A Way to Make Money

Ding!

A gleaming gold coin was flicked high into the air by Zuo Yi, tracing a bright arc through the sky.

Before Blue Star's gravity could pull it back down, it had already fallen into the Gargoyle's mouth.

It was a reward for faithfully carrying out its duties.

Screech!

After swallowing the Law Coin, the Gargoyle let out a delighted shriek, folded its wings, and landed amid the treetops.

It resumed its sentry duty.

Zuo Yi smiled faintly. He silently leaped up and returned to the study through the open window.

Casually setting the two bladed swords on the desk, Zuo Yi left the study and came to Bao'er's bedroom.

He gently pushed open the unlocked door, and dim yellow light immediately spilled out into the hallway.

The running air conditioner gave off a soft hum. On the small single bed, the little girl was sleeping soundly.

But she was a rather restless sleeper, and she had kicked most of her thin quilt away.

Meanwhile, Taike, lying in its dog bed beside the headboard, warily raised its head.

Seeing that it was Zuo Yi, it hurriedly went back to pretending to sleep.

Its dog bed had originally been placed downstairs in the living room by Zuo Yi, but the mutt had carried it upstairs itself and put it here.

Since Bao'er was happy about it, Zuo Yi had not objected.

Zuo Yi tiptoed over to the bed. He bent down to cover the little girl properly again, then lowered his head and kissed her cheek.

Bao'er seemed to sense something in her sleep. Her little lips smacked twice, and she murmured, "Daddy," but did not wake up.

Gazing at the angelic little girl before him, Zuo Yi's heart was filled with tenderness and affection.

The killing intent born from taking two lives earlier vanished without a trace.

And his resolve became firmer than ever before.

So long as he could protect the beauty before him, Zuo Yi would not hesitate to kill, nor would he hesitate to become a grim reaper who destroyed all evil!

(In Sadea World, grim reaper was a neutral term and did not represent good or evil.)

After sitting quietly at the bedside for a long while and seeing that the little girl did not kick off her quilt again, Zuo Yi quietly left her room.

He returned to the study once more.

Sitting back down at the desk, Zuo Yi drew one of the bladed swords.

These two swords had clearly been made not long ago. The python-skin wrapping on both their hilts and scabbards was brand new, without any signs of frequent use.

Zuo Yi noticed that the two seal-script characters "Water-Cleaver" were engraved near the base of the blade.

He drew the other sword for a look and found the same marking on it, so these two swords should be called the Twin Water-Cleavers.

Running his fingertip lightly across the edge, Zuo Yi gained a fairly thorough understanding of the material and craftsmanship of this trophy.

Over the past few decades, martial arts had become increasingly popular throughout the world, including Daxia. Martial arts halls of every kind had sprung up everywhere, more and more people had begun studying combat and swordsmanship, and countless professional martial artists had emerged.

The Daxia Martial Arts Alliance held martial arts competitions every year, offering extremely generous prize money. Winners also qualified to participate in the World Martial Arts Tournament, where they could earn even greater prizes and honors.

The current World Martial Arts Tournament was comparable to the Olympics and World Cup of several decades ago, watched by hundreds of millions.

Martial arts had also become a massive industry.

The industries surrounding it naturally developed at a tremendous pace. Take sword forging, for example: swords had once mostly been handicrafts, but now they were practical weapons, and the industry's output value had increased by far more than a hundredfold.

For ordinary amateur swordsmen, a set of standard swords of acceptable quality was enough to meet their basic needs. Professional competitors with rankings, however, often pursued fine and famous pieces.

Among them, the most sought-after by professional swordsmen were undoubtedly hand-forged swords custom-made by master swordsmiths.

The two Water-Cleaver swords in Zuo Yi's hands were not goods that had rolled off a factory assembly line. Although he could find no other markings, their outstanding quality and exquisite craftsmanship clearly indicated that they had come from the hands of a first-rate swordsmith.

When Zuo Yi had trained at Heavenly Vast Martial Arts Hall, he had received guidance and instruction from its owner, Shang He, and had developed a certain ability to appraise swords. His eye for them now surpassed what it had once been by a thousandfold.

His judgment was naturally incomparably accurate.

In other words, these two trophies were worth a lot of money!

Zuo Yi, who had already begun overdrawing his bank card, rubbed his chin and felt that his luck was quite good.

He had been short on money, and people had immediately rushed over to deliver it to him!

