Civilization and Markets

The trio of Kai, Mina, and Ryu walked all through the night without any rest.

They had decided to take a longer route to avoid running into the group that the two mysterious men belonged to.

Kai's body had recovered from the poison however his wounds still needed more time to heal fully.

The morning light had started to break through the horizon, slowly bathing the plain landscape with a warm glow.

"We've made it," Mina said as she sighed in relief while looking at the horizon.

Kai looked in the same direction and saw a large unpaved road in the distance. It was far however Kai could see the activity of carriages and people moving in both directions.

"If we head South on this road and we'll reach Huang City which is controlled by the Twin-Lions Sect"

"Twin-Lions Sect?"... Kai was curious as this was the first time he had heard of this sect.

"Didn't you say the Golden Arhat Sect controls the entire Southern Continent?"

"They do, but the continent is too massive so it is split into thousands of regions that are governed by the other less powerful Southern Sects. The Golden Arhat Sect still controls the decisions of the continent and the other thousand sects must follow their command"

"Ah, I see"

Mina was curious. Was Kai still pretending to have amnesia by asking such obvious questions?. She even started coming up with her own fantasies of how Kai was probably trained in seclusion by a powerful mysterious master who now sent him out to experience and learns about the world.

Kai was happy to let Mina wallow in her thoughts.

The Trio went over to the road and started to head south. Kai was surprised by how many people he saw.

There were hundreds of people each going about their business. Most were on foot however there were also others riding strange horse-looking beasts wellingtons and carriages.

Kai inspected one of these and was quite surprised as this was the highest Qi value he had seen ever.

[Ceehorn- Grade 2-[Qi 134]

The beasts looked like a Lion however they had a horn on top of their head as well as four pairs of eyes and two tails. Their size was also large, with the smallest one he had seen being 2 meters in height.

Ryu noticed Kai's curiosity and took it upon himself to explain.

"Those are Ceehorns. They're the favored mounts and work beast of the people in this area. They're quite powerful when compared to Mortals however the Twin-Lions Sect specializes in the breeding and domestication of these beasts so anyone with enough money can buy one from them".

Kai became interested in the beast wanted one for himself but first, he figured he needed money.

As Kai was thinking this, massive dirt-colored walls appeared in the Horizon. They looked almost 30 meters in height which Kai thought was insane however it fits into the large scale of everything in this world.

"Let's head in. It's still early so there aren't too many people waiting at the gates". Mina said.

Kai looked at the hundreds of people waiting in line at the gate and wondered how she thought this wasn't a lot.

She saw the confusion in his eyes and continued to explain.

"We've only been here a few times with the village trade party however there are usually tens of thousands of people waiting in line to get in. Of course, you being an internal cultivator, you would simply be able to go in without needing to wait".

This last part she said under her breath, almost afraid that someone would hear her.

Kai gave her a bitter smile but didn't answer.

She had mentioned earlier that If Kai showed that he was an internal cultivator, he would receive special treatment in the town, however that also came at a price.

Rogue Internal Cultivators or unscrupulous groups would target him if he was deemed to be weak or unprotected just on the off chance that he could be carrying some sort of treasure.

To avoid this, Kai would have to join a sect or group for protection, but these groups would require him to work for them while exposing all of his secrets to them in exchange for protection.

For Kai who had too many secrets, joining a group where he didn't have control would be too dangerous. He decided until he could gather enough strength, he would stay undercover and pretend to be a mortal along with Ryu and Mina.

Internal Cultivators never bothered with Mortals since they saw them as being worthless. Apart from having mortals as servants and to fulfill their earthly desires, Internal cultivators would usually not even look in the direction of a mortal.

The line moves quite quickly and efficiently and it was finally their turn.

The Gate was massive being half the height of the entire wall yet the reception area was tiny, only the size of a few square meters. Funny enough, there were no guards at the door. Only the small-looking reception counter with one man inside.

Kai was surprised that despite there being no guards around, everyone was being well behaved and standing orderly in the line.

"Next!"

Yelled the man behind the reception counter.

Mina walked up and carefully pulled out a satchel containing three bronze-colored coins.

She carefully put the three coins and said "Three public passes please"

The main unceremoniously swiped the coins that Mina had treated like gold and handed her three bronze-colored strips of paper with a glowing symbol of a two-headed lion.

