The Difference Between Maps

After leaving the mountains again, Lu Ye was much more composed. Familiar with the way now, he made his way to Green Cloud Market at the foot of the mountain, then headed straight for the Heaven's Mystery Merchant Guild.

Without waiting for the welcoming maid at the entrance to ask, Lu Ye uttered a single word: "Sell!"

Seated in a private room, he drank the Heaven's Mystery Merchant Guild's Spirit Tea as usual. Unfortunately, he had only finished one pot when someone entered.

"Sorry to have kept you waiting, Fellow Daoist!"

A middle-aged man entered the room with those words and bowed to Lu Ye. "I am Liu Quan. Greetings, Fellow Daoist."

Lu Ye nodded. Liu Quan took his seat and went straight to the point. "What does Fellow Daoist wish to sell?"

Lu Ye took out several pieces of ore he had prepared beforehand. Naturally, the Primordial Magnetic Ore was the main item. Of the Spirit Stones he had earned from selling those ores last time, more than half had come from the value of the Primordial Magnetic Ore.

The pieces of Primordial Magnetic Ore he had brought out this time were a little larger, so they would likely fetch a higher price.

Liu Quan inspected them one by one, then named a price for each piece. Throughout, Lu Ye said nothing and merely drank his tea.

At last, Liu Quan set down the Primordial Magnetic Ore and said, "This item is not commonly seen in the Outer Circle. I can price it at thirty-eight Spirit Stones. The total comes to fifty-one Spirit Stones. If Fellow Daoist has no objections, we can proceed with the transaction."

"Can't you go any higher?" Lu Ye looked at him.

Liu Quan shook his head with a wry smile. "No higher. After these items are collected, specialists still need to refine and extract them before they can become useful materials. Any higher, and the Merchant Alliance will have no room for profit."

This guy was harder to deal with than Liu Ruyin! Lu Ye grumbled inwardly. Last time, after he had haggled with Liu Ruyin for a while, she had immediately added four Spirit Stones. Though she was a woman, she had been far more straightforward than this Liu Quan.

What he did not know was that there was an unwritten rule behind Liu Ruyin's willingness to raise the price. At the same time, Liu Ruyin had wanted to do another kind of business with him, which was why she had been so accommodating. In the end, Lu Ye had known nothing of that rule and had not even given her a tip, leaving Liu Ruyin a little displeased.

Liu Quan was a man and had no expectations of doing any other sort of business with Lu Ye, so naturally he maintained a strictly businesslike attitude.

After falling silent for a moment, Lu Ye could not be bothered wasting more breath. He took out four Storage Bags. "You have a way to open these, right?"

Yiyi had previously brought these to him and told him that someone in Green Cloud Market could open the Restriction Locks on Storage Bags. Lu Ye had simply forgotten about it last time.

Liu Quan calmly accepted the Storage Bags, clearly accustomed to such matters. After a brief inspection, he said, "If Fellow Daoist wishes to have us open them, that can be arranged, but there will be a fee."

"How much?"

Liu Quan named a figure.

Lu Ye's face darkened. That price was rather steep.

Liu Quan smiled. "Of course, Fellow Daoist may sell these items to our Merchant Alliance instead. We can offer this amount for each Storage Bag."

He held up his hand to indicate the number.

Lu Ye laughed. "That's even lower than the previous price!"

In other words, the Spirit Stones required to have the Merchant Alliance open the Storage Bags were actually more than what he would get from selling the Storage Bags directly to them. That was a little unreasonable.

Liu Quan said with a smile, "I understand what Fellow Daoist is thinking, but that is indeed the price. Fellow Daoist must understand that Storage Bags belonging to Outer Circle cultivators are not worth much. There may be nothing inside at all—only an empty bag. The Merchant Alliance must bear that risk, so the price cannot be very high. Of course, if Fellow Daoist wishes to gamble and see whether these Storage Bags might contain some priceless treasure, then you need only pay the unlocking fee. It all depends on Fellow Daoist's choice."

Lu Ye recalled the three cultivators Yiyi and Big Tiger had robbed before. There truly had not been anything good in their Storage Bags.

An idea immediately came to him. After another round of haggling with Liu Quan, he finally sold all four Storage Bags to the Merchant Alliance as a bundle for twenty Spirit Stones.

Added to what he had made earlier, that came to seventy-one Spirit Stones!

Once the deal was settled, Liu Quan was visibly pleased as well. "How would Fellow Daoist like to receive payment? Spirit Stones or Spiritual Pills?"

"Do you have maps of the Spirit Stream Battlefield?" Lu Ye asked. He remembered that when he had first entered the market, the nouveau riche he had encountered had told him that the Merchant Alliance sold maps.

If he wanted to head to the Crimson Blood Sect's Camp, he had to determine the Crimson Blood Sect's exact location. Having a map on hand would naturally be much more convenient.

Liu Quan immediately became enthusiastic. "Naturally we do. What kind of map does Fellow Daoist require?"

"How many kinds do you have?"

"We have three kinds: the Three-Part Map, the Seven-Part Map, and the Ten-Part Map."

"What's the difference?" Lu Ye could not help frowning. It was just selling maps—why make so many fancy distinctions?

"It's like this..." Liu Quan began explaining, and as Lu Ye listened, he gradually came to understand the differences between the three maps.

Throughout the Spirit Stream Battlefield, there were countless camps belonging to forces both great and small. After all, every sect in the Nine Provinces had its own camp on the battlefield. Their forces were interwoven like a crisscrossing net, and camps changed hands frequently, making mapmaking an extremely troublesome matter.

However, the Heaven's Mystery Merchant Guild possessed such capabilities. This was because the Merchant Guild had countless branch guilds throughout the battlefield. It merely needed to compile information from each region to easily draw a map of the entire battlefield. This was an ability no other force possessed.

A complete map included information on every camp in the Spirit Stream Battlefield: which faction it belonged to and the rank of its sect. Moreover, all varieties of terrain and topography across the battlefield were marked.

That was the Ten-Part Map.

The Seven-Part Map was a stripped-down version of the Ten-Part Map, containing only general information on seventy percent of the forces' camps across the battlefield...

The Three-Part Map had even less, containing information on only thirty percent of the camps. As for the battlefield's natural terrain and features, they were not included at all...

For Lu Ye, if he was buying one, he would definitely buy the Ten-Part Map. The Crimson Blood Sect was only a Ninth-Rank Sect, so it might not be marked on either the Three-Part Map or the Seven-Part Map. If he bought one only to find that the Crimson Blood Sect was nowhere on it, that would be a blood-soaked loss.

Furthermore, buying the Ten-Part Map had another advantage: he could go to the Heaven's Mystery Merchant Guild at any time to update it. War constantly raged across the Spirit Stream Battlefield, and camps changed hands frequently. A camp might belong to the Vast Sky Alliance today and Myriad Demon Ridge tomorrow. If he failed to notice and plunged in headfirst, there would surely be no good ending. A map that could be updated in real time would invisibly help him avoid many risks.

However, after Lu Ye asked about the price, he immediately abandoned the idea.

A Ten-Part Map cost six hundred Spirit Stones, and that was already after a discount.

As for the Three-Part Map that Liu Quan strongly recommended, it still cost several dozen Spirit Stones. But what use would Lu Ye have for a Three-Part Map?

In the end, he could only conclude the transaction this way. Of the seventy-one Spirit Stones, he kept one and used the remaining seventy to buy seven bottles containing sixty-three Spirit Nurturing Pills. With so many Spirit Nurturing Pills, reaching the Spirit Stream Second Layer was just around the corner.