Your Grandpa's Thermos

Most of the stallholders did this on the side, having obtained a few items from instances that they had no use for.

Rather than sell them cheaply to item resellers, they came to set up stalls themselves.

As a result, each stall displayed very few items, with an average of no more than five.

If a stall had a large selection on display, its owner was a professional item dealer.

You could buy items from them or sell items to them.

As for how much you could get, that depended on your ability to resist their attempts to drive down the price.

Before long, Zuo Cheng'an spotted a green-quality blade:

Thanks to the Eye of Truth, Zuo Cheng'an could see all the item's information without touching it.

[Headless Butcher's Cleaver (Green)]

[Category: Weapon]

[Effect: Attack +18 (30). The more hostile targets killed within one hour, the higher its attack, up to a maximum of 30.]

[Restriction: Intense resentment clings to it. Without a means of suppression, every hostile creature killed with it has a 3% chance of reducing mental power.]

[Description: Hahahaha? I'm insane? Huh? That's right, I'm insane! Goodbye, wretched world!!]

Through the Eye of Truth, he could also learn from the annotations that this Butcher's cleaver originated from the instance "2-1424 Human and Livestock Crematorium."

Good items never lacked buyers. Around the stall displaying the Headless Butcher's Cleaver,

besides Zuo Cheng'an and Tian Wenliang, a player wearing a gray robe was bargaining with the stallholder.

He had his eye on the same cleaver.

"499? What, is this one of those shopping apps where you share links to get the price cut? Two hundred, tops!"

The stallholder also wore a gray robe, mysteriously concealing even his build.

But judging by his voice, he was a middle-aged man. "Two hundred!? You want a green-quality item for two hundred points? Dream on."

The player was a skilled haggler. "Look at this item's side effect. It can reduce your mental power! If you can enter level-two instances, you know how dangerous losing mental power in an instance is, right?"

The stallholder stubbornly defended himself. "Doesn't it say you can suppress it with other items? Just buy a talisman or a Peachwood Sword or something."

"Easy for you to say! Nothing connected to the supernatural comes cheap.

"A green-quality protective talisman costs enough to buy two Butcher's cleavers. How is that any different from buying a phone just to use a phone case?"

The stallholder was left speechless and waved a hand. "Four hundred and fifty. That's my lowest price. Its attack is pretty good, after all, above average even among green items. Take it if you can accept that."

Supernatural instances were the instances all players were most reluctant to enter.

Even with a guide, they still didn't want to go.

Without suitable items, they could do nothing to a ghost even if it stood right in front of them, leaving them at a severe disadvantage.

And with nobody entering those instances, naturally nobody brought items out of them.

This had created a market where supernatural items were scarce.

"Two hundred and fifty!" The player raised his offer a little.

The stallholder lowered his price a little too. "Four hundred and thirty."

"Two hundred and eighty."

The stallholder grew agitated. "Three hundred and eighty, absolute minimum! I nearly got cut in half getting this cleaver from the Butcher. I barely cleared the instance with my guts hanging out. Any less would be an insult to what I went through."

"All right, all right. Three hundred and eighty, deal."

At that moment, Zuo Cheng'an stepped forward. He didn't offer a higher price to make the stallholder sell him the Butcher's cleaver.

In any case, he couldn't afford it unless he emptied his pockets.

Instead, he pointed to another item on the stall, a white-quality item only about the size of a cardboard tube that looked like a stainless-steel thermos.

It was small enough to grip and unscrew the lid with one hand.

"How much for this flask?"

The stallholder was busy trading with the other player. Hearing the question, he glanced at the item Zuo Cheng'an was pointing at, and the corner of his eye twitched. "179. It's awkward to explain. You can touch it and check the information yourself."

Zuo Cheng'an knew why the stallholder looked so conflicted. It was entirely because the item's name could easily be taken the wrong way.

[Your Grandpa's Thermos (White)]

[Category: Item]

[Effect: Can store six liters of liquid.]

[Restriction: Its appearance is rather grandpa-like.]

[Description: Carry this, and you'll be the coolest guy with the biggest pension in the park!]

This item came from the instance "1-0093 Urban Express Delivery."

By following a guide to trigger a delivery driver's side quest, you would receive Your Grandpa's Thermos as the reward upon completing the quest.

Because it was so practical, many guilds specifically organized players who had never been there to enter the instance.

Their goal was to get more of these thermos items.

Later, before entering a wilderness survival instance or one without supplies,

they would first fill Your Grandpa's Thermos with diluted sugar water or salt water.

That way, even with bad luck, basic survival in the instance wouldn't be a problem.

But... how could an item you could obtain simply by buying a guide and following the steps sell for 179?

That was the price of a top-tier white-quality healing item.

Tian Wenliang knew why and, in a rare moment of initiative, spoke up. "This item comes from '1-0093 Urban Express Delivery,' an instance from decades ago. It's long since closed, so this item is out of circulation. You can't get any more."

So instances with numbers too close to the beginning could close?

Zuo Cheng'an followed up. "Then what's the cutoff number for the instances that have closed now?"

Tian Wenliang stared blankly for a moment, spending two seconds recalling. "All level-one instances numbered below one thousand have closed. For level two, it's those below four hundred. Only ten level-three instances have closed so far. None above level three have ever closed."

The higher an instance's level in the game, the fewer there were.

The number of level-one instances developed had already approached five thousand.

There were nearly three thousand level-two instances as well, while level-three instances had only just passed one thousand. Zuo Cheng'an hadn't seen any higher-level instances in the Instance Hall, presumably because the chance of them appearing was too low.

If this was an out-of-circulation item with one fewer left every time one broke, then 179 seemed quite reasonable for a thermos with collector's value.

But when shopping, no matter how cheap the price, you haggled first.

Zuo Cheng'an copied the player who had already bought the Butcher's cleaver and left, slashing the thermos's price by more than half.

"Will you sell it for 80 points?"

That was a rather drastic cut. The stallholder answered without thinking. "No."

"Then how much will you take?"

"179."

Unlike the others, Zuo Cheng'an hadn't put on a robe as a disguise before coming out. Seeing his young face and judging that he didn't look like much of a haggler, the stallholder refused to budge.

Zuo Cheng'an didn't indulge him either. He turned and left with Tian Wenliang.

In the end, it was just a container for liquid. For the same price, he could buy a small storage item. Wouldn't that be more useful than a thermos that could only hold water?

A seller who knew how to do business should have lowered the price a little after his first attempt to haggle. Anyone who still clung stubbornly to the original price

either didn't need those few points and didn't care whether the deal went through, or intended to fleece him.

Seeing Zuo Cheng'an about to leave, the stallholder hastily relented. "One hundred and seventy-five! If you're serious about buying it, one hundred and seventy, no lower!"

Zuo Cheng'an had already walked away. He planned to make a circuit first and see whether there were any more suitable items.

He wanted a container to hold Ketchup. A thermos could make do,

but because Ketchup was semisolid, it would be hard to pour out if there was too little left, which could be fatal in an emergency.

Something like a hand-soap dispenser, which could squeeze out its contents with a press, would be ideal.

If non-items weren't barred from instances, Zuo Cheng'an would already have bought a suitable container at the mall.