Chapter Eleven: Enlightenment in the Dilapidated Temple
The faint sound outside the door could be clearly heard in the deathly silence of the dilapidated house. Liu Bao'er held her breath and silently moved to the door. In the moonlight, a piece of coarse cloth, weighed down by small stones, lay on the ground.
She quickly picked it up and unfolded it. Several symbols were scribbled on the cloth with charcoal: an arrow pointing west, an open door, and a hunched human figure.
It's a mute old servant!
Her heart pounded wildly. She immediately understood—this was perhaps the last way her grandmother had left her, through the old servant, before she collapsed.
Without a moment's hesitation, she tucked the coarse cloth into her bosom and pressed her ear against the door to listen intently. The night watchwoman's breathing was even and deep; she seemed... to be sleeping soundly.
She gently flicked the latch—and the door opened with a click!
Like a wisp of smoke, her slender figure blended into the deepest darkness before dawn. Knowing the Dou family's backyard well, she avoided the night patrol routes and silently approached the overgrown side gate. The bolt had already been broken; she pushed hard, and the icy morning air instantly rushed into her lungs.
She glanced back at the majestic Dou family mansion, its silhouette revealed in the morning light, and for the first time, she felt so clearly how much the mansion rejected her.
She had nowhere to go.
Driven by instinct, she distanced herself from the crowds and headed towards the desolate outskirts of the city. Her shoes were worn out, and her feet ached terribly; she was also parched with hunger. She could only scoop up water from the roadside stream to temporarily quench her thirst.
Finally, she found an abandoned mountain god temple at the foot of Zhongnan Mountain. The walls were crumbling, covered with cobwebs, and the gold paint on the statues had peeled off, revealing the mottled clay beneath.
She huddled under the cold offering table, pulling out a hard, rock-hard flatbread from her bosom. She gnawed on the cold, dry bread, chewing laboriously, the bitterness rising in her throat.
This was the closest she had come to collapse since she came into this world.
His family was destroyed, he was forced to live under someone else's roof, his hard-earned wealth vanished, his trusted partners were imprisoned, and now he was like a stray dog, hiding in this desolate mountain temple.
Why?
She clearly possessed knowledge ahead of her time, and every calculation she made was precise and accurate, so why did she still end up in this predicament?
"If you want to make money, you first need to build connections and find powerful backers..."
Cui Jiulang's arrogant words, brimming with power, echoed in his ears once more.
Connections... powerful backers...
She suddenly raised her head, and in the darkness beneath the altar, her eyes shone with a terrifying light.
Yes! All her previous efforts revolved around "capital" itself. She was like a pure market manipulator, trying to conquer everything within the rules of the market. But she forgot—in this world, the ultimate rule-maker is never the market, but power!
Without the backing of power, even the most ingenious capital operations are nothing more than rootless duckweed, fat sheep to be slaughtered in the eyes of the powerful. The Dou family matriarch's "power" was too small to protect her against a behemoth like the Cui family.
So, in this Tang Dynasty, who was the biggest backer?
The answer is obvious.
emperor!
Only by gaining the approval of the imperial power, even if it's just a little bit, can she have the right to deal with powerful clans!
This thought, like lightning piercing the darkness, instantly illuminated the lost path. Despair and exhaustion receded like the tide, replaced by a stronger, colder fighting spirit.
She carefully crawled out from under the offering table and walked to the entrance of the dilapidated temple. In the distance, the magnificent outline of Chang'an City was revealed in the morning sun; it was the center of power, and it would be her next battlefield.
She looked down at the purse at her waist, where her last trump card was—the key to the hidden compartment of the memorial tablet concealed with gold foil.
“It seems,” she murmured to herself, her tone resolute with a do-or-die determination, “that this time we’re going to play a much bigger game.”
The ultimate goal of capital is power.
So, she used her greatest asset—her ability—to knock on the door of power!
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