Chapter 89: An Eye-Catching Powder in a Bustling Market

“Junior Sister Xu, where are you all going?” Luo Jinhua, who had been searching everywhere for Xu Yu, was clearly displeased. But her target was an Unsurpassed Purple Seed, so she kept her voice soft.

Xu Yu was about to say she was helping Brother Haoxuan sell his powder, but she remembered his warning not to reveal its origin. “I refined some Qi-Circulating Powder,” she said, her expression slightly unnatural, “and I’m going with Brother Haoxuan and Senior Brother Pu to Yixiantian to sell it. And to see the sights, of course!”

“Qi-Circulating Powder?” Luo Jinhua frowned. “But I taught you how to refine a Qi-Circulating Pill.”

“Oh, well, I learned how to make the powder with Brother Haoxuan,” Xu Yu said with a bashful smile.

Understanding dawned on Luo Jinhua. While she had to be polite to Xu Yu, she felt no such obligation toward the others. She shot a venomous glare at Qin Haoxuan. “How could you teach Junior Sister Xu something so low-grade?” she said, her voice sharp with anger.

Qin Haoxuan just smiled without a word. Pu Hanzhong ignored her completely. The disciples of the four great halls were all insufferably arrogant and had always looked down on the Nature Hall. He felt no need to acknowledge her.

Being ignored made Luo Jinhua’s face flush with embarrassment. She glared at Qin Haoxuan again, but then she caught the flicker of displeasure on Xu Yu’s face. She remembered that although he was just an Uncolored Seed, his relationship with the Purple Seed was extremely close. She had no choice but to swallow her anger. She had no desire to go with them; for a high-ranking disciple of the Hundred Flowers Hall like herself to be seen selling mere powder was utterly humiliating.

But then another thought occurred to her. Yixiantian was the sect’s largest market, filled with elites from the four great halls, none of whom had a particularly high opinion of the Nature Hall. A veteran like Pu Hanzhong could handle their sneers, but Qin Haoxuan was a notorious trouble magnet. If he got into a fight and dragged Xu Yu into it, it could disrupt her cultivation mindset—an unacceptable loss for a Purple Seed. With a look of profound reluctance, she sighed. “I’ll go with you.”

Qin Haoxuan gave her an indifferent glance. Pu Hanzhong didn’t even bother to look at her at all, simply walking on ahead. Only Xu Yu smiled sweetly. “It’s wonderful that you’re coming, Senior Sister! You must know Yixiantian much better than we do.”

Luo Jinhua rolled her eyes and shot a contemptuous look at Pu Hanzhong’s back. The world’s gone mad, she thought. Even a cultivator from the Nature Hall can be this arrogant. If Xu Yu gets ridiculed because of this and her mood is affected, I’ll be coming for you.

The ridicule she was anticipating began long before they even reached Yixiantian. On the way to the carriage station, Qin Haoxuan shamelessly hoisted the large wooden sign with its five conspicuous characters—”Qi-Circulating Powder for Sale”—onto his shoulder. They were immediately met with a barrage of sneers and disdainful looks from disciples both old and new.

Could you sell anything more basic? they thought. Any disciple at the Rooting Stage could make that stuff with a bit of corn essence. And they were heading for the carriage station? Were they seriously planning to sell that low-grade, unsellable junk at Yixiantian? Would they even make enough to cover the fare?

“Hey, isn’t that Xu Yu? And… that beauty is Luo Jinhua, the favored disciple of the Hundred Flowers Hall Master, right? What is she doing selling… powder?”

“Didn’t you see she’s with those people from the Nature Hall? That Qin Haoxuan must have talked her into it, and as her guide, Senior Sister Luo has no choice but to go along.”

“Ah, that makes sense!” another disciple said, before bursting out laughing. “A top disciple from the Hundred Flowers Hall, selling Qi-Circulating Powder at Yixiantian… this is just too amusing!”

Though they were whispering, Luo Jinhua was a Twentieth-Leaf cultivator. Not a single rustle of the wind escaped her ears, let alone their hushed gossip. Her face turned ashen. She wanted to dig a hole and hide. More than that, she wanted to beat the insufferably proud Qin Haoxuan, who was parading through the crowd with that ridiculous sign, to a pulp.

