Xiao Hai stood blankly before that pool of dark yin water.
The wild joy on his face had long since vanished without a trace,replaced by a terror and despair that seeped out from the marrow.
He stiffly lowered his head and stared hard at that small patch of utterly empty mud bed at the center of the pool.
After carefully examining the faint traces at the bottom of the pool...
He discovered that those complex roots,tangled together with the underground yin vein...
Had been peeled out completely intact by exceedingly masterful means.
This was absolutely not something an ordinary cultivator could pull off.
What's more,nowhere in the entire grotto was there any damage from spell bombardment.
What did that mean?
It meant that whoever had gotten here first knew the harvesting methods for such heavenly wonders inside and out.
"Who...who the hell was it?!"
Xiao Hai's eyes flooded with blood in an instant,his breathing turning heavy as an ox's.
With trembling hands,he fished a Voice Transmission Jade Slip out of his robes.
All he had to do was inject spiritual power now and he could immediately contact Lord Li,far away on the main peak,and report the situation here.
However...
Xiao Hai's fingers rubbed along the edge of the jade slip for a long while...
And that thread of spiritual power never went in.
A moment later,as if electrocuted,he abruptly shoved the jade slip back into his robes.
His back was already soaked through with cold sweat.
He couldn't report this!
Xiao Hai knew Lord Li's ruthless style far too well.
News of a peerless spirit object like the Nether River Bone Lotus absolutely could not see the light of day to begin with.
If he rashly told Lord Li:
My lord,I found the place,but someone dug the thing out ahead of us.
Lord Li's first reaction would absolutely not be to hunt down the thief.
It would be to deal with him first!
And even if Lord Li believed him...
What became of a chess piece that had already lost its usefulness?
"He'll kill me to shut me up..."
Xiao Hai shivered all over,his throat rolling with immense difficulty.
He absolutely could not go report empty-handed like this.
Xiao Hai stood up,his face so grim it looked ready to drip.
Clenching his teeth hard,he paced back and forth in the empty grotto.
"Investigate!I have to investigate!"
Whether or not I find them in the end...I have to find a plausible'culprit'before I report to Lord Li!
Only by throwing out a perfect scapegoat can I keep this dog's life of mine!
Xiao Hai took one long,deep look at the grotto...
Then pulled up the hood of his black robe and withdrew from the abandoned mine pit without a sound,like a spiteful lone wolf.
---
Meanwhile,in the secluded ravine deep in Hundred Forging Peak...
Mo Fan sat cross-legged in his stone house,completely unaware of any of it.
Throughout these days,his focus had remained on searching for the qi of heaven.
Mo You,meanwhile,had stayed quietly in the depths of the*[Necrotic Realm]*,surrounded by pure death energy.
The Nether River Bone Lotus's pure power of ultimate yin was refining away the mottled impurities in that formless body,bit by bit.
Mo You's aura was becoming visibly more solid and more pure.
And on that face identical to Mo Fan's,there was now a trace of the living flush of a human being.
But the process had stalled exactly there.
The qi of heaven required to complete that first perfect metamorphosis and stabilize into human form remained entirely out of reach.
"Qingmu Market really is just too small."
Mo Fan opened his eyes and sighed a little helplessly.
Over this past month,in his search for a heavenly spiritual essence containing the qi of heaven...
Mo Fan had made several trips to Qingmu Market.
The results had been a bitter disappointment.
Qingmu Market was,when all was said and done,just a low-tier bazaar existing off the Azure Cloud Sect and serving the bottom rung of the ecosystem.
What traded there was mostly daily consumables needed by outer sect disciples and low-tier rogue cultivators from nearby.
Ordinary*Foundation Establishment*cultivation resources,sure.
You could buy those if you had spirit stones.
But things like heavenly spirit marrow,millennium stone milk,or genuine treasures of heaven and earth?
Qingmu Market simply couldn't produce them.
"Looks like I need to try somewhere else."
Mo Fan made up his mind,pushed open his door,and headed with practiced familiarity toward Zhao Ziwei's cluttered stone courtyard.
