52 Huang Jin mountain
"Golden Qi Gu for sale!"
"The finest Golden hair Gu money can buy! Come quick!"
Huang Jin mountain is an interesting place. My brother is still in seclusion and left miss Kai in charge of our caravan finances, approximately 12 hundred primeval stones. Quite a grand sum.
I have always wandered how the trade market works, so I have asked miss Kai to give me 200 primeval stones to check out the exchange market and master this interesting craft.
I am no fool and being taken advantage of doesn't sit right with me. I would rather go along with miss Zhang and learn from her.
"Good afternoon Sir Chun." The beautiful maiden with her guardian and servant greeted me and nodded back at her.
"Thank you for agreeing to teach me, young miss. I have asked my brother in the past about the knowledge of this craft, but his explanations are... Quirky."
She looked surprised and asked "Is your brother a good merchant?"
Now that I think about it, how is Kai Nem so good at trading? Our hunts are profitable, but we are in no way better than credible and long standing Gu master hunting parties. How did he manage to get us such a priority and advantageous deals?
"I have known him for most of my life and I can say, with great certainty, he has a certain mastery over the craft. I believe he hasn't made a single losing investment for as long as I have known him. This includes high stake deals worth thousands of G-u and much greater amounts of primeval essence stones."
She nodded her head and said "The golden wares here are an interesting commodity, so I recommend buying some beautiful furniture to sell at our next destination, but make sure you keep a capital sum, so you don't end up with only items and no universal currency."
That seems reasonable, but I have never seen brother Nem use such a method. He almost always completely invests in one thing and never leaves any safety currency.
"I'll follow miss and buy a couple of items you recommend me." She nodded with a smile and I followed her to study the art of bartering.
...
"Excuse me, miss Xin Ci!" Guts, danger level?
Nothing, so a rank 1 or 2 weakling. I can humour him for a while. "May I inquire who you might be?"
The middle-aged man cupped his fists and said "I am the personal guard of lord clan leader, here on his command to ask for a favour."
Interesting. What could a Gu master want from a mortal like miss Xin Ci? "Please speak."
The middle aged man nodded and said "I have heard a rumour about a refinement Gu master being apart of your caravan and about his great feats in Zhang clan, so my clan leader wishes to speak with him."
"Impossible! I will not have him disturbed for some clan leader to try and recruit him!" Just a Jin clan leader and he thinks he has the right to interfere with my brother's cultivation!
The middle aged man furrowed his brows and said "miss Xin Ci, I would prefer you keep your guards in check. And you, mortal, I recommend you don't talk over a Gu master, if you value your life, that is!"
"humph! Arrogant!" Not even this entire clan could take me and my brother down! Why should I give you, a nobody rank 2 face?
Shang Xin Ci looked a bit conflicted and said "I am only a mortal, the man I am escorting is an almost rank 3 cultivator and a great refiner. We aren't qualified to ask for his time. He spends most of his time isolated, cultivating. Asking him to come out might incur his wrath. I hope you can understand my plight."
The man suddenly gulped and said "I will consult our clan leader about it. Thank you for your understanding, miss Xin Ci."
The pitiful Gu master fumbled away and I continued with my business.
...
Who the fuck's knocking on my door? It feels like a rank 3 Gu master is here. Ah fuck! This is the clan with that unfinished Gu recipe Fang Yuan extorted. The what's their faces... Huang Jin mountain gold-diggers. "Come right in!"
An older rank 3 with a young man entered my tent and I came out of my carriage. Whoever decided to build a tent arround my carriage is a genius and needs a promotion ASAP. Aside from that, this guy has no real adventage. I still have quite a bit of primeval essence, so I can fight at any moment and a simple rank 3 isn't my match.
The old man took one look at me coing down from my carriage and said "You are quite young."
He doesn't believe my credibility. What an arrogant prick! "You must be the leader of Jin clan. I would recommend against bringing your son into this meeting."
The message in my words is 'watch your tongue old fuck! Your little bastard is in arms reach and you don't have the ability to stop me from killing him if you're here for trouble'
It takes a couple of seconds for him to realise what I said and the shocked look on his face and my knowing smile and eyes are all he needed to realize he had lost the initiative completely and is fully passive now.
"You might be correct, but I prefer keeping my son close to me, so he can learn from me about how to manage our clan and external affairs."
