SWDnovel Chapter 129 Auction List
Chapter 129 Auction List
As for her brother Zhou Mingyuan, he was polite to her on the surface, but she knew in her heart that in her brother's eyes she was nothing more than a bargaining chip that could be used to exchange for resources through marriage.
Her father had started looking for a husband for her three years ago. The Han family of Qingxuan City, the Du family of Yunmeng Continent, and even several famous families in Shenzhou had all sent people to sound them out.
She kept delaying, racking her brains and offering advice to the clan, all to show them that she still had value, even more so than the benefits of a marriage alliance.
She didn't marry until she was nineteen, which was considered late for a woman from a prominent family.
Her father was urging her to hurry up, and whenever the aunts and gossipy women in the clan saw her, they would gossip about how good or bad someone else's son was.
She knew that if she didn't break free now, she would never be able to.
So when news of Zhou Mingyuan's death came, her first thought was not sadness, but opportunity.
The thought itself made her feel a little cold.
But this coldness is the only weapon she has learned in this family over the past nineteen years.
Finally, Zhou Mingxuan boarded the immortal boat bound for Danxia Sect and successfully arrived at Qixia Peak, one of the eighteen outer peaks.
Accompanying her were two disciples from the Du and Chen families, both at the mid-stage of Qi Refining. Nominally, they were going to participate in the entrance examination, but in reality, each of the three families sent one person to fill the vacancies left by Zhou, Du, Chen, and others, and to continue maintaining the connections of the three families in the outer sect.
The Du family sent Du Heng's cousin, Du Song, a taciturn young man with sinister eyes.
The person sent by the Chen family was Chen Wan, Chen Ce's cousin. She was in her early twenties and had an ordinary appearance, but her eyes were extremely lively. As soon as she saw Zhou Mingxuan, she grabbed her and asked her all sorts of questions.
"Sister Mingxuan, what exactly are Zhang Lin's abilities that allowed him to kill Brother Mingyuan and the others?" Chen Wan asked in a low voice, her tone filled with curiosity rather than sorrow.
She came from a collateral branch and wasn't particularly close to Chen Ce. She was sent to the Danxia Sect more to fill a vacancy than to seek revenge.
Zhou Mingxuan shook her head: "I don't know, but I do know one thing: if he really killed my brother, then this person must be more dangerous than we imagine."
"So what do we do?"
"No rush." Zhou Mingxuan looked out the window at the surging sea of clouds, her voice calm to the point of indifference. "Let's get on our feet first, investigate slowly. If it really is him, he'll come back eventually."
As she spoke, a faint glint flashed in her eyes; besides revenge, she had another plan in mind.
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Qingluo City, South Inn.
Zhang Lin sat in the room for half an hour, and only slowly opened his eyes when the hustle and bustle of the street outside the window gradually subsided into the twilight.
He had just scanned the entire inn with his spiritual sense, from the top floor attic to the underground wine cellar, from the backyard stables to the front kitchen, leaving no corner unchecked.
He was relieved to find that the guests on both sides were ordinary rogue cultivators, with the highest cultivation level being no more than the late stage of Qi Refining, and that none of them were wearing magical artifacts that could block spiritual detection.
The sound of a wooden clapper came from outside the window; it was past midnight.
The curfew in Qingluo City begins at midnight. At this time, there are no pedestrians on the streets, only the monks of the Patrol Division carrying lanterns walking on the city wall, changing shifts every half hour.
Zhang Lin got up and walked to the window, pushing the window sash open a crack. The night breeze, carrying moisture and a hint of fishy smell, rushed in.
Qingluo City is surrounded by water on three sides, with waterways crisscrossing the city. The largest river, Qingluo River, flows through the city and leads directly to the Great Marsh outside the city. Dozens of merchant ships are moored on the river, and the lanterns hanging from the bows of the ships form a winding ribbon of light in the night.
He closed the window and sat back down on the couch.
He took out the jade slip that he had seized from Du Heng from his storage bag and probed it with his spiritual sense once more.
He had already skimmed through the contents of the jade slip on the immortal ship, but at that time his mind was not settled and he had not examined many details.
Only by calming down and reading it word by word can one truly appreciate its essence.
The auction catalog contains thirty-seven items, arranged in ascending order of value.
The first ten items were low-grade magic tools such as storage bags with special properties, low-level pills, and common spiritual materials, which were items that rogue cultivators would fight over, and he didn't care about them.
The eleventh to twentieth items were mid-grade magic artifacts, top-grade first-grade pills, and decades-old spiritual herbs, which would be considered rare among rogue cultivators, but were still commonplace to him.
The twentieth to the thirtieth items were high-grade magic artifacts, top-grade elixirs, and century-old spiritual herbs, which were the focus of his attention this time.
The list clearly states: Item number twenty-five, a set of twelve top-grade magic artifacts, the Mystic Ice Needles, made of millennium-old cold iron with ice silkworm silk as its core, specifically designed to break through true essence shields, starting bid six hundred low-grade spirit stones.
