This time the disciples of the White Sword faction retired and the core elder Mikaela jumped out of her skybox right onto the stage.
"For first time visitors, I'll make a proper explanation of the rules about this game, these material vessels all contain a random treasure inside, could be good or could be bad, you'll be given thirty minutes to inspect the monoliths however you see fit, there are only three conditions".
"First, you can's use spirit sense to peek inside of them, second, while you are allowed to touch the monoliths, you can't do any damage to them, this isn't only a way to restrict you but to protect you, the monoliths have formations engraved on them, which can only be released by my own personal sword, so don't try anything funny or you might end up dying", said Mikaela to the public with a calm voice, but then the pressure of a Void Manipulation cultivator flooded the auction house as she added.
"That being said, I'm also a Spirit Trial realm cultivator, and my senses are pretty sharp, even before you can get "scorned" by the formations, you'll have to leave a limb or two as punishment, so I suggest you to follow the rules".
The pressure vanished the very moment the elder finished speaking and then with a snap of her fingers, the disciples of the White Sword faction set up a seat which she took, right in front of the area where the monoliths appeared.
"Lastly, this time the monoliths will be sold in batches of five, the initial price will be of one million low grade spirit jades and each pull will be of at least one million, also to make things fair, we'll accept all the grades of jades, even if someone pulls with high grade ones, as long as you can take out more money, you'll be the winner", firmly said Mikaela as she gazed at Aster's skybox.
Which made Aster chuckle, his little trick worked fine earlier, he got the items at a cheaper price by scaring others using high grade spirit jades, but that also made the elder put a lock to that flaw.
The girl who played the role of auctioneer before, took over again.
"For the commodity of the honored guests in the skyboxes, they'll be allowed to use masks and robes to hide their identities, if you didn't bring any, there are sets available under the couches, of course it's optional, the inspection time will start in five minutes, good luck".
Back at Aster's skybox, he waved his hand and a pair of blank masks appeared floating in front of him, he then handed one to Camila.
"We'll only wear masks, these were made by Eris and me, so it should be enough".
"Mm", Camila nodded and then she put on the mask, which to her surprise changed its color from white simple, to a pretty silver tone, her hair as well, she looked into the mirror and then saw Aster's reflect on it too, for him the mask became golden and his hair too.
But that wasn't all, they both now exuded the aura of a body cultivator, which shouldn't be the case, as neither one of them is, Aster is a soul cultivator, while Camila hasn't started her secondary path yet, though she is an amateur rune master, her energy path cultivation increased too fast so she is still learning to take advantage of it, not to mention the trouble her lineage has been giving her, she hasn't had the time to decide which second path she should take.
"Nice right, these masks will make us look like cultivators, in the paths we didn't choose, it's the perfect way to trick others, since no one can cultivate in the three paths", said Aster.
Camila agreed, it was indeed a good way to disguise, as for the skybox they got, it was random, Aster happen to get the number 1, but no one of the staff knew who got what, for safety reasons.
Here in the Treasure Planet killing or deathly injuring others was forbidden, but as long as it was outside of the outpost, robbing others wasn't, as long as you didn't get recognized so the other party couldn't fill a complain, it was an unspoken rule that, robbery was encouraged.
Aster and Camila then went downstairs to the ground floor of the auction house, and they weren't the only one, all the other people from the 50 skyboxes did the same, there were some who were fully disguised from head to toe, while others only wore masks.
The groups were pretty diverse as well, there were loners, couples and large group of maximum five people, not to mention all the ones who were in the ground level to begin with, Aster calculated there should be roughly one thousand people participating, all disciples, though there were guest and inner elders watching the show.
The auctioneer saw that no one else was joining and she nodded to give the greenlight.
"The time for inspection starts now, remember no fighting and you can't monopolize any of the monoliths, everyone has the right to inspect them, elder Mikaela will be supervising everything".
The group then flooded towards the monoliths, needless to say but some of the strong guys of course rushed ignoring whoever they pushed aside, others simply dodged the crowd and went to check the monoliths, that had less people.
For Aster's case, he calmly walked through the crowd, while Camila held onto his arm, whenever someone tried to pass them, or bump into them, they clashed against an invisible wall, which made them feel as if they smashed their bodies against a piece of steel.
"Agh, what the hell!".
"Isn't that cheating, that's got to be cheating right!".
And similar comments could be heard coming from the guys that "accidentally" bumped into the protection of the paragon body, which was invisible right now.
"What do you expect me to leave you bump into my girlfriend with the excuse of this event, dream on!", exclaimed Aster, making Camila blush behind her mask.
The guys who were complaining had no choice but swallow their anger, since they felt the core elder eyeing them, it hasn't been long since the sect started accepting male disciples, of course at the beginning there were some guys who thought, they could just come and do as they pleased, just because they became inner disciples, right away.
The targeted the junior outer disciples, or the girls who were weaker on purpose, and then they were crushed by the core disciples, so harassment was a stupid thing to do, if someone gets caught doing it, then it's better to leave the sect compared to the daily beatings and other similar stuff.
Of course, there are strong male disciples, Victor for example, wasn't worse compared to Iris, who was in the top ten of the sect, prior to the secret realm's exploration, that's why he was called an "unofficial" holy son, since the rules stated that male disciples could become holy son's if they directly joined as core disciples, or became one and then reached the top ten.
Victor wasn't a core disciple, but strength wise he was considered to be in the top ten, so he was an unofficial one, surprisingly for a female disciple to become a holy daughter, she had to be the first ranked for a whole three years at least, maybe because it was easier for female disciples to become core disciples, but so far none has managed to hold the seat of the first rank for such a long time, the top five changes between the same group constantly, or that was the case until Iris replaced one recently.
