"Item collection, number six hundred and eighteen."
Facing-Abyss City, Bai Trading House.
Behind the counter, the shopkeeper was a body cultivator.
A body cultivator in the Golden Body Mystic Bone Realm.
At the sight, Ji Yuan could not help feeling a little rueful.
The Martial God Continent truly had no room for idlers.
Even a shopkeeper sitting behind a counter working an abacus had the battle-hardened physique to take to the field.
He looked away, took the token True Person Qingyuan had given him before his death from his Storage Bag, and set it gently on the counter.
It was a palm-sized wooden token with the character "Bai" carved on its front.
On the back was a peach tree lush with branches and leaves. The wood was ordinary, and the carving was hardly exquisite, but its surface had been rubbed to a glossy sheen.
Someone had clearly held it again and again and carried it close for who knew how many years.
The shopkeeper glanced down at the token, and the polite, distant smile on his face vanished.
Without asking a single question, he lifted it in two callused hands.
As he turned it over to inspect the carved peach tree, his fingers traced the lines of its branches and leaves stroke by stroke, confirming three tiny hidden marks.
Only then did he set the token gently before himself, with no intention of returning it to Ji Yuan.
"Please wait a moment, brother."
With that, he turned and entered the storeroom behind him.
The door closed at his back. Three linked restrictions glimmered upon it, sealing the storeroom off completely.
Ji Yuan did not wait long.
After roughly half the time it took to drink a cup of tea, the restrictions on the door dimmed again, and the shopkeeper emerged.