Medicine Master Disciple’s Cultivation Notes

Chapter 141: The Lower-Grade Spirit Stones Are All Sold Out

Li Qiuchen had two spirit stones on hand, both of which had been the entry fees Chen Nangsheng paid at Blue Stone Platform back in the day.

One of them he had used himself during a casual attempt, accidentally stumbling into his ancestor's hidden instance and spending it there.

The other he had later given to Tang Xiaoxue to experience the illusory realm when they passed through Blue Stone Platform again. In keeping with his general philosophy of not wasting good things around the household, he had opened his administrative access and quietly reclaimed it afterward.

So he still had one left.

Just the thing for wiping the smirk off someone's face.

The moment Liu Huai'an laid eyes on the spirit stone, his expression darkened.

"Those aren't cheap..."

"Quite expensive, yes."

"To challenge three first-class ratings again you'd need at least three of them."

"If it comes to that I can borrow a few more. Unless Senior Brother Liu would care to..."Liu Huai'an rolled his eyes and walked away.

Spirit stones were genuinely expensive. A single finger-sized stone started at upward of twenty taels of silver, and that was for the lowest grade available.

Yun County had only one establishment that sold spirit stones, a shop called Treasure Pavilion. They were kept in elegant little cases and mostly sold as decorative items, carved into jewelry and worn about the person by wealthy buyers.

Actual cultivators had no use for such low-grade stones, treating them at best as currency.

As for the higher-quality stones capable of assisting in cultivation, Li Qiuchen had only heard of their existence. He had never seen them on the open market, and they were presumably a monopolized resource.

The illusory realm that Senior Brothers Wang and Du had constructed required precisely these lowest-grade spirit stones as entry fees, with no actual effect on the illusory realm itself, pure admission costs.

Higher-grade illusory realms naturally required higher-grade spirit stones.

His ancestor's illusory realm was an exception, requiring no high-grade stone but carrying a hidden condition instead.

Li Qiuchen still hadn't worked out whether that particular illusory realm was an officially sanctioned installation or something his ancestor had built privately as a kind of rogue server.

Liu Huai'an's snide remarks had at least reminded him of something useful. He needed to go home and stockpile some spirit stones.

Not just for his own purposes. This cohort numbered over a hundred students, and everyone would need them. Money wasn't the issue, but the Treasure Pavilion's supply of spirit stones was not an unlimited commodity.

Li Qiuchen's third trial had ended so quickly that at this point most students were either still in the middle of their trials or, like Liu Huai'an, lacked the courage to attempt another run any time soon.

So most people hadn't yet registered the problem.

After school let out, he took the two young misses out for a walk into town, stopped at the entrance of Treasure Pavilion, and went in to ask.

"Completely sold out?"

Li Qiuchen was genuinely surprised at the news. "Doesn't the inner hall consume a large fixed batch of spirit stones every year? Didn't you stock up in advance?"

The shop assistant smiled apologetically. "They are needed every year, yes, but this year everything moved up by several months. Our owner didn't anticipate a change like this. Where would we find stock on such short notice?"

"Surely you can't have nothing left at all?"

"There were some reserves earlier, but someone bought up the lot."

Li Qiuchen's brow furrowed slightly. He probed carefully, "Apart from here, is there anywhere else to purchase spirit stones? Even at a higher price."

The assistant shook his head. "If you'll forgive me saying so, young sir, spirit stones are things that only cultivators have use for. Those of us who are ordinary people have no practical need for them and can only sell them as premium gemstones. Pre-ordering would get you stock eventually, but finding them on the open market at short notice is essentially impossible."

In plain terms, the primary consumers of spirit stones simply didn't shop in ordinary markets.

If you insisted on going to a vegetable market to buy a heavy gold bracelet, the shopkeeper's only option would be to pull one off her own wrist. There really was no other way.

"If I pre-order, how long until delivery?"

"How much were you looking to order, if I may ask?"

"At least twenty stones."

"If you place a deposit today, delivery within one month is certainly possible."

One month? In one month the opportunity would long since have passed.

Since Treasure Pavilion couldn't conjure stock out of thin air, Li Qiuchen went to find someone who could.

He went to consult the warm-hearted chief senior brother, Senior Brother Yang.

Since his spectacular fall from grace, Senior Brother Yang had been too embarrassed to show his face around people, and most people weren't particularly inclined to acknowledge him as acting chief senior brother either.

He had spent the past while in intensive seclusion, preparing for the challenge of the second-grade illusory realm.

Li Qiuchen coming to him with questions made him genuinely happy.

It meant his reputation hadn't declined to the point where people found him actively repellent.

Others regarded Senior Brother Yang with a degree of wariness. Li Qiuchen was different. He felt a very natural sense of ease around him.

Dropping by Senior Brother Yang's place felt like visiting family.

Today's visit had more to it than just spirit stones.

"The original illusory realm trial system was jointly established by the Ten Heavenly Lords."

"You've studied history, so you should know this part. After the six great dragon gods fell, the Emperor selected ten exceptional individuals from among his disciples and took them under his wing, cultivating and guiding them to greatness. These became the Ten Heavenly Lords."

