Chapter 57: Leverage

“It’s over, Kenji.”

Xiao Yue’s voice was a brittle thread in the tense silence of their private box.

“Listen to them. They’re laughing at us. Lian Ren, Xue Li… all of them. They know we’ve spent our last coin.”

“Let them look,” Kenji replied without taking his eyes off his opponents. “Their stares have no market value.”

“But the Ice Lotus does!” she retorted, her voice gaining a desperate edge. “The auctioneer’s gavel is about to fall, and we can’t do anything.”

“Incorrect. Capital isn’t just gold, Xiao Yue. Gold is for those who shout their strategy from the rooftops.”

Below, the voice of Lian Ren’s representative cut through the air.

“Fifty gold coins. A symbolic price to start.”

The crowd’s muffled laughter was a slap in the face. Xue Li, of the Alchemist Guild, was quick to join the game: “Sixty. The Guild always supports the circulation of treasures.”

“They’re playing with us,” Xiao Yue muttered, clenching her fists. “Humiliating us before they crush us.”

“Precisamente,” said Kenji. “And that is their mistake. They think the game is about pride.”

He turned from the window and gave a nearly imperceptible signal to the attendant waiting in the shadows. The young man approached with the quickness of a cat.

“Two messages. Personal and immediate delivery,” Kenji ordered in a whisper, his brush already dancing across two small pieces of parchment. “No intermediaries.”

“What are you doing?” Xiao Yue asked, stunned. “Negotiating a surrender?”

Kenji didn’t answer. He folded the first piece of parchment and handed it to the attendant along with a silver coin that seemed to absorb the light.

“For Lord Xue Li. Urgent.”

Then, he handed him the second. “And this one, with the same urgency, for Elder Shen of the Still Mountain Temple.”

“Elder Shen?” Xiao Yue frowned. “But he’s not…”

“Go,” Kenji interrupted, addressing the attendant.

The young man vanished without a sound.

The move did not go unnoticed. A murmur rippled through the hall. In the Alchemist Guild’s box, Lian Ren leaned toward his partner.

“What do you think he’s offering? His thanks for the beating we’re about to give him?”

Xue Li smiled, a smirk of superiority. Just then, the attendant appeared at his side.

“A confidential message for you, Lord Xue Li.”

“For me?” Xue Li took it with an air of smugness, unrolling it slowly to prolong the moment.

Lian Ren watched, amused. The amusement vanished as he saw the color drain from Xue Li’s face. The smile froze on his lips, then melted away, leaving a waxy mask. The parchment trembled in his fingers.

“Xue Li, what is it?” Lian Ren asked, his mocking tone now tinged with genuine confusion. “Did he send you a threat? That nobody?”

Xue Li didn’t answer. His eyes were fixed on the words: “Warehouse C-7. Merchant Jin. Discretion is a valuable asset.”

“The bid is at sixty,” the auctioneer announced. “Does the Guild wish to continue?”

Lian Ren nudged his partner. “Well? Cat got your tongue?”

Xue Li shot to his feet, knocking over a cup of wine. The red liquid spread across the table like a pool of blood.

“The Guild… the Alchemist Guild has… more urgent matters to attend to. We withdraw.”

“What?!” Lian Ren exclaimed, incredulous. “You’re backing out now? For a miserable sixty coins?”

But Xue Li was already walking toward the exit of his box, his gaze distant, a sheen of cold sweat on his temple. Before disappearing, he cast a fleeting, terrified glance toward Xiao Yue’s box. It wasn’t an apology. It was an acknowledgment of receipt.

Across the hall, in the discretion of the lower tiers, Elder Shen read his own note. His face revealed no emotion, but his fingers paused for a moment on a single sentence: “The city’s future awaits a hand that will guide it, not subjugate it.”

He folded the parchment carefully and looked up just in time to see Xue Li’s chaotic retreat. A piece had just been removed from the board by an invisible force.

“Two hundred gold coins!” Lian Ren roared, his voice thick with fury and wounded pride. If Xue Li was abandoning him, he would take the prize alone and crush everyone else.

The auctioneer’s gavel rose. “Two hundred, going once…!”

“Two hundred and fifty.”

The voice was calm, serene, yet it silenced the entire hall. It hadn’t come from Xiao Yue’s box. It had come from Elder Shen.

Lian Ren spun around as if struck. His face flushed with rage.

“The Temple…?”

“Does the Valley of the Silent Echo wish to start a bidding war with the Still Mountain Temple?” Elder Shen asked, his voice never rising, yet every word was a block of granite.

Lian Ren opened his mouth, then closed it. He was seething, but he was trapped. Defying the Temple was unthinkable.

“We… withdraw,” he hissed through his teeth and collapsed into his seat. He didn’t look at Xiao Yue. He didn’t understand what had just happened, and that enraged him more than the loss itself.

The fall of the gavel was final.

“Sold to the Still Mountain Temple!”

In their box, Xiao Yue buried her face in her hands. “We lost it, Kenji. Your plan… it failed. Elder Shen has it.”

“Failed?” Kenji finally turned to look at her. “The goal wasn’t to buy it with our money. The goal was to have it bought for us. You haven’t seen the full play yet.”

A soft knock came at the door. An acolyte from the Temple entered and reverently placed a white jade box on the table.

“Lady Xiao Yue. A gift from Elder Shen,” he said, bowing. “His message is this: ‘The balance of power is worth protecting.’ He adds: ‘Friendship with the new generation of Clan Silver Cloud is an alliance I am pleased to forge.’”

The acolyte withdrew.

Xiao Yue looked at the closed box containing the Ice Lotus. Then she looked at the Cloud Crane Tear they already possessed. And finally, she looked at Kenji. The game had been won on a board she never knew existed.