Not long after the auction began, Xiao Yan started to regret coming. The reason was simple: the items being auctioned were far too low-grade. Even a weapon inlaid with a second-tier magic core was praised so extravagantly that flowers might have rained from the heavens, let alone anything else. Aside from buying a Medicine Cauldron, Xiao Yan barely bid at all. Nor had he bought it because its quality was particularly good. The one he had previously used for alchemy had exploded, so he could only buy this thing to make do.
Just as Xiao Yan was growing bored enough to doze off, a commotion suddenly rose from the auction floor. The sudden swell of noise prompted him to look over curiously, but when he saw what was being auctioned onstage, he froze.
On the auction stage stood an enormous iron cage, and curled up inside was a girl who looked only seven or eight years old. Her body was painfully thin, and she looked sickly all over. Bloodstains were still visible on the flimsy clothes draped over her, left by the wounds where a whip had struck her body.
Although the Jia Ma Empire did not prohibit the slave trade, few people were willing to buy a slave this young who looked as though she might collapse from illness at any moment. For that very reason, the girl had gone unsold many times. Each time she returned, a whipping awaited her, leaving her body even weaker.
A few people with peculiar tastes had considered bidding on the girl, but when they saw the green scales on her wrists, they suppressed the thought. Those scales meant that she had been born from a union between a human and one of the Snake-People, and such children were often regarded as a