But how to sell these two swords was a problem. Zuo Yi lacked the channels and experience for this sort of thing. He could not exactly set up a roadside stall and hawk them, could he?

Or put them up for sale online?

After thinking it over, he turned on his computer, logged in, and searched around.

The search results disappointed Zuo Yi somewhat. Although several secondhand trading platforms had many swords for sale, their rules prohibited the buying and selling of sharpened weapons and controlled weapons.

The two bladed swords Zuo Yi had seized were sharp weapons, so they naturally fell outside the permitted range.

In fact, according to the regulations of the Daxia Martial Arts Alliance, professional swordsmen could purchase sharpened swords as long as they applied for a sword permit.

But the main purchasing channels were licensed weapons stores.

That left Zuo Yi with only one path if he wanted to sell his trophies and make up for the shortfall in his account.

He could sell them to a weapons store that offered buyback services.

However, Zuo Yi remembered Shang He once telling him that weapons stores offered very low buyback prices. If a newly purchased sword was immediately sold for cash, at most one could recover seventy percent of the original cost, and that was only if it had been sold by the same store and came with proof of purchase.

The Twin Water-Cleavers were of unknown origin. Whether they would even accept them was a question. Even if they did, they would probably slash the price mercilessly.

Just thinking about it made Zuo Yi's teeth ache.

Seeing that it was not too late yet, he sent Shang Yulin a WeChat message on his phone.

He asked whether she knew any relatively honest merchants.

If Shang He were still alive, he definitely could have introduced Zuo Yi to a good channel. Shang Yulin, however, was another matter.

She had barely any ability to run a martial arts hall. Heavenly Vast Martial Arts Hall was practically doomed in her hands.

Shang Yulin replied quickly.

After learning that Zuo Yi wanted to sell swords, she told him that selling them online was both unreliable and illegal.

As for weapons stores, the swords used by Heavenly Vast Martial Arts Hall were purchased directly from manufacturers—it saved a considerable amount on costs.

So she did not have any suitable connections in that area. Moreover, the buyback prices offered by weapons stores were extremely exploitative, so she did not recommend that either.

However, Shang Yulin still pointed Zuo Yi toward another option.

He could sell them at the West Creek Underground Market.

The West Creek Underground Market was located beneath the West Creek Martial Arena.

West Creek Martial Arena was the largest martial arts competition venue in Jiangnan Province. Beneath it was a five-story underground complex, including two parking levels and three levels of underground market, making it enormous in scale.

The first level of the West Creek Underground Market had both permanent stalls and a large number of temporary rental stalls. It sold a wide variety of goods: antiques, calligraphy and paintings, jewelry, jade, bladed weapons, electronics, materials, medicinal herbs, and more.

Many local martial artists from Hang City often went to the West Creek Underground Market to hunt for bargains. Therefore, if Zuo Yi wanted to sell his swords at a good price, he could rent a temporary stall on the first level.

The rent was quite cheap.

It was perfectly normal that Zuo Yi did not know about the West Creek Underground Market, since it had only opened three or four years ago.

"Thank you."

Having received this very useful information, Zuo Yi felt as though the clouds had parted and the sun had appeared.

Because the problem troubling him would soon no longer be a problem.

"You're welcome."

Shang Yulin replied, "Get some rest early. Good night."

"Good night."

After ending his conversation with Shang Yulin, Zuo Yi put down his phone and picked up a Water-Cleaver sword again.

He planned to make a few minor modifications to the two bladed swords.

This was a very simple matter for Zuo Yi. First, he found a piece of Red Crow Gold from his Spatial Ring.

Red Crow Gold was a very special metal. At the same volume, both its weight and malleability greatly surpassed gold.

Red Crow Gold possessed extremely strong corrosion resistance and had a very high affinity for battle qi and mana, making it an important auxiliary material for crafting extraordinary weapons.

However, Red Crow Gold had considerable reserves in Sadea World, so it was not particularly expensive. This high-purity piece of Red Crow Gold that Zuo Yi took out, roughly the size of a longan, was worth only about two Law Coins.

Holding the sword in his left hand, Zuo Yi gripped the Red Crow Gold in his right, then ignited battle-qi flames.

When the Red Crow Gold melted into liquid in his palm, he swept his hand swiftly across the bladed sword.

In the blink of an eye, the originally silvery-white blade was evenly "plated" with a dark-gold coating of Red Crow Gold, immediately taking on an entirely different texture!

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