"You have to do something, Patriarch!"

"This can’t go on,"

A week later, the effects of Gu Fan’s little scheme crashed down upon the Poison valley Town.

The Gu Clan’s primary poison refinement labs and alchemy halls were running dry because the local merchants had mysteriously sold off their entire stock of herbs and toxic beast cores to an anonymous buyer.

This left the clan shops entirely empty and forcing the leadership to frantically bleed their emergency treasury dry just to purchase basic operational supplies at hideously high market prices.

Inside the grand Audience Hall, the atmosphere was tense as Patriarch Gu Yangtian sat on his throne with a deeply stressed expression while dozens of angry clan elders shouted and complained about the catastrophic lack of resources.

"The Bai Clan must be blocking the trade routes, Patriarch!" one elder yelled furiously as he slammed his fist on the table, "Our medicine shops have absolutely nothing to sell, and the disciples are threatening to riot if they don’t receive their monthly spirit stones and alchemy supplies soon!"

"You fool, it’s not the Bai Clan!" another elder countered aggressively, waving a piece of parchment in the air, "I just received inside information from our spies in the Bai estate, and they are suffering the exact same crippling shortages over there, so someone else is completely hoarding the market!"

"Then what do we do?!" a third elder panicked loudly. "We don’t deal in weapons or arrays like the Song Clan, we rely entirely on poisons and potions to survive, so without herbs and beast cores, our clan is as good as dead in the week!"

Gu Yangtian rubbed his temples aggressively since he had absolutely no answers for the sudden crisis. This has never happened before. So why now?

Just as the arguments reached a boiling point and the Patriarch seemed completely powerless to calm the furious elders, Madam Li sitting beside the Patriarch stood up gracefully from her seat, wearing a lavish red dress and the room fell silent in a second.

"Are you all just going to stand around and complain like helpless children, or are you actually going to offer some solutions?" Madam Li demanded with a harsh, overbearing tone as she glared down at the desperate men

"Do none of you have personal connections? Shouldn’t you be out there finding new trading partners and hitting the road to secure resources instead of crying in this hall?"

The elders immediately looked down at the floor in profound shame because they had absolutely no counterarguments to her harsh words.

"What a bunch of useless cry babies," Madam Li scorned as she glared at them all.

"Since none of you useless men can do it, I will take the matter into my own hands," Madam Li announced with a smooth, authoritative tone.

"I have heard your grievances, and since my husband seems entirely overwhelmed by the external pressures, I will personally take on this task."

The elders looked at her in sheer shock because the treasury was practically empty, but Madam Li simply offered them a calm, reassuring smile before turning to the Patriarch.

