After claiming the small sword, the young woman seemed to feel a twinge of guilt, because she said to Andy: "Go ahead and see what's in the storage pouch. Should be some good things in there—you can keep it all." As she said this, a sly little smile slipped across her face. She was putting on a show of generosity.
If the young man had owned any better artifacts, he would have used them in the fight—so the storage pouch was unlikely to contain anything of real value.
Andy had no idea what she was thinking. He assumed she was giving him everything out of gratitude for saving her life.
He channeled a small amount of spiritual power into the storage pouch as instructed, then gave it a gentle shake, spilling its contents onto the ground. Out came a tattered old book and more than a dozen stones of various colors.
The stones were spirit stones. As the name suggested, spirit stones were stones containing a certain amount of spiritual power, and their uses for cultivators were extensive. During meditation, simply holding a spirit stone allowed one to rapidly absorb and convert the stored spiritual power into one's own—far faster than the normal method of breathing in ambient spiritual energy, which greatly reduced the time needed for meditation. Beyond that, spirit stones were essential in specific quantities and qualities for both forging magical artifacts and setting up formations. Formations in particular relied entirely on spirit stones for their power supply, with the formation's strength directly tied to the amount of spiritual power the stones contained. As a result, virtually no cultivator could do without spirit stones, and they had become the standard medium of exchange in the cultivation world—the equivalent of gold and silver among mortals.
Based on the amount of spiritual power they contained, spirit stones were divided into three tiers: low-grade, mid-grade, and high-grade. A mid-grade spirit stone held roughly a hundred times the spiritual power of a low-grade one, though it cost somewhat more than a hundred low-grade stones, since a higher-tier stone could deliver more power in a single use and had broader applications. Mid-grade spirit stones were also far rarer in spirit stone veins than low-grade ones. As for high-grade spirit stones, while their spiritual power was also roughly a hundred times that of a mid-grade stone, their value was generally recognized at over a thousand times that of a mid-grade stone. This was simply because high-grade spirit stones were extraordinarily scarce. According to the texts in the Jian clan's Archive Hall, only the legendary Nascent Soul old monsters were rumored to possess such treasures. As for what special uses high-grade spirit stones might have, the texts offered no details.
Andy himself carried three low-grade spirit stones—a pale red fire-attribute stone, a light blue water-attribute stone, and a green wood-attribute stone, all common varieties. But among the dozen-odd stones before him now, one stood out immediately.
It was a fire-attribute spirit stone, but the spiritual power radiating from it was far stronger than an ordinary low-grade fire stone's. Its color was much deeper too—a dark crimson—and it was slightly translucent. It matched the description of a mid-grade spirit stone from the texts.
"A mid-grade spirit stone!" The young woman noticed it as well and let out a soft gasp, a flash of regret crossing her face.
She didn't say anything more about it, though. All told, the contents of the storage pouch were worth perhaps a hundred-odd low-grade spirit stones, while the mid-grade artifact she had taken was worth somewhere between one and two hundred. She simply hadn't expected the young man to have had a mid-grade spirit stone on him as well.
"Put your things away. It's getting dark, and you said you were heading to Liuyun Market—I'm going there too. Let's get moving." The young woman glanced up at the sky and urged him along.
Andy flipped through the old book. The title on the cover read Art of the Blazing Flame. He gave it a single glance and tossed it back into the storage pouch, then gathered up the remaining spirit stones.
The storage pouch really was convenient. Andy only needed to channel a small amount of spiritual power into it, then use his spiritual sense to easily place or retrieve any item he wished. It felt almost like magic.
The image of the young woman playing in the waterfall still lingered in the back of Andy's mind, and the faint scent of her fragrance still reached him now and then. Now that this beauty was inviting him to travel together, he was hardly going to refuse.
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The two set off toward the cliff face. Having survived a life-or-death battle together, they had warmed to each other considerably, and the conversation along the way came easily. For the most part, the young woman shared stories and curiosities from the cultivation world while Andy listened with keen interest, occasionally asking a basic question that she would patiently answer.
"My name is Liu Yingying. I'm from the Liu family, northwest of the Liuyun Mountains. Where are you from?"
