Chapter 253: Chapter 249: Dead Book and Living Book
After Song Ciwan parted ways with Yu Miaomiao, the Heaven and Earth Scale appeared beside her.
A wisp of qi was collected: [Human Desire. The shame, vexation, and anger of an Early-Stage Qi Refining Cultivator. Weight: six liang and nine qian. Available for trade.]
Yu Miaomiao’s emotional control was clearly far stronger than Xie Yunxiang’s. Not only were her emotions incredibly difficult to leak, making them hard for the Heaven and Earth Scale to capture, but even when they were caught, the weight was very light.
Song Ciwan accepted the wisp of qi and continued walking along Sanpo Street.
She hadn’t bought any Communication Talismans, but she walked into a shop and immediately purchased five pairs of Lingxi Jade.
Lingxi Jade could be considered a high-end, encrypted version of a Communication Talisman. It came in yin and yang pairs and didn’t require the user’s personal imprint. As long as two people each held the yin and yang jades of the same pair, they could communicate through the two stones.
A Profound Level Lingxi Jade could be used for communication three times a day. After the three uses were exhausted, it had to be left to rest for twenty-four hours before it could be used again.
Thirty Communication Talismans were typically worth one Primordial Pearl, whereas a single pair of Lingxi Jade cost ten Primordial Pearls.
Furthermore, both Communication Talismans and Lingxi Jade had range limitations.
A standard Communication Talisman could only transmit messages within a hundred li, while a Profound Level Lingxi Jade could do so within a thousand li.
But don’t think a hundred or a thousand li was a vast distance. Cangling County itself was massive, spanning three thousand li. A range of a hundred li often wasn’t even enough to leave the city, let alone the county.
However, Song Ciwan wasn’t counting on the Lingxi Jade for long-range communication. What she valued most was its encryption.
No personal imprint required, and the connection could be severed at any time—that was the greatest advantage of Lingxi Jade.
After buying them, Song Ciwan planned to give one to Xie Yunxiang if she had the chance, and she could also give one to Gao Xiaolang if she ran into him again.
The remaining three pairs would be kept as spares; they might come in handy someday.
Then there was the matter of Chi Hua Fairy. Having heard so much news, Song Ciwan had actually been carefully considering whether to get involved in the search.
’Search outside the city?’
Song Ciwan wasn’t really leaning that way. ’Is Chi Hua Fairy really outside the city? And is the information released by Shanxing Tower even reliable?’
Shanxing Tower was also known by cultivators as the Celestial Secret Tower, and even the Taotie Building... These wildly contradictory names were because, on one hand, Shanxing Tower was famous for its well-informed network and mastery of divination. On the other hand, their notorious greed was equally famous.
How greedy were they?
It was said that Shanxing Tower would even sell false information for profit!
Such a self-sabotaging practice seemed like a suicidal business model.
But if anyone caused trouble for Shanxing Tower after receiving inaccurate information, the tower would offer an irrefutable excuse—
Divination can never be one hundred percent accurate. Shanxing Tower has an eighty percent accuracy rate, isn’t that enough?
If someone happens to receive false information, it’s not Shanxing Tower’s fault. You can only blame the buyer’s terrible luck. If the heavens themselves want to deceive you, what can Shanxing Tower possibly do?
Such a shameless attitude was one of a kind in the Great Zhou.
And yet, precisely because of that eighty percent accuracy rate, Shanxing Tower’s information business had always stood firm in the Great Zhou, never once collapsing.
Of course, the fact that Shanxing Tower could be so shameless without being beaten to death by angry cultivators wasn’t just because of their clever excuses—that was the least significant reason. The real reason was that Shanxing Tower was overseen by an Earth Immortal, or perhaps even a Celestial Immortal!
In this Mythical Realm, where ultimate power resides in the individual, what was the undeniable truth?
Might makes right!
With fists that speak, mountains and seas can be leveled.
Song Ciwan bought several more items on Sanpo Street, such as Array Flags for Array Formation. Including the ones she had stockpiled before, she now had a total of one hundred and twenty-eight Array Flags.
