Chapter 148
Even in the midst of her disbelief, Baek-cheong laid the high-Grade spirit Stones out in a neat row across the bed.
The blue spirit stones she had pulled from the Storage Platform shone, each brimming with spiritual energy.
She had never dreamed the Troublemaker listing she had tossed up as a joke would actually sell.
Thanks to that, a hundred high-High-Grade spirit Stones she had no way to use had suddenly rolled into her possession.
“What am I supposed to do with these?”
She had put them up because they were a headache to dispose of, but once she took them out, the scale felt even more absurd.
One high-Grade spirit stone was worth ten thousand low-Grade spirit Stones. With a hundred of them, the sum was even hard to count.
Even a golden core Rogue Cultivator would not be able to gather this many spirit stones easily.
“This really is a hot potato.”
It was absurd that a dao friend had paid such a price for her trolling.
The problem was that even with this many spirit stones, she had no good place to use them.
If she splashed high-High-Grade spirit Stones around all of a sudden while holed up in the Eastern Region, her uncle would definitely ask where they came from.
A whole string of questions about where she had gotten them would be sure to follow.
She could not exactly confess that she had earned them by trolling on the Nameless Forum Marketplace.
On the other hand, secretly pouring them into formations or magical treasures would not amount to much either, since her own divine realm was still low.
“What should I do?”
Just then, as she sat there unable to do anything but toy with the spirit stones, something came to mind.
She suddenly remembered the 2nd tier five elements puppetry she had shoved into a corner of her Storage Platform.
She had neglected them, figuring she would have no reason to take them out during secluded cultivation since she would not be focusing on pill refining.
But with the 2nd tier five elements puppetry, the situation was different.
Puppets, by nature, moved using spirit stones as power, and if they were 2nd tier, they would consume at least twice as many spirit stones as the 1st tier units.
This meant there would be no problem using high-High-Grade spirit Stones as a power source.
“Oh, this works out perfectly.”
Baek-cheong took out the 2nd tier five elements puppetry units one after another.
They were a head taller than the 1st tier puppets, with sturdier frames.
She opened each chest panel and inserted one high-Grade spirit stone apiece.
Once the spirit stones settled into place, spiritual energy flowed freely through every part of the golems.
'Let’s see…’
All that remained was to try operating them.
Though her realm was still only artifact forging, her Divine Sense yielded to no one.
With Divine Sense that could put a golden core Cultivator to shame despite its wielder being only at artifact forging, operating 2nd tier golems should not be difficult.
She split her Divine Sense into five strands and tried moving the golems one by one.
“Just as I expected.”
Sure enough, the 2nd tier five elements puppetry units obeyed as smoothly as if they were her own hands and feet.
Still, it seemed she would need some time to get used to using them for pill refining.
The only minor disappointment was that the spirit stones showed no sign of being depleted.
A single high-Grade spirit stone contained such an enormous amount of spiritual energy that even if she worked one golem all day, it looked as though it would take a full year to empty just one.
In the end, even after using five high-High-Grade spirit Stones inside the golems, she still had a little over a hundred left when they were combined with what she already owned.
“That barely even made a dent.”
Baek-cheong stared blankly at the remaining pile of spirit stones.
The more she stored them away, the more of a burden they became.
Then she came to a single conclusion.
“Empty-handed I came, empty-handed I go.”
One came empty-handed and left empty-handed. That was the way of things.
Since the spirit stones had come from the Nameless Forum in the first place, she could simply use them in the Nameless Forum.
Normally, she would never even consider spending high-High-Grade spirit Stones in the Nameless Forum Marketplace, where fraud and deception ran rampant.
If they had been spirit stones she had earned through hard work, she would have trembled over wasting even one.
But things were different when it came to something she had picked up for free.
Free money did not feel wasteful in the slightest.
“Might as well do some shopping.”
Baek-cheong put the spirit stones away in her Storage Platform and lay back down on the Profound Jade Bed.
As usual, she moved her Divine Sense and connected to the Nameless Forum.
No sooner had she entered than familiar posts caught her eye.
It seemed the aftermath of the last pill commotion had not yet faded.
“Dao friend(11.23): The choice is yours.”
[Who told you to buy it?]
[Dao friend(33.7): I shall find you, without fail.]
Dao friend(11.23) had egged everyone on and was now neatly ducking responsibility.
How shameless, denying it now after doing all that baiting.
Dao friend(33.7), thoroughly provoked, was sharpening a knife.
The threat to find someone without fail somehow felt aimed at her, and she flinched.
“If I get involved for no reason, the sparks will fly onto me.”
Baek-cheong pretended not to see it and turned her gaze toward the marketplace.
When she deliberately browsed through the marketplace, there was nothing useful.
Everything that caught her eye was suspicious.
“Dao friend(415.6) Sale: Jade slip left behind by an unnamed senior. 10 mid-Grade spirit Stones.”
[Seems like there’s something amazing inside. I haven’t opened it, so I don’t know. My gut says it’s real.]
“Dao friend(627.31) Sale: Spirit ginseng that looks at least a thousand years old. 1 high-Grade spirit stone.”
[After I dug it up, it looked extraordinary. Need spirit stones fast; tearful quick sale.]
“Dao friend(803.5) Sale: A strange stone with an auspicious aura. 50 low-Grade spirit Stones.”
