Keeping an Appointment to Sell Herbs

The middle-aged scholar wrote on the paper a while longer, then said unhurriedly, "Go back and look through your storage pouch. See if you have a jade slip whose title has six characters."

"The hexagram mentioned the ninth spell in its third volume. Find some time to read it. You'll need it soon."

"Six characters?" Mo Chen paused.

"You'll know once you look."

The fortune-teller offered no further explanation. He folded the white sheet covered in annotations and pushed it over, then casually took a book from the shelf behind him.

The Sixty Na Yin Compendium.

"This Sixty Resonances Compendium is our shop's most comprehensive new book on the Five Elements' na yin. It lays out all the beneficial and detrimental effects of the Sixty Resonances on cultivators, along with methods for identifying them. It also includes plenty of cultivation insights and suggestions for combining spells, compiled by our predecessors."

The cover gleamed with a soft luster, and the pages were made from fine spirit bamboo paper. One glance told him it was no cheap purchase.

"Ten spirit stones."

Ten spirit stones would take nearly four months of work at the Twin Crane Sect's Scripture Pavilion. But then he thought of the nine spirit stones he had just spent on three questions. Every answer had genuinely resolved a doubt that had troubled him for decades.

Mo Chen leafed through it and found that the Sixty Resonances Compendium listed the beneficial and detrimental effects of every na yin. The entry on his own Furnace Fire was even more detailed than the explanation he had just heard.

It seemed that if he encountered any more questions in the future, he could consult the book himself without needing a fortune-teller.

Ten spirit stones for a reference book he could use his whole life—a steal.

"I'll take it."

Without hesitation, Mo Chen counted ten spirit stones out of his storage pouch and lined them up on the table.

The fortune-teller accepted the stones, then suddenly called out to Mo Chen as he rose to leave.

"One more thing, free of charge. As for selling that batch of wood-attribute treasures, there is good fortune amid the danger, and the outcome will still be favorable. Whether you sell them or not is up to you."

Mo Chen cupped his fist in thanks, put the book into his storage pouch, and lifted the door curtain to leave the shop.

Afterward, Mo Chen wandered around the city for nearly another hour, inspecting every spirit herb shop along the way.

The large trading houses in the city center had imposing storefronts, and their customers were all smartly dressed sect disciples.

Mo Chen stood at their entrances for a moment, glimpsed the purchase prices displayed beyond the counters, and quietly backed out.

Large trading houses always drove prices down harder than small shops. The more respectable their signs, the less they treated rogue cultivators like people. Near the foot of the city wall at the end of the street, however, he found a moderately sized spirit herb shop with a weathered sign. Several baskets of drying medicinal herbs sat outside, and only an old shopkeeper was inside, dozing over the counter.

This one.

Mo Chen stepped over the threshold. The old shopkeeper jerked awake and raised his head. "What would you like to buy, fellow Daoist?"

"I'm selling, not buying."

Mo Chen walked up to the counter and took bundles of spirit herbs out of his storage pouch, one after another, arranging them in a long row.

The old shopkeeper picked up a bundle, weighed it in his hand, then brought it to his nose for a sniff.

"Well now, these must be over seventy years old, eh?"

The shopkeeper examined a few more handfuls of spirit herbs. "These really are fine specimens. You don't often see rogue cultivators growing herbs of this quality. I'll take all these varieties. Let's keep it simple: six hundred spirit stones for the lot."

Six hundred.

Mo Chen was not particularly surprised by the price. The fortune-teller had said he would be lowballed, so the old man's offer probably left room for negotiation.

Mo Chen frowned, putting on a reluctant expression. Seeing this, the old shopkeeper volunteered a few more pleasantries, praising his growing skills and inviting him to bring any future stock here.

Mo Chen took the offered slope to make his graceful descent and nodded. They finally settled on six hundred and fifty spirit stones.

After he finished counting the stones, thirty jin of spirit herbs remained unsold on the counter.

One pile was Spirit-Nurturing Herb, an auxiliary ingredient for refining Qi-Gathering Pill.

The other was Three-Lights Flower, which could be refined into Heart-Clearing and Mind-Calming pills.

The old shopkeeper looked troubled. "I don't buy these two, but I have a longtime customer who specifically purchases herbs like these, and his prices are fair. He runs a pill workshop in Maozhou City. Right now, he happens to be out escorting a delivery himself. If you're not in a hurry, you can stay at the inn in Shuinan Village to the south and wait for him. I'll send him a Voice Transmission Talisman now and tell him to come find you when he returns tonight."

Before he had even finished speaking, the old shopkeeper took a yellow paper talisman from a drawer and recited a few Hand Seals. The talisman turned into a streak of spiritual light and shot away through the air.

Barely two cups of tea later, another streak of spiritual light flew in through the window.

The old shopkeeper activated the Voice Transmission Talisman in front of Mo Chen, and a deep male voice emerged from it.

"I'll buy them! Of course I will. Shopkeeper Zhang, have him stay at the Cloud Arrival Inn's branch in Shuinan Village first! I'm still out escorting a delivery. By the time I finish delivering these pills and get back, it'll be nighttime. Let's agree on the hour of Chou. I'll come visit him then."

