Chapter 106
Chapter 106
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 106
Chapter Title: Wild Nature (4)
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Seoran had her own share of worries too.
Was it really necessary to go this far?
Couldn’t there have been another way to get Mokseon-gwa?
Had the Ten Great Sects committed such grave sins?
So she pulled out the report she’d written back then and read it over.
The scathing critique, dashed off in a fit of rage, stood out.
Time had dulled most of her fury, but now it surged right back to the top of her head.
On second thought, the post-bank-run bailout terms were downright merciful.
Seoran steeled herself for the sake of the Eastern Continent cultivators suffering under ladder-kicking and bloodsucking.
She would become a righteous thief.
Seoran slammed her head against the galleon’s hull and muttered.
“I just lost my entire fortune at the races... lost everything at the races... my entire fortune...”
She pictured a gambling addict on the brink of bankruptcy.
All sounds around her faded into the distance, and the ground seemed to crumble beneath her feet, leaving her in a dizzy haze.
At last, Seoran fully immersed herself in the role.
With a pallid face, Seoran leaped from the galleon.
“Senior, you can’t park a flying vessel right in front of the bank. Galleons go in the designated area... Senior?”
The bank clerk, about to ask her to move it, fell silent at the sight of her bloodless face.
Seoran didn’t spare the clerk a glance as she bolted into the bank in a panic.
The bizarre behavior of Great Forest celebrity Ryu Seoran drew every eye from the surrounding cultivators.
A long line snaked at the counters.
It was the season to pay fall lecture fees.
The bank was far busier than usual.
Seoran took her place at the end of the shortest line.
She couldn’t stay still for a second.
Her pupils darted wildly, her gaze flicking around constantly.
She jumped at the slightest noise.
Her clothes were already soaked with cold sweat.
Classic nervous breakdown symptoms.
The cultivator right in front of her spoke up.
“Senior, you seem in a hurry. Go ahead of me—I’ll let you cut.”
Seoran didn’t even say thanks.
She just mumbled something and shuffled into the spot.
She pressed right up against the person ahead, as if ready to headbutt them.
Unable to withstand the silent pressure, the cultivators yielded their turns to her one by one.
Finally, Seoran faced the counter clerk.
“Uh, what brings you to our head branch today?”
The clerk’s voice quavered pitifully.
A clerk well-versed in common sense and sound judgment instantly sensed it.
This was the prelude to a major incident.
He cursed the heavens for picking his shift to unleash this mess.
Seoran stammered.
“Spirit stones... give me my spirit stones...”
Bad vibes.
The clerk wanted to bolt right then.
But he had to eat.
The clerk forced a bright smile.
“You’d like to withdraw your deposit? Please fill out this form with the amount, and submit it with your depositor’s jade token?”
Seoran didn’t even glance at the form.
“Spirit stones... withdraw everything... h-hurry up and give them back...”
The clerk asked desperately.
“You mean your regular deposit, right?”
But his gut feeling never failed.
“No, my fixed-term savings! Withdraw it all right now!”
Fixed-term savings, withdraw in full, right now.
Seoran’s frantic cry echoed through the bank.
Her clear pronunciation made it audible to all.
The customers buzzed at once.
Sweat pouring, the clerk asked.
“Ryu Cultivator—no, esteemed customer—your super long-term savings plan incurs extra fees for early termination based on the remaining term. Is that alright?”
Early termination fees.
That was the Ten Great Sects’ safeguard.
The fees scaled with the remaining term—astronomical for early breaks.
For a half-year early withdrawal like this, Seoran would pay over thirty percent of the total.
Since she’d eagerly stamped the contract, the Ten Great Sects had dropped their last suspicions.
After rational deliberations, the sects had decided to cover shortfalls with Seoran’s spirit stones.
They trusted human greed, not her.
Breaking savings over a whim and tossing away a third of one’s wealth defied common sense—that was the leadership’s consensus.
But common sense can’t beat madness.
Nothing was absolute.
The Ten Great Sects learned a hard lesson thanks to Seoran.
Now it was just time to pay the tuition.
Seoran’s shout capped off the bank-run ploy.
“I’ll pay the thirty-two percent termination fee right now! So give me back all my spirit stones! Hurry!”
The clerk felt his hair go white.
It was all over.
He didn’t know exactly what or how.
But that’s just how it felt.
