Money and Silk

This was not Li Fan's illusion. The crocodile's palace dress was definitely of the highest quality. It was not made from a single piece of cloth. Not only was the quality excellent, but the patterns were also colorful and varied. It was clear that a lot of the finest silks and brocades were used to make it.

Li Fan remembered that when he was in the shop outside the Dao Tower, he had been eyeing those Golden Core Stage Purple Sash Immortal Clothes and had also glanced at the prices of the fabrics and silks.

In a word, expensive.

How expensive was it? In the Human Dao, without storage magic treasures, a single string of Divine Astral Coin weighed over ten kilograms, which was far too heavy and inconvenient to carry. Therefore, in this era without paper money, silk also served as currency equivalent to large sums of money.

According to the official prices in Li Country, a bolt of silk is worth ten zhang, or one hundred chi. In places like Lou Guan Heavenly Clothes, the lowest grade of silk costs one string of Divine Astral Coin per chi. Even the most ordinary bolt of silk would cost at least ten strings of coins.

If someone happens to like the color, pattern, and texture, the price might double. The higher the quality of the silk, the more precious and rare it becomes. There are various types of silk, such as brocade, embroidery, damask, gauze, silk, saffron, brocade, damask, and brocade, each with its own name, and the price can be hundreds or thousands of strings of cash.

After all, this is not something for ordinary people to consume. Everyone knows how outrageous the premium is for luxury goods.

However, Ink Bamboo Mountain rarely uses silk as a substitute for gold. After all, the Divine Astral Coin issued by the Three Palaces of the Immortal Palace are abundant, and silk is an imported product of Ink Bamboo Mountain with a high premium. It can be used for both clothing and making talismans and magical Magic Treasure, so exchanging it directly for money would be too uneconomical. It would be even more impossible to use it directly to pay the disciples' salaries.

Therefore, the economic strength of a sect can sometimes be seen from the uniforms issued to its disciples...

Thinking of this, Li Fan looked down at the coarse linen robes worn by the disciples of the Ink Bamboo Clan, and sighed again.

However, if we speculate this way, this monster lives deep in the mountains, and its clothes are so well-preserved, it must be quite wealthy, right?

So he took the Si Nan and went back to the pool to check. Near the left foot of the crocodile's carcass, at the bottom of the pool, he found a broken red rope with nine jade auspicious beasts strung on it. They were probably the nine sons of the dragon or something like that. Li Fan didn't know exactly which one was which, but they all looked like reptiles, so they were probably the ancestors that the female crocodile had recognized.

Li Fan tried to check with his Divine Sense and found that they were indeed all storage magic treasures, and they were also categorized.

Storage jade pendants are, needless to say, very expensive Magic Treasure. Li Fan currently only has three issued by his sect, and he noticed that the cheapest one from Ink Bamboo Mountain costs over a thousand strings of cash, so he hasn't been willing to buy one yet.

Others' Storage Jade can only be opened by using corresponding incantations and a specific ratio of the Five Elements True Qi. Some superior ones require special true qi cultivated through special Cultivation Method, such as the Qiankun Two Qi or the Samadhi True Fire. A higher level also has the function of recognizing a master, which requires a match of Divine Sense to unlock.

Therefore, looting corpses is also a skill in this world, requiring the use of divination and fortune-telling to calculate the Daoist techniques and Qi combinations needed to unlock Storage Jade.

The first bell likely contains important items such as Cultivation Method or treasures, requiring special Dao energy and a Fa Yin to activate, similar to a combination lock that requires divination and has several layers of seals. Li Fan doesn't have the money to buy a proper compass for divination, so he can't unlock it for the time being and has to give up.

The pendants that followed were simpler, each requiring only one layer of Daoist incantation combined with specific true Qi. Li Fan consulted the Four Elements Calculation Classic Scripture, made some hand seals, and quickly solved them one by one.