"The passes will expire tomorrow at this time, renewal can be done at any watchtower point for an additional bronze coin. Being caught within the city without a valid pass is an offense punishable by death...Next!"

The man rattled the words off as if he had said them a million times.

Mina headed back to the party and handed Kai and Ryu each a strip of paper.

Kai inspected the paper while Mina explained.

[Weak Tracking Talisman - [Grade 1]- [Qi 5]

"This is the entry token, after dropping some blood on it, it will be bound to you and will allow you to enter the public areas of the city. We just have to make sure to leave the city before this time tomorrow"

Kai heard what she said but he was more interested in the Talisman. Did people know these were tracking talismans and not just simple entry tokens?.

"This world has some interesting stuff," Kai said with an inquisitive smile while looking at the talisman. He immediately bit his thumb and dripped a drop of blood onto the token. The Two-headed Lion symbol glowed briefly then went back to normal.

Kai wasn't too worried about being tracked. Now that he knew that the Talisman was the one tracking him, he could always destroy it before running away if he ever did something wrong.

The group walked into the city and Kai was overwhelmed by what he saw. Apparently, this was just considered a small town in this world yet what Kai saw were massive buildings lining up each side of the road.

Their architecture was reminiscent of Eastern designs.

Kai saw the many people going about their business on the incredibly wide main road. The people all wore robes of differing qualities and designs. The rich were easy to discern from the poor by how they were dressed.

As they walked, Mina quickly pulled Kai to the side which surprised him. He quickly noticed that the other people on the path were also making room while keeping their heads down as a group of young men and women dressed in similar luxurious-looking clothes walked by.

They each held swords at their waists and oozed a sense of superiority as they ignored those around them.

"Internal Cultivators..."Kai murmured to himself. He had already fought internal cultivators so he now could identify them by the Qi within their bodies that they didn't even bother to try and hide.

Kai didn't even need to inspect them to know this, however, his curiosity got the better of him so he stole a glance at one of them"

[Human - [438 Qi] E-Rank]

Kai's jaw almost dropped. This guy had over [400 Qi]?. Kai remembered that the system classified anything containing between 100 and 1000 Qi as E-Rank.

"Does this mean this person is almost halfway through E-Rank?.... So what would his cultivation level be then?."

Kai was confused. He understood that the system ranked internal Cultivators based on how much Qi they had within their body according to its Qi value scale, however, he didn't know what their cultivation levels were.

This guy could be a peak Qi Condensation Level Twelve cultivator who is cultivating a trash internal manual, or he could be a Qi Condensation Level One cultivator studying a Godly manual that gives a lot of Qi at the first stage...

Kai had no way of knowing.

"Either way I think this method is better. No matter what their actual cultivation level is, I'll know how powerful they are based on how much Qi they have"

The person Kai had just inspected suddenly turned his head towards Kai's direction. He looked at the people around Kai with a curious look on his face. Mina and Ryu were terrified and unconsciously hunched their backs while keeping their heads low.

"What's wrong junior bother?" asked one of the females in the group.

"Hmm, nothing, I must have just imagined it"

"Well then hurry up, we need to get to the store before they run out of talismans, out of the way you lot you're crowding the road!".

The woman roared at the people around who quickly scattered, some falling over in their hurry to get away as the group of cultivators left.

"Was he able to tell when I inspected him?".

Kai didn't know if that's why the man had looked over but he decided to be more careful with his inspections moving forward.

Phew, Ryu sighed in relief. "We've been running into internal cultivators a lot recently. I wonder if the universe is attracting them to you Master?" He said as he stared at Kai.

"Who knows, and don't call me Master, people will look at me funny".

Mina lead the group east and the scenery slowly started to change. The large buildings were exchanged for smaller less intricate-looking buildings.

They went to the easternmost part of the city until they reached the open market.

This place didn't look as fancy as the entrance. Instead of large buildings like before, here there were lots of small shops tightly packed next to and on top of each other.

Apart from those, there were countless free-standing stalls crowding around the square. The stalls seemed to be selling everything from street food to odd-looking weapons and even what seemed to be tamed pets.

"This is the place. Many villages come here to trade their goods either for other supplies or for money."

They waded through the stalls and reached a meat vendor who was hawking his goods to the people passing by.