Across all of Hundred Forging Peak,this Senior Brother,once so passionately devoted to all manner of dangerous research...
Was without question the number-one know-it-all when it came to breadth of knowledge and material-purchasing channels.
"Senior Brother Ziwei!"
Mo Fan had barely stepped into the courtyard when he saw Zhao Ziwei squatting grubby-faced among a heap of scrapped materials,hammering away at something in his hands.
"Hm?Xiaoqi?What brings you around to see me today?"
Zhao Ziwei swiped a hand across the black soot on his face.
"Senior Brother,I've got a question for you."
Mo Fan walked over and got straight to the point.
"I've hit a bottleneck in my body refinement lately,and I need some exceedingly special materials to assist."
"But I've made several trips to Qingmu Market and found the goods there clearly don't cut it."
"Around the Azure Cloud Sect,besides Qingmu Market,are there any other markets of a higher grade with deeper reserves?"
"Higher grade?"
Zhao Ziwei raised an eyebrow,looking at Mo Fan with interest.
"How high a grade do you need?What are you trying to buy?"
Mo Fan weighed his wording and described it under the pretext of body refinement.
"It has to be exceedingly pure.Not those ordinary artificially refined spirit medicines."
"Ideally naturally gestated heavenly essence,or spirit liquid,spirit marrow,that sort of thing,of very high age."
Hearing those requirements,Zhao Ziwei froze for a beat,then shook his head very decisively.
"If what you want is that grade of thing,then forget about Qingmu Market right now."
"Even if you scraped three feet of soil off that place,you wouldn't find a few drops of it."
Zhao Ziwei stood up,walked over to the water vat beside him and washed his hands,his expression gradually turning serious.
He looked at Mo Fan,doing his best to play the seasoned veteran,and spoke with considerable earnestness.
"Xiaoqi,do you happen to think our Azure Cloud Sect is the one and only center of this world?"
Mo Fan blinked slightly and didn't answer.
"Within our own little patch,say,ten thousand miles in every direction,our Azure Cloud Sect's word is indeed law."
Zhao Ziwei shook the water droplets off his hands,his gaze turning toward the distance.
"But if you cast your eyes farther,across this entire Cangqing Province we live in,then the Azure Cloud Sect is nothing more than one of the'Hundred Sects'on that vast map!"
"If you really want to buy heavenly rarities like that,there's only one place you can go..."
Zhao Ziwei enunciated each word.
"Cangqing City!"
Cangqing City?
Mo Fan chewed the name over carefully.
"That's right."
Zhao Ziwei continued his explanation.
"Cangqing City is the provincial capital of Cangqing Province,a true supercity garrisoned and administered directly by the Great Xia Dynasty's own troops and officials!"
"It doesn't belong to our Azure Cloud Sect,and it doesn't belong to any single cultivation sect!"
"Compared to that place,Qingmu Market is the equivalent of a vegetable market outside our Azure Cloud Sect's front gate."
Zhao Ziwei's analogy was exceedingly vivid,and there was even a trace of longing in his eyes.
"Cangqing City,on the other hand,is a genuine cultivation metropolis."
"A gathering point for every sect's elite disciples,top-tier rogue cultivators,ancient cultivation clans,headquarters of major trading guilds,even official Great Xia Dynasty forces!"
"They've got cross-region skyships spanning multiple provinces,large auction houses rich enough to rival a nation,and a seven-story flagship branch of Myriad Treasures Tower!"
"Never mind heavenly spirit marrow.If you've got enough spirit stones in hand,you could even buy a damaged ancient Dao artifact there!"
Zhao Ziwei clapped Mo Fan on the shoulder and delivered his summary.
"Xiaoqi,you only need to remember one thing."
"Those so-called centerpiece treasures of Qingmu Market?"
"Drop them into Cangqing City and they're roadside stall grade."
Roadside stall...
Those words did give Mo Fan a much clearer concept of just how vast this world was.
Qingmu Market.
Cangqing City.
