Chapter 150
For a full fortnight after that, Baek-cheong diligently haunted the Nameless Forum Marketplace.
It was not as if she had no results at all.
Of course, she did get scammed more often than not.
The scams came in every variety imaginable, too bizarre for a Mortal’s way of thinking to keep up with, which made them hard to filter out.
Some dao Friends even crossed from one Lower Realm to another while changing their interface Numbers.
If a soul formation cultivator refused to ascend and instead wandered from Lower Realm to Lower Realm running scams, there was simply no avoiding getting taken in.
Still, she did occasionally find a gem, like dao friend(553.24)'s bundle of pill formulas.
Among the first-tier and second-tier pill formulas, several were ones even she had never seen before.
Some were formulas from other Lower Realms and lacked available ingredients, but parts of them could be adapted, so they were useful enough.
“As expected, if I put in the legwork, there are things to find.”
Her gains did not stop at pill formulas.
From the marketplace listings that had been rolling around for ages, she also scooped up a few distinctive Techniques/Spells.
They were all minor things that only reached the first or second tier, but their approaches were unusual, making them quite fun to examine.
The knot of irritation left by all the scams eased bit by bit thanks to those few genuine finds.
“This is why I browse the marketplace.”
There was just one problem.
She was running out of listings to look through.
She had spent the entire fortnight brute-forcing her way through marketplace posts.
New listings appeared so slowly that she could count them on her fingers each day.
In the end, only one method remained.
To search for exactly the item she wanted.
‘Let’s see.’
When she tried running a search, it was completely different from blindly scrolling.
Listings that did not contain the word she wanted were filtered out automatically.
The only issue was that searches devoured an exceptional amount of Divine Sense.
For every page of search results she turned, one jang of Divine Sense was occupied.
As a result, even with Divine Sense reaching thirty-one jang, it was exhausted by the time she had gotten only thirty-one pages in.
Compared to how much she had been skimming from the entire marketplace, that was pitifully little.
Still, since the search was filtered by the exact term she wanted, those brief thirty-one pages were densely packed with listings that looked decent.
More importantly, it dragged up older, deeper listings she could never have reached by mindlessly flipping through.
“Oh, they had things like this too.”
Baek-cheong searched for pill formulas and went all the way down to the bottom.
Then an auction post from an interface number she had never seen before caught her eye.
『Dao friend(41.6): [Auction] Purple Firmament Revival Pill Formula. [Auction Complete]』
[A pill formula that drifted down from the Upper Realm. A secret formula for a Revival pill said to bring back even those whose souls have perished. Bidding starts at 1 high-Grade spirit stone.]
The auction had ended ages ago.
Out of curiosity, she opened the bidding history, and the sight of hundreds of dao Friends clinging to it and driving the price upward remained.
The final winning bid price had reached 3,000 high-Grade spirit Stones.
“Three thousand?”
It was enough to make her eyes go wide.
The dao Friends had gone mad at the single phrase “Upper Realm pill formula,” and swarmed it.
Of course, auctions that heated up this much were few and far between.
As for the other old items, their prices and activity were utterly ordinary.
Even so, simply browsing sale and auction posts that had long since ended was interesting.
They were posts so deep and old that she normally could never have reached them.
“But this is strange.”
While peering into the bottom of the marketplace, she realized something.
Any decent listing had already been taken in by the Nameless Pavilion.
Among the items left behind like dead stock, anything usable had already been appraised by the Nameless Pavilion and sold off at auction.
In other words, if an item in the deep sea of the marketplace had not even been chosen by the Nameless Pavilion, there was a clear reason.
Either even the Nameless Pavilion could not determine its authenticity.
Or there was a very, very, very high chance it was a scam listing.
And yet there were still dao Friends who picked up those deep-sea listings without a moment’s hesitation.
“Why would anyone buy that?”
Baek-cheong simply could not understand it.
Puzzled, she posted on the forum board.
『Dao friend(913.14): Why go out of your way to buy stuff buried deep in the marketplace sea?』
[Isn’t it all trash anyway?]
It was a sincere question.
Replies came streaming in before long.
[Dao friend(33.7): The delight lies in finding treasure amid the trash.]
At the affectedly dignified tone, Baek-cheong narrowed her eyes.
It was the dao friend who had eagerly bought her pill a few days ago, then begged for a refund.
After hurling threats as if the dao friend and the other party were sworn enemies, the dao friend was now playing the enlightened sage.
[Dao friend(225.6): Some dao Friends are probably just into trash.]
That much she could accept.
The problem was the next reply.
[Dao friend(888.168): Even the Nameless Pavilion has no way to recognize items like golden Fingers.]
It was a dao friend with an unfamiliar interface number.
That one line carried a strange weight.
A golden Finger referred to something like a cheat item.