"My name is Andy. No sect, no affiliation—I'm a rogue cultivator." Andy had no desire to mention the Jian clan. The Nanhua Jian Clan did carry some reputation in Gun Prefecture, and he had no intention of bringing them any embarrassment. As for the Liu family northwest of Liuyun Mountain that she had mentioned, Andy had never heard of them.
"By the way—how did you survive getting hit by that sword earlier?"
"The flying blade artifact in my pouch happened to block it. I think the sword had already lost most of its force breaking through all three layers of my Diamond Shield."
"Mm, that makes sense. Otherwise there's no way a low-grade artifact could have stopped it."
……
The two chatted as they walked, and before they knew it, they had arrived at the cliff face. The young woman produced a small red jade token, whispered a few words to it, then flicked her slender finger. The token shot up in a streak of firelight toward the mountainside and vanished into the clouds.
She turned to see Andy's astonished expression and asked with puzzlement: "Don't tell me you've never seen a Message Talisman either?"
Andy's face reddened slightly. He changed the subject: "I know what a Message Talisman is. But why didn't you tell me this morning that I'd need to send one when I reached the entrance?"
The young woman blinked, and a mischievous look crossed her face. She said with a grin, mimicking his voice: "'My lady, where might the entrance to Liuyun Market be?' You asked where the entrance was. You never asked how to get inside it. How was I supposed to think of telling you?"
Andy was speechless.
Three to five minutes after the young woman sent her Message Talisman, the dense clouds halfway up the mountainside began to churn. A shimmering, five-colored radiance slowly extended down from within the clouds, reaching all the way to the base of the cliff and forming a stairway of light roughly a zhang wide—strikingly beautiful.
"Let's go—the duty cultivator at Liuyun Market will seal this passage again before long." The young woman was already moving, bounding up the stairway of light in a few quick steps.
Andy hurried after her. The stairway began to rise, carrying both of them up into the dense clouds, then dissolved into sparkling motes of light and disappeared.
……
"This is Liuyun Market?"
Andy had expected the market to be a few busy streets and a handful of two- or three-story shops. Instead, as the fog parted before him, he found himself gazing up at a towering mountain peak, nearly a thousand zhang high. A broad road several zhang wide wound its way up the mountainside in a great spiral. Here and there, wisps of cloud large and small drifted about the peak's slopes, and the mountain was dotted everywhere with buildings—pavilions and towers of every size, numbering in the thousands at least. The widest, busiest section appeared to be a relatively flat stretch partway up the mountain, where the road broadened to several dozen zhang across and both sides were lined with densely packed buildings of three to five stories. That, presumably, was where the market proper was located.
The Jian clan settlement Andy had grown up in also had plenty of buildings and a carefully thought-out layout, but everything there was built on the flat floor of a valley. It came nowhere close to the grandeur of this market built right into the mountainside. Andy had never seen anything on this scale, and for a moment he stood there staring.
The young woman gave him a look that seemed to say: Surely you've seen a tall mountain before? The Liuyun range has plenty higher than this.
"It's getting late. Come on—there's an inn over by the market called the Cloud Immortal Lodge. They provide short-term lodgings for cultivators, and the prices are reasonable. You should check it out. All those buildings around it are shops selling pills, artifacts, raw materials, talismans, spirit beasts—everything the cultivation world has to offer. As long as you have enough spirit stones, there's nothing here you can't buy. It may look quiet now, but during the first few days of every month the market is absolutely packed. After all, this is the largest market in all of Gun Prefecture's cultivation world. They say that every three years, the market also holds a major trading fair aimed mainly at high-stage Qi Refinement and early Foundation Establishment cultivators. When that happens, you'll see more Foundation Establishment seniors here than you'd encounter in an entire lifetime…"
The young woman led Andy to the Cloud Immortal Lodge, explaining many of the market's details along the way. When they arrived before an elegant three-story pavilion, she suddenly stopped and said with a perfectly composed expression: "Here's the Cloud Immortal Lodge. Farewell, Fellow Cultivator Zhao."
Andy was caught off guard, but matched her formality, clasping his hands in return. "Thank you for guiding me, Lady Liu."
The young woman was about to turn and leave, but suddenly looked back and asked quietly: "Where did you get so many Fireball Talismans?"
"Because I happen to be a Talisman Maker," Andy said with a slight smile, unable to hide a touch of pride.
"What a coincidence—I happen to be an Alchemist," the young woman replied with a light laugh, then turned and walked away.