In another shop, a woman with a graceful figure received Shen Luo.
When she heard Shen Luo ask for Water-Fire Resonance Pills, she wore the same expression as the middle-aged shopkeeper before her and told him they were sold out.
Though puzzled, Shen Luo asked no further questions and turned to leave the shop.
Yet over the next thirteen shops he visited, he received exactly the same answer: the Water-Fire Resonance Pills were sold out. He failed to buy even one.
Upon entering the sixteenth shop, Shen Luo looked at the old man approaching him and asked directly:
"Shopkeeper, don't tell me you're out of Water-Fire Resonance Pills too?"
The old man's slightly stooped figure paused, then he smiled faintly. "We at Baozhai Hall do still have a little stock, but we cannot sell it to you, sir."
At those words, Shen Luo's brows rose slightly.
"What do you mean by that? You have stock, yet refuse to sell it? Why turn away business?" Shen Luo asked.
"One look tells me you've come from far away, sir. You haven't heard, have you? Recently, the South Sea Dragon Palace suddenly sent envoys to the Great Chasm and bought up all the Water-Fire Resonance Pills on the Great Chasm Ten Isles. They also strictly forbade us from selling any to outsiders for the time being," the old man told Shen Luo after a brief hesitation.
Shen Luo frowned deeply. Buying up the Water-Fire Resonance Pills was one thing, but forbidding shops from selling them privately to others was far too overbearing, wasn't it?
"Why would the South Sea Dragon Palace do that?" Shen Luo asked in bewilderment.
"Well... we don't know either. Perhaps it has something to do with the strange phenomena that have appeared in the Great Chasm lately." The old