Huo Yuhao shrugged, then patted Wang Dong on the shoulder and said,
"Nothing we can do about it. They set the prices. Even if they charged hundreds of millions of Gold Soul Coins, you'd have nowhere to argue your case."
After Huo Yuhao finished speaking, Wang Dong sighed helplessly. Then, as though something had occurred to her, she leaned toward him, her eyes shining like a faithful dog begging for food.
"Yuhao~ We're good roommates, aren't we~?"
Huo Yuhao rolled his eyes, then told Wang Dong,
"Not a chance. I have other uses for my two exchanges."
Huo Yuhao gently pushed Wang Dong aside, then headed straight for the medicinal herb section.
Seeing this, Wang Dong gazed reluctantly at the Soul Bone, her fingers drifting toward its display plaque.
After a fierce internal struggle, Wang Dong finally pulled a crimson card from inside her clothes.
It was not the red identification card that represented her credit allowance, but the highest-tier card issued by the All-Continent High-Tier Universal Bank.
Its spending limit exceeded ten million Gold Soul Coins, signifying that it was backed by at least fifty million Gold Soul Coins.
Holding the card, Wang Dong took one last, long look at the Golden Earth Dragon King Soul Bone, then headed toward the counter.
Meanwhile, Xiao Xiao followed Huo Yuhao. She had no particular opinions about these items and merely looked at him curiously as she asked,
"Yuhao, isn't this your first time here too? Have you spotted something important?"
Huo Yuhao smiled, then told Xiao Xiao,
"It is my first time here, but I saw some of these things in ancient books ages ago, so I know a little about what they really are.
"There are a few things here I'm especially interested in, and I don't have all that much money. Naturally, I need to save my two exchanges."
Xiao Xiao nodded, then Huo Yuhao looked at her and asked,
"Do you trust me?"
Xiao Xiao froze for a moment, then nodded earnestly and told Huo Yuhao,
"We're comrades in arms. As long as you need it... I can entrust anything to you."
Huo Yuhao patted Xiao Xiao on the shoulder, then told her,
"Don't worry. I'm not trying to take advantage of you for nothing or ask for your life. My family has done some research into martial souls, and a few of the spirit herbs here would be useful for yours."
Xiao Xiao blinked in surprise. Then she watched Huo Yuhao weave expertly through the spirit treasure section before stopping at an inconspicuous spirit plant display case tucked into a corner.
"What is this?"
Looking at the unremarkable little blade of grass before her, Xiao Xiao could not help asking curiously.
Huo Yuhao tapped the display case and told her in a low voice,
"This is spirit phoenix grass. They say that when the Phoenix God fell all those years ago, his blood spilled across the azure sky, and this special spirit plant would grow on land bathed in phoenix blood. But it's extremely rare and looks exactly like the spirit-calming grass they've labeled it as here, so almost everyone mistakes it for that."
"My martial soul is a mutated tiger-type martial soul, which gives me an innate sensitivity to the auras of all beasts. I can sense the powerful avian aura it contains, and that's how I can tell that this definitely isn't spirit-calming grass. It's spirit phoenix grass."
Understanding dawned on Xiao Xiao. A smile spread across her face, and she told Huo Yuhao,
"If that's really the case, we've stumbled onto an incredible bargain. This grass is so cheap that I can buy it tonight without even using my credit allowance."
Once she finished speaking, Huo Yuhao nodded and watched Xiao Xiao take her plaque to purchase the grass. Not a single word he had said was false. He had read all of it in the books kept by Dai Hao's army.
This grass existed only in legends, but through his Qiongqi martial soul, Huo Yuhao could sense the rich phoenix aura within it.
It could bring a qualitative improvement to Xiao Xiao's Nine Phoenix Ceremonial Flute martial soul.
On top of that, Xiao Xiao had heeded Huo Yuhao's warning in this life and had not given the Nine Phoenix Ceremonial Flute any Soul Rings first. With nine Ten Thousand Year Soul Rings in the future, there was truly no telling how powerful it would become.
In terms of combat strength, she would probably far surpass Bei Bei and Xu Sanshi at the very least. As for Jiang Nannan, she would be little more than a speed bump.
If she absorbed it well, she might even undergo a complete transformation and gain a semi-ultimate attribute. Combined with the advantage of twin martial souls, that would let her go toe-to-toe with Ma Xiaotao.
After taking care of all that, Huo Yuhao turned his attention to the piece of whale rubber.
It was the very piece of whale rubber that had caused Huo Yuhao to molest Ma Xiaotao after eating it in the original story.
Under Dai Hao's guidance, Huo Yuhao had eaten plenty of this stuff before enrolling. Looking at it now, he could easily have overlooked it without the Sky Dream Ice Silkworm's reminder, because its appearance was far inferior to the whale rubber he had eaten at Dai Hao's place.
Although he did not particularly need it, he still bought the piece of whale rubber at the Sky Dream Ice Silkworm's strong insistence.
Besides that, Electrolux, who had awakened ahead of time, also alerted Huo Yuhao to another extremely valuable item.
It was in the Soul Tool materials section, fiery red throughout, with a faintly crystalline translucence.
According to Electrolux, it was a piece of extremely high-purity fire cloud crystal.
Its purity was the sort that stood about three or four stories high.
Once Huo Yuhao fashioned it into a weapon such as a staff, it could greatly improve the conductivity of Qiongqi's fire and give the flames more variations, allowing him to catch opponents off guard.
If he had to pick one flaw, it was that this piece of fire cloud crystal was simply too short and compact. It was only as long as a person's forearm, making it almost impossible to turn into a large weapon unless Huo Yuhao went and learned Soul Tool technology.
Although Shrek Academy did not recognize what it was, they clearly knew it was valuable. Its listed price was far higher than that of the Soul Bone Wang Dong had her eye on.
Eleven million five hundred thousand Gold Soul Coins. Huo Yuhao was fairly confident that, unless someone from an old-money family like Ning Tian's mobilized the forces behind them to set their funding chain in motion, no one could afford this thing without a red identification card like his.
It was not there to be sold at all. It was there to anchor the exhibition and prove that the venue had treasures worth seeing.
Besides that, Electrolux also recommended something that could be considered the cheapest item in the entire venue: a stone that was dark bluish-black all over.
According to Electrolux, it would be useful when Huo Yuhao studied necromancy in the future. Since they had happened upon it, he should buy it now.
As for its name, Electrolux said he could not recall it for the moment, but he could sense its extremely high affinity for the undead attribute. It would certainly be of great use in the future.
Aside from those three items, Huo Yuhao also picked up one thousand-year crimson flame fruit, one thousand-year ice scale fruit, and one thousand-year dragon scale fruit from the spirit treasure section. In the original story, these things would not be formally introduced until the Legend of the Dragon King era, ten thousand years later.
But spirit plants like these could not possibly have come into existence only when Tang Wulin was born. They already existed in this era; there simply had not been a madman who mixed them together to temper his body...
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