They were absurdly overpowered treasures that fell into one’s lap through innate luck, and the dao Friends called them golden Fingers.
The mysterious green medicine bottle was the representative example.
Using the spirit liquid inside, one could grow spirit herbs thousands or even tens of thousands of years old.
‘Something’s off.’
But Baek-cheong immediately tilted her head.
When considered with common sense, it did not add up.
If someone possessed such a golden Finger treasure, they would clutch it tight; there would be no reason to sell it on the marketplace.
[Dao friend(913.14): What kind of Cheong-yi would list a golden Finger on the marketplace?]
└Dao friend(888.168): Well, circumstances vary. One dao friend once slipped a golden Finger item onto the marketplace to hide it and then died before retrieving it; another, with the dharma Ending Age looming, once dumped every golden Finger they had collected onto the marketplace.
Baek-cheong read dao friend(888.168)'s reply with interest.
The more she mulled it over, the more plausible it sounded.
The Nameless Forum was a place frequented by cultivators from every sort of Lower Realm across the Three Thousand Great Thousand Worlds.
Among countless dao Friends, it was entirely plausible that some unlucky soul would list a golden Finger and die away from home.
Somewhere in the heap of scam listings sunk in the deep sea, a real golden Finger might be lying in wait.
“If I could pull just one green bottle or something out of there…”
Her small chest thumped just from imagining it.
The corners of her mouth crept upward before she knew it.
“No.”
But Baek-cheong did not let go of her suspicion in the end.
It was tempting, yes, but this was hardly her first time getting burned in the marketplace.
Above all, an item on the level of a golden Finger was a different matter.
What she had bought so far was made up of things like jade slips and materials.
Whether they were jade slips engraved with pill formulas or materials used in pill refining, they were not the sort of things that could harm a person.
“Spiritual objects are dangerous.”
Spiritual objects above a certain grade were another story entirely.
With high-grade magic treasures, there were cases where a nascent soul resided inside, or an artifact spirit had taken up residence.
If she carelessly bought such a thing, having her body stolen instead would be all too easy.
Besides, she had to consider what sort of characters swarmed the Nameless Forum.
There were righteous cultivators, demonic cultivators, Buddhist cultivators, and even yao beasts.
“Maybe the most dangerous place in the Immortal Realm is the Nameless Forum.”
There were more than enough people there who would use any means necessary.
It would not be strange in the slightest if someone dangled a golden Finger as bait and built a trap that killed others for amusement.
‘It’s entirely possible.’
Of course, not every jade slip was safe either.
A jade slip was a kind of recording device, so it could contain all sorts of information.
But one reading used Divine Sense, and her Divine Sense had already surpassed artifact forging, so she could prepare for artifact forging.
For example, at the Biun Sect, a nascent soul-stage Sect Master had once released a thread of Divine Sense to examine her.
She had immediately noticed the presence quietly extended by the Sect Master of a great sect far above her.
Her Divine Sense was sharp enough not to miss even a nascent soul’s Divine Sense.
Whether it was a jade slip or anything else, if some suspicious scheme lurked inside, she was confident she could probe it with Divine Sense beforehand.
That was why she had limited herself to jade slips, materials, and the like so far.
Even if a trap were hidden inside, it was something she could notice with Divine Sense and back away from.
“But…”
Having reasoned that far, Baek-cheong folded away her temptation.
For a mere Qi Condensation cultivator to covet a golden Finger was, after all, a step too far.
Rather than stir up trouble out of pointless greed, it was better to know her place.
“Who needs a golden Finger? Being privileged is enough.”
When that thought occurred to her, she snapped back to her senses.
Thinking it over, she realized she had grown far too addicted to the marketplace.
She had spent a whole fortnight lying on her bed and browsing listings.
She had been so entertained by finding a few real gems that she had completely forgotten the training she was supposed to be doing.
“This is full-on marketplace addiction.”
She urgently needed to detox.
Now that even the plausible story of golden Fingers was flickering before her eyes, she had to pull out before it was too late.
If she dipped even one foot farther in, she felt she truly would not be able to crawl back out this time.
“Right. I bought enough.”
Baek-cheong shook off her lingering attachment and left the Nameless Forum.
She sprang up from the bed and headed to the Training Room.
She sat in the lotus position on the Jade Flat Platform laid with the Spirit Gathering Formation and began Qi Absorption, and dense spiritual energy seeped into her Dantian.
It was the same loathsome yoke of training.
But there was no helping it.
If she wanted to enjoy a long-lived forum-addict lifestyle, she had no choice but to first raise her realm.
“If I raise my realm, I too can dig more boldly into the marketplace deep sea.”
Not even the time it takes to eat a meal had passed since she vowed to detox.
Baek-cheong let out a hollow laugh at the thought that had sneaked up on her, erased her idle thoughts, and made herself focus on Qi Absorption.