Abysswall Market

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Chapter 47: Abysswall Market

"Gurgle."

As they watched Golden Egg bouncing about on the table, Chen Dong and Huang Xiaoling both fell silent.

After a long while, the couple exchanged a glance, then turned their eyes toward Chen Beiwu together.

Huang Xiaoling coughed twice and asked tactfully, "Didn't the Spirit Beast Pavilion have any better companion beasts?"

As a cultivator with a true water spiritual root, she knew Golden Scales' shortcomings and the difficulty of advancing them all too well. Saying that even people and dogs despised them would hardly be an exaggeration.

Cultivators with dual metal and water spiritual roots, on the other hand, tended to favor Golden Scales.

"Golden Egg is the companion beast best suited to me," Chen Beiwu said softly.

Huang Xiaoling froze, the advice she had been about to offer catching in her throat.

Chen Beiwu was no child. Rather than question him, perhaps what she ought to do was trust him.

Chen Dong interrupted the conversation. "Let's eat first."

A companion beast contract was difficult to change once formed. Whatever they said now, they could not alter that reality.

Besides, he did not believe his son would sever his own Dao path. Perhaps this Golden Scale had some unique qualities.

Over dinner, Chen Dong struck up a conversation, asking about Chen Beiwu's cultivation.

When he heard that his son planned to cultivate at home on his own, he did not object. Instead, he exchanged a glance with his wife and brought up another subject.

"The Tile Factory happens to be on break lately. Your mother and I are planning to visit Fallen Dragon Prefecture this month."

"How long will you be gone?" Chen Beiwu suddenly remembered that his family had been short of money a while ago.

"About half a month," Chen Dong said hesitantly.

Heart-Severing Cold Syndrome was difficult to cure at its root, but the operation to treat it was not complicated and counted as minor surgery.

Normally, three days would suffice. To prevent a relapse, however, he planned to have his wife rest at the Immortal Hospital for a few extra days and recuperate properly.

"Are we still short of spirit stones? I have some spirit origin left," Chen Beiwu asked with concern.

"No. That bloodface vine sold for nine hundred and fifty spirit origin. You've only just contracted your companion beast. This is precisely when you need spirit origin," Huang Xiaoling refused firmly.

After dinner, Chen Beiwu returned to the cultivation room on the second floor, and his body vanished in an instant.

In the land of chaos, a colossal gate held up the heavens.

Fortune was fickle and traceless. Ordinary cultivators could not sense changes in their own fortune at all. Chen Beiwu was different, however: he could use Nine-Breath Chaos to clearly perceive those changes.

When he discovered an additional wisp of golden radiance beneath Nine-Breath Chaos, delight lit up Chen Beiwu's eyes.

His guess had been right.

After contracting Golden Egg, his fortune had ridden that momentum and undergone a transformation as well. Yet the wisp of crimson calamity aura that had quietly appeared to the right of Nine-Breath Chaos dampened much of the joy on his face.

Fortune and misfortune relied on each other. With the birth of his golden fortune, he had also gained a wisp of crimson calamity aura representing terrible ill fortune. Its potency far exceeded the gray ill-luck aura that had appeared before, as though some bloody disaster was about to strike.

I can't let this crimson calamity aura keep brewing, lest disaster turn into a tribulation.

With a thought, Chen Beiwu activated the Nine-Breath Qi Ingestion divine ability, directly employing its fourth breath to channel fortune and dispel tribulation.

"Hum!"

Under his control, a strand of blue fortune charged fearlessly into the crimson calamity aura, dimming its radiance a fraction.

Not enough? Chen Beiwu shifted his gaze toward the five strands of green fortune.

;psme&;psme&

"Hum!" ;psme&;psme&

As the five strands of green fortune coiled around the crimson calamity aura like snakes, its bloody crimson glow gradually faded, replaced by a hazy layer of gray ill-luck aura.

Chen Beiwu exhaled a breath of stale air and opened his eyes in satisfaction.