The second pendant contained rouge, face powder, and many silk jewels, as well as some spare clothes. However, upon closer inspection, the silk was clearly of inferior quality, incomparable to the magnificent palace dresses found on the riverbank. Furthermore, it contained three or four sets of human skin for replacement.

It's real human skin, but it doesn't look freshly peeled. It's probably some kind of magical Magic Treasure that's been soaked in a potion, or perhaps a demonic tool similar to the Painted Skin technique. It's likely that when the crocodile monster hadn't reached a certain level of cultivation, it used this human skin to aid in its transformation into a human.

Well, it's a monster, after all. Do you really expect it to come and repay your kindness? This crocodile has probably learned some evil techniques of sexual exploitation. She's the kind of monster that first drains a person's vital essence and cultivation before eating them up without wasting a single drop.

Li Fan curled his lip, blew a sword flower towards the crocodile corpse next to him, and chopped it into pieces before he could quell his anger a little. Then he continued to unlock and loot equipment.

The third pendant contained many colorful mountain stones and gems, unpolished mineral materials, and a jumble of bones, hides, and horns. Ketu materials it had obtained from the monsters in the Ten-thousand-mountains.

The fourth pendant contained meat—raw meat, rotten meat, meat from various animals, and probably even human flesh. But it was mostly mangled and unrecognizable; it was likely food stored up by the mother crocodile herself.

You know what, this guy's Material Dao are actually quite organized...

Then, counting the fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth auspicious beast jade pendants that were strung up, they all contained the same thing.

It's money, probably around 100,000 strings of Divine Astral Coin in total.

Kindness...

100,000 strings of cash...

A female crocodile,

Inside the jade pendant for storage,

There's even a special prize of 100,000 strings of cash!

100,000 strings of cash!

"Holy crap..." Li Fan was stunned and couldn't believe it for a moment. He shook the jade pendant, and with a clang, a brocade wooden money box full of money fell in front of him, making a deep crater on the ground. Only then did he take a deep breath and come back to his senses.

One thousand cash equals one string, a long, gleaming gold strip. Twenty strings are laid out horizontally, and ten strings are laid out vertically. A full money box contains two hundred strings.

When Li Fan killed Chen Jinu, the sect gave him a reward of 20,000 strings of cash, which was filled with a hundred boxes of this size and stuffed into the jade pendant. That's why Li Fan knew so well that he had counted his first pot of gold.

Although the box doesn't look big, it's made of high-quality Divine Astral Coin and weighs over twelve jin (approximately 6 kg). These two hundred guan (approximately 1000 strings) weigh over two thousand jin (approximately 1000 kg)! Ordinary people simply can't lift it, and even Foundation Establishment cultivators would have a hard time. So it's impossible to pack more in one batch, otherwise it would be inconvenient to move.

Roughly one hundred money boxes, or one hundred tons of weight, is the upper limit for ordinary Storage Jade. These auspicious beast jade pendants are also filled with five, which means nearly one hundred thousand strings of cash.

At this moment, Li Fan was not happy at all about making a fortune. On the contrary, he realized that he was really cursed by a jinx and had gotten himself into a huge mess again!

Because these 100,000 strings of cash weren't scattered; they were neatly arranged and filled to the brim!

What does 100,000 strings of cash mean? When they wiped out a small, independent sect of cultivators on Tiantai Mountain, most of the assets worth a million strings of cash were in the form of silk and cloth, and the cash value was only a few hundred thousand strings.

And then they encounter a crocodile deep in the mountains, and it somehow manages to carry 100,000 strings of cash? Is it going to celebrate Cai Jing's birthday??

Considering the items found in the previous jade pendants, Li Fan estimated that this money most likely didn't belong to the crocodile.

Monsters and rogue cultivators are pretty much the same; they live for today and don't know tomorrow. It's clearly impossible that they would keep so much cash in their caves and carry it with them in Storage Jade without spending it, right?

Even the palace dress probably didn't belong to this crocodile; otherwise, why would it be carefully folded together instead of being directly placed inside the jade pendant?

