"Everyone, please calm down!"
"Those three extraordinary stones with astronomical price tags yesterday were indeed purchased by an elder. Old Master Ghost Eye can step forward and testify to that shortly."
Yanlong drew a deep breath and addressed the crowd in a ringing voice.
Now that one of the Great Evolution Stone Workshop's ten direct disciples had spoken, many of the skeptical voices around them gradually died down. There were still exceptions, however.
"Who knows which elder it was? You won't even give us a name. Spending that much Source on three lousy rocks-could some old monster have crawled out of the ground and taken a fancy to your counterfeit filled stones...?"
The Luo Family's sixth brother muttered this in a low, snide voice.
The crowd immediately erupted in laughter.
The people who had only just quieted down burst into laughter again.
"Sixth Brother, watch what you say! The Great Evolution Sacred Land is open and upright. How could it possibly use counterfeit filled stones to deceive us?" Luo Qingying declared with a perfectly serious expression.
It would have been better if he had kept quiet. The moment he spoke, Yanlong's face beside him darkened further.
The corner of Luo Yue's mouth twitched too, and her cold little face nearly lost its composure. Sometimes, she had to admit that the Luo Family truly was...
A place where talents sprang up in endless succession!
An aunt who lost every bet, a sixth brother with a godlike gift for sarcasm, and a third uncle who delivered everything with a straight face-not a single person in that enormous family was simple.
"Little Yue, ignore them. Pick your stones first. Just tell us if anything catches your eye."
Jiang Wei remained as gentle and refined as ever. Seeing Luo Yue's little face held so stiffly, he spoke with a smile.
Luo Yue nodded, thinking, Are you all done performing? Once you're finished, it's my turn.
Deep within her ice-blue eyes, the Qi Refining Art, enhanced by the [Yellow River Chart and Lo Shu], was already circulating.
In an instant, the world shed its colors and became a monotonous black and white. Only the stones of various shapes shone with multicolored radiance, some bright and some dim, some dense and some faint.
Ashen white lay deathly still, scarlet blazed like flames, emerald ripples flowed, violet qi rose, golden light glittered... Most of the stones, however, were shrouded in heavy gray-black primordial qi, making them difficult to see through.
Her gaze was as sharp as a blade as it swept swiftly across the entire Heaven-Class Stone Garden. Most of the stones had nowhere to hide before her eyes; whether they held anything inside and how valuable it was became clear at a glance.
The Heaven-Class Stone Garden clearly contained far more stones from the Primordial Ancient Mine than the Earth-Ranked Stone Garden did.
This Great Evolution Stone Workshop even has counterfeit filled stones in its Heaven-Class Stone Garden. Aren't they afraid someone with a fiery temper will come flip their tables...? Luo Yue was silently speechless.
Those were not her main target, however.
Luo Yue focused on sensing the faint stirring of the Heaven-Mending Stone fragment in her Life Spring, trying to catch that ancient, five-colored aura of chaos that shared its origin.
She wanted to find another fragment of the Heaven-Mending Stone.
That was plainly rather unlikely, though. Obtaining even one corner fragment had already taken luck so outrageously good it defied heaven.
Just then, a cold, obscure aura, thick with the breath of decay and a trace of ill omen, suddenly stabbed into the range of Luo Yue's black-and-white perception like a lurking venomous snake.
Luo Yue's gaze instantly locked onto an inconspicuous corner deep within the stone garden.
Several stones stood there, their shapes exceedingly strange and their colors so dark they were almost black. Twisted natural markings covered their surfaces, resembling congealed filthy blood or distorted ghost faces.
The light they emitted was not any color that represented life. Instead, it was a reddish gray woven from dark crimson and murkiness, making her feel revulsion-even fear-in the depths of her divine soul!
The largest was roughly half a person's height and shaped like a twisted heart. Its ominous aura was the strongest, with nearly tangible black-red mist coiling around it. Ordinary eyes could not see it, but it could not escape the Qi Gazing Art enhanced by the [Yellow River Chart and Lo Shu].
Baleful qi, wrapped in death and resentment. How do they still dare sell these stones? Their intentions are rotten through and through. Luo Yue frowned inwardly.
As someone with a Divine King Body, she detested this aura. Both her divine bones and divine blood were resisting it.
These stones were anything but ordinary, yet they were certainly no harmless treasures either. Their aura filled her with instinctive aversion and wariness, as though something terribly malevolent were sealed inside. Without betraying anything, she lightly tugged Luo Qingluan's sleeve with her little hand and said:
"Auntie, look at that corner. How much is the biggest strange black-red stone?"
Luo Qingluan followed her gaze and saw that hideous "heart stone." Bold as she was, she could not help frowning. Merely looking at it made her uncomfortable.
She called out to the Great Evolution steward beside them, "Steward, how much is that pitch-black stone that looks like a rotten heart?"
