Chương 168: Victory Loves Preparation

One thing you learn pretty fast when you're living in a cultivation sect is that there's always two economies happening at the same time, the official one that everyone pretends is the only one, and then the unofficial one that everyone actually uses and nobody really talks about out loud. The Azure Peak Sect was no different from any other sect.

The Heavenly Treasures Pavilion was the official store, this big three story building made of white stone with blue tiles on the roof where disciples could go and trade in their contribution points for cultivation resources, it was organized and clean and elegant but there was no haggling allowed which meant it was basically the most boring place in the entire sect as far as I was concerned. The Sect Marketplace though, now that was different.

"Fresh spirit herbs! Got them this morning from the eastern mountains!"

"Talismans over here! Come get your talismans!"

"Beast cores! Still warm!" The marketplace was arranged in these big concentric circles, the more expensive and prestigious stalls were closer to the middle, so outer disciples like me generally stayed in the outer rings where the prices were actually manageable and the shopkeepers didn't look at you like you were something unpleasant they'd stepped in while walking down the road.

One thing that I noticed was that no matter which world you were in, marketplaces always felt like marketplaces, the noise and the energy and how people argued about prices like their lives depended on it, the only real difference here was that when someone shouted that the prices were robbery, they meant that in a very literal sense.

My storage ring had 10, 750 spirit stones in it right now, which wasn't a massive fortune by sect standards, but it was definitely enough to make me a target to be robbed if anyone knew about it.

"Young cultivator!" somebody called out, "Yes, you! Come look at these excellent formation materials!" I turned around and there was this old man waving me over from behind a stall filled with different stones and metals and what I first thought were dragon scales on it but were almost certainly just lizard scales that someone had painted to look more impressive because real dragon scales would have caused a deadly commotion. I was about to decline and keep walking when something on his stall caught my eye.

"Is that Earth Essence?" I asked.

"You have excellent taste young cultivator!" the old man's face lit up.

"Yes, yes, Earth Essence, perfect for earth-attribute formations or pills, very rare, very powerful!" I doubted it was as rare as he was making it sound, mostly because I was carrying some in my own storage ring, but knowing the going market price for it wasn't useless information to have.

"How much are you asking for it?"

"For such a discerning customer, only 5000 spirit stones!" I actually laughed, couldn't help it.

"5000? For unrefined Earth Essence? I could walk into Three Rivers Town right now and find better prices than that." The merchant kept smiling like I hadn't said anything.

"Ah, but this is special grade Earth Essence! Look at the crystalline structure, see the rich brown color..."

"The standard purity level," I said back at him, "and the qi distribution is slightly uneven which means it hasn't been stabilized properly." His eyes grew a little narrower as he realised that I actually knew what I was looking at and talking about.

"You seem quite knowledgeable about Earth Essence," he said carefully.

"I should be, I have some in my ring right now actually." I took out the jade box from my storage ring and opened it just enough that he could see what was inside.

"I was thinking about selling it, and since you mentioned 5000 spirit stones..."

"Now hold on," he said quickly, raising both hands up, "let's not do anything hasty, you're right that 5000 is perhaps a little on the high side, maybe we could talk about what a fair price actually looks like?" What came after that was about fifteen minutes of haggling that would have made Wei Lin proud.

"4000 spirit stones," he finally said, "and I mean it this time, that's my final number." Anything over 3000 was fine by me since elder Chen Yong was selling it for that price, but I made myself pause and look like I was really thinking it over before I nodded.

"Deal." We did the exchange fast and clean, the spirit stones went into my ring and he looked over the Earth Essence very carefully before packing it away.

"You know," he said while he was doing that, "you haggle pretty hard for an outer disciple."

"And you know a lot about cultivation materials for someone who's supposed to be a simple merchant." He grinned at that, and for just a second the whole weathered old man act dropped and there were sharp eyes looking back at me.

"Maybe we do business again sometime?"

"Maybe," I said, which is the only safe answer when you're in a marketplace and someone says something like that because committing to anything more specific has a tendency to turn into a complicated and potentially deadly situation. I moved on from there toward the section where medicinal pills were sold.

