Last day of the trade fair.

After waking up, Collin started his final day of this modified training routine. Today was the last day of the trade fair, tomorrow everyone would go back to their normal routines, this included Collin. He was looking forward to it, he planned to focus on preparing for the Alchemist's Guild test. He was still a few pills shy of his goal, but these pills were the hardest of the top ten pills to make. He figured he would need a month or two until he was confident enough with his skills to take the test.

If he failed, he would have to wait a month to retake the test. There were many alchemists in the guild that had failed their first time, but Collin dreaded the thought of failing even once, so he was going to make sure he did everything in his power to pass the first time. Like most people born and raised in a cultivation clan, any type of failure was seen as an unforgivable sin and given the choice of experiencing a minor failure or death, most would choose death. While Collin wouldn't choose death even if he failed a hundred times, he still would prefer to succeed the first time.

After breakfast, Collin gave the trio five-thousand gold coins and one-hundred spirit stones. He told them that he would be taking them to the market for the last day of the trade fair and that they could buy anything that they needed. He made sure he said needed enough times for them to understand what he meant. He also stressed that this was all the money he was going to give them, and any other money that they needed was to be made hunting beasts. But he was still expecting them to waste money on whatever shinny things caught their eyes.

Several times on the way to the market, people tried to rob them. But mortals with swords and clubs were no match for Collins flying blades. Most died instantly while a few died with a puzzled look on their faces. Everything of value was placed in one space bag while the bodies were put in the red space bag used for transporting dead people. Most of the valuable items these robbers had were stolen, and Collin had no problem stealing from them. Julie was the first to realize why they were being targeted so much, shortly after Valter also realized why, it wasn't till after the seventh or eighth robbery attempt that Viktor noticed that they were meandering around the slums to attract the attention of thieves.

Only once did they come across a cultivator, he was at the 3rd layer and led a gang of over twenty people. He had a copy of the Heavenly Star cultivation method in his space bag, from the blood on the cover Collin was sure that this person found the cultivation method on a dead body or killed the former owner, ether way the book now belonged to Collin. After a while, there were plenty of dead bodies inside the space bag, more than enough to feed the raptor and the flood dragons for several months.

"I didn't force those people to try to rob us, I didn't wear fancy clothes, or fancy jewelry, nor did I wave large bags of gold coins in their faces. We simply took a stroll to the trade fair and were forced to defend ourselves." Collin had to resist smiling as he spoke. While he knew everything he just said was true, he also knew it was pure bullshit. He purposely took them on a path that he was sure people would try and rob them, and he knew he could have made them all run away in terror if he should them that he was a cultivator but was curious what the robbers had stolen from their victims.

The space bag he got from the six robbers yesterday had a bunch of spell and technique manuals for body transformations. Everything from minor face transformations to full body transformations into powerful beasts. The only problem with these techniques was that the higher the grade the technique was, the more one would have to shatter their own bones to learn. Sometimes it was as little as shattering your bones several hundred times to well over one-hundred-thousand times per bone. The manuals taught how to take the shattered bones and repair them in a way that they could be manipulated into different shapes and sizes to complete the transformation.

Collin was intrigued by the concept of transforming into a different species, but the thought of shattering his bones was off-putting to him. If he did decide to practice those techniques, he would do it after he learned to make pills that completely numbed the pain but didn't affect his thought process. Some of the alternative path methods he owns work in a similar way and made him think these were the inspiration for those alternative paths.

After reaching the trade fair, Collin let the trio go off on their own and buy what they needed to, but he told them where and when to meet up. The trio quickly got lost in the massive crowd of people trying to get some last-minute deals. Collin looked at the wares of the stalls, making some purchases when he found something useful. When he was in front of the beast sellers' tent, he went inside and bought ten wood element flood dragons before he returned to stalls.

He had checked the cocoon when he got up, but it was still the same as yesterday. If he was lucky it would emerge from its cocoon perfect, but if he wasn't lucky it would evolve down the wrong path and shed its legs and become a pure serpent and would no more evolutionary potential. It would also lose its ability to produce a unique poison, instead it would become a strong snake venom, which wasn't that hard for a skilled alchemist to treat.

Trying to put the thoughts of what would come out of the cocoon and focus on the items being sold at the various stalls wasn't that hard to do. Most of the stalls had several items Collin would like to buy for no other reason than he would like to own them, he found it funny he believed the trio would waste their money, when he was tempted to do the same. By the time that he visited the last stall, he was close enough to see the alchemy shop was still closed. If he was right and Valeria was under orders from the Alchemist's Guild to help with guarding the items for auction, then the shop should open again tomorrow, but since he wanted to buy some supplies now, it was bothersome.

Since the auction was tonight security had been strengthened and the road to the city center had the largest number of guards. They were checking everyone to make sure no one that shouldn't be in the city center couldn't enter. In a few hours massive amounts of wealth will be thrown around to purchase rare and valuable items from around the world. When he was a young master, he could walk through those guards with a smile on his face, but as a rogue cultivator that ran away from his clan, he didn't dare to look in the guards direction for too long.

There was still time before he was supposed to meet up with his cousins, so he began to wander around the trade fair. Down an alley people had spread colorful blankets on the ground and place items they wish to sell on them. The more Collin looked at the items for sell, the more he was sure the most valuable thing there was the blanket the seller was sitting on. There were some items that while not very valuable, were items that had already bought at several stalls because they were useful.

It didn't take long for all the items that were for sell to seen by Collin, unfortunately there were no rare items, or hidden treasures to be had. Slightly disappointed, Collin headed towards where he was supposed to meet the others. He was expecting to be early be to his surprise he found all three of them waiting for him. Gathering them up, they headed home without any of the detours that used on the way to the market. Since he wasn't going to the auction tonight and wasn't planning to watch the trade ships leave tomorrow morning, this year's trade fair was over for him. He and the city would slowly get back to a sense of normalcy, while eagerly waiting for next year's trade fair.