I nodded my head "so, what brings the respectable clan head to my humble abode? If it is a small favour, then I would prefer we end this night on good terms." meaning: 'keep it short and to the point. You aren't worth my time!'
I might be a bit too overbearing, but I have the lower cultivation here. I need to fully stomp on him to the point where he forgets cultivation is even a factor and he rationalizes fighting a wisdom path Gu master with wit.
"I have heard you are a master refiner and wanted to request your help. My clan has been trying to develop a Gu recipe for a few years and a refinement master's insight would be quite useful for us."
I remember it was the golden silkworm Gu they wanted. According to the 4 ranks of it in baby alchemist, then this is a very simple Gu, with metal path progression. The recipe is mostly garbage tho and I can only make out, that no similar ingredients are used during refining. Either that or I am talking out my ass.
I figure out this technique when it came to me in a dream a week ago, so I ain't the best at it. Well, technically I am the ONLY one using it, so... Basically it works like this: Baby Dao Alchemist shows me the Dao marks of multiple ranks, I inspect them and compare the different ranks.
You need an incredibly comprehensive knowledge of how dao marks change using different materials for this technique to work, so it is completely unrealistic to even expect someone to use it, but what else can you expect from a technique thought up inside a dream? Abstract dream realms are a midfuck and a half I tell ya!
"I am well versed in metal path refinement the most, so I can provide the best insight if the Gu is of metal origin."
I have the most knowledge on luck path Gu worms, but hey, this guy doesn't need to know that.
The Jin clan leader made no movement and said "Quite a coincidence, as I need insight on how to refine a rank 3 metal path Gu worm. Here is a rough outline of the recipe. I would be grateful if young master does me a favour by inspection it."
The young man next to him scoffed with a smirk and I just took the recipe. What is this garbage recipe? The combination will make a golden silkworm Gu, but it is very wasteful. Jinzan grass has no other use, so might as well tho.
I'll improve upon this a bit and give it back. Of course I won't fall for the obvious pitfalls he made to mislead me. Jinzan grass should go with gold dust, about 13.2 kg of rank 1 marble gold...
"Here you go. I think this should be a pretty decent improvement. Though, I think I missed the recipe by 1 or two golden silkworm Gu, so don't hold me accountable if it doesn't work."
The young master was bored out of his mind and a bit irritated, as I took well over an hour to finish the base recipe. I actually figured it out in like 10 minutes, but I wanted to dully top off my primeval essence and not look like a refinement monster.
I worded my sentence carefully, so the teenager there doesn't understand what I meant, but the clan leader knew exactly what I was implying. Having his clans greatest secret leaked so blatantly probably spooked him a bit. "Though a bit of polish shine gold Gu would be a fine replacement. They have similar uses, so not much difference."
He tried to sell the recipe off as a polish shine gold Gu one, so I basically told him I know everything. "That's all for my remarks. I hope clan leader will appreciate my humble effort and pay me my fair due for this recipe."
The small smile on my face probably looked like a devil's wide-toothed grin to this guy, as I could see the cold sweat on his forehead. "I will not waste sir Gu master's time. If you ever need anything from my simple clan, then feel free to ask. I am not ungrateful enough to refuse after you did such a favour for me."
They probably have nothing I will ever use, but hey, at least I can get some clout out of this. Reverse engineering a Gu recipe is hard, but not as hard as making a new one. He won't reveal the full truth, but the truth he will reveal will be my actual competence level, so I basically just got a lot of fame in southern border.
Well, back to cultivating. "Jack, if I ain't being too big of a hermit, can you at least not let little shits into my tent? The jackass was scoffing so much you'd think he was having an asthma attack!"
Muffled aounds of laughter came from the outside and I just went back to cultivating peacefully.
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A.N.
Thank you Ken for all the stones! And hope you enjoyed seeing the glaring difference between Kai Nem and Chun Jack. If you didn't get it, Chun Jack is slightly arrogant and doesn't analyze much, while Kai Nem analyzes evey small detail to bully his opponent into submission.
A small P.S. for everyone. I know how unreliable I am, but bare with me here, I had a good idea. I am going on Hiatus for you lot. I probably won't upload for months or years. Quote, upload. I will try to write constantly for myself and get a bunch of chapters saved up. I'll probably finish the story and then slowly upload it afterwards, so you guys can have daily upload or somewhat daily uploads depending on if I feel like editing something during the upload period.
