academy elder into this. With another witness, it was much harder to keep murder under wraps. Not to mention the academy elder would likely be against such a plan given he was tasked with nurturing the Gu Master seeds of the village. It was also easy enough for him to explain why he went to the academy elder first and not the clan head, with the academy elder being the elder closest to him.
"Fang Yuan, you do understand why we can't let the full details of this get out?" the clan head said to Fang Yuan.
"Of course, the story occurred as everyone knows it," Fang Yuan said. "The Flower Wine Monk was first defeated by the fourth generation clan head, but then took advantage of his kindness and betrayed him." (This statement was fact-checked by real Gu Yue Village patriots and was found to be 100% true).
The clan head was a bit off-put by how quickly Fang Yuan agreed to it, and how nonchalantly he went along with things. After all, the story was well known around the village, and to be told that it was false would've greatly perturbed a normal boy his age. It was like meeting your childhood hero and finding out that they were a slimy and worthless individual.
However, that still left the clan head nothing to complain about.
"Alright then, Fang Yuan," the academy elder said. "We'll make sure that you're properly rewarded for this."
"Can I keep the Liquor Worm?" Fang Yuan asked. The person who had originally found the inheritance had given it up to the clan as he had no use for it, though naturally, Fang Yuan wanted to hold onto it.
He said this with a natural curiosity that one would expect from a budding student his age.
If the gu worms that Fang Yuan had found were very valuable, without a doubt they would take it from him, 'appropriating' it for the clan's greater good. That was why normally anyone would keep a finding like that secret.