The question, seemingly casual, fell into the quiet study like a stone dropped into a still lake.
Behind the desk, Jia Fu had been about to lower his head and return to his ledgers.
But the instant he heard the words "bitter wine," the hand turning through his documents paused — for half a breath, no more.
In that half breath, the eyes of the magnate who commanded the Southern Border's most vast network of goods distribution flashed with a razor-sharp gleam, keen as a hunting falcon's.
In commerce, greed was never the problem. A man with no desires was the dangerous one.
The moment the other party wanted something, it meant there was capital for long-term cooperation and deeper entanglement.
But that was not the core reason Jia Fu's expression had shifted.
"Bitter wine..."
Jia Fu's mind began to turn like a precision abacus, spinning at full speed.
The stuff was extraordinarily obscure, and its taste was wretched. Even a man who lived and breathed wine would never spend good money on something so difficult to swallow.
Its only practical uses were as feed for certain niche Gu worms, or as an obscure auxiliary material in Gu refinement.
In a flash, Jia Fu connected the report his manager had just relayed from downstairs with the young man standing before him — and a clear, logical chain snapped together in his mind.
He raised his head.
The easy, wealth-inviting smile remained on his face, but the vicious scar on his right cheek gave a faint twitch, and his eyes took on a quality that was difficult to read.
He lifted his slightly cooled teacup, skimmed the surface with a light blow, and regarded Lin Mu with a smile that was not quite a smile, deliberately drawing out his words.
"Bitter wine is exceedingly rare, and exceedingly difficult to brew. I do happen to have a small half-jar left in my private stores."
"However..."
Jia Fu's tone shifted. His gaze fixed on Lin Mu's eyes, carrying a thread of amusement and deliberate probing.
"It seems our young Brother Lin has a fondness for wine? Just now downstairs, you spent eight hundred Primeval Stones without hesitation on a Liquor Worm."
"And now you come looking for bitter wine — the kind that most people wouldn't spare a second glance..."
He did not finish the sentence. Instead, he paused — with exquisite, perfectly timed precision.
Tsk.
A single, quiet sound. And the air in the study seemed to solidify.
That pause landed exactly where it needed to.
Jia Fu had not said it plainly. But the weight of what he had left unsaid pressed down like a mountain, pushing all the pressure squarely onto Lin Mu's side.
He was forcing Lin Mu to show his hand — and testing whether Lin Mu possessed some secret refinement formula connected to the Liquor Worm.
He's seen through me.
The invisible pressure hit without warning. Lin Mu felt his back tighten in an instant, a cold rush shooting straight to the top of his skull.
He had anticipated that Jia Fu's private stores might contain bitter wine.
What he had severely underestimated was this merchant's terrifying capacity for intelligence synthesis and commercial intuition.
From nothing more than the words "Liquor Worm" and "bitter wine," the man had assembled a picture that came alarmingly close to the truth — in a single instant.
He was caught between two bad options.
Admit it — and the bitter wine would follow naturally. Deny it — and the next time he tried to find this exceedingly rare catalytic ingredient somewhere in the Southern Border's ten thousand mountains, it would be like fishing in the open sea.
His combat power after breaking through to Rank 2 would be severely compromised.
But in that same instant, the alarm in Lin Mu's mind — the one that represented absolute rationality — began flashing red with frantic urgency.
"Do not give anything away. Not a word."
Lin Mu issued himself a severe internal warning. "The Four-Flavor Liquor Worm formula is a line that must never, under any circumstances, be crossed."
Not merely because it was the cornerstone of his Rank 2 advancement and the foundation of his Primeval Essence superiority — but because it was also the refinement path that Fang Yuan was destined to walk.
If he revealed the Four-Flavor Liquor Worm formula to Jia Fu today, over a mere half-jar of bitter wine —
Merchants lived for profit. Once that formula spread through the Jia Clan's trade routes, even the faintest whisper of it reaching the wrong ears...
Fang Yuan, far away on Qing Mao Mountain, would catch the scent of something wrong like a shark scenting blood in the water.
He would deduce it immediately — that somewhere in this world, apart from himself, there existed another person who possessed knowledge from five hundred years ago. Another transmigrator. Another reincarnator.
And once that killing star fixed his gaze on Lin Mu, death was the only outcome. This was a fatal weakness that could bring absolute ruin.
"Fang Yuan must never detect any variable outside his control."
With that chain of reasoning settled, the tension in Lin Mu's back gradually eased. Not a trace of panic showed on his face.
Instead, he adopted the perfectly natural expression of a man who had simply not caught the implication.
"Lord Jia is joking. I purchased the Liquor Worm for nothing more than the convenience of refining Rank 1 Primeval Essence. As for the bitter wine..."
Lin Mu's expression did not flicker. He steered the conversation back to the transaction itself with deliberate force.
"I came across some scattered notes in my late father's manuscripts — disorganized experiments involving Gu worms soaked in various wines."
"I thought I would buy some bitter wine to tinker with on my own and try my luck. What price would Lord Jia ask for that half-jar?"
Seeing Lin Mu play dumb and sidestep the heart of the matter —
Jia Fu let out a broad laugh and waved his hand with apparent generosity, dropping all pretense.
"What is Brother Lin saying! We hit it off the moment we met — what is a mere half-jar of bitter wine? Consider it a gift from me, free of charge."
