In the evening, on the street outside the entrance of the Town Guardian Cultivator's Manor.
"Do you think anyone will buy our talismans?"
Wearing a wooden mask, Yu'an looked toward his older brother.
They had co to browse the ghost market, though naturally, they couldn't afford to buy much. After all, combined, they currently had only a little over ten spirit stones on them.
"If no one buys them, we'll just lower the price," Yulou replied. "Those Thousand-Mile Talismans we drew are indeed quite average. Our goal tonight is simply to recoup the cost of our practice materials.
"Losses are perfectly normal. Anyone learning auxiliary arts cannot avoid this step.
"Once we sell the Thousand-Mile Talismans, we can buy a piece of cheap spiritual material and directly refine a low-grade magical artifact to sell!"
Yulou ca to the ghost market precisely to sell off the talismans he had drawn. Breaking even would be enough, though making a small profit would naturally be better.
Even if he lost out on spirit stones, the process of crafting the Thousand-Mile Talismans helped accumulate golden light inside the Jade Ruyi within his mind, so it was a minor loss overall.
Both of them had passed Hongi's crafting test. Now, refining low-grade magical artifacts was sothing they could handle with absolute ease—though it had never been that difficult to begin with.
The difficulty of the refinent path lay first in gaining entry, then in mastering restrictions, and most of all in the various nuances and secret heritages.
Refining low-grade magical artifacts did not have a high barrier to entry, required very few restrictions, and did not involve complex nuances or secret heritages.
"If you ask , we should just borrow two hundred spirit stones from my dad first. That way, we could directly start purchasing materials to refine artifacts."
Yu'an truly didn't treat Yulou as an outsider, showing zero hesitation when it ca to milking his own father.
"Hahaha, no need. Master has already agreed to let us use Huafeng Residence to sell the magical artifacts we refine ourselves. That is more than enough. You need to have faith in ."
Yulou did not believe the Wang Clan, having been thoroughly bled dry by Hongdengzhao once before, had much surplus left. Therefore, he politely declined Yu'an's suggestion.
"I have more faith in myself," Yu'an said, tossing his chin up.
The person guarding the gate outside the Town Guardian Cultivator's Manor was one of Gao Jian's lackeys. He managed to deduce the truth from Yulou's height and physical build.
"Are you... Wang Yulou?"
Yulou was quite speechless. Since everyone was an acquaintance, let alone wearing a mask, even wearing night-traveling attire would be useless.
The ghost market of Clear Stream Market had absolutely nothing to do with a so-called underground black market. It was purely a cultivation version of a duty-free market set up by the Town Guardian Cultivator to revitalize his personal coffers.
"Shh, here is the invitation. Take a look."
The gatekeeping cultivator pushed back the invitation Yulou handed over and said, "Yulou, you're treating like an outsider now. Go on in, hurry inside."
The cultivation world was just like this. No matter how fierce Gao Jian was, he was still just a dog and couldn't monopolize all the benefits.
He and his subordinates weren't complete beasts either; at least when facing Wang Yulou, they all put on a very human guise.
"Please let Senior Gao know that tomorrow I must leave the market town with Master, so I won't be attending his banquet for taking a concubine tonight."
Yulou gave a brief explanation, then led his younger brother into the ghost market, which was held once a month in Clear Stream Market.
The ghost market of Clear Stream Market generally didn't hold high-profile auctions. The only reason one had occurred last ti was that the major clans and Jiang Baobian wanted to harvest the wealth of the common cultivators early, which led to that temporary event.
Under normal circumstances, the ghost market was just a temporary night market, except its location was rather unique—right in the backyard of the Town Guardian Cultivator's Manor.
No matter how one looked at it, this arrangent was rather bizarre. The chief official of Hongdengzhao's local outpost had engaged in an innovative business model, boldly opening Clear Stream Market's underground trading hub right inside the Town Guardian Cultivator's Manor.
But... everyone actually preferred coming here because of it.
The Town Guardian Cultivator's Manor was secure!
As long as the items you sold weren't completely defying heaven's laws, the Foundation Establishnt stage seniors wouldn't bother interfering at all.
When viewing a Foundation Establishnt senior as a threat, everyone was scared to death.
But if he posed no threat to you, setting up a stall in the backyard of the Town Guardian Cultivator's Manor essentially ant having a Foundation Establishnt senior act as your security guard, didn't it?
With a Foundation Establishnt cultivator acting as a security guard, the debt of gratitude to Hongdengzhao could never be fully repaid.