Gray ill-luck aura did not qualify as a calamity. At most, it would worsen his luck and bring him some inconsequential mishaps, such as catching nothing while fishing or encountering birds that angrily dropped dung on him while he walked. There was no need to waste more fortune dissolving it.

I can keep that strand of golden fortune to anchor my fate and fortune. What matters most now is exploiting the differences between the two worlds to earn my first pot of gold as quickly as possible and gather enough spirit stones to buy the All Arts Converge Jianmu Heavenly Scripture.

At that thought, Chen Beiwu turned his gaze toward the indescribably magnificent gate within the chaotic world.

...;psme&;psme&

A day later, a handsome figure suddenly joined the queue outside Abysswall Market.

Almost all of them are Qi Refining cultivators, Chen Beiwu thought as he surveyed the surrounding crowd.

Abysswall Market stood at a major transport crossroads between the Three Kingdoms. With its heavy traffic, considerable size, and good reputation, it could be called the most famous cultivation market near the Marshland Kingdom. Even Foundation Establishment bandit cultivators dared not cause trouble here, attracting large numbers of ordinary Qi Refining cultivators to take up residence.

Chen Beiwu had only decided to visit Abysswall Market after reading the diaries left behind by Lin Yu and the others.

There was no other reason: it was relatively safe!

The cultivation lineage controlling Abysswall Market was the Cloudsea Shen Household, a renowned Foundation Establishment lineage in the Marshland Kingdom. Three Foundation Establishment experts presided over it, and all the surrounding cultivation lineages feared its might.

But what tempted Chen Beiwu even more was the Cloudsea Shen Household's extraordinary backing. ;psme&;psme&

It was the Mirror Moon Palace, one of the Five Great Sects of the Earth Evolution Realm. Every five years, the Mirror Moon Palace recruited a batch of outer disciples at Abysswall Market.

Moving forward in the queue with the crowd, Chen Beiwu looked up and saw a tall, imposing ceremonial gateway. Its plaque bore the words "Abysswall Market" in large, archaic characters, radiating a presence impossible to ignore. At a glance, it was clearly the work of a powerful expert.

At the gateway's entrance stood two stern-faced cultivators in blue-green Daoist robes. One registered cultivators entering the market, while the other handed out jade slips.

"Get lost! Where did this beggar come from? You don't even have two spirit stones, yet you want to enter the market?" the gatekeeper snapped without a shred of courtesy.

"Fellow Daoist, could you make an exception? I have an exotic herb here that I could offer as collateral..."

Before the shabbily dressed rogue cultivator could finish, the gatekeeper snatched the exotic herb from his hand and kicked him away.

"Rules are rules. They cannot be broken. If you have no spirit stones, get the hell away," the other cultivator said coldly.

The rogue cultivator looked reluctantly at the exotic herb in the gatekeeper's hand, gritted his teeth, and staggered away.

The cultivators queuing nearby were already so accustomed to this scene that they had no interest in even lifting their heads for a glance.

With market gatekeepers acting this brazenly, this place still counts as relatively safe? Just how chaotic is the Southern Wasteland's Earth Evolution Realm? Chen Beiwu's heart sank.

A gatekeeper had openly seized a rogue cultivator's spiritual material, yet no one cared. Instead, they took it for granted.

In the Immortal Alliance, even a Foundation Establishment rogue person would not dare openly seize an ordinary Qi Refining cultivator's belongings, let alone injure them.

"Senior, one spirit stone will suffice." The cultivator in Daoist robes bowed slightly, his tone respectful.

Chen Beiwu asked no questions. He simply handed over a spirit stone, then accepted a market-entry jade slip from the other gatekeeper.

He had barely taken a few steps before another stream of angry curses reached him from behind.

"Get lost! You dare pass spirit sand off as spirit stones? You old bastard, do you have a death wish?"

Chen Beiwu did not pause and continued forward.

The weak were meat for the strong: that was the law of the world. The Southern Wasteland was simply more blatant, bloodier, and more absolute about it.

He could not look after others. He could only look after himself.

(End of chapter)