At the station, after paying the one-thousand-jin corn fare, the four of them boarded the Immortal Cloud Carriage under the contemptuous gaze of the elder piloting it and flew toward Yixiantian. The unearned disdain she had suffered left Luo Jinhua fuming. If Xu Yu hadn’t been there, she might have torn Qin Haoxuan to shreds.

After about an hour’s flight, the carriage landed smoothly in a massive plaza filled with other vehicles. The elder at the controls looked mournfully at the third-tier spirit stone in his control panel, which had visibly shrunk. Because of the discount for new disciples, this trip hadn’t even covered his costs. He shot a final, disdainful glare at Qin Haoxuan and his sign and muttered, “Bringing a few pathetic powders to the Yixiantian market. Have they no shame?”

Qin Haoxuan heard him but paid no mind. He and Xu Yu were already captivated by the bustling scene before them. As the largest market in the Taichu Sect, Yixiantian was a vibrant, chaotic hub of activity, with stalls packed tightly together and voices crying out from all directions.

“Hey, come and see! Freshly refined pills, guaranteed to boost your cultivation with a single dose!”

“Why buy pills when you can refine them? I’ve got furnaces of all grades for sale! Hey, Junior Brother, you look like a dragon among men. Let me tell you a secret… I have an ancient pill formula, one that not even the Sect Master has! If you could refine this, your future in the sect would be limitless!”

“Junior Brothers, Junior Sisters, come and see! Spirit beast cubs for sale, a flat price of twenty low-grade, second-tier spirit stones each!”

“Looking for a flying sword? I have them in all grades, to satisfy cultivators of every level! Come on, Senior Brother, flying on a sword is the true way of the immortal. Only thirty low-grade, second-tier spirit stones a piece…”

“Flying swords!” Qin Haoxuan’s eyes lit up. No cultivator could resist their allure. He was no exception. “I wonder when I’ll be able to afford one,” he murmured.

Luo Jinhua, walking beside him, overheard and snorted with laughter. She looked at the swords on display with contempt. “You call those flying swords? It’s an insult to even call them sword embryos.”

“What do you mean, Senior Sister?”

“A real flying sword, even the cheapest one, is worth millions of third-tier spirit stones,” she lectured.

“They aren’t made from ordinary iron. The raw ore alone costs tens of thousands of spirit stones. And the forging requires spirit fire, which is fueled by burning even more spirit stones. After all that, if the resulting sword embryo is of poor quality, you end up with junk like this, only good for fooling novices. If the quality is good, you still need to spend thousands, even millions more spirit stones to infuse it with spirit. The success rate is incredibly low. You could invest a mountain of spirit stones and end up with nothing but a pile of slag.”

She shot another disdainful look at the blades. “These things might be able to fly, but not very high, and they’ll probably shatter after a few uses. If these were real flying swords, he’d be selling them in the shop district, not at a roadside stall.”

As they walked, Qin Haoxuan was amazed by the various sales tactics. He had gone from being a “junior brother” to a “senior brother” in the eyes of the vendors. He knew that if he met these people elsewhere, they wouldn’t give him the time of day. He pondered this for a long time and finally came to a conclusion: it was all about the spirit stones.

The Yixiantian market was divided into a stall area and a shop area. Any disciple could set up a stall to trade resources. It was a chaotic place, and it was said that one could sometimes find priceless treasures sold cheaply by ignorant owners. It was mostly frequented by poorer cultivators hoping to get lucky. The truly wealthy went straight to the shops. To open a shop, one had to purchase the storefront from the sect for an astronomical sum. The market was so famous that cultivators from neighboring kingdoms dreamed of getting in.

The good spots in the stall area were all taken. After a long search, they found an empty space in an unremarkable corner. They laid out a white cloth, neatly arranged the seven packets of powder, and Qin Haoxuan propped up his wooden sign. “Spirit Powder for sale!” he began to shout. “Qi-Circulating Powder that’s even better than a Qi-Circulating Pill!”

His cry immediately drew curious glances. People stared at the sign, their expressions perplexed. Have these people lost their minds? they thought. No one at Yixiantian would even bother refining something as low-grade as Qi-Circulating Powder, yet these people were trying to sell it.

Just then, a few people recognized Luo Jinhua, and the whispers began. “Isn’t that Senior Sister Luo Jinhua from the Hundred Flowers Hall? What’s she doing with those Nature Hall cultivators, selling powder?”

(End of Chapter)