This was a classic maid dilemma. The survival-oriented answer was to lie. To say, "Yes, just putting the finishing touches on this last one!" and then polish the remaining twenty vases with the speed of a hummingbird on spirit nectar. Telling the truth would mean throwing Xiao Ling under the bus and incurring the full wrath of Head Maid Liu.
Her instincts screamed at her to lie. But the system's promise echoed in her mind. The greater the consequence, the greater the reward.
Chen Yue took a deep breath. She looked Xiao Ling straight in the eye. "No, they are not finished," she said, her voice clear and steady. "In fact, I have barely started. For the last hour, I have been sitting on the floor, contemplating the futility of my existence and fantasizing about filling Head Maid Liu's favorite teapot with pond scum."
Xiao Ling's jaw dropped. She stared at Chen Yue as if she had just sprouted a second head. "Are you insane?! She will have you scrubbing the latrines with a toothbrush for a month!"
But Chen Yue barely heard her. The moment the brutally honest words left her mouth, a magnificent message flashed in her mind.
[High-consequence Honesty validated. Truth Purity: 98%. Reward: Breakthrough to the Second Layer of Qi Condensation.]
BOOM!
A surge of pure energy flooded her body. It was a clean, painless, and utterly bewildering sensation. The bottleneck to the Second Layer, a barrier she had assumed she would never cross, simply dissolved. The Qi in her body swirled and settled, twice as dense and powerful as before. She could feel the very air around her differently, could sense the faint spiritual energy flowing through the hall.
"Yue? Are you alright?" Xiao Ling asked, her voice filled with concern. "Your face is all flushed. Do you have a fever?"
"I have never felt better in my life," Chen Yue said, a slow, smile spreading across her face. Xiao Ling, thoroughly unnerved, decided to make a strategic retreat.
Chen Yue stood alone in the hall, her heart pounding with a triumphant rhythm. It was real. All of it. She had found the ultimate loophole in the universe. She just needed to be a brutally honest person.
This changed everything.
The rest of the evening and into the night, the Chen Family estate became Chen Yue's personal laboratory for the practical application of truth. She abandoned the vases, a decision that felt liberatingly reckless, and set out on a quest for honesty.
Her first experiment was simple. She found Guard Li, a stoic man who stood watch over the eastern gate, and who was rumored to have a secret passion for embroidery.
"Guard Li," she said, approaching him with a newfound confidence. "Is it true that you are currently working on a cross-stitch of a kitten playing with a ball of yarn?"
Guard Li, a mountain of a man who could wrestle a spirit boar into submission, turned a shade of crimson usually reserved for ripe tomatoes. He sputtered and looked around furtively. "That is… classified information," he stammered.
[Honesty validated. Truth Purity: 85%. Reward: Qi refinement increased by 5%.]
It worked. The jolt of power was small, but it was there. She needed bigger truths. More consequential truths.
Her next target was Young Master Chen Bo, a cousin from a branch family known for his arrogance and his terrible, terrible poetry. She found him in the gardens, preening in front of a group of junior maids while reciting his latest masterpiece.
"…and the moon, a lonely pearl," he declared, one hand placed dramatically on his chest, "weeping dewdrops on a world of churls."
The other maids swooned on cue. Chen Yue stepped forward.
"Young Master Bo," she said, her voice carrying across the garden. "That was a very honest poem."
Chen Bo puffed out his chest. "Ah, so you have an ear for true art! Tell me, what truth did you perceive in my humble words?"
"The truth is that you have the poetic sensibility of a constipated goose," Chen Yue stated, her face a perfect mask of sincerity. "It was painful to listen to, and I believe the moon is now weeping out of sheer embarrassment."
The garden fell silent. The junior maids gasped. Chen Bo's face went from pleased, to confused, to a truly spectacular shade of purple.
[Brutal, high-impact Honesty validated. Truth Purity: 99%. Reward: Breakthrough to the Third Layer of Qi Condensation.]
BOOM!
Another effortless breakthrough. She felt the power surge through her, cementing her new cultivation base. As Young Master Bo began to scream for the guards to seize "that insolent wench," Chen Yue was already sprinting away, laughing like a madwoman. The feeling of power was far more satisfying than a steady job.
She spent the next few hours as a whirlwind of truth. She told the head gardener that his prize-winning peonies were, in fact, quite garish. She informed a group of gossiping servants that their whispers were as subtle as a charging rhinoceros. She found Manager Feng, the notoriously corrupt head of the kitchens, and told him to his face that she knew he was selling the family's high-grade spirit herbs on the black market and keeping the profits.
That last one had been particularly rewarding. Manager Feng had threatened her, his jowls quivering with rage, but the sheer danger of the accusation had resulted in another massive power-up.
[Courageous, life-threatening Honesty validated. Truth Purity: 96%. Reward: Breakthrough to the Fourth Layer of Qi Condensation.]
She was a Fourth Layer expert. In a single evening. She had gone from being a nobody to possessing a cultivation level on par with the family's elite guards. The world had tilted on its axis.
As the moon climbed high into the sky, she found a secluded spot by the spirit-fish pond to consolidate her gains. She was drunk on power, but she knew she needed one more push. The Fifth Layer. That would put her on par with the junior family members themselves. But what truth was left to tell? She had insulted, accused, and embarrassed half the estate's staff.