It was a normal day in the pleasure district, one of the managers in the store run by the Xing Clan was just coming it to work. They mostly started in the afternoon and worked too late at night. Not like managers like him did much, they were just there to greet customers and make the girls service the customers, if they refused they would punish them in various ways.
This man in question was looking slightly bewildered as quite a bit of his working girls hadn’t shown up to work. He was quick on the uptake, he whistled after some of his goons and sent them to drag the women back here. The thugs were allowed to even hurt the working girls, they just weren’t allowed to damage their faces.
Some time had passed and the goons returned, but the manager scratched his head as there were no women with them. Instead, all of them were carrying sacks with something in it.
“What is this? Where are the girls? The customers are waiting… if they don’t come now we will lose a lot of coin… and what is that?”
One of the hired guards walked over and handed the sack to the manager, he knew what was in those bags the moment he grasped it. He tossed one of those on a table and looked as gold and silver coins spilled out. The men workers carried all the cash inside, piling it up in one spot the manager’s eyes bulging out as he didn’t quite get where his hired thugs got all of this money.
“T-the girls paid off their debt… a-all of them…”
“How can they all pay of their debt? Who is asking for trouble with my Xing Clan?”
The manager knew that this had to be some kind of plot, someone was buying out their prostitutes probably wanting to move them to another Bordello. While he was thinking about calling the main house for some help a certain man walked in.
There were some female workers in the establishment right now, but they apparently didn’t get the memo about the Zhang Clan paying off the debts. That person was wearing a blue robe, this wasn’t a police uniform but an official Zhang Clan robe with their name sewed into the back part.
He wasn’t alone though, there were some other members behind this man and they looked rough around the edges. The hired goons shrinking back after receiving the stink eye treatment that was boosted by their cultivation level.
“Hear me out!”
The man clasped his hands and with the aid of his cultivation shouted out, quickly bringing everyone’s attention to himself.
“We are from the Zhang Clan, by the order of our Patriarch we have come here. The Zhang Clan is willing to pay off everyone’s debt and you may stop working out on the streets. “
“The debt will have to be paid and a small 5% fee will be added to it. But! It will not increase further, we have created an up to ten-year plan for you to pay it off! Let me repeat, no incentives will be added to this debt from the point it will be taken!”
“You may choose to stay in this line of work, but…”
The Zhang Clan member looked at the manager of this whore house and smirked.
“The business owners are forbidden from taking more than 25% of your earnings, if they do so they will be treated as criminals and dealt according to the new laws. Also! The women workers may refuse any clients they deem unworthy or if the price that the business owner offers is too little.”
This was quite the hit to these kinds of business places, the owners milked the girls for about 80% of their earnings giving them enough to not starve to death. They even lowered the prices so that the female workers earned even less, all to keep them in debt for as long as it was possible. Now the girls could outright leave or take most of the earnings with them.
The remaining women that were dancing out to the side or even ones that were in the back rooms heard it all. They instantly stopped doing what they were, some patrons were left with their pants down and cold air greeting their crotch.
“Sir, is this really true?”
The manager of this red light district business quickly run up to stand between the Zhang Clan cultivator and his working girls, his eyebrows going down sharply and quite a few ridges appearing on his forehead.
“What are you doing you fool! Get back to work!”
He was about to give her a good old slap, showing her who was in charge but before he could do that his hand was grasped by one of the bodyguards that came with that Zhang Clan cultivator.
“Halt!”
“Aghh…”
The manager soon found his hand getting twisted behind his back and he was held down by his wrist. His hired thugs wanted to jump in but the Zhang Clan cultivators quickly rushed in between them. It looked like a fight was going to break out, but the goons clearly knew that they were outmatched by these stronger cultivators they were mostly just your usual riff-raff. Their cultivation was low and their techniques were quite bad, they had no chance against trained warriors that were backed by a strong clan.
The previously speaking Zhang Clan member slowly walked past the business manager and over to the girl that asked the question.
“Yes young lady, we only require you to show us the binding contract that you sign and we will take care of the rest.”
He then produced a parchment of his own and showed it to the girls that were slowly coming over, their eyes sparkling with anticipation.
“This is the contract that out Zhang Clan created, please read it throughout but I guarantee by our Patriarch’s name that what I have spoken is true!”
Most of the girls here couldn’t read and that was also part of why they were duped by the Xing Clan. Some of them could though, one of them started reading through the contract and didn’t see any faults in it.
“But sir… it’s written here that you will find us some work… and that you’ll teach all the girls how to read and write… in something called a weekend course?”
The man nodded while taking back the scroll that the woman read.
