The grade of the natural treasures used for Magical Treasures could be classified as third grade.
Just like third-grade talismans and third-grade pills!
There was a reason they were expensive.
A first-grade pill could usually be bought for just a few spirit stones!
But once pills reached the second grade, their prices rose dramatically.
Take Qi-Gathering Pills and Spirit-Gathering Pills, for example. A first-grade Qi-Gathering Pill cost only two spirit stones, but a bottle of twelve Spirit-Gathering Pills cost two thousand spirit stones even at the Alchemy Shop.
That worked out to an average of more than a hundred and sixty spirit stones per pill.
Why?
Because the costs were too high.
First-grade pills required only first-grade spirit herbs, which were extremely easy to cultivate. In any Spirit Field where spiritual energy emerged, seeds could be scattered and a plentiful harvest gathered within a year.
Second-grade spirit herbs, however, could no longer mature in a single year.
Take the main ingredient of the Foundation Establishment Pill, century-old purple ginseng. Its name meant exactly what it said: purple ginseng that was a hundred years old.
Leaving aside how painstaking it was to cultivate, that age alone offered a glimpse of the difficulty involved.
Talismans were the same.
The main cost of a third-grade talisman was third-grade Talisman Paper.
Where did third-grade Talisman Paper come from?
Simple: it was made from third-grade spirit herbs such as heavenly spirit hemp and immortal reed grass, or from the hides of Golden Core Stage Demon Beasts.
Which of those things was easy to obtain?
That was the fundamental reason why a treasure's price multiplied dozens or even hundreds of times when its grade rose by just one level.
"One hundred and thirty-five thousand spirit stones!"
"One hundred and forty thousand!"
"One hundred and forty-five thousand..."