"How about a hundred?"
Ghost Banner Daoist lowered his voice as he haggled.
The stall owner knocked his pipe against the bowl, looked up at him, and slowly held up two fingers. "Two hundred. Final price."
"This came from Rehe. It's been buried beneath an old mine vein for at least three hundred years. Shell patterns this neat? This old man doesn't come across more than a few in a year."
"Take it or leave it."
Ghost Banner Daoist squatted there, rubbing the stone shell back and forth with his fingers as heaven and man battled within him for a long while.
Only then did he reach toward his robes, his fingertips brushing against two things.
On the left were the ten thousand silver notes Chen Mo had given him, a thick stack wrapped tightly in oiled paper.
On the right was his own money pouch, which contained barely more than two hundred silver dollars in total.
Without even thinking, he passed over that stack of silver notes.
Master Chen's money was absolutely untouchable.
He could not say why, but whenever he saw Chen Mo's young face, he thought of Chen Mo's master.
Both were equally unfathomable. Whenever those eyes swept over him, they made his scalp prickle.
Even if someone beat him to death, he would not dare use those ten thousand silver dollars to gamble on stones.
Gritting his teeth, Ghost Banner Daoist took out two rolls of silver dollars from his own pouch, then counted out several crumpled banknotes.
The stall owner accepted the money and knocked his pipe against the bowl three times.
That meant the money and goods had both changed hands.
"Want it cut open?"
He hesitated.
Yin Stone Seals were, plainly put, the cultivation world's version of stone gambling.
In ancient times, certain