At five Primordial Pearls per flag, the total came to six hundred and forty Primordial Pearls.
No wonder they said that all six arts of Cultivating Immortality were just ways to burn money.
At this rate of spending, Song Ciwan would never have been able to afford it if she hadn’t sold a batch of Primordial Longevity Pearls.
After buying enough Array Flags, she also found and bought a scroll titled *Basic Array Formulas Collection* in a shop on Sanpo Street—
Despite its name, the scroll actually contained only thirteen basic array formulas.
And because the "Collection" was far from complete, Song Ciwan ended up paying a total of five hundred Primordial Pearls for the scroll.
It was hard to say whether she got a bargain or not.
But there were reasons for such a high price. First, the arts are not taught frivolously. In the Great Zhou, knowledge was precious, especially Dharma Gates related to Cultivation. Second, technique manuals like this one, meant for sale, often contained a faint Magic Guide!
This Magic Guide was difficult to explain in words. It could only be described as the spiritual resonance of a Dharma Gate.
Without this resonance, the scroll was as if "dead." An ordinary person could copy it ten or a hundred times, but all the copies would also be "dead books."
A dead book was meaningless. It was rumored that no one had ever managed to learn a Dharma Gate from a dead book.
Only by possessing a Magic Guide and acquiring that spiritual resonance could a dead book become a "living book" and be learned from.
This was why array formula books were so expensive. Of course, it wasn’t just array books; any book related to Cultivation was expensive, as they all had to possess a Magic Guide.
The Magic Guide also acted as a lock, enforcing the principle that the arts are not taught frivolously. Once a book was studied by someone, its Magic Guide would disappear. Afterward, if the book fell into someone else’s hands, it would once again be a dead book.
This ensured, to the greatest extent possible, that the knowledge would not be leaked to a second party.
The more Song Ciwan came into contact with these aspects of the Cultivation Realm, the more magical she found it. It was so magical that sometimes she could hardly tell if she was in a Mythical Realm or a fantasy world.
In any case, it was endlessly magnificent. Beauty could be found in distant perils as well as what was right in front of her.
On Sanpo Street, Song Ciwan also bought a new Storage Pouch. A Storage Pouch was an upgraded version of a Storage Talisman. The space inside a Storage Talisman was unstable and would often be rendered useless after about a hundred uses, whereas a Storage Pouch could be used indefinitely.
Song Ciwan needed a visible storage item. She had used Storage Talismans before because she was strapped for cash, but now she was switching to a Storage Pouch. A Lower Grade Storage Pouch was worth sixty Primordial Pearls, and a Middle Grade one was worth two hundred.
Song Ciwan bought one of each. The Lower Grade Storage Pouch had twenty cubic meters of storage space, while the Middle Grade one had a hundred.
The capacity was quite large. Song Ciwan transferred all the various supplies from her old Storage Talismans into the Lower Grade Storage Pouch, and after binding it to herself, she hung it from her waist.
She stored the Middle Grade Storage Pouch inside her Vast Sea Grotto Heaven. The Vast Sea Grotto Heaven was a true Grotto Heaven, of a high enough level to contain other spatial items.
As for the Vast Sea Grotto Heaven, Song Ciwan’s development of it was actually quite lacking.
A true Grotto Heaven should theoretically be able to support living beings, but Song Ciwan’s Vast Sea Grotto Heaven couldn’t house people for the time being. The fundamental reason was that the Five Elements within it were unbalanced, resulting in a Grotto Heaven with only a sea and no land.
With the Five Elements imbalanced, a complete Grotto Heaven could not be formed, and Song Ciwan had been constantly thinking of ways to remedy this flaw.
For some reason, perhaps because she was practicing the Great Derivation Birth Skill, the more Song Ciwan heard about Chi Hua Fairy today, the stronger a premonition grew within her: perhaps the opportunity to complete her Vast Sea Grotto Heaven would begin with this.
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