Chapter 4
Chapter 4.
[The item has been sent to the winner (HumansSuck)'s storage pouch.]
[Baby Jiaolong has no registered storage pouch.]
[330 top-grade spirit stones from the sale have been registered with the Yao Mirror Pavilion.]
Top! Grade! Spirit! Stones! 330 of them!!
Jackpot! Jackpot! Jackpoooooot!!
You have no idea how huge this is.
And they’re not just ordinary spirit stones—they’re top-grade spirit stones!
Spirit stones are rocks imbued with the world’s spiritual energy, and they serve as a kind of currency in the cultivation world.
An ordinary mortal would be lucky to even lay eyes on a hundred regular spirit stones.
One hundred of those precious items make one mid-grade spirit stone, and a thousand mid-grade spirit stones make one top-grade spirit stone. And I traded one spirit fruit for 330 top-grade spirit stones. How is that not a jackpot?!
“I thought yao beasts might use yao stones or something as currency, but I guess not. Well, whatever.”
There were all sorts of things I could do with 330 top-grade spirit stones.
[HumansSuck: Review of the Purple Heart Grass Fruit]
-It’s definitely genuine. I don’t know why a spirit fruit that should only exist in the Spirit Realm is growing in a young yao beast’s cave in the Lower Realm, but it’s worked out well for me. I’m looking into recipes for turning it into a pill, since that should make it twice as effective. Unless you’re a yao immortal with as much murderous poison built up as I have, you should be fine just eating it.
└Black Wind: It’s really genuine...?
└LotsaTails: Ah, what a shame. One would’ve been perfect. Can’t you grow more?
└HumansSuck: The conditions required to grow it are so unusual that even if you wanted to, there’s a good chance you couldn’t.
└Yao Immortal (178.1): [Baby Jiaolong], list another Purple Heart Grass Fruit!!
└Yao Immortal (333.3): If you list another one, I’ll help you cultivate until you ascend!!
└Yao Immortal (66.66): Sell more! Sell more!
└TurtleTurtle: For that to end up with [HumansSuck]... Those human cultivators over there are going to die even more now.
└Yao Immortal (456.45): Gasp!
└Yao Immortal (444.44): Didn’t they buy it so they’d stop killing people?
└Yao Immortal (124.1): Then they wouldn’t be [HumansSuck] lol. Your karma’s going to pile up too, Baby Jiaolong! If you don’t want to get smacked by karma, put up another Purple Heart Grass Fruit!!
They were already clamoring for me to sell more Purple Heart Grass Fruits.
“No way I’m selling another one. If you wanted it that badly, you should’ve won the auction...!”
A fair number of people must’ve bid cautiously, thinking it might be a scam.
I ignored the yao immortals who kept finding my post and hammering me with reply notifications, and opened the Yao Mirror Pavilion.
If you’ve made money, shouldn’t you spend it?
Money’s just trash if you save it forever.
“Yao Mirror Pavilion, here I come!”
I went straight to the Yao Mirror Pavilion and searched for a storage pouch. Since it said the money had been deposited there because I didn’t have one, shouldn’t I buy one first?
“A storage pouch is essential in a xianxia world. Obviously.”
[Yao Mirror Pavilion (妖經閣) - Spatial Storage Items]
[Seller: Wind King]
Item: [Top-grade] Leather storage pouch.
Requirement: 20 mid-grade spirit stones.
-A storage pouch with the power of ages compressed into its leather lining. The flow of time inside slows dramatically, allowing precious spirit fruits and medicinal herbs that would otherwise rot to be kept fresh for hundreds of years.
[Seller: LotsaTails]
Item: [Mid-grade] Finger-worn storage ring.
Requirement: 50 mid-grade spirit stones.
-A small storage item, smoothly refined into a ring. Surprisingly popular as jewelry among young yao immortals.
[Seller: North Sea Ice]
Item: [Top-grade] Waist-worn storage tablet.