The steward looked in the direction she indicated, and his expression instantly turned rather strange, even showing a trace of fear. He cautiously glanced at Yanlong's expression beside him before lowering his voice.
"Miss Luo, that is ancient ominous stone brought from deep within the Burial Immortal Pit. It was tainted by the dreadful baleful qi of an ancient battlefield and must not be disturbed lightly by ordinary people. The asking price is thirty thousand jin of pure Source."
"Thirty thousand jin?"
Luo Qingluan sucked in a cold breath.
Some stone gamblers nearby who rarely visited the Heaven-Class Stone Garden also burst into an uproar upon hearing the price.
The price was simply appalling, far beyond that of ordinary Earth-Ranked stones. And the words "Burial Immortal Pit," "Ancient ominous stone," and "dreadful baleful qi" were even more discouraging.
"Hmph, putting on airs to make it seem mysterious! You dare charge an astronomical price for a lousy rock?" Luo Qingluan scoffed.
Just then, an aged, hoarse voice, like sandpaper scraping, abruptly rang out, thick with mockery.
"If you know nothing, little girl, stop barking!"
"This is a 'Heart-Burial Stone,' tainted by some primordial fiend. It holds a baleful weapon that could shock the world, or perhaps a peerless treasure. Its baleful aura can devour a person's divine soul. None but those whose Source Arts reach divine heights may touch it!"
"If you Luo Family youngsters have the courage, buy it and cut it open. I only fear you won't live to enjoy it."
Everyone turned toward the voice and saw a hunched old man dressed in coarse gray hemp robes, who had appeared in a corner of the stone garden at some unknown point.
His face was withered and his eyes clouded, but one eye was exceptionally strange. The white occupied almost all of it, with a pupil as tiny as a bean. It now flickered with eerie green light as he stared fixedly at Luo Yue and her companions.
"It's that old monster Ghost Eye! Why did the Great Evolution Sacred Land invite him here?"
"Shh. That old ghost is an honored guest of Great Evolution now."
As soon as this strange old man appeared, those around them who recognized him all looked shocked.
Even Luo Qingying, Jiang Wei, and the others frowned, seemingly never having expected this old man to appear here now. Only Luo Yue looked relatively unimpressed.
However,
She seemed to sense the aura of someone in the same trade...
"Little Yue, be careful. This old fellow used to be a master tomb robber. Rumor has it
"that one of his eyes is the legendary Netherworld Eye. He's also proficient in Source Arts, with the ability to see through the netherworld, perform Dragon-Seeking and Gold-Divining, and use Mountain-and-River Binding."
"He used to be an old ghost who couldn't bear the light of day, someone everyone wanted to beat. Then, somehow, Great Evolution took him in. He's been doing their dirty work for years," Luo Qingluan explained quietly.
Understanding dawned on Luo Yue after she heard this. She had wondered why he carried that familiar yet extraordinary smell of earth. So he was a "fellow professional"...
Then she would not stand on ceremony!
Luo Yue looked at the old monster Ghost Eye and asked with a very serious little face, "Grandpa, you helped the Great Evolution Sacred Land make all the counterfeit filled stones in this garden, didn't you?"
"Grandpa, could you teach me when you have time?" Luo Yue's clear, childish voice sounded especially distinct-and especially grating-in the now-silent Heaven-Class Stone Garden.
She tilted her little head, her ice-blue eyes clear to their depths, looking utterly sincere and innocent. She seemed like nothing more than an inquisitive seven-year-old child asking an "elder" to teach her his craft.
That innocent, guileless expression of bewildered curiosity, paired with those devastating words...
Instantly blew the whole place apart!
The entire Heaven-Class Stone Garden sank into a brief, suffocating deathly silence.
Everyone seemed to have been pinned in place by invisible spikes of ice. Even their breathing stopped.
After that brief dead silence came an uproar like mountains collapsing and seas roaring, followed by uncontrollable gasps rising one after another.
"Hiss-"
"So that's it! I wondered why I kept losing lately! I knew something fishy was going on!"
"Damn it, nobody told me the fishy business was that old ghost Ghost Eye's doing!"
"Refund our Source! The Great Evolution Sacred Land is cheating people! Give back our hard-earned Source!"
"Ghost Eye, you old monster! You rotten old bastard who deserves to have his line die out! All you do is this foul, wicked business!"
"Great Evolution, how can you face us after this!"
The gamblers who had lost everything at the Great Evolution Stone Workshop, who had suspected something was wrong with the stones but lacked any proof, instantly boiled over.
Seeing that it had worked, Luo Yue's lips curled up slightly.
Although acting cute and innocent now gave even her goosebumps.
But once there was a first time, there would be a second. She had actually refused at the beginning, but what could she do? This trick was simply far too useful!