Therefore, this money is very likely funds belonging to some organization, which the crocodile brought here, perhaps intending to hand it over to someone...

Whose money? Guess who else? The nearby demon forces—isn't it the Jade Toad Granny's group from Yaoguang Cave?

If it's a monster from Yushan in the east or Lei Marsh in the south, then it has to pass through Middle Valley Dojo guarded by Real Person Huang, the heavily guarded Chicken Mountain Mine in Ink Bamboo Mountain, and the medicinal garden where Tian Zhenren cultivates a large number of spiritual plants.

These places are deep within the Ink Bamboo Mountain range, a desolate and barren landscape where no vegetation grows and there is nowhere to escape. The possibility that even birds and beasts have been driven away by the mountain god is extremely low.

Who would it be given to? It certainly wasn't offered to Li Fan to take for himself.

So let's make a bold assumption: Did a eunuch die after consuming Golden Core?

Chen Jinu did indeed come to Yangjia Mountain, didn't he?

If the purpose is simply to break the seals on the two mountain peaks in front and confirm that the fish and birds symbolizing the drought have emerged, then one can slip away. There's no need to travel another thousand miles west, risking attracting attention, is there?

And thinking back on it this way, when Li Fan killed Chen Jinu, Ink Bamboo Mountain was actually quite generous with the rewards.

Ink Bamboo Mountain said the sect bought the contents of the jade pendant to investigate, but that's 20,000 strings of cash! Is this really a sect where even Golden Core disciples only receive 10 strings of cash a month? Would they really be so generous as to give it away to a disciple who had just reached the Foundation Establishment, and who might not even have survived the Tribulation of Death yet? Given the way Lou Guan does things—only considering someone a true ally after they've survived the Tribulation of Death?

Or was it that the 20,000 strings of cash originally belonged to Chen Jinu's Storage Jade pendant, and he was simply returning the reward Li Fan got from defeating monsters to him as is?

If that's really the case, where did Chen Jinu get those 20,000 strings of cash? He didn't need to carry so much cash with him when he came out to decide the fate of another sect, did he?

Could it be that he didn't bring it with him at first, but instead received the funds from the monsters after meeting the crocodile at Yangjia Mountain? And what did Chen Jinu provide to those monsters in return?

We won't go into detail about Chen Jinu since there's too little information available, but based on what we do know, his Suanni and sword pellets must be quite expensive for an ordinary Golden Core cultivator, right?

At least in the Human Dao, cultivation is certainly more financially challenging than in a place like the Ten-thousand-mountains, right?

Therefore, it is plausible that Chen Jinu provided something or some kind of assistance to obtain funds from the monster.

So where did the monsters get their money from?

If we're still assuming this is true, Li Fan's guess is the Nangong Family.

The main thing is that this palace attire, and so much real Divine Astral Coin, all originated from the Immortal Palace faction.

It doesn't necessarily mean that the demons colluded with the Nangong Family, since the Nangong Family originally retreated from the Ten-thousand-mountains, didn't they?

What they lost back then wasn't just those mountains, was it? There was also a lot of Divine Astral Coin and clothes that they couldn't take with them immediately, and perhaps weren't worth taking.

Even Ink Bamboo Mountain is using many of the gold and stone mines and fortress facilities preserved by the Nangong Family, isn't it?

It's quite possible that the demons seized the wealth left behind by the Nangong Family. Furthermore, the Divine Astral Coin mainly circulated among the Twelve Countries; while useless to demons, they were useful to humans. Add to that the existence of a common enemy, Ink Bamboo Mountain, and wouldn't that provide a basis for cooperation between the demons and Chen Jinu's forces?

Therefore, if Li Fan deduced from the worst-case scenario, the enemies on both the north and south sides of Ink Bamboo Mountain might have already secretly colluded before Ink Bamboo Mountain itself made up its mind to confirm the route to be opened up!

Furthermore, these hostile forces may already be involved in secret transactions involving huge sums of money, and may even be plotting or forming an alliance against Ink Bamboo Mountain!