"Why did you say I was your girlfriend…" softly mumbled Camila as they reached the first of the twenty batches of monoliths.
"We are disguised, so what's the problem, besides don't we look like a couple right now?", said Aster with a carefree voice.
Camila evaluated her current situation, since there were a lot of people here, she was walking really close to Aster, probably the closest she has ever been of anyone before, not to mention she was holding onto his arm, because Lilia told him that this much was expected of a girl on a date, even if it was a friendly one only.
'It's not like I haven't had any physical contact with Aster before, so why does this feel… different", she wondered, without realizing she was deceived by a certain cunning dragon mother.
In any case she didn't feel uncomfortable at all, and she has seen Agnes and Vivian who aren't Aster's lovers, also doing it, so she put the thought at the back of her mind and focused on the monoliths.
"Same rules apply, you inspect them and tell me which to pull for and the top price for us to get a benefit, but to make things more interesting, the monoliths will be opened in public", said Aster with a playful voice, but to Camila it was like the voice of the devil.
Naturally Aster was pressuring her on purpose, since keeping so much things bottled for oneself wasn't healthy, the origin of the Wolfstein lineage seems to be a spirit beast, who knows what could be the impulses brought by it, if not handled properly it could be a disaster.
Just like when Lilia had those murderous impulses, just by Aster not giving her, all his attention, though she managed to control them so nothing happened, Aster still noticed them, and wolves aren't exactly peaceful creatures either.
"Calm down, even if I were to buy this whole building, I'll still have money to waste, so take your time and inspect them, remember that you are my cute lucky charm", whispered Aster at Camila, making her face redden.
She then put hands to work, so Aster let go of her and he did his own investigation as well, they didn't separate but by touching the monolith, Camila should get a better grasp of how "attracted" she felt to the treasure inside.
Aster on the other hand was more blunt, the rules said he can't use spirit sense, but nothing prevented him from using his soul energy directly.
Spirit sense, is a mixture of spirit energy and ones senses, while it can be enhanced with soul energy, which is the case for soul cultivators, it's not a must, it's composition varies depending on the paths chosen by a person.
But everyone can use it, how sharp or precise that depends on many things, however, soul cultivators can directly use soul energy to "see" or "feel" the world wound them, such is the case of Vivian, when she lost her sight due to her poison, she learned to use soul energy to replace that, the principle it's not that hard to understand actually.
The soul path is connected to the brain, parallel thinking, and enhanced reaction time, are applications of it, ultimately all the information perceived by a person ends up in the brain, touch, taste, smell, sight, the results of that go to the brain.
Soul energy if trained correctly can become another sensorial "organ", but there is a trick, what happens when you don't blink, or when you eat something extremely sour, there is a backslash of some kind, sure it's maybe not that harsh, but that's because both the eyes and tongue, are originally integrated into the body.
They are meant to be used that guy and were designed with that purpose, but the popular say that cultivating is going against the heavens, plays their part once again, when using directly only soul energy with that functionality, one can't filter what to perceive and what to not.
At least not after meeting some requirements, meaning that when using soul energy, you see, smell, taste and touch, the target all at the same time, and that information is send in less than a second directly to your brain, the result as one can imagine is… a information overload, damages to the soul and to the brain, and death depending on the severity of the case.
That's why, unless one is skilled enough to classify and filter, only what is needed, in those fractions of seconds, using soul energy instead of spirit sense is a suicide, Vivian is fine, because her body directly helped her, with a poison that numbed the receptors, to keep it at a tolerable level, it's worth mentioning that such poison would have caused death, if she wasn't immune to its lethal effects.
But Aster didn't have something like that, instead, and just like how even Tiana who also uses reaction enhancement, found outrageous how fast he was moving without his body exploding, he directly used his soul energy which has been purified everyday since he got Rigel's flames to peek into the monoliths, and to top it off, he did a whole batch in a single go.
The elder Mikaela who was supervising the event suddenly had a strange feeling, but it disappeared even before she could realize what it was.
'What was that, someone tried to use spirit sense… no, the young lady's formation would have reacted if that was the case, and there aren't Soul Kings in middle ranked Stellar Systems, maybe it's one of those guys with interesting constitutions using its ability, this is such a good way to discover hidden gems, as one expect from the princess of the Fey family, she is scary', thought the core elder as she kept looking, making sure no one was cheating.
Aster who in a second inspected the whole batch inwardly smiled, he then turned to see Camila who was finishing too, to see what she had to say.
She was surprisingly in a better mood than before, apparently now that she could touch the monoliths and was closer to the treasures, she had an easier time.
'I guess, she deserves some fun as well, in any case this one isn't that bad, but nothing too spectacular', thought Aster.
"Mm, out of the five, I'm confident that three have middle Stellar grade resources, the other two should be a low Sky grade and a fake thing which isn't worth anything, I'll say forty million of low grade spirit jades, I can't determine what are the contents due to the formation interfering, but he treasure aura I feel from them, should be worth double than that", happily said Camila.
Aster nodded and noted the amount, he was serious when he said he was going to follow her advices.
"Okay, let's continue then", said Aster as he offered his arm to her once again, this time Camila didn't hesitate and accepted the offer, apparently feeling confident in her prediction put her in a really good mood.
The most uptodat𝓮 n𝒐vels are published on (f)reew𝒆(b)novel.𝗰𝗼𝐦