Night Talk

Night had fallen.

Rainbow Sound Flying Sword Shop.

Before the tea table.

Chen Xianhe brewed Chen Daoxuan a cup of Spirit Tea, looked him over, and smiled. "Everything in the family is well, right?"

"Everything's well!"

Taking the amber-colored teacup Chen Xianhe handed him, Chen Daoxuan nodded.

Changing the subject, Chen Daoxuan smiled. "By the way, Thirteenth Uncle, how did you think of selling Flying Swords this way?"

At those words,

Chen Xianhe immediately blew his beard and glared. "Wasn't it all because of you, brat!"

As he spoke, he could not help laughing first. "The Flying Swords you forge are of superb quality. There isn't a second shop in the entire Rogue Cultivator Market that can compare.

But there are simply too few of them—nowhere near enough to go around among all those Rogue Cultivators!"

At that, Chen Xianhe shook his head regretfully.

"Oh, right. How many Flying Swords did you bring this time?"

As if recalling something, Chen Xianhe looked at Chen Daoxuan expectantly and asked.

Chen Daoxuan smiled faintly and immediately took fifty-five Flying Swords from his Storage Bag.

"All the Flying Swords the family produced during this period are here!"

Chen Daoxuan pointed at the neatly stacked pile of sword cases on the floor.

Seeing this,

Chen Xianhe stepped forward, opened the sword cases one by one, and carefully inspected the Flying Swords within.

"Good! This Flying Sword has three feet of Sword Light, spiritual radiance flowing across its blade, and exceptional material quality! This one isn't bad either."

Seeing Thirteenth Uncle as excited as a child, Chen Daoxuan was greatly pleased as well.

After inspecting them,

Chen Xianhe raised his head and said, "But why are there so few Flying Swords? I remember we bought over three thousand Spirit Stones' worth of Spirit Mine ore back then. Adding the ore reserves in the family, we should have been able to forge far more than this, shouldn't we?"

At those words,

Chen Daoxuan rose to his feet without betraying a thing.

He walked to the shop entrance, checked the tightly shut doors, then set up another Soundproofing Formation before returning to his seat, his expression solemn. "Thirteenth Uncle, it's a long story."

Thus,

Chen Daoxuan recounted everything in detail: how he had encountered the Merfolk Tribe on his last return trip to Twin Lakes Island, how he had reached a cooperation agreement with them, and all that followed.

As Chen Daoxuan spoke,

Chen Xianhe's mouth gradually fell open wider and wider. He had never expected that so many changes had taken place in the family in merely three months.

Not only had they reached a cooperation agreement with the Merfolk Tribe, but they had also discovered an Immortal Seedling within the clan.

When he heard that Chen Daoxuan had found an Immortal Seedling in the clan, Chen Xianhe could not help sighing. "Given the odds of mortals producing cultivators with Spiritual Root Aptitude, our Chen Family should have dozens of Immortal Seedlings hidden among us.

Unfortunately, I never tested the Spiritual Root Aptitude of the clan's young children all these years. I was completely afraid that we would find Immortal Seedlings but lack the means to nurture them, only adding to their suffering."

Having served as acting Clan Leader for so long, Chen Daoxuan understood Chen Xianhe's concerns only too well.

Indeed, the Chen Family could select every Immortal Seedling in the clan and guide them onto the path of cultivation.

But what then?

The Chen Family had only one Spirit Eye, enough only for Chen Daoxuan's cultivation. Chen Xianhe had even given up his own Dao path for his sake.

But could the other Chen Family cultivators give up cultivation for Chen Daoxuan?

Obviously not.

After all, Chen Daoxuan held the same status as them. Why should they be the ones to make sacrifices?

If that happened, the Chen Family cultivators, already starved for spiritual energy resources, would inevitably fight among themselves and perhaps even split apart!

As for seeking a way out by risking their lives on the Cloud Country Battlefield, that path was clearly impassable as well.

The Qianyuan Sword Sect would not even accept a cultivator at Qi Refining Stage One.

Back then, Chen Xianhe had only been able to enter the battlefield because the Chen Family cultivators of the Immortal generation had earned military merit, allowing them to pull strings for him.

Otherwise, with Chen Xianhe's cultivation at the third layer of Qi Refining back then, how could he possibly have been qualified to set foot on the Cloud Country Battlefield?

This was also why Chen Xianhe had racked his brains trying to cultivate a Spirit Vein for the family.