The twenty-eighth item: three top-grade first-class Mind-Concentrating Pills, refined by an inner sect alchemist of the Danxia Sect. They calm the mind and focus the spirit, and can increase the success rate by 30% when taken during a breakthrough to a minor realm. Starting bid: 400 low-grade spirit stones.
The thirtieth item is a 30-year-old gold-type spiritual object, a gold essence stone, weighing three catties and seven taels. It comes from the depths of the gold spirit mine in Hunyuan Continent. The starting bid is five hundred low-grade spirit stones.
Zhang Lin's gaze lingered on the gold essence stone for a moment before shifting away, regretting that this gold-type spiritual object was too young.
If it were an ordinary Heavenly Dao Foundation Establishment cultivator, strengthening it might be enough for him, but he needs a thousand-year-old spiritual object. Before strengthening it, he must start from a hundred years.
However, the starting bid for this gold essence stone was only five hundred low-grade spirit stones, which was much cheaper than he had expected.
He quickly realized the reason. Although the five elements spiritual objects that were not yet of age were precious, his buyers were mainly aristocratic families. After taking them back and nurturing them for several decades, they could become a hundred-year-old spiritual object. That was the power of resources.
As for rogue cultivators, their livelihood is precarious. Even if they obtain these thirty-year-old spiritual items, they can only use them to extract the Five Elements Spiritual Liquid. It would be more cost-effective to simply buy the spiritual liquid directly, since the spiritual liquid needed for a ten-year supply of a Foundation Establishment Pill is sufficient.
What really caught Zhang Lin's attention were the three items at the end of the list.
The thirty-fifth item is a Grade 2 top-grade pill called the Gathering Yuan Pill, used for Foundation Establishment stage cultivation. One pill is equivalent to three months of arduous cultivation. The starting bid is 800 low-grade spirit stones per pill.
Zhang Lin shook his head inwardly. The consumption of a Foundation Establishment cultivator was indeed extraordinary. One pill was equivalent to several years' savings for a rogue cultivator. No wonder some Foundation Establishment cultivators could not break through to the middle stage in their entire lives.
The thirty-sixth item is a mid-grade spiritual weapon, the Frost Sword, forged from millennia-old cold iron. The sword itself exudes an icy aura that can freeze true essence. The starting bid is 1,500 mid-grade spirit stones.
One thousand five hundred mid-grade spirit stones, which is equivalent to one hundred and fifty thousand low-grade spirit stones.
Zhang Lin's eye twitched slightly.
With 150,000 low-grade spirit stones, he killed two Foundation Establishment cultivators, one of whom was a demonic cultivator, and only managed to collect 1,100 mid-grade spirit stones, which was still less than the starting bid. The difference between the materials used for Qi Refining and Foundation Establishment was truly like an insurmountable chasm.
The thirty-seventh item, a century-old earth-elemental spiritual artifact, Thick Earth Mystic Jade, has a starting bid of three thousand low-grade spirit stones.
Zhang Lin's gaze lingered on those five words for a long time.
Thick earth and dark jade tablet, a hundred years old, earth system.
Among the five spiritual items required for foundation building in the underground passage, the standard answer is an earth-type spiritual item.
He wasn't without other options; there were more than one type of earth-elemental spiritual item: Earth Mother Root, Xuanhuang Soil, and Kunyuan Stone could all be used as substitutes.
However, the thick earth gui is the most orthodox and also the one with the most stable quality.
Earth Mother Root has mild medicinal properties, but its age is difficult to determine; Xuanhuang Soil contains many impurities and requires repeated purification; Kunyuan Stone is extremely hard but difficult to refine.
Only the Thick Earth Mystic Jade, condensed from the essence of the earth, is pure and flawless. It consumes almost no spiritual consciousness during refining and, after being strengthened, is the first choice for earth-type spiritual objects for the Heavenly Dao Foundation Establishment.
Three hundred years ago, a Golden Core cultivator from the Danxia Sect left behind a note during his breakthrough, discussing the merits and demerits of various spiritual objects used in the Heavenly Dao Foundation Building, and highly praising the Thick Earth Mystic Jade.
When Zhang Lin happened to read this manuscript in the Scripture Pavilion of Cuiping Peak, he took it to heart. Afterwards, he consulted more than ten kinds of classics and verified the origin, quality and price of the spiritual objects needed for the foundation building of the Heavenly Dao one by one. He already had a clear understanding of them.
Although the Thick Earth Black Jade is excellent, the starting bid of three thousand low-grade spirit stones is just the beginning.
Auction rules dictate that the starting price is merely a smokescreen; the actual selling price is often three to five times the starting price.
If a prestigious family bids, the price could potentially increase tenfold.
He put away the jade slip and reviewed the information he had gathered in the city in his mind.