1190: Chrysalis of understanding 1190: Chrysalis of understanding Satisfied that he had everything he needed, Yang Qing decided to use the remaining hours before Li Gang’s arrival to relax.
“I don’t think I’ve had breakfast…
or lunch, for that matter.
This isn’t good…” Yang Qing muttered worriedly as he examined his wrist, checking its girth and luster to see if skipping als had taken any visible toll.
There was no real need for that, at least not for soone at the Palace Realm.
A cultivator at that stage had long since stopped relying on food for sustenance.
Their bodies were as hardy and resilient as any monarch-grade artifact.
Even if Yang Qing were to die, his corpse would remain pristine for a thousand years.
But even knowing all that, Yang Qing couldn’t help himself.
One could never be too careful.
After all, every cultivator began their journey with food.
Sowhere along the path, though, so stopped.
It may have started with skipping a few als here and there before disinterest kicked in, and before they knew it, they had lost all joy in eating.
Yang Qing would be danged if he let that be his fate.
Eating was one of the few things that still brought color, joy, and fulfillnt to his life, and there was no way he was going to jeopardize that.
Without hesitation, he brought out about thirteen dishes, spread them out on the table, and began gorging himself, making sure the amount was more than enough to make up for the breakfast and lunch he had skipped.
If ti allowed, he even planned to get so more as an apology to his body for the negligence.
Ti quickly flew by as he indulged, and it wasn’t long before Fan i called to inform him that Li Gang had already arrived.
Yang Qing offered to et him at her office, but Fan i rejected the offer, feeling it was better for him to handle the eting in his own office.
She had too many things to get to—coordinating with the three parties that had taken up the commission, on top of her already endless duties as a ‘slave administrator’ of the Order.
One of the reasons she was so swamped, beyond the usual chaos of her role, was that the three parties had already decided on the forms of remuneration they wanted as paynt for their services.
Dong Ping, for instance, wanted his remuneration converted into rit points, which he intended to redeem for sothing from the Order.
He hadn’t specified exactly what, only giving Fan i a general direction: anything that could help him polish his foundations further as he prepared for his breakthrough into the Domain Realm.
It was up to Fan i to create a list of potential items fitting those criteria and present it to Dong Ping, from which he would choose whatever best suited his needs.
For the Silver Frost Eagles, the remuneration they requested was appraisal services, which didn’t co as a surprise to Fan i.
Having dealt with them plenty of tis, she knew their preferences well.
Eight out of the ten jobs she’d handled for them had ended with them choosing appraisal services as their paynt.
Given how highly sought-after appraisers were, finding one, especially a capable one, usually ca down to connections and reputation.
Wealth alone wasn’t enough.
So Fan i understood perfectly why the Silver Frost Eagles always gravitated toward appraisal services.
By taking on a job, they secured access to an appraiser, and not just any appraiser, but one from the Order.
It was a given that they’d choose that route more often than not.
While it was a fair trade-off for them and even for Fan i to so extent, since the more appraisals she perford, the more refined her skills beca, plus there was also the added perk of pocketing the spirit stones that would’ve been used as remuneration.
Still, it wasn’t without its drawbacks.
Appraisals were ti-consuming, and with everything else she had to juggle, it ant her ti was stretched thin and dangerously so, at that.
The only saving grace in all this was that, at least, Dong Ping and the Wind Gliding rcenary Escort hadn’t requested appraisals.
The latter had opted for a low-tier blue-grade defensive treasure as their remuneration, which could be either in the form of a formation array blueprint or an artifact.
Dong Ping’s request, as well as that of the Wind Gliding rcenary Escorts, despite their generalized nature, were things she could easily fulfill.
She already had those lists on hand in her office, and more importantly, committed to mory.
After all, as soone who’d worked as an external logistics advisor for nearly twenty years, Fan i had handled countless remuneration requests, many of which followed the sa patterns.
In anticipation of what commission takers might ask for, she always maintained a curated list filled with items, resources, and various cultivation materials that the Order had available for redemption through earned rit points.
The list spanned across a wide spectrum—from pills and potions, to weapons and artifacts, to formation blueprints.
It even included access to various facilities like the Order’s library, the Institute, or the special cultivation sites open to outsiders.
A discounted rate for treatnt at dical Valley was also among the perks.
So fulfilling the requests from those two parties was hardly a hassle.
It was the Silver Frost Eagles’ end that would prove thorny.
Still, despite the extra trouble, she didn’t really mind it.
She genuinely loved appraising, even if it often ran her ragged.
There was sothing deeply satisfying about unraveling the secrets and mysteries within an item.
Uncovering the buried stories and the hidden truths within and bringing them to light.
And it certainly didn’t hurt that appraising was one of the fastest ways to deepen her understanding of her chosen Dao and cultivation art.
The Dao she used to break through to the palace realm was known as the Echoes of the Past Dao.
It was an esoteric Dao tied to the Supre Dao of Karma.
However, unlike Karma, which observed cause and effect to establish threads linking the past, present, and future, her Dao’s abilities were centered solely on the past.
Her Dao was influenced partly by her true passions and desires, but also partly by her cultivation technique, which was equally esoteric in nature.
It was a gold-grade art called the Sage Chrysalis of a Thousand Truths Scripture.
The technique had been fashioned by a gifted cultivator who had extensively studied the abilities of a special Dao lifeform—the crypt keeper caterpillar.
The crypt keeper operated on deals and cause and effect.
It could fulfill almost any request, but you had to pay the price it demanded.
And that price wasn’t dictated by the nature of the request, but by the crypt keeper itself.
It decided what it wanted, and when the ti to collect ca, it always collected.
Fan i’s cultivation art borrowed so of those principles.
While she couldn’t replicate most of the crypt keeper’s abilities, after all, it was a lifeform born conceived directly from the powers of the Grand Dao itself, she could borrow abilities from the past and wield them for herself, as long as she paid a price.
However, unlike the crypt keeper, where the price followed no law or principle other than the whims of the caterpillar, her cultivation art operated under a structured system of laws and principles when it ca to paynt.
If the power she summoned was lower than her cultivation realm, the price she paid was minimal.
Conversely, if the abilities exceeded her current realm, then the price she’d pay rose accordingly.
Additionally, the more truths she uncovered surrounding those borrowed abilities, the less it cost her to summon them.
These abilities ca from the items she appraised.
For every item she appraised, she needed to reach a certain level of understanding of its story to trigger the formation of a chrysalis.
That chrysalis would continue to develop the deeper her understanding grew.
Only items that had ford a chrysalis could have their abilities summoned.
She also had a choice in which items to form chrysalises with, provided she t the threshold.
That, in itself, was a great boon given she had only 1,000 slots, so she had to be highly selective.
Quality mattered.
So far, she had ford only 53 chrysalises, which covered but a small fraction of her available slots.
But those 53, because of the exceptional quality of the items she used, had been more than enough to propel her breakthrough into the palace realm.
It was when she ford her 48th chrysalis that she felt the bottleneck to the palace realm begin to loosen, and by the ti she ford her 50th, the door had fully revealed itself.
User Comments
0 comments from readers