Wang Dachui held up one hand with a smile. "This much."
Without another word, Xiang Yang prepared to take out his money. "All right, fifty Gold Soul Coins, right? No problem."
The blacksmith's face stiffened. That wasn't what he meant. Why wasn't this kid playing by the rules? Wasn't he supposed to name some sky-high price on his own and let him make a killing? Could he have seen through him? No, no, the kid looked honest enough. Maybe he really did think that.
Watching Xiang Yang count out the money in earnest, he hurriedly said, "You misunderstood. I meant five thousand, five thousand Gold Soul Coins." What a pity.
Xiao Wu was extremely sensitive to anything involving money these days, and she reacted the moment she heard that. "What? Do you take us for suckers? Trying to fleece us? Do you think you can just cheat us whenever you want? I..."
"Uh, uh..." He hadn't expected the little girl, who had been quiet beside them all this time, to react so strongly. Her retort left him speechless.
Tang San glanced at Xiang Yang, looking somewhat helpless. "Xiao Wu."
"Hmph!" Xiao Wu folded her arms and turned away.
"Mister, you really have too little left. How about this? We'll offer one thousand Gold Soul Coins." Seeing that it was time for him to step in, Xiang Yang took a step forward.
"No, I can't do that. I risked my life to get this, and it's been with me for more than ten years." He turned his head to the left, putting on a show of how precious and important the thing was.
Tch, if it's really that important, would you bring it out to sell? And you're so practiced at this, it definitely isn't your first time. Maybe you've got several more pieces... That was what Xiang Yang thought, but he nodded along instead. "Mm-hm."
A few minutes later, Blacksmith Wang, who had worn a displeased expression, immediately broke into a grin as he watched the three walk away. The apprentice from earlier came over and asked excitedly, "Dad, how did it go? How much did you make?" His dad was usually happy at times like this, and naturally easy to talk to. As it happened, he was a little short on money lately.
But to his surprise, the moment Wang Dachui saw him, his face darkened. "Get lost. What's it to you how much I made? Have you finished working that piece of material from earlier? If you've ruined it in the forge, I'll skin you alive!"
"Huh?" What was going on?
After shooing his son off to work, Wang Dachui returned to the little room and counted the Gold Soul Coins again. Oh dear, he'd only sold it for three thousand this time. It was getting less and less.
Xiang Yang had guessed correctly. He really had been doing this for a long time. It had started by coincidence: once, he had gotten drunk with someone at a tavern, and during one of his usual bouts of bragging, a passing noble—or so he thought—had overheard him.
He'd been so startled that he sobered up instantly. Fortunately, the noble had been easygoing, and fortunately, he was in the habit of preparing the amount of beast bone he needed in advance. As a result, he had just taken out a piece and was about to introduce it, only to offer the whole thing up directly. To his surprise, before he could finish speaking, the man had tossed him fifty thousand Gold Soul Coins without another word. That little piece was only enough for him to make a dagger, and he sold the stuff for just one or two hundred Gold Soul Coins.
In any case, from then on, he rarely used Dark Gold Beast Bone to make weapons, unless the "bait" he used to fish with had sold out.
Today, he had seen at a glance that the three of them had powerful backgrounds. Although they had haggled the price down quite a bit, he had still made a profit. As for not selling it and saving it for the next person?
Never mind that he hadn't made a sale in over two months, that fellow tradesman surely wouldn't give up easily either, and he clearly couldn't afford to offend him. He was better off quitting while he was ahead.
Meanwhile, elsewhere.
"Even though we haggled it down quite a bit, that price still wasn't right." Xiang Yang was certain of that, but unfortunately, he knew little about smithing and didn't really understand the proportions involved.
Xiao Wu was a little surprised. "Huh? Seeing how reluctant he looked, I thought we'd brought him down as far as he would go."
"Heh, that guy was definitely an old hand. He must have done this many times before," Xiang Yang said with a cold laugh.
Tang San looked at them, hesitating to speak. "Actually, I think..."
"Don't give me an 'actually.' I know you don't care whether you spent five thousand or three thousand, or even more. All you care about is whether you have enough money to buy what you want, right?"
"Mm." Tang San nodded.
"That won't do." Xiang Yang touched his forehead with his left hand, a hint of disappointment at his failure to measure up in his wry smile. "You'll only make people push their luck further and further, and their greed will keep growing. You can't be nice to them."
Xiao Wu recalled the greatest Waterloo of her "life." Thinking how she had lived for so many years, only to be swindled by a human who was merely a few decades old, she raised her hand in agreement. "Exactly, exactly! We can't indulge them."
Finally, Xiang Yang continued, "We're the buyers. He should be the one begging us, not the other way around.
"Besides, prices are flexible to begin with."
Over the years they had spent together, he had come to understand Tang San's personality in detail. Aside from the people and things he considered important, he cared about almost nothing. Outwardly, this showed in his extremely poor emotional intelligence and his straightforward way of doing things.
All in all, it was fine, if a little extreme. It would be all right if the world around him stayed peaceful, but given his background, that was unlikely.
Seeing Tang San fall silent, Xiang Yang changed the subject. "By the way, what do you think of that beast bone?"
The mention of it immediately fired Tang San up. "I just tested it with Mysterious Jade Hand. It's much harder than ordinary bone, and it also has a certain compatibility with Soul Power. It's clearly been reinforced."
"If it really came from a Dark Gold Bear, then it would be metal-attribute Soul Power. Speaking of which, I never expected Soul Beast bones could be used to help forge ironware."
At that, Xiang Yang couldn't help giving a wry smile. "I actually knew a little about that, but I didn't know much, so it didn't occur to me." Something he, a transmigrator from the modern era, hadn't thought of was already being put to use by others.
Then he told Tang San what little he still remembered.
"Charcoal? Wood charcoal?" Tang San asked in confusion.
"No, it's carbon, with the stone radical. Uh..." Xiang Yang suddenly remembered that seven hundred years separated Tang San's era from his own. Never mind that simplified characters were used almost everywhere in modern times; he didn't even know whether the character for "carbon" had existed in Tang San's day. The Douluo Continent certainly didn't have it, though.
"Never mind that. Anyway, all we need to know is that adding the right amount of Soul Beast bone when forging iron can increase its strength. The rest is just a matter of spending time testing the formula."
"Mm, that's right." Tang San glanced at the Dark Gold Bear Bone in his hand, then put it into his Storage Soul Tool. "Once this Soul Hunting trip is over, I'll set aside some time to study it."
At that thought, Tang San suddenly felt a headache coming on. Medicinal herbs and pill formulas, gunpowder weapons, improving his Hidden Weapons, Soul Power cultivation, combat training, physical exercise... His days were already packed, and now he had to add researching a formula for forging iron with beast bones.
Sigh, if only he could find a few people to help. He was so busy now that he had almost no free time. Fortunately, he didn't have to worry about his Soul Ring combinations himself, or there wouldn't have been enough time at all.
"Let's go. It's almost time. Let's head back and regroup."
"Mm." "Okay."