Why Such a Price Difference

The middle-aged man with black-rimmed glasses set down his water glass and glanced at the personal information form Lin Li had filled out.

Then he looked up, smiled at Lin Li—whose heart was racing with wild joy as he fantasized about eating hundreds of tiny magical fruits and becoming an incredibly powerful cultivator—and said, "Mr. Lin, you're the first person I've encountered in all these years who's registered as a cultivator this late."

"Huh? I..."

Snapped out of his fantasy by the middle-aged man's words, Lin Li was momentarily stunned.

Just as he instinctively opened his mouth to explain that he hadn't deliberately delayed registering as a cultivator until now, he swallowed the words back down.

Keep a low profile, stay under the radar—that was the hard-won wisdom of countless predecessors. He couldn't let anyone discover the secret of his rapid advancement.

Lin Li just smiled at the middle-aged man in response, offering no further explanation.

"So this guy deliberately put off coming in to test his cultivation until now!"

"That means he's been a cultivator for a few years already. If he's only now getting his cultivation tested and registering, wasn't he afraid of getting caught and fined before?"

"What a weirdo."

"Just to show off, he waited until First-Order High Stage to register. This guy's a real piece of work."

The people who had been stunned by Lin Li's First-Order High Stage test result now looked at him with strange expressions, whispering among themselves.

Even though they kept their voices low, the testing room was only about a hundred square meters, so their murmuring still reached Lin Li's ears.

Lin Li wasn't annoyed by their gossip; in fact, he was pleased. The more they speculated in that direction, the better it suited his purposes.

The middle-aged man in charge of testing everyone's cultivation saw Lin Li staying silent and just smiling at him, so he too followed the same line of thought as those gossiping about Lin Li, assuming this young man in his early twenties was just someone who liked to show off.

Then the middle-aged man wrote Lin Li's cultivation details on his form and handed it back to him.

"Thanks." Lin Li thanked him, took the form, and left the testing room.

At 10:30 in the morning, Lin Li, now officially registered as a cultivator, walked out of the Official Institution. From now on, he was a cultivator on the books.

"Time to head to that place." Lin Li looked up at the sun in the sky, then walked to the roadside and hailed a taxi to his next destination.

Seven or eight minutes later, the taxi stopped in front of a bustling shopping plaza.

"That'll be fifteen yuan."

"Driver, I'll scan to pay."

"Sure."

Lin Li paid the fare, got out of the taxi, and quickly walked toward the shopping plaza ahead.

The plaza had a heavy flow of foot traffic, with most shops along the street packed with customers—except for one.

This shop was decorated quite upscale, but because its merchandise was mainly aimed at cultivators, very few customers came inside.

Looking in from outside, there were only one or two customers, and they were just browsing without buying.

Spirit stones, produced from Spiritual Energy mineral veins and containing vast amounts of Spiritual Energy, were the primary cultivation resource for cultivators these days.

Old Third Liu's Spirit Stone Shop, located in the busiest section of the shopping plaza, was a store specializing in selling spirit stones. Lin Li's trip here was to buy some spirit stones to speed up his cultivation progress.

After eating the red fruit from the Miracle Small Tree on the Mysterious Small Island, Lin Li had become a cultivator at First-Order High Stage in one go.

Such a huge leap should have been enough to satisfy him, but if Lin Li wanted the Miracle Small Tree to keep producing small fruits, he had to break through to First-Order Peak as quickly as possible and become an exotic beast hunter.

Then he could go out into the wild himself to hunt exotic beasts and obtain Exotic Beast Meat that was fresh within an hour.

Under normal circumstances, after most cultivators broke through to First-Order High Stage, reaching First-Order Peak would take anywhere from a year to several years.

But the tiny magical fruit Lin Li had eaten was too powerful—it had pushed him straight to First-Order High Stage and right to the brink of breaking through to First-Order Peak.

Lin Li now felt like he was about to break through at any moment. If he cultivated normally, he could probably reach First-Order Peak in about half a month.

But he couldn't wait that long, so he came here to buy some spirit stones to assist his cultivation, aiming to break through to First-Order Peak in the shortest possible time.

A salesgirl in her early twenties, with long hair flowing over her shoulders, a pretty face, and wearing a black work uniform and black stockings, saw Lin Li enter the shop and immediately approached him with a warm greeting.

"Welcome."

"I want to buy spirit stones."

Lin Li's purpose for coming was very clear. Once inside the shop, he got straight to the point with the pretty salesgirl.

"Please follow me, sir." The pretty salesgirl, seeing how strong this customer's purchase intent was, smiled even more brightly. She extended her hand and gestured for Lin Li to follow her to her counter.

The other salesgirls in the shop, seeing their colleague snag a customer so quickly, inwardly cursed themselves for being too slow to grab that commission.

"Sir, how many spirit stones would you like to buy?" The pretty salesgirl invited Lin Li to sit in a chair in front of the counter, then stepped behind it and asked with a smile.

"What's the price of spirit stones in your shop?" Lin Li looked down at the crystal-clear spirit stones displayed in the glass counter and asked casually.

"Fifty thousand yuan each."

"Fifty thousand each? The price I saw online was forty-nine thousand. Why is it a thousand more here?"

Hearing this, the pretty salesgirl immediately judged that the young man in front of her, about her age, was probably buying spirit stones for the first time, which explained his confusion. She smiled and explained, "Sir, we're not overcharging. National regulations set the market price for a single spirit stone at a uniform fifty thousand yuan, just like tobacco—it can't be arbitrarily priced.

The forty-nine-thousand-yuan spirit stones you saw online were probably smuggled in from abroad.

While those are a bit cheaper, buying black-market goods carries risks. There's no guarantee that the Spiritual Energy in the stones you get hasn't already been partially depleted."