The issue with medicinal pills was that quality was not consistent, at all, the sect had official suppliers of course, but their prices were so high that most disciples bought from independent alchemists instead and just accepted that there was a slightly elevated chance of something exploding.

"Young cultivator!" a voice called out from nearby.

"You look like someone who appreciates quality pills!" There was a woman running a stall who looked cheerful and had laugh lines around her eyes, her products were arranged in clear crystal containers and every one of them was labeled with both the name and the effect. When Azure scanned them, the qi readings were steady and consistent across the board, which was actually a really good sign. This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

"Personally, I appreciate pills that don't do anything horrible to my internal organs," I told her. She laughed at that.

"Then you're in exactly the right place! Madam Zhang guarantees everything she sells, no explosions or unexpected mutations!"

"The fact that you have to say that is concerning."

"In this business it's just being professional." She gestured at everything on her stall.

"What are you looking for? I carry everything from basic qi recovery all the way up to advanced beast resistance." I looked over the display carefully.

"Qi Recovery Pills, Blood Replenishing Pills, and probably some Detoxification Pills."

"Ah," she said, and her eyes had this knowing look to them.

"Heading somewhere dangerous?"

"That obvious?"

"Only disciples going into real danger buy detox pills, they're expensive and they degrade fast even in a storage ring, so there's no reason to buy them unless you're expecting to encounter poison out there." She was right about that. Detoxification Pills worked on essentially any poison a Qi Condensation realm beast might use on you, they were expensive, and they only lasted about a month before starting to break down, so buying them meant you were planning on needing them soon.

"Twenty Qi Recovery Pills, how much?" I asked.

"Normally 120 each, but for that quantity I'll do 2000 for the whole set." I raised an eyebrow at that.

"Market rate is 100 per pill."

"Market rate is for pills where you might get indigestion as a bonus side effect. Mine are guaranteed clean." She had a fair point and these ones did have unusually stable qi patterns when I looked at them properly, I'd read enough about cultivation to know that pills made badly could do everything from just failing to work all the way to actually reversing your cultivation progress somehow, so paying a little more for ones that were actually reliable made sense.

"I'll take twenty," I said.

"And ten Blood Replenishing Pills." She nodded like I'd made a sensible decision.

"Good combination. Blood pills are 100 each but I'll throw in an extra one since you're buying both types." The woodweave seal could handle most injuries but it burned through red sun energy when it did, the blue sun healing was even better, but using that in the open would attract attention that I didn't need, so having actual pills as a backup option was just practical thinking.

"Deal. And three Detoxification Pills." Her eyebrows went up a bit.

"Those are 1000 each, you're sure about spending that much?"

"Expensive beats dead," I said. She laughed again.

"Can't argue with that logic! Though I hope you don't actually end up needing them." The total worked out to 6000 spirit stones which was not a small amount of money, but these pills were potentially the difference between walking away from something alive or not, so it was worth every single stone. While I was putting away everything I'd bought, there was suddenly a lot of noise coming from nearby, a group of inner disciples were arguing loudly with a talisman seller.

"What do you mean these are genuine Thunderclap Talismans?" one of them was saying.

"We used them in training yesterday!" The merchant, who was a thin man and clearly very uncomfortable with how this conversation was going, kept bowing at them.

"Honored disciples I promise you there's been some mistake, all my talismans are genuine products..."

"Then why did they just fizzle instead of making lightning?"

"Oh!" the merchant said suddenly, like something had just clicked for him.

"Did you try to use them in the sect's training grounds?" The inner disciples looked at each other.

"Of course, we did, where else would we test them?"

"That's the problem then! The training grounds have formation arrays in them that suppress external energies, my talismans work perfectly fine anywhere else..." I didn't stick around to see how that argument resolved itself, but it was a good reminder of how formations and talismans actually interact with each other because that's something a lot of people don't think about carefully enough.