The Voice Transmission Talisman spontaneously caught fire. Shopkeeper Zhang cupped his hands toward Mo Chen. "Young brother, he says he'll buy them. Why don't you go rest in Shuinan Village first? He'll hurry back tonight after finishing his delivery and trade with you in person."

Mo Chen thanked him, returned the two small piles of spirit herbs to his storage pouch, and left the shop.

The afternoon sun had already slanted westward, and the streets had grown somewhat less crowded.

Mo Chen then spent one spirit stone on a Travel Map of the area around Maozhou City. After confirming Shuinan Village's location, he left the city and flew off on his sword.

Travel Maps in the cultivation world were truly peculiar jade slips: they were actually sealed jade cylinders that could not be opened.

But when he immersed his divine sense in one, he discovered that its interior was hollow. Someone had used divine-sense engraving to mark the terrain and cities inside. With a mere thought, the entire Travel Map would appear directly within a cultivator's sea of consciousness.

What Mo Chen found most wondrous was that the phantom Travel Map in his sea of consciousness could be enlarged or shrunk without limit.

After magnifying it more than tenfold, he could even see notes about Shuinan Village.

According to the Travel Map, Maozhou lay in the Western Lingnan Circuit, one of the Three Circuits of Lingnan. Although it nominally fell under the jurisdiction of Haiyanhui within the Immortal Alliance, the alliance had too many affairs to attend to and no time for local details.

Authority was therefore delegated down through one level after another. The sect that actually governed the three-thousand-li region around Maozhou was a third-rate sect called the Jade Pot Sect.

It had been founded several hundred years ago by local cultivators. Its current sect master was reportedly at the early Golden Core stage, and another early Golden Core elder also held the fort within the sect. Across the surrounding ten thousand li, it was already a formidable power...

Shuinan Village lay at the foot of a mountain a hundred li south of Maozhou City. It was a small settlement where cultivators and mortals lived together, and it was also the site of East Terrace Sunset Glow, one of the Maozhou Eight Scenic Views.

A hundred li was only an hour's flight by sword.

Mo Chen was in no hurry and flew along at a leisurely pace.

Along the way, Mo Chen split off a strand of divine sense to examine the books in his storage pouch one by one. He had taken most of these cultivation manuals from the Scripture Pavilion in Flowing Cloud Immortal City because they had something worthwhile to offer. He had not expected them to actually come in handy.

The titles of these jade slips and books varied in length, but only one had six characters.

The Compendium of Unorthodox Spells.

Even its cover was still brand-new. It was clearly an obscure book that no one in the Scripture Pavilion had touched in decades.

Mo Chen had not taken it because it contained any profound spells. It was purely because its title included the word "unorthodox."

He felt he was walking an unorthodox path himself, so the title had caught his fancy, and he had casually stuffed it into his pouch.

Mo Chen then opened the contents to the third volume and followed the entries leftward, line by line, stopping at the ninth spell.

Rewriting and Deepening a Spirit Beast's Mastery Mark!

Mo Chen stared at that line for several breaths, then read a few lines farther down.

The spell's purpose was simple enough. After subduing a spirit beast, cultivators would place a Master-Bonding Mark in its soul. The deeper the mark, the more loyal the beast would be.

This spell could rewrite an existing Master-Bonding Mark, as well as deepen it...

Mo Chen read farther. The notes explained that even a fully formed Master-Bonding Mark could be rewritten, erasing the original master's traces and engraving a new master's Spiritual Power imprint in their place.

In other words, this was a spell specifically designed to steal other people's spirit beasts.

Of course, there could be no effortless windfall of pies falling from the sky.

The spell still had restrictions, which were clearly written below.

"This technique requires the spirit beast's master to be beyond divine-sense detection range, or for the spirit beast's original master to have already died..."

What?

Is this stupid or what?

If the original master's already dead, you can just beat the demon beast into submission and make it acknowledge you anyway!

Still, rewriting was useful. Directly erasing a Master-Bonding Mark caused severe harm to both the cultivator and the spirit beast, and one careless move could even trigger a backlash.

Mo Chen carefully read the incantations and hand seals on the page several times, then practiced the motions in his palm. Only after making sure he had memorized them did he close Shu and return it to his storage pouch.

As he flew through the air on his sword, wind roared past his ears. Mo Chen continued on his way, repeatedly reciting the Incantation in his mind...

Before long, he reached Shuinan Village.

Shuinan Village sat beside the Mao River, with East Terrace Mountain at its back and deep emerald waters before it.

Mo Chen put away his flying sword at the inn's entrance. He was just about to push the door open when a boiling clamor of voices stopped him in his tracks.

The mountain path leading toward East Terrace Mountain was woven thick with people.

Young cultivators in Daoist robes, rogue cultivators in bamboo hats, and mortal tourists with their families streamed uphill, shoulders brushing shoulders and feet knocking against feet. It was even more crowded than Maozhou City's busiest market.

Puzzled, Mo Chen reached out to stop a blue-robed cultivator passing beside him and cupped his hands. "Fellow Daoist, is there something happening on the mountain today?"