Requirement: 80 mid-grade spirit stones.
Description: A flat tablet-shaped item carved from ten-thousand-year cold iron and fragments of a storage item. It serves as both a protective charm and storage item, reacting sensitively to an enemy’s killing intent to warn its wearer.
[Seller: Blood-Red Dragon]
Item: [Top-grade] Wrist-worn storage bracelet.
Requirement: 4 top-grade spirit stones.
Description: A treasure in the form of a bracelet, woven from a jiaolong’s sturdy sinew and the power of a storage item. In battle, it blocks an enemy’s attack once at the instant it strikes your body. It can safely block attacks around the fourth realm. After it blocks an attack, it must be recharged with spirit stones.
“Oh.”
I looked at all sorts of things, but the storage bracelet seemed like the best option after all.
It was a fairly thin cord, and the fact that it was made from jiaolong sinew made it strangely appealing.
Of course, four top-grade spirit stones for one storage item was pretty expensive. But if it could block even an attack from a Spirit Severing cultivator, it was worth the price of my life.
The stages of human cultivation are the first, Qi Refining; second, Foundation Establishment; third, Golden Core; fourth, Spirit Severing; fifth, Nascent Soul; and sixth, Deity Transformation.
If it can block an attack at the fourth realm, that’s not bad at all.
Besides, the seller was Blood-Red Dragon.
The name alone gave off the air of one of my own kind.
Jiaolong often fight when they meet, but still, there’s such a thing as feeling a little closer to someone just because they’re kin.
I had a hunch it’d suit me better somehow. A feeling, you know?
Just in case, I searched for Blood-Red Dragon. They seemed like a pretty dignified yao immortal who just posted on the Gallery.
“Their oldest post...”
[Blood-Red Dragon: What should I do with the blood of a thousand human cultivators?]
-The answer is simple: take a bath.
[The image in this post has been deleted by the Yao Immortal Gallery.]
“Hmm... This dragon’s definitely a particularly deranged one.”
Still, a dragon with that kind of power probably wasn’t a scammer.
Looking through their other posts, I couldn’t find anything about tricking anyone or anything like that.
They just seemed a little... boastful.
As far as Gallery posts went, this was pretty tame.
I’d seen all kinds of trolls back in the modern world. This was cute by comparison.
Strike while the iron’s hot, as they say. I immediately bought the bracelet-shaped storage item from the Yao Mirror Pavilion.
I had plenty of money, anyway.
[You have purchased the wrist-worn storage bracelet.]
[There is no registered storage item. Transfer put on hold.]
“Huh? Huhhh? Aaaagh!!”
I immediately grabbed my hair and yanked.
Now that I thought about it, I had no storage item to receive it in, so I couldn’t get it at all!!
“Aaaagh!! Aaaaaagh!!”
[Baby Jiaolong: Aaaagh! Aaaaaagh!!]
-I bought a storage item! But I didn’t register a storage item, so I can’t receive the storage item I bought!! Aaaaaagh!!
└Black Wind: Why not list one more Purple Heart Grass Fruit, Fellow Jiaolong?
└Yao Immortal (66.66): Why not register a storage item?
[Baby Jiaolong: I bought one because I didn’t have one! Aaaagh!!]
└LotsaTails: Looks like this kid grew up alone without ever leaving the cave, so they don’t even have a storage item. This is hilarious. Cackle, cackle!
└Yao Immortal (333.3): You’ll incur karma for mocking them for not having parents.
[Baby Jiaolong: ......]
└LotsaTails: Gasp! I didn’t know! I’m sorry!!
└Yao Immortal (178.1): Don’t most yao beasts lack parents? They normally grow up alone. Except for those beastly bastards.
└Black Wind: Are you an insect immortal? How about joining my Yao Insect Corps? I’ll put you to good use.
└Yao Immortal (178.1): What plane are you on? I’ll come find you and kill you.
