Chapter 20
Chapter 20: Then the Players Will Be the Ones Humiliated
After buying the beef pies, A Wu trotted back and stuffed one into each of their hands. The rest went into his small back basket, still warm through the woven bamboo.
The pies were solid—real meat, real heft. The seasoning wasn’t the delicate, over-optimized kind you’d find in the modern world, but it had a blunt, honest flavor that somehow made it better. It was miles ahead of the prepackaged stuff in real life.
And this was a game.
They chewed in stunned silence. The steamed buns from earlier had felt like a lucky exception. This wasn’t an exception. This was a whole, complicated taste—layers, texture, heat, salt, fat, the faint sweetness of flour.
Zhou Xiao turned in a slow circle, taking in the street. It was bustling, sure, but the stalls were mostly flatbreads and noodles, with the occasional hot cake stand. Compared to modern cities, the variety was thin.
“Real life still wins on options,” she concluded.
“Ancient setting,” Jiang Ya said, shrugging. “Some things just don’t exist here, even on Yun Zhou Continent.”
And cultivators on Yun Zhou Continent didn’t seem to care much about food. Mortals did, but limited development meant their cooking hadn’t been pushed very far.
Zhou Xiao’s eyes brightened. “I’m looking around—most places accept spirit stones. We could study modern food and sell it in the county town.”
Han Tian snorted. “Hard to profit. Eldest Senior Brother bought all this for two low-grade spirit stones.”
It was already decent food, and because the ingredients were mortal-grade, the price was laughably low.
“I don’t buy it,” Zhou Xiao said, stubborn. “I don’t believe cultivators reach the end and just stop craving food. It’s not that they have no desire—it’s that what they’ve got isn’t delicious enough. Be honest. If you hit a high realm later and someone hands you cream cake or fried skewers… sure, junk food, but you’re telling me you’d have zero appetite?”
Han Tian stared at her.
Then, flatly: “Impossible.”
“Mortals use ingredients without spiritual qi, so it’s cheap,” Zhou Xiao pressed. “We can work on that.”
They only understood why food ran so cheap after they started looking at pills. Even the ones refined from spirit herbs cost next to nothing.
Yun Zhou Continent had a common blood replenishing pill—usable by mortals too. Swallow one and bleeding stopped almost instantly. The effect was so immediate it outclassed any real-world first aid.
One pill: one low-grade spirit stone.
For cultivators, though, it wasn’t as miraculous. Cultivators were usually injured by cultivators of similar rank—or by demon beasts. In those cases, an ordinary blood replenishing pill didn’t do much, though it could still hold the wound at bay for a short while.
There were also qi replenishing pills, a little pricier. They replenished spiritual qi and let someone draw a bit more within a limited window. The effect was modest—barely worth mentioning—and it couldn’t be stacked.
If a mortal could use one, it might at least strengthen the body.
Two low-grade spirit stones per pill.
The numbers looked low until you compared them to the beef pies: fifty-plus pies for two low-grade spirit stones. Mortals traded in silver, not spirit stones. They couldn’t get spirit stones in bulk, which meant they couldn’t afford pills like these no matter how “cheap” they seemed.
Rarer pills typically came from medicine sects.
Wangan County didn’t have one. This was Flying Sparrow Sect territory; a medicine sect existed only in a neighboring town.
As for spirit herbs, Yun Zhou Continent had a unified purchase system.
A Wu’s errand today was spirit-herb seedlings. In Wangan County, a single pharmacy handled the supply.
Seedlings were cheap—ten for one low-grade spirit stone—but how well they grew depended entirely on the cultivator.
Mortals couldn’t grow them at all. They needed spiritual qi to feed them.
There was also fertilizer: a first-rank spirit-herb solution. One bottle cost one low-grade spirit stone and could be used up on a single plot.
The herbs you grew—blood pearl grass and spirit-boosting grass—were raw materials for blood replenishing pills and qi replenishing pills.
If the pills were cheap, the herbs were cheap too.
“If a few survive, you’re doing well,” A Wu said. “If you get lucky and grow something second rank or above, that’s Fortune. A single second-rank plant can sell for ten low-grade spirit stones.”
Like demon beasts, herbs on Yun Zhou Continent were graded by rank. Higher rank meant rarer.
The only visible difference between spirit herbs and normal plants was the faint spiritual qi clinging to them. Mortals couldn’t see it, but to cultivators it gleamed—like a soft, flowing light effect.
Jiang Ya asked, “Senior Brother, is it really that hard to get a higher rank?”
“Of course!” A Wu scratched his head. “I’ve grown spirit herbs for years. I only lucked into a second-rank blood pearl grass once, and I still don’t know how I did it.”
Han Tian leaned in. “What’s the highest a single herb can grow?”
A Wu blinked, genuinely lost. “Uh… I’m not sure. blood pearl grass and spirit-boosting grass are common. I’ve only heard of them reaching third rank at most.”
“Spirit herbs can appear at any rank,” a slow voice cut in. “There are even rumors that medicine sect disciples can cultivate seedlings into fourth rank or higher.”
The pharmacy boss emerged from behind the counter at his leisure.
He was a local fixture—an ordinary Foundation Establishment Stage rogue cultivator who’d run pill business here for years. Flying Sparrow Sect didn’t produce medicine, so in Wangan County his shop mattered.
He looked at A Wu. “I’ve got two rarer seedlings—Soul-Returning Grass and foundation-stabilizing grass. Want them?”
A Wu wrinkled his nose. “What would I do with that? Soul-Returning Grass is an ingredient for third-rank soul-returning pill, and foundation-stabilizing grass is for a fourth-rank Qi-Stabilizing Pill. I can’t even keep blood pearl grass alive. You want me to grow those?”
The boss sighed. “They came in by chance. Flying Sparrow Sect won’t buy them. There are only two. Cheap, too—four low-grade spirit stones for both. If you don’t want them, I’ll keep them until people from Peach Blossom Sect come to collect.”
Peach Blossom Sect sounded tacky, but it was the medicine sect in the neighboring town. The name came from their Sect Master’s nickname: the Peach Blossom Cultivator.
Four low-grade spirit stones really was cheap. High-rank herbs, but not unheard of.
Cheap—if you could keep them alive.
Even a Golden Core Stage cultivator wouldn’t dare promise a perfect survival rate, let alone someone at Qi Refining Stage.
Dead on arrival.
But Jiang Ya’s gaze sharpened.
Han Tian and Zhou Xiao caught the same thought at the same time.
What they lacked wasn’t appetite. It was knowledge of Yun Zhou Continent. And back at the sect, Chen Miao Miao was already studying herbs.
The three of them exchanged a look. Zhou Xiao spoke first, light and casual. “Senior Brother, we’ve never seen those. They’re rare to us. Why don’t we buy them and take a look?”
A Wu froze. “Huh?”
“Four low-grade spirit stones,” he said weakly. “That’s a whole meal. The sect doesn’t have money. The herbs I grew haven’t even been harvested yet, and I don’t know how much they’ll sell for…”
The Sect Master had nearly handed him everything they owned just to buy seedlings. The seed money couldn’t be cut. It was the only way the sect could earn.
It was the kind of poverty that made your throat tighten.
Even the shop boss sucked in a breath. “This broke and you still recruit disciples? What’s your Sect Master thinking?”
A Wu went quiet.
Han Tian’s brows drew together. “Eldest Senior Brother, don’t worry. We’ll figure out a way to earn.”
They couldn’t let a whole sect starve.
And when the humiliation finally came, it wouldn’t be the Sect Master losing face.
It would be them—the players.
No one was going to convince him that modern knowledge was useless on a cultivation continent.