Talismans are pre-packaged effects that anyone with sufficient cultivation can trigger, you draw the right symbols and infuse them with qi and the effect happens, they're fast and reliable and good for when you need something done right now. Formations are more complex and they take longer to set up, but they're much more efficient and can maintain effects for a lot longer and achieve things that would need many talismans to replicate otherwise.

The obvious downside is that you can't set up a proper formation in the middle of a fight unless you planned ahead, which is why most serious cultivators carried both, talismans for immediate situations and formations for anything they could actually prepare for in advance.

"Young cultivator!" another voice came from a small stall nearby.

"You look like someone who knows good talismans when you see them!" Young cultivator this, young cultivator that, apparently, I looked like I knew about a lot today. They really should try a new sales pitch. When I turned, I saw a cheerful looking woman there wearing inner disciple robes waving at me.

"Explosive talismans," I said, getting to the point.

"I need it for Qi Condensation realm combat."

"Another one heading to Floating Reed Village?" She pulled out a tray of red paper talismans.

"These should be exactly what you need, fire-attribute explosive talismans, decent blast radius, minimal spiritual feedback on the user." I picked one up and checked the brush work on it. Clean and precise, no energy leaking out anywhere, nothing fancy but well-made and reliable.

"Price?"

"100 each, but for ten or more I'll do 90 per talisman." I bought twenty. They weren't going to hit anywhere near as hard as my explosive seed rune, but they also wouldn't drain my red sun energy reserves at all which mattered a lot, and having more of something reliable was better than having fewer of something powerful sometimes.

The last thing on my list was formation flags and for that I went to a proper shop called Clear Sky Formation Supplies, it was an actual building rather than a stall with glowing characters above the door spelling out the name. The inside was quiet and cool which was a relief after all the noise outside.

"Welcome!" a young woman behind the counter said, then she noticed something.

"Oh! A formation guild token? Right this way please, we have a certified practitioner section." She brought me through to a separate room that had the good supplies in it, formation flags, high-grade inscription tools, and resonance crystals, the prices in this room alone were enough to make me glad I'd sold that Earth Essence when I did.

"Combat formation flags," I told her.

"Reusable ones." Single use flags were cheaper, but they had a reliable tendency to fall apart at exactly the worst possible moment so reusable was always the right answer. She laid out several different options for me.

"The red series is optimized for offensive formations, blue is better for defensive work, and then these black ones are for containment formations, mostly used for capturing beasts but they have other applications." I looked them all over carefully, they were well made, spiritual silk with formation-conductive threads woven through in exactly the right patterns, essentially blank slates ready to have whatever formation you needed inscribed onto them.

"Four of the blue series," I said. They'd work as anchor points for the Symphony Shield and let me extend the coverage area significantly even if probably not enough to cover an entire village, but bigger than what I could manage without them.

"4000 spirit stones for the four." I pushed back a little and got her down to 3700 before we agreed. I handed over the stones and she packed up the flags carefully for me. While walking out of the shop, my head was already working through how the Symphony Shield would need to be adjusted to maintain stability properly when it was running across multiple anchor points spread further apart than the base formation was designed for.

There was a weapons display near the marketplace exit that caught my attention on the way out, swords on the walls, spears in racks, all of it looking very impressive and also extremely expensive.

"Looking to upgrade?" the weaponsmith asked, he was a big man with arms like most people have legs and he somehow handled a nearby sword with complete delicacy despite that.

"Starting price for your basic options?" I asked, already knowing I wasn't going to like the answer.

"Basic spiritual sword starts at 10, 000 spirit stones," he said, gesturing at one of his simpler pieces. I stopped him there. 10, 000 for the basic option was almost everything I'd had before today's shopping trip had even started, and beyond that I hadn't actually trained seriously in weapon forms beyond the absolute basics. Buying an expensive spiritual weapon when you don't have the skills to use it properly was just a guaranteed waste of money and would probably end up getting me killed.

"Some other time," I said politely. I got away from there as fast as possible before he could start explaining whatever payment plan options he had available. Some disciples spent years paying those off and I had more than enough going on already without adding debt to the list.

"Master, what now?" Azure asked.

"It's time to say our goodbyes."