In the end, the bank mobilized every clerk for the withdrawal.
Even after over thirty percent fees, Seoran’s spirit stones were astronomical.
The sheer volume forced them to measure by bulk, not count.
Shocked, the cultivators couldn’t shut their mouths.
Carts piled with spirit stones streamed from the bank to Seoran’s galleon parked out front.
An endless procession.
A literal mountain of stones.
Every customer shared the same question.
Over thirty percent termination fees?
Weren’t Ryu Seoran and the Ten Great Sects on bad terms lately?
Something fishy, right?
The situation screamed suspicion.
Plus, Seoran’s antics had plenty of holes.
A little scrutiny would reveal the ploy in seconds.
Eastern Continent cultivators weren’t idiots.
That’s precisely why Seoran’s plan was a smashing success.
The smart ones raced to the counters first to withdraw ahead of everyone else.
Sure, something felt off.
But wasting time on overthinking in a crisis like this? That was the real stupidity.
The wise queued up immediately.
Maybe a catastrophe had hit the Ten Great Sects.
Or maybe Ryu Seoran was pulling some stunt.
Either way, it was none of their business.
Rushing to withdraw meant zero risk no matter what.
The bank turned into pandemonium in an instant.
Carts hauling stones out, crowds surging to counters, more flocking in at the noise.
Seoran, the culprit, sailed off toward Great Forest with her fully loaded galleon.
At the rendezvous, she handed the stone-stuffed galleon to the waiting recovery team.
She switched to a prepped empty-cargo galleon and headed for the next bank.
The next day, every bank on the Eastern Continent shut down.
Banks on the verge of bankruptcy.
Furious depositors boiling over.
Tormented Ten Great Sects leadership.
As the continent teetered on the edge of flames, each sect head received a letter.
Seoran’s bailout proposal.
A lengthy treasure list was attached.
Hand over the listed treasures if you want to save your sect.
The Ten Great Sects knelt in the end.
*****
Twin Dragon Sect’s Decisive Blade Cultivator Yu Jingwang wrestled with this.
How had it come to this?
How had the Ten Great Sects bowed to one cultivator?
How had they suffered such humiliation at their own sect headquarters?
The owl puppet with purple eyes spoke.
“Why are there fewer Millennium Five Elements Woods than I demanded?! A simple mistake?! Are you insane?! Did you think such a shallow trick would work?! You must not want to save your sect!”
A usually arrogant executive groveled before the owl puppet.
“Ryu Cultivator, it’s not like that...”
“No excuses! Hurry and fetch the smuggled treasures! I recorded it all perfectly before! How many Millennium Five Elements Woods were in Twin Dragon Sect’s warehouse! A search will reveal everything!”
At the armbanded owl’s signal, the others swarmed into the treasure vault.
They ripped into walls, floors, and ceilings.
Hidden treasures tumbled out.
Traces of desperate last-ditch efforts to keep even one treasure lay exposed.
Seoran’s collections were merciless.
Millennia of Eastern Continent plunder from Twin Dragon Sect melted away in real time.
After the brutal forced diet, the vault held less than half its usual treasures.
The owls, remotely piloted by Seoran from afar, opened their large galleon’s cargo hold.
The mountain of stones withdrawn from Twin Dragon Bank recently poured onto the ground.
The owl legion loaded the emptied hold with treasures from the sect vault and departed.
Even amid the chaos, Yu Jingwang brooded.
Why had the Ten Great Sects yielded to one person?
Maybe fear.
Abandoning competition, dodging risks, fleeing endlessly until this dead end.
They could have fought if they’d willed it.
If they’d dared cede the banks or Great Forest control, they wouldn’t have fallen so helplessly.
Obsessing over avoiding losses had led here.
When had dreamers of supremacy become the naive ones?
Sometime ago, the Ten Great Sects stopped challenging.
They just clung to the status quo.
Ryu Seoran, though, had wildness. Resolve.
So of course they lost.
Livestock can’t beat beasts of prey.
Then a thought struck.
Seoran always opened lectures with those words.
Cultivation is transcendence.
The desire to become a better being.
Yu Jingwang pondered deeply once more.
At last, he resolved to leave the sect.
With spirit energy imbalances resolved between regions, like-minded cultivators were founding new sects left and right.
He’d felt it living in Great Forest: cultivation suited his temperament more than wealth and glory.