Volume 1, Chapter 398 – Source Crystal

Pushing through the crowd pressing in around her, Shi Lan hurried toward a pavilion. The martial meet had already ended, and she was going to collect her spirit crystals.

For this wager, she had all but emptied her savings. It had all been for this moment.

After arriving at the entrance to the pavilion, a servant led Shi Lan into a private room. After serving her tea, he withdrew and closed the door behind him.

Not long afterward, a knock sounded from outside.

“Come in.”

The middle-aged man pushed open the door, sat down across from Shi Lan, and handed her a storage ring.

Shi Lan took it and swept it with her divine sense. Her original stake was all there, neatly set aside in one corner without a single coin missing. In another corner were three small piles, stacked in an orderly fashion.

The first pile was the smallest. It contained milky white jade-like crystals, only a few hundred in number, but they were the most valuable.

These were top-grade spirit crystals, worth a hundred times more than high-grade spirit crystals. That small pile alone was worth several hundred million low-grade spirit crystals.

Apart from those, there were also more than twenty thousand crystal plaques made from high-grade spirit crystals, along with several million mid-grade spirit crystals.

There was not a single low-grade spirit crystal.

No matter what, this was a staggering fortune, enough to make an ordinary second-grade sect green with envy.

“What you won this time is no small sum, Miss. It will take some time to gather it all. This is only part of it. The rest will be delivered here tomorrow.”

The middle-aged man poured Shi Lan a cup of hot tea.

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“You need only leave an address, Miss, and I’ll have someone deliver it to you.”

This amount of spirit crystals was indeed considerable, but for him, it was still far from enough to injure his foundations.

Because Shi Lan had upset expectations in this martial meet, he had not made much, but neither had he suffered a loss.

Most people had favored Gao Linyuan beforehand.

That was only natural. Dark horses were not something one saw often.

Shi Lan left the location of her palace, did not touch the hot tea on the table, put away the storage ring, and rose to leave.

“Please wait, Miss.”

The middle-aged man stood as well.

“My surname is Yun, given name Yu. I am from the Yun family of Yonghan Prefecture in the Central Heaven Domain. Most of my family is engaged in trade. In the future, if you ever wish to sell magic treasures, pills, or the like, or if you need to find rare spirit materials or precious medicines, you may contact me directly.”

Perhaps because he had seen that Shi Lan disliked beating around the bush, Yun Yu got straight to the point and handed her a purple token.

The token was about the size of a palm, carved entirely from some unknown purple crystal. One side was blank, while the other bore the embossed character “Yun,” vigorous and forceful in its strokes.

“This is my family’s VIP token. It grants discounted rates at Yunzhou Merchant Association branches everywhere, and it also allows the temporary borrowing of up to one billion spirit crystals.”

As Yun Yu finished speaking, before Shi Lan could respond, her name slowly appeared on the blank side of the token.

After thinking it over for a moment, Shi Lan still raised a hand and accepted it.

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One should not strike a smiling face. Besides, it might prove useful someday.

And at a gathering like this, he alone had dared open a betting pool. Clearly, the power behind him carried enough weight.

…

Just as Shi Lan stepped out of the private room, she received an invitation from King Xuan, Chu Hanzhou.

The meeting place was not far from here, in a pavilion at the edge of the arena.

Only when Shi Lan entered did she discover that Li Jingzhou was also there, seated at the table and drinking tea.

After Shi Lan sat down, Chu Hanzhou pushed the clay kettle of warm tea toward her.

“This Ice-Clear Leaf only grows in bitterly cold lands. It blooms once every hundred years, sheds its leaves once every hundred years, and only after another hundred years, when the branches turn green again, can it be made into tea. You practically never see it on the market.”

Shi Lan took up a teacup and poured herself a full cup, then took a small sip. The tea was mellow and warm, with a crisp taste and a hint of icy coolness that was extremely refreshing.

A single cup felt enough to conjure a vision of mountains buried in wind and snow. It truly was no ordinary tea.

“Good tea.”

Shi Lan set down the cup and commented casually. Having already drunk quite a bit of Ancient Enlightenment Tea, ordinary spirit tea was little different from plain water in her eyes.

Li Jingzhou gave Shi Lan a faint glance, then looked toward Chu Hanzhou.

“That starfield is called Huntian. It houses a lineage of heterodox incense worship, not part of orthodox Daoism. Other than regularly collecting cultivation resources from it, no one has concerned themselves with it. I’ll send you the star map later. You can arrange the handover yourself.”

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Chu Hanzhou nodded slightly and lifted a hand, signaling Li Jingzhou to continue.

“As for the Sovereign Weapon, you’ll need to come back to my residence with me.”

Then Li Jingzhou turned his head to Shi Lan.

“The Yunlai Immortal Realm needs time to prepare. It will open in three days. Someone will inform you when the time comes.”

Shi Lan nodded slightly to show that she understood. Small secret realms like this, capable of boosting one’s strength in a short period of time, generally consumed considerable resources to activate. It was no trivial matter.

“Would you be interested in entering my service?”

Li Jingzhou had taken a liking to her talent. He cherished the gifted. Perhaps because he himself had once been a heavenly prodigy, he always regarded highly talented young people with appreciation.

Shi Lan paused slightly, then shook her head.

“Thank you for your favor, Spirit King, but I’m used to being on my own.”

Even without Chu Hanzhou’s presence, Shi Lan would not have agreed to Li Jingzhou.

The aura Li Jingzhou gave off was obvious enough. He had never regarded her as someone worthy of speaking to on equal terms. What he wanted was only a subordinate.

Seeing Shi Lan shake her head, Li Jingzhou said nothing more. After draining the tea in his cup, his figure vanished from where he stood.

…

“This contains part of what you asked for.”

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After Li Jingzhou left, Chu Hanzhou took out a bracelet and handed it to Shi Lan.

Shi Lan took it somewhat impatiently. This was the real key to rapidly raising her strength.

The space inside the bracelet was enormous, far larger than the Qiankun Bracelet on her wrist. The mountain-like heaps of spiritual items dazzled her eyes.

“You asked for many things. Most of them were not difficult to obtain. Only world source crystals are hard to find.”

A world source crystal was the most important core of an entire world. Only worlds at the mid-level tier and above could give birth to one.

To forcibly take a world’s source crystal was tantamount to destroying that world. The karmic consequences involved were immense and could never be demanded lightly.

But there were always exceptions. In worlds that had already fallen into extinction, source crystals like these might still exist.

“Thank you… King Xuan.”

Shi Lan knew what Chu Hanzhou said was true, but a world source crystal was an indispensable item for completing the third layer of the True Martial Undying Body. There was no substitute for it.

Only by refining a world source crystal into her body could her physique truly gain the terrifying might to wage direct war against a world itself, and thus sweep across the Heaven-Man Realm.

“No need to thank me. Thanks to you today, I also made a tiny little profit.”

Chu Hanzhou was in an excellent mood. Then his tone shifted, and he asked:

“If I didn’t see wrong, the power you used on the arena should not have belonged to the Lingyang Realm. A path from beyond the domain?”