[I picked it up, and it seems like no ordinary rock. Buyers with discerning eyes only.]
Every last one was the kind of item made to rob you blind in broad daylight.
What sucker would list a thousand-year-old spirit ginseng for one high-Grade spirit stone?
Nine times out of ten, it was a scheme to make someone bite the bait and then stab them in the back.
Other dao Friends might be tempted, but Baek-cheong only snorted.
She had, after all, been steeped in community culture since her previous life.
She was not gullible enough to fall for such obvious bait listings.
'Still, I’m on a different level from the old fossils of the Nameless Forum.’
Since she could not even do proper forum browsing, she decided to take her time and thoroughly browse the marketplace.
After a long while of searching, she finally spotted a listing that looked somewhat decent.
“Dao friend(540.9) Sale: A jade slip containing an ancient era pill formula. 5 high-High-Grade spirit Stones.”
[Our family fortunes have declined, so I tearfully offer an heirloom passed down through generations. Any dao friend with ambitions in pill refining will not regret this.]
The phrase “Ancient era pill formula” secretly piqued her interest.
With a bit of luck, she might obtain a pill formula that had been lost to time.
But in the marketplace, one had to tap even a stone bridge before crossing.
'Let’s see.’
Baek-cheong immediately started digging into that dao friend’s interface number.
Of course, the Nameless Forum had no function for searching interface numbers.
But that did not mean there was no method at all.
She scraped the keywords written in the sale post and searched all over the Nameless Forum.
She found posts with similar expressions, followed the replies attached to them, and branched outward from there.
Before long, a string of idle chat posts dao friend(540.9) had scribbled came trailing out.
Whenever she found one, she used the interests revealed in that post as another keyword.
Favorite spirit herbs, commonly used pill refining methods, even trivial complaints - she searched them all.
The number of posts she found grew one by one.
Putting all that activity together, the dao friend seemed quite solid.
For nearly five years, the user had steadily posted information and completed small trades without complaint.
“Mm, this much should be trustworthy.”
Baek-cheong finally finished her forensic background check.
She nodded in satisfaction and pressed purchase.
[Payment complete. 5 high-High-Grade spirit Stones have been deducted.]
[Dao friend(540.9)’s item has been transmitted to your Storage Platform.]
She immediately took the jade slip from her Storage Platform to check the item.
She sent Divine Sense into the palm-sized jade slip and read through the pill formula engraved inside.
But the more she examined the information, the stiffer her expression became.
The ancient era pill formula was indeed an ancient era pill formula.
The problem was that the pill formula was useless.
At best, it could refine a minor nourishing pill only mortals would eat.
As for its medicinal effect, it could not hold a candle to an inscribed spirit gathering pill she could make with ease.
If she resold it as an antique, she might get one mid-Grade spirit stone for it, if that.
Having paid five high-High-Grade spirit Stones for it, she had been ripped off spectacularly.
“This is… a scam?”
Once the item she had bought and trusted so firmly turned out to be garbage, fury surged all the way to the top of her head.
She had been so proud of her community experience, yet she had been caught by such an obvious scam.
In the end, unable to hold back her anger, she saw red and immediately hammered out a post.
“Dao friend(913.14): It’s fake!!!”
[How can you sell trash like this! Your Nameless Forum track record was clearly perfectly normal!!!]
No sooner had she posted it, huffing with rage, than a reply appeared.
[Dao friend(540.9): I nearly died pretending to be respectable for five years just so I could sell that thing.]
Only then did Baek-cheong feel as if she had been struck over the head.
The respectable history built up over five years had itself been bait from start to finish.
They had known someone might dig through their activity and had laid the groundwork in advance.
Her much-vaunted forensic background check had become the very trap that caught her.
“This is insane…”
The next-level bait left her speechless.
At the same time, as she made a scene about having been scammed, dao Friends who had been watching began to gather one by one.
Amid the bustling replies, a familiar interface number slipped in.
[Dao friend(33.7): Dao friend… if it would not be too much trouble, could you return the spirit stones?]
The reply was polite, almost like Yeonha.
[Dao friend(913.14): Why should I?]
└Dao friend(33.7): My old mother and young children are at home, and they have nothing to eat right now…
They spun out a long, pitiful story, begging for sympathy.
But as a regular haunting the Nameless Forum, Baek-cheong remembered a fair number of dao Friends.
This included what sorts of posts and replies dao friend(33.7) usually wrote.
“Old mother, my ass.”
Since her eyes had already gone bloodshot, she wrote the reply in a fit of spite.
[Dao friend(913.14): Aren’t you the one who said you were so lonely when alone that you were even castrating the people who entered your sect? If you’re an old Ancestor, act like an old Ancestor. Stop acting like an old monster, and I recommend you hurry up and die early.]
The resentment of being stuck with trash finally seemed to ease a little.
Even if she had been scammed, she could not afford to lose at forum warfare too.
After a brief silence, dao friend(33.7)’s reply appeared.
[Dao friend(33.7): I shall find you as well, without fail.]
Baek-cheong stared blankly at the dao friend whose grudge she had just earned.
No matter how much they threatened her, finding her Lower Realm was a distant impossibility.
Still, empty bluster like that was something many dao Friends enjoyed.
[Dao friend(913.14): Find me and I’ll return the 100.]
As soon as she wrote her reply, completely unbothered by the threat, she left the Nameless Forum.