In other people's eyes, they had entered the Tianjiang Dragon Manor of old.
But in Yang An's eyes, they had set foot upon a solitary island amid a sea of mist.
Before long, when Yang An and the others stepped onto the island, a figure came forward and bowed to them.
"I am a child attendant under the True Person. Please follow me, everyone, and rest for a while."
The child attendant was courteous and refined. He would first lead them to rest. Yang An and the others were the first to arrive at the Communal Feast Convention, and they still had to wait for the other cultivators to arrive.
Everyone responded with equal politeness.
A trace of something strange flashed through Yang An's eyes, but he restrained his emotions and followed behind the others as the child attendant led them deeper into the island, doing his best not to look at the attendant walking ahead.
What child attendant was that? It was clearly a humanoid creature formed from countless muckworms tangled together.
Each muckworm was the size of a finger, like a snail stripped of its shell. They were densely entwined together, enough to make one's scalp crawl and every hair stand on end at a single glance.
And there was not merely this one child attendant before them. The farther they went, the more "people" they saw. They seemed to be carrying out their own duties and did not casually approach Yang An's group.
Among them were quite a few who looked perfectly human, yet some grotesque creatures still made people feel profoundly uncomfortable.
On this island shrouded in dense mist, Yang An surveyed his surroundings and saw corpses scattered everywhere, the remains of creatures he could not identify.
Some were nothing but skeletons. Some still had scraps of rotten flesh hanging from them. Some were as large as boulders, while others were as small as washbasins. They had even drawn flocks of birds to fight over the flesh, utterly heedless of the people passing nearby.
The occasional breeze that blew toward them even carried a rather pungent stench of decay.
Yet the people beside him turned a blind eye to it all. Their five senses had been completely sealed by the Illusionary Insect Corpse, and they had fallen into another illusion. They could see only the magnificent splendor of the Tianjiang Dragon Manor from legend, not the bizarre and sinister sight of bones strewn across the solitary island.
Still, though everything on the island appeared exceedingly strange, Yang An did not sense any danger for the time being. He was like an unknown outsider, standing apart and quietly watching it all.
Following the Muckworm Child onward, the group was eventually brought into a cave on the island. Lamps adorned the interior, which had been cleaned quite thoroughly, with none of the strange things one might have expected.
Seeing this, Yang An had no choice but to sit down with the others. Before long, the Muckworm Child appeared again, carrying a pot of clear tea and several cups.
While the others were not paying attention, Yang An inconspicuously tested the tea with his finger. No prompt appeared before his eyes, indicating that it was merely ordinary clear tea. Only then did he relax.
The wait was somewhat long.
Pan Shi's injuries had not yet healed, so he took the opportunity to meditate and recuperate.
Pan Yu, meanwhile, seemed to be thinking about something. From time to time, she wore a foolish grin. Yang An suspected she was shipping a couple in the void inside her skull, and perhaps she had already been poisoned by another world.
The naturally familiar Black Brow seemed eager to strike up a conversation with Yang An, but Yang An ignored him. He merely offered a polite faint smile and kept his distance.
Yang An's thoughts were elsewhere. He was considering what he should do once the other cultivators arrived.
Before the Communal Feast Convention, there would naturally be an important trading gathering.
On the way here, Yang An had learned from Pan Shi that if one wanted to exchange things with other cultivators, one could only do so through barter.
Other than the currency systems used by ordinary people, cultivators in this world had no unified item that could serve as currency in transactions.
Mortal gold and silver were practically useless to most cultivators, so transactions between cultivators usually involved offering one another items of equivalent value.
Of course, this did not mean cultivation methods could only be exchanged for cultivation methods, or pills only for pills.
Since it was a trade, it naturally depended on the needs of both parties. So long as one satisfied the other party's needs, pills could be exchanged for cultivation methods, and gold or silver might even buy rare treasures or magical artifacts.
Precisely because of this, when they did not know the other party's needs, many cultivators chose to inflate the value of the items they possessed in order to gain greater profits.
Over time, trades at the Communal Feast Convention naturally came to include goods priced above their worth, and even fraudulent counterfeits. There were no shortage of people who misjudged an item and were deceived.
Sometimes, even the person offering the item might not know its true value, merely stubbornly driving up its price.
It was no different from panning for gold in roaring waves. Perhaps one might find gold, but most of the time, one either misjudged or was deceived into mistaking ordinary grains of sand for treasures.
That powerful sense of déjà vu inevitably reminded Yang An of the antique bargain hunting common in the modern world of his previous life. They were practically cut from the same cloth.
But the more it was like this, the more Yang An looked forward to it.
His golden finger could not only purify and remove the costs of using items, but also reveal their true information. This sort of bargain-hunting trade could not have suited him better.
Others might be deceived, but he certainly would not be!
This was one of his own advantages. The upcoming trading gathering would be his time to show off his skills.
The only pity was that he was poor now. He possessed only two things of any value.
One was the already purified Lighting Method practice method, which carried no cost of use. The other was the artifact staff he had picked up from that Filth Daoist.
Yang An did not intend to trade the former. After spending these past days with Pan Shi and the others, he had learned certain things from Pan Shi and gained an increasingly deeper understanding of cultivation.
In this world, anything related to cultivation carried a certain cost, whether great or small, light or heavy. So long as one came into contact with it or used it, one would inevitably have to bear the corresponding price.
But aside from mundane objects, there absolutely existed nothing without a cost among the things cultivators could use.
Never had there been!
If Yang An were to bring out the Lighting Method practice method whose cost had already been removed, it would absolutely cause a great uproar in this world and bring him enormous trouble.
Having long considered this, he understood the principle that a common man was innocent, but possessing a jade made him guilty. Thus, on the way here, he had already destroyed that fragmentary page of the Lighting Method, committing only its practice method to memory.
In other words, the only thing he could truly use for trade was that disgusting staff.
Then how should he make use of this artifact from the Filth Daoist to obtain what he needed? That was the question he needed to consider next.
What was it that he needed?
Without a doubt, cultivation methods.
Although the Lighting Method he had mastered was immensely powerful, its limitations were too great. Affected by his own circumstances, its potential for growth could go no further than this.
In a direct confrontation, relying only on the Lighting Method and Bone Relic Buddha Light, he would absolutely be no match for a cultivator. Yang An understood this clearly.
Since mastering the Lighting Method, he had relied more on his ability to seize opportunities and make judgments to survive until now.
Techniques were ultimately only techniques. What mattered was the person wielding them.
Without cultivation methods, a person was like rootless duckweed.
Unable to become a cultivator, one would forever remain mortal flesh, fragile and unable to withstand a single blow.
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