Black Jade Demon King City, Talia District.
A dilapidated little stone house held only a few simple, crude furnishings-a table, chairs, and a bed. Apart from those, there was only an iron pot. On the stone bed lay a woman in coarse hemp clothing, long since dead.
Blood Spirit walked silently into the room, dropped to his knees with a thud before his mother's stone bed, and kowtowed several times without a word. Rising with a wooden expression, he looked back at Han Shuo and said, "Master, I want to bury my mother!"
Han Shuo nodded without saying much. He took a few glossy black "Black Stone Coins" from his Spatial Ring and placed them on the cracked table in the middle of the room.
No matter the plane, burying the dead cost money, and the Abyss Realm was naturally no exception. Blood Spirit had left home to get enough money to give his mother a proper burial. He had never expected to run into some hostile "old friends" on the road and nearly be beaten to death.
Had this penniless youth not met Han Shuo, he probably would not have earned enough to bury his mother even by the time her body rotted. Blood Spirit dispensed with empty formalities toward his newly acknowledged master. Glancing at the high-denomination "Black Stone Coins" Han Shuo had placed on the stone table, he merely said woodenly, "Thank you, Master."
In the Abyss Realm, "Black Stone Coins" were the highest-denomination gold currency in circulation. One "Black Stone Coin" could be exchanged for ten "Blue Stone Coins" or a hundred "Yellow Stone Coins." Normally, a few "Blue Stone Coins" would pay for a proper burial. The several "Black Stone Coins" Han Shuo had set down were more than enough for Blood Spirit to spend