"Just give me one week’s time, husband," Madam Li declared firmly, "I guarantee that our clan will not starve under my watch."

~~~~~

Meanwhile inside the lavish private quarters of the Bai Clan estate, Patriarch Bai Haoran was violently taking out his massive frustrations regarding the lost Spirit Mines on a plump, terrified concubine as he forcefully bent her over his heavy wooden desk.

He roughly grabbed a thick handful of her hair and yanked her head back as his hand ruthlessly squeezed her bouncing breasts.

"How do you like it, you dumb bitch," Bai Haoran grunted aggressively as he drove his hips forward with brutal force, burying himself into her pussy with a loud smack that echoed through the room.

"Ahhh! Yes, Patriarch! You are so powerful!" the concubine cried out, completely faking her pleasure as she gritted her teeth in actual pain, forcing herself to arch her back and stroke his massive ego because she knew her survival depended entirely on satisfying his brutal temper.

"Yes! that’s right! Here, take this bitch!" Bai Haoran slapped her ass cheek hard enough to leave a stinging red handprint.

"Oh! Yes! Hit me harder, Patriarch!" The concubine moaned, looking over her shoulder at Bai Haoran.

Bai Haoran leaned down to roughly kiss her mouth, shoving his tongue aggressively past her lips while his calloused fingers pinched her stiff nipples.

"Take my seed, you worthless slut! Take it all!" he roared loudly as he grabbed her wide hips to lock her in place, driving his cock as deep as it could possibly go before his balls blasted as he cummed inside her.

"Patriarch! You must come to the grand hall immediately!" An elder banged on the doors of his quarters as his panicked voice screamed from the hallway, completely ruining the afterglow.

Bai Haoran furiously shoved the naked concubine aside and quickly pulled on his dark green robes before he threw the doors open to glare murderously at the sweating elder.

"What the fuck is so important that you dare interrupt my cultivation, Bai Chong?!" Bai Haoran snarled as he stormed down the hallway, forcing the terrified elder to practically run to keep up with his massive strides.

"It’s a nightmare, Patriarch!" Elder Bai Chong panted desperately as they entered the massive stone Audience Hall where dozens of other clan elders were already gathered in a state of absolute panic, "Our top three herb and beast core suppliers just abruptly cut us off this morning and refused to do sell us the raw materials!"

Bai Haoran stopped dead in his tracks as he looked at the elder with confused, narrow eyes before he threw his hand forward shattering a heavy rock statue into a million pieces of flying dust because his rage completely boiled over.

"What do you mean they cut us off?!" Bai Haoran roared so loudly that the windows rattled, "Don’t they know we rely entirely on those toxic beast cores and rare herbs to supply our poison refinement halls?"

"They completely sold out their entire stocks!" a fat merchant elder cried out while wiping sweat from his forehead, "They claimed that someone approached them late last night and offered them a massive, upfront buyout in pure Medium-Grade Spirit Stones, paying highly inflated premium prices that we simply cannot match!"

Bai Haoran violently threw the fat elder to the floor and scoffed dismissively, trying to suppress the rising panic in the room, "Don’t make such a massive fuss over this, because it might just be a short-term fluctuation caused by the recent chaos in the valley."

"We can’t wait, Patriarch!" Elder Bai Chong argued desperately, his face pale with fear.

"We were too busy dealing with the hunting competition, strengthening our perimeter defenses, and managing the fallout from the lost Spirit Mines, so we haven’t been able to stockpile anything!"

"We have completely run out of raw materials, and our shops are almost entirely empty right now. We can last a day or two, three days at absolute max, before our entire economy collapses!"

"Then find other suppliers!" Bai Haoran screamed as he grabbed the fat elder by the collar of his robes and lifted him completely off the floor, "Spit out the gold and buy out the smaller merchants to keep the halls running!"

"We already tried, Patriarch, but there are none left!" Another elder interrupted frantically while waving a stack of economic ledgers in the air, "The market has been entirely swept clean, so only cheap, rotten raw materials are left, and they are completely useless for us!"

"Then trace the anonymous buyers!" Bai Haoran snarled, violently spitting again as his extreme paranoia flared up. "Find out who these shadow bastards are and send our elite execution squads to slit their throats so we can take our supplies back by force!"

"We hit a complete dead end!" Elder Bai Chong explained fearfully, "The moment the transactions were completed, so whoever is doing this is using highly professional, untraceable merchant tactics to bleed us dry!"

Bai Haoran began pacing like a caged beast, his mind completely twisting with fury as he tried to figure out who would dare attack them on such a massive economic scale.

"It has to be the Gu Clan," Bai Haoran finally declared, his eyes completely bloodshot with absolute hatred, "That bastard is not done even after taking our spirit stones."

"He must have emptied his entire emergency treasury to avenge that fat pig by artificially inflating the market and starving us of resources before they declare an all-out war!"

The elders murmured in agreement since it was the most logical conclusion, but right as they began plotting a spy dressed in completely black stealth gear dropped down from the ceiling rafters and knelt respectfully before the furious Patriarch.

"What is it?!" Bai Haoran asked impatiently.

"Patriarch, it is not the Gu Clan," the spy reported quickly, his voice muffled by his dark mask, "I just returned from infiltrating their inner courtyards, and their estate is in chaos as well because they are suffering from the exact same supply shortages as we are!"

The entire hall fell completely dead silent as the sheer impossibility of the situation slowly dawned on the Bai Clan leadership.

"Are you telling me that the Gu Clan’s alchemy halls are also shutting down?!" Elder Bai Chong asked in absolute disbelief, stepping forward to look closely at the spy.

"Yes, Elder," the spy confirmed with a quick nod, "Their shops are slowly going out of stock."

"Their disciples are threatening to riot over the lack of cultivation resources, and Patriarch Gu Yangtian is completely clueless about how to fix it, although rumors state that Madam Li has suddenly stepped forward to take control of their crisis."

Bai Haoran stumbled back slightly and collapsed into his large wooden throne, rubbing his temples aggressively as a massive headache pulsed behind his eyes because none of this made any logical sense to his battle-hardened mind.

If the Gu Clan wasn’t doing this, then who the hell had the absurd, terrifying amount of liquid capital required to buy out the entire town’s medical and poison market overnight without completely bankrupting themselves in the process?

"Who would dare go against us?"