How likely are these assumptions?

Is there more, more accurate evidence?

While Li Fan's mind raced, he neatly and efficiently used the jade pendant to collect the crocodile and its carcass. He then tried to store the silk palace dress inside, but there was no reaction. It was probably an expensive magical robe, or some kind of anti-theft spell was in effect. So he strung the nine Storage Jade pendants together with his own jade pendant and carried them with him. Then he looked at the Si Nan.

Li Fan now had two thoughts in his mind.

One option was to immediately turn around and leave, returning to Bamboo Mountain to report the problem. The other was to continue westward.

Because that's how the Si Nan points.

Ten thousand strings of cash, and that's not all. Head west, and there's still more opportunity.

Li Fan squinted and estimated that there were risks, but the potential rewards were greater.

If his numerous baseless assumptions are true, and this female crocodile, carrying 100,000 strings of Divine Astral Coin from the Yaoguang Cave demon group, came to trade with Chen Jinu, then the fact that he could easily ambush her means that these demons still do not know that Chen Jinu is dead!

Furthermore, judging from the two demons' inexplicable reaction to running into the territory of Ink Bamboo Mountain during their previous struggle for the Scarlet Fruit, it can be seen that only a very small number of demons knew about the transactions with humans through this secret passage connecting the two sides. All cooperation between the two sides was carried out in secret.

The monsters in the west should be completely unprepared.

But conversely,

If all of Li Fan's deductions are simply that a person on the verge of bankruptcy suddenly wins a big prize, experiencing an overproduction of dopamine and excessive emotional excitement, unable to believe their sudden turn of fortune, leading to anxious overthinking and unfounded conspiracy theories, ultimately resulting in pure delusion, it is not impossible.

What if there was no conspiracy between the two major groups to jointly oppose Ink Bamboo Mountain?

If all of this was simply Li Fan getting lucky and stumbling upon a chance,

If the story ended with simply killing a rare monster and getting 100,000 coins as loot...

That at least shows that,

The monsters of the Ten-thousand-mountains are all very rich...

Li Fan touched the Yellow Jade Sword Case in his arms.

The bold get rich, the timid starve.

Head west!

Once he made up his mind, Li Fan immediately raised his Sword Light and fled.

I believe everyone can understand this kind of impulsive excitement. After all, most people who suddenly win a lot of money at the poker table find it very difficult to quit while they're ahead and leave the game in time.

Li Fan was one of those people who, even after pondering a lot of speculations in his mind, would still come to the same conclusion in the end.

Today I'm on a roll! My momentum is unstoppable! I'm the greatest under heaven! I'll slaughter all the leopards, they'll all die!

Right now, Li Fan was in this state of being blinded by rage. Fortunately, he hadn't completely lost his mind. He immediately flipped through the book and found the "Summoning Wind and Rain Cloud Dishui Huofeng Sixiang Qifu Dunjia Jingjiang." This is a classic rain-summoning spell that can create a large rain cloud.

Li Fan learned and practiced on the spot. He took out a talisman flag that he had prepared in advance, copied the incantation on the flag, Yinian the incantation, and waved the flag.

Immediately, water vapor rose from the sky, and clouds gathered.

Li Fan also rode the Qi of Heaven and Earth and soared into the sky. He lit a talisman, waved a command flag, and summoned rain clouds to envelop his body, hiding himself inside the clouds so that the Sword Light would not reveal his whereabouts.

Following the guidance of the Si Nan handle, they rode the clouds and flew straight west.

Then, after traveling only four or five miles, Li Fan saw his opportunity.

And can you believe it's another classic serendipitous encounter...?

In a Spirit Pool beneath a waterfall, four slippery, fair-skinned, and radiant female demons were laughing and frolicking in the water.

Looking again at the edge of the pool, sure enough, there were four more sets of palace robes, brocade robes, silk skirts, and undergarments neatly folded and laid out together.

Li Fan smiled. Today really was his lucky day! What a stroke of luck! Here I come!