As for Chen Ping, he was speaking quietly with Ning Tian.
"You've sold it all already? How much did you get?"
"Enough for you to throw around on the black market tonight."
A faintly smug smile appeared on Ning Tian's face. Mingdu was practically half her home turf. Although the Nine Treasures Glazed Tile Sect's influence in Mingdu was not particularly great, it certainly had plenty of dealings with the local snakes.
Ning Tian had connections, and Chen Ping had information. He knew that the rare metals currently circulating in large quantities on the black market would all be used as stakes for the upcoming Soul Engineer tournament secretly backed by the Holy Spirit Cult, sending their prices soaring across the board. So he had contacted Ning Tian early and seized the opportunity to make a hefty profit.
Originally, Chen Ping really had not had much liquid capital on hand. Even if he entered the market, he would only have counted as a small-time investor. But with Ning Tian, the young sect master of the Nine Treasures Glazed Tile Sect, helping him work the circuit, even the profits alone were enough for him to swim like a dragon through this black market.
More precisely, he would be swimming like a dragon through the betting pools for the underground Soul Engineer tournament organized by Mingdu's three largest underground powers, taking advantage of the Continental Youth Advanced Soul Master Elite Tournament.
At dusk, Chen Ping had already quietly taken Huo Yuhao straight to the black-market competition venue. Until they faced genuinely strong teams later on, neither of them needed to take the field at all, so entering the evening's Soul Tool Crafting Tournament put no pressure on them whatsoever.
The requirements for the first qualifying round were simple, too. Crafting a Level