└Black Wind: I’m not falling for that from a coward who asks for someone’s plane number. If you’ve got a problem, come find me.
[SunshineIsThisWorld: Ah... I needed a Purple Heart Grass Fruit. If I’d gotten it, I could’ve tried growing and cultivating it... Then I could’ve sold it on the Yao Immortal Gallery too... Ah.....]
-Conclusion: Sell me another one.
Sunshine the Yao Immortal must’ve been planning to try growing the Purple Heart Grass Fruit. Well, there’d be another chance.
Spirit fruits grew back if you left them alone, so it wasn’t like I couldn’t sell more.
‘Seems like it takes a year to grow.’
A year passed in the blink of an eye for a yao beast.
I’d think, ‘Has it been about a month?’ and then find out a year had gone by.
“Phew. Anyway, this... I really can’t stand this.”
I’d made a fortune, but I couldn’t get the money because I had no account, and I couldn’t even spend it? That was ridiculous. It was worse than not making any money at all.
“A storage item? I’ll go buy one at the nearby marketplace. I can just hurry over and get it. Oh, right, I don’t have any money. Well, I can borrow some for a bit and pay it back!!”
Honestly, I was a little scared.
But my spirit stones! I need to spend them!
“If I’m going to die without getting to use my spirit stones, it’s better to use them before I die. Besides, isn’t it arrogant to assume no one will come here as long as I stay put? What if someone finds the eastern region and barges in?”
If that really happened, I’d be slaughtered without a single means of defending myself.
If I wanted to cultivate or do anything else, I needed a way to protect my body.
And to get that protection and grow stronger, I needed a storage item.
“All right. I’ve made up my mind.”
I’m leaving the cave abode.
I’d just go out and come back quickly. What would be so different about staying here for the rest of my life? My cultivation had stalled at the Yao Knot realm anyway.
If I stayed here, I was going to die from a heavenly tribulation sooner or later.
“All right!”
Smack!
I slapped my cheeks and strode toward the entrance to the cave abode.
Then I stopped.
“... But how do I open the door?”
The cave abode’s door.
I’d never opened it before.
“In xianxia, they usually conceal cave abodes with barriers or formations... So I’d need to be the one who made it, or have some associated technique, to open it.”
If I forced it open, I might suffer several times the pain of a ‘Tch, a barrier?’
But now I was a yao beast too.
One at the Yao General rank.
“Let’s see... Hmm. Right. Like this... Is that how it works?”
From what I could tell, the barrier was stronger against impacts from outside than from within.
At this rate, I could probably just bash it open.
“It’s not like I’m never coming back. If I break it, I’m only hurting myself.”
Just as I was about to open the Yao Immortal Gallery again, I heard—
Rumble—.
“What’s with the automatic door?”
The cave abode’s door began to open automatically just from me reaching out to it.
And beyond it...
“Another cave abode?”
Instead of the outside world, another cave abode appeared.
Of course, it wasn’t the same cave abode.
It seemed to serve a different purpose.
It was no smaller than the room where I was born, but it was divided into sections, almost as if...
“It’s a room that says, ‘I don’t know what you’ll want to do, so I prepared everything.’”
It was a room where I could practice the most iconic arts of the xianxia world.
There were room after room filled with all kinds of tools for alchemy, talisman making, artifact refining, and formation mastery. There was even a training ground for magic and body cultivation. It was spacious enough for me to use even in my true jiaolong form, as if it had been lovingly prepared for my growth.
“All kinds of weapons and armor... Wait, that’s a sealed yao insect egg. And this... liquor? Wow, amazing. What is all this? Am I some kind of princess!? Mama! Papa! Arigato!”
The stuff looked expensive at a glance.
Could it be? Was I really born with a silver spoon in my mouth? A huge grin spread across my face.
Because...
“Time to humblebrag.”
I was already excited to show off on the Yao Immortal Gallery.