Zhao Tu's eyes snapped open, and he gasped for breath.
He looked down at his smooth chest, then raised a hand to feel it. It was real. The festering sore that had kept him awake at night was gone.
The suffocating sensation of being eaten away from within at every moment had vanished, too.
Zhao Tu's eyes instantly reddened.
But a moment later, his expression froze.
He sensed his cultivation.
The perfected state of his peak spirit transformation cultivation had shattered.
Like a cracked mirror, it could never be pieced back together. His cultivation had fallen from its peak, plunged past great perfection, past perfection, and only barely stabilized at the late spirit transformation stage.
He had dropped an entire major realm.
Zhao Tu's breathing quickened.
His cultivation was his livelihood. Peak spirit transformation had been what let him swagger through the Central Province unchallenged. Now he was only at the late spirit transformation stage...
But then he touched his chest again.
Flat, smooth, warm.
No pain, no gnawing, none of the despair of waiting for death every day.
Zhao Tu closed his eyes briefly. When he opened them again, he looked at the young man standing behind him with a complicated gaze.
Then this brute, who had never knelt to anything but heaven and earth in his entire life, bent down and struck his forehead hard against the white jade floor.
"Thank you."
His voice was hoarse, but every word rang with weight.
Zhou Xuan withdrew his hand, took a handkerchief from his sleeve, and unhurriedly wiped his fingertips.
He did not look at Zhao Tu.
He turned to face the hundreds of burning, fearful, greedy, and despairing gazes a hundred zhang away.
"The first transaction is complete."
Zhou Xuan's voice was quiet, but it reached every person's ears