God-Tier Villain

Chapter 26: Chapter 26

Something had finally caught his interest.

Four burly men carried out an iron cage, ten feet long and ten feet high, and set it down on the auction stage with exaggerated care.

The cage was custom work, its dark red material brutally hard, a transparent formation sealing its top, locked inside were two youths, one male, one female.

The young man looked to be in his early twenties, the girl seventeen or eighteen.

Both wore specially forged shackles at wrist and ankle, and both looked thoroughly the worse for wear.

The young man’s eyes weren’t large, but they burned, he gripped the bars with both hands, biting his lip until blood showed, furious, transparently furious, and utterly helpless.

The girl’s gaze darted in panic across the packed hall, she shrank behind her brother, lips pressed thin, eyes swimming with terror.

Wave after wave of stares converged on her, no amount of grime could hide that exquisite face.

"There’s Spirit energy on them!"

"Hehe, that’s right, spirit slaves!"

"Placed in the second half of the auction, no less. Their bloodline tier can’t be low, anyone able to tell which Spirit tribe?"

"Can’t tell, but Spirit slaves come with plenty of benefits, blood first among them, spirit blood does wonders for a demon’s cultivation. If the price is fair, I’m fighting for them!"

"Seems we all had the same idea, but they’re caged together, bundled sale, most likely!"

"A bundle’s terrible value, but it proves one thing, those two bloodlines are one high, one low!"

"Never mind how filthy the little chick looks right now, that skin is glossy, and those features are flawless, scrub her clean and she’ll be a stunning beauty."

"Win her, and even if you never tap her as a blood slave, having her warm your bed at night is pure profit!"

The first floor erupted into roaring laughter, and half the room was already itching to bid.

Sensing the crowd had cooked to a boil, the auctioneer launched into his introduction with gusto.

The two were blood siblings carrying the bloodline of the Spirit race, an extremely pure strain, by the Commerce Guild’s testing and appraisal, the bloodline of the Ice Heaven Alluring Fox.

The Spirit had once stood among the world’s dominant races, alongside humans, beasts, and demons.

Then, for reasons no one knew, the vast majority vanished, nowadays one only occasionally found Spirit living in seclusion in forgotten corners, and after the erosion of ages, most carried degraded bloodlines, or worse, impure ones.

For two pure-blooded Spirit bearing the Ice Heaven Alluring Fox line to appear on an auction stage was rare beyond measure, and Spirit blood held a special property.

It could ignite the latent potential of a demon’s bloodline, granting far greater strength in a short window of time.

This was precisely why blood-supplying Spirit slaves existed as a concept.

The auctioneer moved on to their origins, the pair had been caught after disguising themselves as Commerce Guild staff and slipping into the Guild’s rear pavilion to steal medicinal herbs, given their pureblood status, killing them would have been an outrageous waste, hence the decision to auction them instead.

He let that settle, then continued.

"There is one small regret."

"Their strength is nothing remarkable, both sit at the Spirit King realm."

"Furthermore, though they are blood siblings, their bloodline tiers differ enormously."

"As you all know, bloodlines divide into Lower-Tier, Middle-Tier, Upper-Tier, Premium, and Supreme."

"The young lady’s bloodline is very high indeed, a bona fide Premium tier."

"Purely as a combat asset, she is only a Lower-Tier Spirit King, nothing more."

"But employed as a blood-supplying Spirit slave, the Spirit blood she can provide in a single year is roughly equivalent to ten Venerable-Tier medicinal pills!"

The hall went silent, then came the gasps, rolling through the seats in a wave, a heartbeat later, ninety-nine percent of the demons in the audience lost their minds.

Premium Spirit blood, unthinkably rare, they had to bid.

The auctioneer beamed on. "The young man’s bloodline is merely Upper-Tier, a fine bloodline for ordinary folk, but for various reasons, the two will be auctioned as a set."

"The starting price is two hundred thousand spiritual stones, each bid must rise by no less than fifty thousand."

Spiritual stones were the hard currency of the Azure Spirit World, good for trade and equally good for direct absorption in cultivation, useful to every major race, but two hundred thousand was a number that turned most stomachs, plenty of demons could save for half a lifetime and never see that sum.

Even so, bidders gritted their teeth and shouted, muscling the price from two hundred thousand up to five hundred thousand, past that line, most of the room dropped out with long sighs.

Yet the bidding stayed hot, the Violet Jade Immortal Domain did not lack for Demon Venerables.

The Endless Demonic Domain counted seventy-some Upper-Tier Demon Venerables, the Violet Jade Immortal Domain had over a hundred.

The higher the price climbed, the more terror filled the girl in the cage, she had no idea who would end up buying them, but whoever it was, there was no version of this where her fate, and her brother’s, was anything but wretched.

Soren watched in silence, to a Middle-Tier Demon Emperor, a pair of Spirit with merely Premium bloodlines held little intrinsic appeal.

What nagged at him was stranger, with all pure-blooded Spirit nearly extinct, how did two young, King-realm purebloods surface here?

Instinct told him there was some unknown story buried behind these siblings, the surrounding domains all belonged to demons or humans.

No sizable population of pureblood Spirit could survive in any of them, which left exactly one candidate.

Black Dragon Mountain, the very place Soren was headed.

One of the three great forbidden grounds of the Exalted Continent, wrapped year-round in that lethal sonic wave, impenetrable even to Demon Emperor experts, ownerless to this day.

If pureblood Spirit were hiding anywhere, it would be there.

While he chewed on the thought, the price for the siblings sailed past one million spiritual stones, five times the opening bid.

Soren decided to enter anyway, even if the pair had nothing to do with Black Dragon Mountain, raising two spirits to work for him was hardly a losing trade.

He called out a flat one million three hundred thousand.