"Because the Ten Heavenly Lords were primarily responsible for handling internal affairs of the Central Continent and rarely had occasion to appear in public, their names don't feature prominently in the historical records. But they are extremely well known in the Central Continent. It's simply that out here in an isolated backwater like ours, information doesn't flow freely, which is why you've never heard much about them."

"Lord Luo... you drew the Embracing Stone Academy slip, didn't you? Completely understandable. Back in the day, several of my own senior brothers and sisters came to grief on that same slip. They ground their teeth over it for years."

"The Ten Heavenly Lords don't only maintain and operate the illusory realm trial system. They also contribute their own creations to it. Each Lord has a strongly distinct personal style, and of all of them Lord Luo's style is the most pronounced."

"Lord He and Lord Chen's illusory realms are the easiest to clear. Lord Xing's are the most dangerous, primarily centered on warfare. As for Lord Luo's... you've experienced it firsthand, so I don't need to elaborate."

"As for spirit stones... they do circulate rarely on the open market, but it shouldn't be a shortage situation. It's probably because the inner hall advanced your cohort's trials unexpectedly. Supply should recover after a while. If you need some urgently, I have a few here I could give you."

Li Qiuchen quickly waved a hand. "Senior Brother has already done me the enormous favor of answering my questions. I couldn't possibly accept them as a gift. If Senior Brother has any surplus stones to spare, I would like to purchase a quantity at thirty percent above market price."

Senior Brother Yang looked surprised. "When did you become so flush with money?"

Li Qiuchen smiled. "My two young misses both have need of them, and it's naturally my duty to make sure they're well supplied."

"You've certainly latched onto some impressive backing."

Senior Brother Yang smiled, produced a storage pouch, and tossed it to Li Qiuchen. "Count what's in there and give me a total. These low-grade stones are slag at this point. I have no use for them anymore."

Li Qiuchen took it and counted. There were nearly twenty spirit stones inside, which at market value came to around four hundred taels. Four hundred taels plus thirty percent, plus the value of the storage pouch itself...

He produced a seven-hundred-tael banknote and offered it respectfully to Senior Brother Yang.

"That's too much."

"The extra is the junior brother's personal regards."

"Don't use flattery meant for young girls on me. If you want to buy more spirit stones, you might try the market near the big mine pit. That pit has been depleted for thousands of years, but there are always a few scraps and remnants here and there."

The big mine pit?

Li Qiuchen had nearly forgotten about it until Senior Brother Yang brought it up.

When he had first arrived in Yun County and caught sight of the great mine pit from a distance, he had found it genuinely striking.

But the longer he had stayed, spending his days moving between the county school and home in an unchanging routine, the more he had simply stopped registering its existence.

Yun County's city had been built around the great mine pit, but thousands of years had come and gone and the pit had long since been exhausted, leaving nothing but wild grass growing thickly over it, which from a distance made it look like an enormous burial mound.

The pit had originally produced various types of ore, including spirit stones, though this "originally" referred to thousands of years in the past. By now, as the locals would say, it had been licked cleaner than a dog's bowl.

Li Qiuchen had been so focused on his studies recently that he hadn't paid any attention to what was going on around the pit. It wasn't a scenic attraction. Nobody went out of their way to keep tabs on it.

But now, it turned out, there were reasons to pay attention.

Not just the market Senior Brother Yang had mentioned.

Tang Xiaoxue had drawn her second-round illusory realm slip, a trial named Fire Kirin, located apparently in the depths of the great mine pit itself.

The name sounded impressive, but surely it wouldn't actually involve a real kirin?

Based on Li Qiuchen's own experience across several trials, first-grade illusory realms held almost no genuine physical danger.

They tended toward the eerie, the mysterious, or the psychologically infuriating.

All designed to test character rather than combat ability.

After all, students participating in first-grade trials were theoretically still without any cultivation to speak of.

Hu Caiyi's slip was called Twin-Lock, and its location was in the opposite direction entirely from the mine pit. The map marking placed it somewhere along the Dragon Scale River, not far from the site of a previous incident.

Hu Caiyi grumbled and sulked about it, but she had no choice in the matter.

After discussing it, the two of them agreed to accompany Tang Xiaoxue through her trial first.

As the personal steward of the two young misses, all preparations for any outing naturally fell to Li Qiuchen to handle.

It was also a good opportunity to get out of the house, clear his head, and improve his mood.

The duration of the second-round trials varied. There was every possibility of encountering a situation like Pig-Slaughter Lane, where following the scripted flow required the full seven days before the trial could be cleared, or it might conclude in two or three days with a success or failure. Nothing was certain.

It was essentially no different from a countryside excursion during summer, and the preparations should reflect that.

Once everything was packed and ready, Li Qiuchen hired a cart, loaded the two young misses aboard, and set off toward the great mine pit.

The cart was the same one as before, but the horse was not the same small fire-horse.

When the stable owner heard Li Qiuchen was heading to the mine pit area, he immediately switched the animal out for an ordinary draft horse, and warned him repeatedly that the puttering fire-horses were for use outside the city only, and under no circumstances were they to be taken anywhere near the mine pit.

When asked for a specific reason, he offered nothing, saying only that one look and he'd understand.

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