With Luo Qian's approval, Du Lengning hurried off to make the purchases. As he had expected, three days later, the major medicine shops noticed what the Luo Family Medicine Shop was doing. Luo Qian's reputation had soared recently in the Immortal Realm, and the stories about him had grown so fantastical that some even believed he was the Immortal Emperor's illegitimate son. The shops assumed he had inside information and was buying up low-grade Immortal Pills at any cost. None could guess why, but all were certain that hoarding them would bring a windfall. Prices shot up, and the ripple effect even drove up the cost of raw materials.
Four or five days later, the Luo Family Medicine Shop's buyers had acquired fifty thousand low-grade Immortal Pills, still fifteen thousand short of the hundred thousand the God King had requested. By then, however, their price in the Immortal Realm had climbed twenty percent higher than that of mid-grade Immortal Pills! Luo Qian had expected prices to rise, but never imagined his "power to steer the market" was this great. He cursed the buyers as lunatics. Low-grade pills cost more than mid-grade ones—who did business like that?
Helpless, Luo Qian changed tactics. He bought some mid-grade Immortal Pills, "watered them down," and divided each into three or four pills, bringing the total to a hundred thousand.
The price surge had gone far beyond Luo Qian's expectations, and the buying spree cost him nearly thirty percent more Immortal Jade than planned. He took a small loss, but the shops hoarding low-grade Immortal Pills suffered far worse. Their funds were tied up in pills of little value, and after waiting ages for a windfall that never came, they cried foul. Everyone decided Luo Qian had plotted the whole thing. Several weaker shops had