Chapter 23
Chapter 23: Trading Market
With that doubt burning in her chest, Shao Heng sent Duo Bao back to the disciples’ residence first. After giving it instructions and activating the formation at her doorway, she went straight to the Wondrous Dharma Tower.
She couldn’t ask others.
If she let slip that she’d taken a planting task, it wouldn’t take much for someone to start connecting threads. Better to search the tower’s records and learn what she could before making any move that drew attention.
Following the book list she’d already compiled, she pulled volumes from the first three floors, carried them down, and stacked them on a table.
Complete Guide to a Hundred Demons. Thousand-Gold Spirit Medicine Formulary. Grand Debate on Earth Bearing the Four Elements. Essentials of Basic Spells.
More than twenty books in all, only three of them related to planting. No obvious pattern. No obvious target.
Even in the Mortal Realm, Shao Heng had lived by a simple creed: cautious steps, loud life.
If mortals could grow shrewd with age, then in the cultivation world—what high-realm cultivator wasn’t an old monster?
She read steadily, page after page, until the anxious tightness in her chest eased into quiet focus.
Nearly two hours passed.
Late afternoon arrived. Disciples who had just finished a full day of lectures on the fourth floor dragged themselves downstairs with faces full of misery.
A strikingly beautiful girl among them—Yan Ning—looked haggard, her eyes heavy with frustration. As she descended, she suddenly spotted someone and grabbed the sleeve of the person beside her.
“Qin Ji,” she hissed. “Look. It’s Lu Shao Heng.”
They had entered the One Yuan Sect the same year, but some came from cultivation clans and others from the Mortal Realm. Cliques formed naturally.
They were from the Great Yan dynasty and had known each other since childhood. They moved closer together as if pulled by habit.
Qin Ji turned his head.
A yellow-robed girl sat at a table, head bowed over a thick book, expression calm. Too calm.
“She still has energy to read here,” Yan Ning said, voice sour. “So Elder Zhao was right. She must have entered Qi Induction Realm to be this relaxed.”
Yan Ning had been a commandery princess in Great Yan, with a fief of five hundred households. Since childhood she’d lived in luxury. She’d sung when she wanted, indulged when she wanted, and no one had dared to correct her.
Now she had to wake before dawn and sit in a lecture hall for four straight hours.
Her backside felt like it had been split into four, five, six, seven, eight pieces, and she still couldn’t sense even a whisper of the spiritual qi of heaven and earth.
After class, she could barely meditate for an hour or two before her will collapsed into exhaustion. She’d sleep like a stone, jolt awake in panic, and scramble back to the tower.
In less than 10 days, the burning ambition she’d carried into the sect had been ground into dust, replaced by resentment so thick she felt like she could raise demons with it.
She hated how easy Shao Heng looked.
But she also knew they’d long since fallen out. Now that Shao Heng had stepped into Qi Induction Realm, Yan Ning couldn’t pick a fight without being laughed at.
Qin Ji watched Shao Heng without speaking.
A dark glint flickered in his eyes.
Jiang Yun Jiang had entered the inner sect. They hadn’t been in contact for a long time.
But Shao Heng…
Shao Heng had once been his fiancée.
—
Shao Heng’s spiritual sense was sharp. Of course she noticed the stares.
She didn’t care.
After a brief pause, she dipped her gaze back to the page. Let them look. If she’d learned anything since stepping into this world, it was that attention was inevitable.
She just had to survive it.
By the time she closed the last book and returned the borrowed volumes to their shelves, she had found three ways to replenish the spiritual qi in spirit-field soil.
The first: a precious earth-element treasure called Living Soil. It was said that a single grain could become a mountain, endlessly renewed. Buried in a field, it would prevent barrenness no matter how hard the cultivator pushed planting.
Shao Heng read the passage twice, then laughed under her breath.
Living Soil wasn’t luxury. It was fantasy.
An earth-element treasure like that was something Golden Core Stage and Nascent Soul Stage cultivators would kill for.
The second: set up a spirit-gathering formation in the field, replenishing losses at all times.
But formations cost money. And a formation that constantly drew in scattered spiritual qi would lower the qi density nearby, drawing the sect’s notice sooner or later.
Not feasible.
That left the third method.
After each planting of spirit plants or herbs, replenish the soil with something rich in earth-element qi—like Thick Earth Pill. The books mentioned pill alchemists refining it specifically for demon beasts or spirit fields.
Whether the spirit stones she earned could cover the cost would have to wait until she had real numbers in hand.
Moonlight poured across the stone paths when she left the Wondrous Dharma Tower. Stars scattered like frost across the sky.
She stopped and looked up.
“The Discourse on Roots and Bones Seeking Heaven says the roots-and-bones aptitude measured by Human Clan cultivators is a reflection of talent,” she murmured. “If your five elements lean toward fire, fire-element spells will be smoother.”
She thought of Jiang Yun Jiang.
High-Grade Aptitude. A “White Tiger” true embryo. Even without a cultivation method, the spiritual power Jiang Yun Jiang cultivated carried a thread of metal killing intent. Every spell would naturally strike harder, sharper.
Shao Heng flexed her fingers toward the sky, as if she could grab a handful of stars.
They didn’t move.
She snorted twice, clasped her hands behind her back, and strode off with exaggerated steps.
Behind her, the full moon and the stars brightened for a single instant—sharp as a blink—then returned to normal.
—
It was a blazing sunny day.
Outside the One Yuan Sect’s mountain gate, a market had formed: vendors shouting, merchants haggling, cultivators arguing, laughter and curses rolling together into constant noise.
As a top-tier immortal sect, One Yuan Sect disciples were wealthy, and where wealth gathered, merchants followed. Over time, trading houses took root. A proper Trading Market had grown here.
It was close to the mountain gate. Merchants coordinated with the sect, paid taxes for protection, and Law Enforcement Pavilion disciples patrolled regularly. Anyone who broke market rules would be punished.
Shao Heng blended into the crowd, unhurried, her steps easy.
Yesterday, she had completed her final round of testing in the spirit field. The third time she turned the Azure Emperor spirit liquid into rain, she reaped a full-field harvest.
After processing it with spells and removing the husks, she had a net weight of 580 jin of White Jade Spirit Rice.
She’d compared her new harvest with a handful saved from the seed bag, tasted both, and confirmed the spiritual qi inside was similar—no obvious difference. Only then had she felt safe selling it.
If her rice had contained noticeably more qi than ordinary spirit rice, she wouldn’t have dared bring it to market so casually.
She had the Gray Cocoon seal her aura completely. She wore a veiled hat. She visited multiple rice shops, asked prices, haggled until her tongue was dry.
In the end, she sold 240 jin at a rate of one spirit stone for four jin, keeping aside what she needed for task hand-in and the next sowing.
She earned 60 spirit stones.
All told, Shao Heng now had 157 spirit stones.
She entered an elegant trading house with tasteful décor, intending to ask about Thick Earth Pill—
And then a display case stole her breath.
A bow hung suspended in midair, held by a faint white glow. It was so beautiful it almost hurt to look at.
Shao Heng couldn’t help herself. “Whoa,” she whispered. “What a gorgeous bow.”