Floating ice bobbed up and down.
Old Toad's round body rolled back and forth, spinning in tight circles and performing Thomas flares across a patch of broken ice less than twenty square meters wide, spraying water in a ring around the edges.
"Frog Duke, absolutely not! We came all this way to Blue Lake through untold hardship. Before the matter is settled, how can we abandon it halfway?"
"I don't care!" Old Toad flipped over and sat up. "Where is the entrance to your Vortex Waterway? Take me there at once! I'll give you a low-grade, low-tier Treasure Fish! Ten jin!"
Hiss!
He was actually willing to bleed?
The nine-tier Treasure Fish standard—three grades, high, middle, and low, each divided into three tiers—had originally been proposed by Old Toad when he served as Record-Keeping Military Advisor. After promotion through trade by the River Conservancy Office, Sea Merchants, and Merfolk, it had gradually become the universal standard throughout the Great Marsh over several years. Even the Flood Dragons of the Dragon Court had begun using it.
It used a standardized quantity of Marsh Essence.
Low-grade Treasure Fish contained roughly sixty points of essence, middle-grade ones three hundred, and high-grade ones over a thousand.
As for types like Golden Gong, Red Lion, and Blood Lion, those were supreme treasures above even that. They could serve as bargaining chips and had to be assessed separately in trade; no single number could sum up their value.
Of course, fish came in all sizes. If a Treasure Fish was large enough, it could also be considered a supreme treasure.
Ten jin of low-grade, low-tier fish did not even count as toothpick meat, yet this had been pried from between Old Toad's webbed claws...
Liang Qu realized how serious the situation was.
"Frog Duke, won't you