And the true heart of the Great Xia Dynasty that Fang Tong had mentioned before...
Dragon Capital!
"I understand.Thank you for the guidance,Senior Brother."
Mo Fan quietly settled on a decision,took his leave of Zhao Ziwei,and headed straight back to his own stone house.
Since he was going to a money-devouring den like that to buy top-tier materials,the first order of business was naturally to take stock of his assets.
Mo Fan locked the stone house door tight,then untied the Storage Pouch at his waist...
And dumped out every bit of the fortune he'd accumulated over these past few months in one go.
Clatter,clatter...
An exceedingly pleasing,crisp clinking of spirit stones rang out in the stone house,and multicolored spiritual light instantly lit the dim room bright.
Like an old landlord,Mo Fan began counting it all with meticulous care.
"Mid-grade Spirit Stones.A hundred and twelve here."
Most of these had been scraped out of the old freak Mi Chen's private stores last time.
"Low-grade Spirit Stones...six hundred thirty-odd."
These were mainly from recently hunting high-tier demon beasts,or from selling off odds and ends of materials.
As for Sect Contribution Points,that stuff could only circulate inside the Azure Cloud Sect.
In a place under Great Xia Dynasty jurisdiction like Cangqing City,it was simply a worthless number,so he set it aside for now.
Mo Fan rubbed his chin and ran a quick conversion in his head.
One Mid-grade Spirit Stone exchanged for a hundred Low-grade Spirit Stones.
"Which means the pure cash I can deploy on the spot right now,converted,comes to roughly eleven thousand eight hundred some Low-grade Spirit Stones!"
Besides that cash flow...
On the other side of the table,his enormous"fixed assets,"not yet liquidated,were piled up like a mountain.
There were the various demonic artifacts and jade slips confiscated from the old freak Mi Chen,along with that Blood Soul Malevolence Art.
Several flying swords in respectable condition.
Plus a large quantity of late Tier-1 and even early Tier-2 demon beast hides and bones.
And the big stockpile of materials he'd hoarded at the bottom of Abandoned Sword Cliff before.
On top of that...
After Mo You had been fully resolved,Mo Fan had also found time to return to the bottom of Abandoned Sword Cliff and comb that entire area over meticulously.
Among the genuinely valuable finds...
There was a portion of the snake molt left behind by that Peak*Golden Core*Blood-Red Python.
Just how tough that thing was...
Mo Fan had experienced firsthand.
In terms of actual value,it was probably far more outrageous than the vast majority of what was on the table.
Of course...
Whether he could sell it was another matter entirely.
Mo Fan looked at the spoils filling the room and rubbed his chin.
"If this were Qingmu Market,my net worth here would absolutely qualify me as a bona fide big shot."
Mo Fan gave a wry laugh.
"But since I'm going to buy that grade of supreme heavenly essence...this bit of money probably doesn't give me nearly as much confidence as I'd imagined."
And there was an exceedingly awkward practical problem baked into it as well.
Those demonic artifacts and techniques left behind by the old freak Mi Chen were worth a fortune,sure.
But on the turf of an orthodox sect,they absolutely could not be pulled out and casually sold!
The instant they saw daylight,a major sect would brand him a remnant of the demonic cultivators and have him strung up in the street within minutes.
"Rich,but a lot of it is black money and black goods that can't see the light of day."
Mo Fan stuffed those scalding demonic items back into his Storage Pouch.
Asset inventory complete.
Which left only one final,entirely practical problem.
Zhao Ziwei had just told him that Cangqing City wasn't a hundred-odd miles off like Qingmu Market.
It was a full several thousand miles away!
Even*Foundation Establishment*cultivators generally weren't stupid enough to fly there on their own swords.
Not only did that drain an enormous amount of true essence,the wilderness along the route was riddled with dangers.
Most people chose to book passage on a trading alliance's large cross-region skyship.
Mo Fan looked at the spirit stones on the table and sighed helplessly.
"Money's ready.Goods are ready."
"But how the hell do I get there?"