“Yes, this is true. I’m sure you’re confused about that word but don’t worry it’s something our glorious Patriarch came up with!”
The people had no idea what a weekend was, but Zhang Dong was trying to push it through in the next couple of laws that he was working on. He would implement it here and back in Spirit Spring City, if it worked fine he would use that as a schematic for future endeavors.
It didn’t take long for all the girls to leave with the contracts in hand, none of them really wanted to work in this place but they were forced to due to various circumstances. The manager was left with more sacks of gold and torn up contracts, he was even threatened by these Zhang Clan people that if they find them bothering the women again that they would be severely punished. He could only imagine how badly they would get beaten, maybe even killed.
After a couple of days, word reached the Xing Clan main house. They were fine for now, they had an infusion of cold hard cash in the form of the payouts but the Patriarch knew that this wouldn’t last for long. They required those debt slaves to work for them for tens of years, those debts could be cleared fast if they gave them a fair price for the services but that wasn’t really the point.
Xing Deng slammed his fist into a nice looking wooden table, the hit making splinters fly in all sorts of directions.
“They released all our slaves… they got to the prostitutes and are blocking out loans from getting through… the only thing left is the casinos…”
His empire was slowly folding on itself, he knew that the Zhang Clan was slowly eating them up and those casinos would follow suit soon after.
“I have to do something… my clan is at stake…”
He calculated that in a year or two he would be bankrupt, the steady flow of cash was stopping and he didn’t think that the Zhang Clan would strike a deal with him. He attributed it to the clan being in some kind of righteous faction, or at least their new leader being quite the idiot that didn’t care for profit.
Soon he called one of his retainers to give him a throughout calculation of how much wealth they had left. He also organized a meeting with the other two clans that were bleeding money due to the Zhang Clan’s changes in the laws. He had to get those two onboard or they were all finished and would be forever suppressed by this Zhang Patriarch.
In a different place.
A man on a large black sword was hovering up in the air, he was holding onto a demonic beast core below him a giant carcass was laying down. This man had clearly defeated this large monster, the core was pulsating in the great circle of core formation signaling that this cultivator was of quite the high caliber.
“Well, guess that’s a wrap…”
The man jumped down from his sword and pulled out a machete looking bladed weapon. He started slicing and dicing the creature’s remains were getting cut up at a rapid pace. The man was gathering up the beasts remains separating the claws from the teeth. Those items could be sold off for quite the penny, the pelt would bring in quite a bit of spirit stones or could be used to craft a resistant robe.
Not even the bones would be sparred as the only thing that the man didn’t bring along was the meat and flesh of the demonic being, that couldn’t really be used by him for anything unless he was a demonic cultivator.
“This core should be enough for me to get my comission~”
The man remembered that previously he used to bring the entire beast body and just drop it off at the doorstep of the person that he got the commission from. Now he knew better to cause trouble for the people that were paying up. He was, of course, the Zhang Clan Patriarch, but he was in his Demon Hunter disguise.
His face was full of scars and he looked quite menacing, even his black robe got a couple more upgrades to look edgier than before. Matt kind of like this persona of his, as he could act like an ass. It was a bit funny how everyone shrunk back, but this was an important act letting him get a bonus from the bounties he was hunting.
He returned to the city that he got the wanted notice from, the people at the gate just bowed to him as his renown had spread throughout the area quite a bit. He could hear the people whispering amongst themselves, which made him chuckle quite a bit.
“Isn’t that the famous Demon Hunter Lei Ying-Lo”
“Shh be quiet, what if he notices you and thinks that you were being disrespectful…”
“Wonder if he is taking in any disciples…”
“Why would he take someone like you as a disciple, I would be much better!”
They chatted with each other, the man had more or less a good standing with the normal folk. There was a rumor that even though he was quiet and ferocious-looking, he had a heart of gold. He saved many people from evil cultivators or demonic beings alike. He was kind of a hero in the eyes of the common folk for that reason.
But when he was going out with a bag filled with spirit stones and ready to bolt back to Moonlight city, someone stopped him.
“Senior Ying, please could this junior have a word with you.”
This wasn’t anything new, people would walk up to him from time to time asking for favors with monetary compensation. He would mostly turn it down though as it was mostly assassination requests, a lot of people thought that he was a contract killer. He lost out on a lot of cash this way, but he didn’t want to get involved in strange power struggles. Though this time he was taken aback, as the target of the assassination was quite peculiar.
“W-what did you say?”
“Yes, the clans from Moonlight City would like you to punish the ferocious fiend Zhang Dong! We believe that he is a demonic cultivator in disguise, many young women had fallen to his demonic ways! We request your aid Great Senior, you are our last hope.”
‘Oh… boy…’