In a single word—worth it!
The mont Yu'an stepped into the backyard, he was startled by the bustling liveliness of the ghost market.
So stalls were piled high with books and jade slips. These were selling classic texts, though street-side materials like these were rarely authentic, let alone offering any after-sales guarantee.
Only the poorest rogue cultivators would choose to buy so-called spells, cultivation techniques, and secret heritages from these stalls. Anyone with even a bit of family wealth would only go to shops opened by major clans or sects.
Other stalls consisted of massive carriages holding nurous cages filled with living creatures. These were selling beast cubs, mounts, and spiritual pets.
Beasts were divided into spiritual food types and trainable types. The forr were ant for consumption, while the latter were reared to serve as assistants in magical combat or as guardian beasts for a clan's mountain stronghold.
Rogue cultivators couldn't afford the forr, but they were often willing to grit their teeth and buy a trainable one to raise at ho.
There was an even greater variety of mounts, including so cubs capable of growing to the Qi Refining stage.
The most unique were the spiritual pets. They were the most expensive, as they were already fully tad beasts that could be used imdiately upon purchase.
These types of spiritual pets were generally bred by cultivation clans or related sects, and their value was quite substantial.
Soon, Yulou located a cultivator whose stall was covered with all kinds of talismans.
"Fellow Daoist, do you accept Thousand-Mile Talismans here?"
The cultivator raised his head, glanced at Yulou, then looked at Yu'an standing behind him, and said, "Bring them out for a look. If the quality is acceptable, I'll take them."
Yulou pulled a stack of talismans from his robe and handed them over. The stall owner inspected them with his divine sense, quickly noticing sothing amiss.
"A Thousand-Mile Talisman is supposed to grant the user the endurance of a thousand-mile horse to achieve long-distance travel, so it is typically drawn using the blood of a wild-beast-grade dappled horse.
"Yet looking at the blood used in your talismans, it doesn't seem to be from a dappled horse. Forget about a thousand miles, at most it would only let a user run for a hundred miles!"
Yulou explained, "Fellow Daoist may not know, but I used spiritual donkey blood, and it's blood harvested from a spiritual beast donkey, which is entirely different from a talisman drawn with beast blood. The side effects are much smaller."
He really had to thank Manager Tang for his assistance in this matter.
Learning artifact refining required learning restrictions, and learning restrictions required accumulating experience in talisman crafting. If the Spiritual Attraction Talisman was considered a basic activation switch, then the Thousand-Mile Talisman was one of the fundantal entry-level talismans.
By borrowing the blood of the spiritual donkeys from Zhiwei Bistro, Yulou managed to save a significant number of spirit stones on purchasing materials.
If Old Tang had restricted the supply of spiritual blood, the two brothers wouldn't have a single spirit stone left over.
Furthermore, although the Wang Clan's spiritual donkey Thousand-Mile Talisman had a shorter duration, it possessed other unique advantages.
Talismans made with beast blood would disrupt the user's spiritual energy circulation, whereas spiritual donkey blood carried no such issues.
Hearing Yulou's explanation, the stall-keeping cultivator scrutinized Yulou and asked tentatively, "Spiritual donkey? Are you Yulou?"
"Ah?"
Not only was Yulou stunned, but even Yu'an was startled.
It made sense that Gao Jian's lackey at the entrance recognized them.
But for just any random rogue cultivator in the ghost market to recognize them, wasn't that a bit absurd?
"Haha, it's , Wu Jinyan."
Wu Jinyan, Hongi's close friend and the witness to their apprenticeship under Hongi, was naturally soone Yulou recognized.
"Senior Wu, why are you here selling talismans?"
The Wu Clan was involved in mining, so they ought to be selling spiritual ores and spiritual tals instead.
"Sigh, just supplenting the family inco a bit. But what about you two? Did you tell your master before coming to the ghost market?"
"We naturally inford him," Yulou replied.
Wu Jinyan smiled understandingly and said, "How about this? For these dozens of Thousand-Mile Talismans, I'll give you a flat rate of twenty spirit stones. I won't let you lose out. What do you think?"
Twenty spirit stones for a stack of Thousand-Mile Talismans of varying quality was indeed a fair price.
Yulou nodded. Realizing Wu Jinyan was an acquaintance, he decided to save himself the trouble of looking elsewhere and inquired, "Senior Wu, we also want to procure a piece of spiritual material for artifact refining. But even counting these twenty spirit stones, our budget is only thirty-five spirit stones. Do you happen to have anything suitable on hand?"
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