The Journey of Immortal Cultivation

Chapter 1058 - 578: The Whereabouts of the Spiritual Tea

Though the Storage Ring is an essential item for a cultivator whether at home or traveling, as well as for killing and looting, most junior and mid-level disciples of Immortal Sects only receive rings with a capacity of dozens of jin. Typically, a cultivator possessing a ring with a capacity in the hundreds of jin is quite fortunate, and a capacity reaching thousands of jin is remarkable. These three Storage Rings already have a capacity that can make many people envious.

Chang Tian once told Ning Xiaoxian that to forge a storage container with a large capacity, exceptional artifact refining skills alone aren’t enough; a very rare metal is needed, which is not produced in this world and can only be extracted from fallen meteors. During the Ancient Times, due to frequent wars, artifact crafting methods were developed to an extreme, and this precious metal was exhausted, which resulted in storage spaces becoming increasingly spacious. Finally, the emergence of the "Sea Bag" stored in the Fifth Floor of the God Demon Prison, with an astonishing capacity of hundreds of thousands of jin, came to be.

These storage bags were essential for transporting military supplies; otherwise, could the precious military materials on the God Demon battlefield rely on carrying beasts for transport? It’s neither secretive nor safe. If used for personal belongings, such a large space wouldn’t be necessary, but for transporting army supplies, even the storage bags in the God Demon Prison were far from sufficient!

After all, time has passed a long thirty thousand years. In the Ancient Times, these rings may not have been intriguing to cultivators of that era. However, storage bags are also a type of magic artifact, and they too cannot withstand the ravages of time. Except for the Sea Bag, which can be nourished by the God Demon Prison and not damaged, most of the giant storage containers in the human world have been destroyed. Unless they are held by a giant demon living for several thousands of years, ordinary human cultivators and demons are unlikely to encounter such treasures.

In the auction catalog, she saw that more than three thousand people paid attention to these rings. The one with the largest capacity had an estimated price boosted to two hundred and twenty thousand spirit stones, so predicting that acquiring them all would cost about five hundred thousand spirit stones in total. Many people were interested, but the price wasn’t high because each bid only increased slightly.

In the end, those coveting these three containers were not individual cultivators, but Immortal Sects or Demon Sects, and even powerful chambers of commerce. But herein lies the problem: regarding large sects, these rings, whether in quantity or capacity, were just too small. For instance, the spirit tea garden of the Hidden Stream ships about one hundred and fifty thousand jin of spiritual tea annually to the Southern Continent, with over ten different routes. Even if Ning Xiaoxian acquired these three rings, it would only save manpower and transport power on three routes, without altering the overall transport structure.

Anyone who can sit in Bai Yujing is a sharp individual, so while many were interested in these rings, most were merely onlookers, and few were genuinely willing to pay a high price.

The newly arrived auctioneer likely analyzed this situation quite thoroughly and merely hoped to sell it for its real price, thus introducing the items in a very calm manner, unlike the passionate excitement of the previous auctioneer.

Ning Xiaoxian and Steward Wu, however, laughed. They had waited the entire day, eagerly anticipating the appearance of these three rings.

One of Bai Yujing’s rules: within four hours before going on auction, treasures must be locked in the main hall until they enter the selling venue, and unless more than half of the elder seats agree, no one can approach or touch the auction items.

With the appearance of these three items, they had half-won because—

The stolen spiritual tea was eight-tenths likely hidden within these three storage rings.

The disappearance of Ningyuan Hall’s spiritual tea had many suspicious points, the most significant and conspicuous being that the tea seemed to vanish without a trace almost immediately after exiting the back door of the ginseng and medicine shop. It wasn’t dozens or thousands, but a full hundred thousand jin of spiritual tea! Tea leaves are lightweight but in huge volume, capable of filling dozens of large carts, yet even the city defense patrol did not see any trace of those tea-carrying carts.

There are only two possibilities for achieving this:

First, Juan Niang bought a courtyard near the medicine ginseng group for nearby loading and unloading. In other words, the carts from Ningyuan Hall, shortly after departing, were driven into a nearby courtyard, then the robbers set a smokescreen, guiding Ning Xiaoxian and others to the Li Mansion, while they left some people at the newly acquired courtyard to leisurely unload and store the goods.

Since the time spent on the road was brief, this method indeed could avoid the notice of city defense guards. However, at present, courtyards within Central City Inner City, like those of Li Family’s middle-rich homes, were under four hundred square meters. This was determined by land prices, just like Shui Yun’s current residence on Xiamen Island, where house prices almost reach thirty thousand per square meter. The cost of buying a hundred square meter house here could even erect two buildings in the countryside and have savings left.