"Fresh meat!, the highest grades you will find in the open market. I have Grade-3 spiritual beast meat from a Flame Ape! at a reasonable price. Eating this has a chance to increase resistance against fire!..."

"Sir, I see your business is doing well?" Mina said with a smile.

The man looked down to see where the voice came from and noticed the trio, "Ah, Jurgen's lackeys?. Where is Jurgen, that guy still owes me, 10 copper, for the low-quality meat he sold me last time"

Mina gave a dry laugh and ignored the man's first comment. "He is preoccupied so we came instead. We had some high-quality meat this time if you're interested?"

The man looked at the three before his eyes were fixed on Kai. Kai was still wearing the old fishing gear which had lost durability due to the constant damage from all the fights he had.

"What good stuff could you have? shoo, now your smell is chasing away my customers!" The man said dismissively.

None of them had taken a bath in a few days so they were indeed quite rancid, however, Mina and Ryu were poor so they were used to only owning one pair of clothes and going a few days without bathing.

As for Kai, he had suffered through extreme poverty in his previous life so this bit of smell was nothing much.

"Take a look at the stuff first before you dismiss it," Kai said as he took off his backpack. He took out one strip of dried Hare meat and handed it over to the man.

"The man was about to turn his back on them but saw Kai pull out the strip of meat".

"Indeed it's well preserved, what meat is this?" The man said as he took it from Kai and inspected it.

"This is Vicious Hare meat"

"Vicious Hare? those are quite far away close to the deep forest, not many are willing to go there. How did you get this?. Did Jurgen finally grow some balls and do something dangerous for once?"

The man laughed and but Mina kept quiet. She also didn't know how Kai was able to survive being so close to the deep forest during the seven-colored lotus season. She unconsciously looked in Kai's direction.

"It doesn't matter how we found it, the question is do you want it or not?. Someone else already gave us an offer but we came here because you're familiar with Jurgen" Kai said as he got into his haggling mode.

He lives a tough life so he had gotten good at driving discounts from markets so save money.

The man took a bite of the strip and savored the flavor with his eyes closed for a moment. Then quickly opened his eyes.

"How much do you have?.., I'll give you 1 copper for every 5 pounds of meat."

Kai didn't know if this was enough so he subtly checked Mina's expression and noticed that she looked pissed off.

"This could sell for at least 2 copper a pound, buying it for half a copper per pound is robbery!"

Mina said as she stared daggers at the man.

"Take it or leave it."

The man said with confidence as he shoved the rest of the meat strip in his mouth.

Kai had about 50 pounds of Hare Meat in his backpack, meaning the man would buy everything for 10 copper while Mina was saying this was worth at least 100 copper.

Looking at it like that, they were clearly being robbed.

Kai turned to Mina and said, "No problem, let's go back to the guy who offed us, 1 copper, a pound. This guy is too unscrupulous to keep talking to just because he is associated with Jurgen".

Kai grabbed Ryu and Mina and slowly left. Ryu had a confused look on his face but Mina gave a look of understanding as she bolstered up Kai's story.

"You're right, Jurgen was just hoping we could pay him back for all he's done for us by selling him the meat at a good price but if he's going to be this unscrupulous, then we should just leave".

Mina harrumphed and walked away with Kai as they dragged a confused Ryu along. The man noticed that they weren't turning back and slightly panicked. He thought they were desperate based on how they appeared, however, they didn't even try to haggle, they just left.

"Could they really have another buyer?... Is it that damned Mrs. Jiang again trying to buy up all the good stuff for her restaurant again?." The man murmured to himself under his breath

"Wait, hold on. Let's make a deal!" He said before they went out of sight.

"Nope, you had your chance already. Mrs. Jiang's price is better so we won't haggle for anything less" Kai said as he waved without turning back.

"Wait, I'll match her price!..."

The man said in a panic. The boy had just confirmed his suspicions.

Kai turned around and said with a well-concealed smirk

"I'm listening?..."

"And...and I'll also add an extra 1 copper for every 10 pounds you sell me!. How about that?".

Kai tried his best to hold back his laughter. Kai had enhanced his hearing with Qi and heard the man mention a 'Mrs. Jiang' so he simply slipped her name into his story and the results were better than he had hoped.