Those gazes held reverence, envy, and a hidden mix of jealousy and curiosity. After all, this person not only carried the Border Defense True Seal, he had also suddenly become the personally-appointed disciple of the Formation Peak Master, a legendary figure who had already taken on a mythic presence in the eyes of the sect’s low-ranking disciples.
Su Ming’s expression remained calm; he had long since gotten used to such looks. The Way of Survival did not mean always acting submissive. Faced with absolute hierarchy and status, appropriately showing a bit of authority could actually save a lot of unnecessary trouble.
He walked straight to the deepest part of the hall, to the special counter reserved for inner disciples and true disciples.
The steward behind the counter, who had been dozing with his eyes closed, sprang up as if a spring had been attached to his seat the instant he saw the purple robe. The stern face instantly split into a smile bright as a chrysanthemum.
“Well, well, so it’s Great Disciple Su in person! What can I do for you today?” the steward gushed, bowing and flattering to the extreme.
Su Ming gave no idle words. He took his identity token from his sleeve and handed over the list he had already planned.
“Two items. One Spirit-Communion Jade Marrow, and one Star-Pattern Silk, both of mid-to-high quality.”
“Right away! Great Disciple Su, please wait!” The steward took the token, not daring to ask any unnecessary questions, and immediately turned and rushed into the special storeroom in the back.
While the steward went to fetch the goods, Su Ming sent a sliver of divine sense into his identity token.
In the contribution points section, a clear number appeared: 21,350 points.
Seeing that number, Su Ming’s mouth twitched ever so slightly into a faint smile.
A small portion of that had come from what he himself had accumulated before, but the vast majority was the steady dividends that had flowed into the Repair Hall over the past few months.
Since he had implemented assembly line operations and the standard damaged component training method, and handed the chief steward position over to Wang Defa, the Repair Hall machine had started running properly. By monopolizing low- to mid-tier formation repair work for the outer sect and even some inner sect, it brought his “hidden hand” a steady and generous passive income each month.
“Old Wang gets things done reliably,” Su Ming silently thanked Wang Defa. With this steady source of income, he finally had some real backbone to stand straighter in this cultivation world.
Before long, the steward returned, running, carrying two delicate jade boxes.
“Great Disciple Su, please inspect. This Spirit-Communion Jade Marrow was taken from the core of the Southern Wasteland spirit jade vein, with very few impurities. This Star-Pattern Silk is produced by second-stage variant star-spot silkworms, absolutely top-tier.”
Su Ming opened the jade boxes and glanced inside. The jade marrow felt warm to the touch, its spiritual energy pure; the star-pattern silk was as thin as a filament, sparkling with tiny starlights under the light.
“Not bad. Deduct the contribution points.”
“Spirit-Communion Jade Marrow, eight hundred points; Star-Pattern Silk, three hundred points; total, one thousand one hundred points.” The steward quickly marked the deduction on the token, then respectfully returned the token and the jade boxes to Su Ming.
Su Ming stowed the items into his storage pouch and did not linger in the Administration Hall. He turned and left.
After exiting the Administration Hall, Su Ming did not immediately summon his flying sword back to Gazing Star Cliff. Instead, he descended the steps and turned into a narrow alley by the side.
This was the outskirts of the marketplace, the flea market that the sect’s lower-ranking disciples had formed themselves.
Unlike the Administration Hall’s clear pricing and strict official atmosphere, this place was loose and grassroots. Along the alley, there were no proper shops. The stall owners were mostly outer sect disciples in the Qi Refining stage or menial posts. They would spread a tattered cloth on the bluestone slabs and sell the oddments they had gained through experience, things they no longer needed or had been phased out.
Although it was a mixed-bag of people, prices were much cheaper than the Administration Hall, and occasionally one could find strange items not recorded by the officials.
Su Ming slowed his pace, hands tucked into his sleeves, his gaze casually sweeping across the stalls.
His purple robe looked a bit conspicuous here. Stall owners fell silent when they saw him approach, nervously assessing him with sidelong glances.
The goods were wildly varied. There were damaged low-grade magical implements whose spiritual energy had severely leaked; blackened, burnt-smelling unidentified elixirs; crookedly-drawn low-tier fireball talismans; and all sorts of mud-stained demon beast bones and inferior spirit herbs.
Su Ming paused at a stall that displayed several broken formation plates. He probed them with divine sense and immediately saw that their formation lines were fractured and collapsed, the core hub completely burned out. Their condition was atrocious—so bad they weren’t even worth bringing back to the Repair Hall for “refurbishment.”
He shook his head and kept moving deeper into the alley.
Near the alley’s end, an inconspicuous little stall suddenly caught Su Ming’s attention.
The stall owner looked like an outer sect disciple at third-stage Qi Refining. He cowered in the corner, timid, with only a few rough, hand-copied books and some yellowed, curled scraps of paper spread on a cloth washed white by the sun.
Su Ming’s gaze passed over the useless travelogues and low-quality cultivation methods and locked precisely onto one scrap of paper.
On the edge of that yellowed sheet, written in extremely neat tiny characters, were five words:
“Soul-Nurturing Incense Recipe.”
Su Ming’s heart gave a sudden jolt.
Ever since the Master inside the ring had slipped into a dormant recuperation, he had been searching for ways to gently nourish the soul body. The Soul-Nurturing Wood Pith given by the Grand Elder was indeed an excellent medicine, but it was a heavy-duty remedy. The master’s remnant soul’s recovery also required long-term, steady daily nourishment.
He crouched down and, without using any spiritual power, examined the content on the scrap of paper with his naked eyes.
“Main ingredient: Silver-Spotted Heart-Clearing Orchid, three qian; auxiliary: Calming Herb, one liang; century-old Sunken Yin Wood shavings, half qian… grind into powder, mix with rootless water, sun-dry for three days and it is complete.”
The preparation method was written in extreme detail, and from the medicinal hierarchy of monarch-minister-assistant-enforcer, the logic was tightly arranged. This was not some made-up scam.
What excited Su Ming even more was that the most expensive main ingredient in the formula—the Silver-Spotted Heart-Clearing Orchid—was something he himself had planted in large quantities of mutated varieties in the Formation Field at Clear Stream Valley and around Gazing Star Cliff.
It was practically tailor-made for him.
“How much for this formula?” Su Ming looked up and asked evenly.
The outer sect disciple jumped at the question and shot his head up. When he saw the true disciple purple robe on Su Ming, he trembled all over and stammered, “R-Replying to Great Disciple Uncle. Th-this was copied by me from an abandoned ancient cultivator’s cave dwelling. If G-Great Disciple likes it, i-it’s only thirty low-grade spirit stones.”
Thirty low-grade spirit stones.
For an outer sect disciple in early Qi Refining, that was a fortune that could buy him many months of hearty meals. But to Su Ming now, it was not even a fraction of the spirit stones in his storage pouch.
Su Ming directly took thirty spirit stones, each brimming with spiritual energy, from his storage pouch and placed them before the stall owner.
“I’ll take the recipe.”
The stall owner looked at that pile of spirit stones, and to Su Ming’s retreating back, he expressed a thousand thanks.
“Thank you, Uncle!”
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