Watching the family's Immortal Seedlings be unable to cultivate because they lacked spiritual energy was a pain too difficult to put into words.

In truth, deep down,

Chen Daoxuan did not quite agree with Chen Xianhe's way of managing the family.

He felt that Chen Xianhe had put the cart before the horse.

In Chen Daoxuan's eyes, the family's cultivators—or rather, its clansmen—were a family's most important foundation.

The Chen Family could have selected all the Immortal Seedlings and guided them onto the path of cultivation.

Even if those cultivators only reached Qi Refining Stage One, the Chen Family could have had them develop the deserted islands in the sea near Twin Lakes Island.

The Chen Family only needed to take the Spirit Stones from the Clan Treasury and buy slaves to cultivate those barren islands and farm them. No matter what, that was far better than clutching the Clan Treasury's Spirit Stones and waiting to die!

That way, after several generations of toil, the Chen Family would surely have gradually worked its way out of its predicament.

Rather than becoming lifeless and stagnant as it had under Chen Xianhe's leadership.

From this perspective, Chen Xianhe had not been a qualified Chen Family Patriarch.

But in truth, there was little he could do.

After all, Chen Xianhe had not truly been the Chen Clan Leader back then. He had only become Clan Leader because the family's cultivators had all died in battle, leaving him no choice but to accept the appointment in a moment of crisis.

Seeing the smile on Chen Xianhe's face slowly fade and turn bitter once more,

Chen Daoxuan calmly handed over a Storage Bag.

"What is this?"

Chen Xianhe gave Chen Daoxuan a puzzled look.

"Thirteenth Uncle, take a look inside."

At that, Chen Xianhe extended his Divine Sense into the Storage Bag. The next moment, he shot up from his seat, staring at Chen Daoxuan in shock as he lowered his voice. "Daoxuan, did you Ambush cultivators traveling to Guang'an Prefecture?"

"Uh,"

Chen Daoxuan was stunned for a moment, then smiled bitterly. "Thirteenth Uncle, could Ambushing Rogue Cultivators bring in this many Spirit Stones?"

"That's true!"

Chen Xianhe nodded. "Then where did these Spirit Stones come from?"

Though he had not counted them carefully, Chen Xianhe's experience told him that the Storage Bag contained at least fifty thousand Spirit Stones.

What did that mean?

In other words, this tiny Storage Bag held at least half a first-tier Spirit Vein.

How could Chen Xianhe not be shocked?

"Thirteenth Uncle, I earned all these Spirit Stones through my trade with the Merfolk Tribe."

"You mean you sold most of the Flying Swords you forged to the Merfolk Tribe?"

Chen Daoxuan nodded. "Exactly."

Hearing that answer, Chen Xianhe's heart suddenly clenched. Looking at the Flying Swords on the floor, he immediately found them far less appealing.

"Then why not sell all these Flying Swords to the Merfolk Tribe?"

Chen Xianhe was so distressed that it was as though he had lost several hundred million.

"Wasn't I thinking that your Flying Sword supply here was tight, Thirteenth Uncle? Besides, although the Merfolk Tribe market has high profits, its scale simply cannot compare with Guang'an Prefecture. The human market is still the Chen Family's largest market."

Chen Xianhe quite agreed with that.

These past days, he had finally experienced the "enthusiasm" of Guang'an Prefecture's Rogue Cultivators.

Chen Xianhe even believed that if he raised the Flying Sword prices in the shop to eighty, or even one hundred Spirit Stones each, there would still be a large number of Rogue Cultivators willing to buy them.

But he had kept in mind what his nephew had said about establishing the Rainbow Sound Flying Sword name, so he had chosen to sell at market price rather than taking the opportunity to raise prices.

And this conduct had built an excellent brand image for Rainbow Sound Flying Sword among the countless Rogue Cultivators, allowing its reputation to spread ever wider.

By now,

Nearly every Rogue Cultivator in the Rogue Cultivator Market had heard of such a Flying Sword shop. The Flying Swords it sold were not only excellent in quality, but cheap as well.

The only drawback was that supply was insufficient, making them extremely hard to buy.

But Rogue Cultivators found even this shortcoming entirely understandable.

Because they all knew that it was not easy for an Artifact Forger to forge Flying Swords. They had to be made one blade at a time, so no one used it as an excuse to cause trouble.

After all, having such an affordable artifact shop in the Rogue Cultivator Market was a good thing for every Rogue Cultivator.