"But..." Jia Fu leaned forward, the look of a fox coaxing its prey into reach.
"I am a merchant, and I have always been fascinated by unusual Gu formulas. If Brother Lin could share a thing or two from these 'tinkering' experiments of yours regarding the Liquor Worm — the bitter wine is yours to take whenever you like."
Something for nothing. Jia Fu was trying to trade half a jar of worthless wine for a potentially priceless secret formula.
But Lin Mu's next words made the smile on Jia Fu's face stiffen ever so slightly.
"As for insights on the Liquor Worm — I am afraid I am completely in the dark on that front. I would only disappoint you, Lord Jia."
Lin Mu deflected the Liquor Worm topic with deliberate vagueness.
But rather than leaving Jia Fu's appetite unsatisfied, he smoothly produced the real bargaining chip he had prepared.
"However — in that same manuscript my late father left behind, I happened to commit to memory two rather obscure Rank 2 'incomplete Gu formulas.'"
"Incomplete as they are, the thinking behind them is quite unconventional. I wonder, Lord Jia — might you be interested?"
"Incomplete Gu formulas?"
At those three words, Jia Fu's eyes lit up — with even greater excitement than when the Liquor Worm had been mentioned.
For a caravan, Gu worms were a one-time transaction — sell it and it was gone. But a Gu formula was something else entirely.
Even an incomplete formula, handed to the clan's Refinement Path masters to deduce and complete, was a hen that could lay golden eggs without end. Its strategic value far exceeded any Gu worm of the same rank.
"Oh?"
Jia Fu studied Lin Mu for a long moment.
As a seasoned operator, how could he fail to hear the holes in Lin Mu's story? "A manuscript left by my late father." "Happened to commit to memory." The excuses were riddled with gaps.
A guard who had scraped by at the bottom of the Southern Border and died young — how could such a man have left behind Gu formulas with "unconventional thinking" that bordered on the extraordinary?
But he saw through it without saying so.
Everyone in this world carried secrets. As long as a secret could bring him tangible benefit, who cared where it came from?
"Your late father... was truly a man of remarkable experience."
Jia Fu leaned back in his grand chair, his tone carrying a knowing, gently ironic appreciation.
"A pity he has already passed. Otherwise, I would have very much liked to share a good jar of wine with him and learn from him at length."
The meaning was plain: I know you are hiding something enormous. Your father's manuscript is almost certainly a cover story. But I will not expose you.
The ten thousand mountains of the Southern Border held countless inheritances. As long as you could bring him real, tangible benefit — you were Jia Fu's finest friend and most worthy investment.
The wisdom of investment lay in knowing when to play the fool.
"Since Brother Lin possesses such a rare incomplete formula, I will offer this half-jar of bitter wine with both hands."
The two men looked at each other across the study and smiled — a quiet, mutual understanding sealed without a word spoken aloud.
In the half-hour that followed —
Drawing from his vast memory of the original Reverend Insanity, Lin Mu carefully selected two obscure, incomplete formulas from the margins of Fang Yuan's recollections — formulas entirely unrelated to Fang Yuan's own core cultivation path — and recited them aloud to Jia Fu.
To Fang Yuan and Lin Mu alike, these were scraps.
But in the Southern Border's commercial world at this point in time, they were more than enough to ignite the keen interest of any Refinement Path master.
In exchange, Jia Fu agreed without hesitation: three days hence, he would personally retrieve that half-jar of bitter wine from the deepest reaches of the caravan's inventory and deliver it to Lin Mu in secret.
The exchange concluded. A perfect ending.
In this game, Lin Mu was without question the greatest winner.
He had used "free intelligence" from Fang Yuan's future memories — intelligence that cost him nothing — to obtain the exceedingly rare bitter wine at no price.
He had not only kept the fatal secret of the Four-Flavor Liquor Worm sealed, but had perfectly preserved Fang Yuan's timeline, ensuring his own identity as a transmigrator remained absolutely secure.
A textbook three-way victory.
"I am grateful for Lord Jia's generosity. Lin Mu takes his leave."
His promise secured, Lin Mu clasped his hands in farewell, pushed open the door, and walked out of that quiet study filled with calculation.
As the door swung shut behind him —
Inside the study, the smile on Jia Fu's face gradually faded, replaced by an expression of deep and serious gravity.
He pulled open the bottom drawer of his desk — the one secured by a complex hidden lock — and withdrew a ledger bound in jet-black covers, one that only he had the authority to consult.
This ledger recorded no gold or goods.
It was a record of the promising "rising stars" he had identified and cultivated across the Southern Border over half a lifetime of travel.
Jia Fu opened the ledger and turned to the page marked "Black Blood Stockade."
At the top of that page, only a handful of senior names had been written — Lin Cang, Supreme Elder Lin Zhen, and a few others.
But now, Jia Fu lifted his vermillion brush and, beneath those names, wrote two characters with great deliberateness.
Lin Mu.
Then his brush pressed down hard.
Below the name, with a force that nearly tore through the paper, Jia Fu drew two sharp, vivid red double-underlines.
"Neither arrogant nor rash. Knows precisely when to advance and when to retreat. Unfathomable depth..."
Jia Fu murmured to himself, eyes fixed on those two striking red lines.
In the Jia Clan's intelligence ranking system, a double underline carried a single meaning: this person's priority for recruitment and cultivation had been elevated to the highest tier — surpassing even the patriarch of a stockade.