Chapter 197: Barter

From that moment, Mo Tiange started to reside in Bixuan Court.

Although Wei Haolan was quite a scheming person, she was still treating Mo Tiange quite well at the moment. Not only did she assign two female cultivators to take care of Mo Tiange’s daily needs, but she even sent many specialties of the Eastern Sea area such as spiritual fruits and so on for Mo Tiange to enjoy.

After the second day Mo Tiange moved into Bixuan Court’s distinguished guest house, she started to have a torrent of visitors coming over. Xia Qing certainly came; at dawn every day, she came and pulled Mo Tiange towards the concocting room, asking this and that and questioning her about the art of pill-concocting. By the time she returned from the concocting room, there were always other visitors waiting for her return. These visitors were all Bixuan Court Foundation Building female cultivators. As for the reasons for their visits, everyone said they heard she came from Kunwu, so they wanted to ask about some Kunwu-related matters and at the same time, they wanted to exchange a few things with her.

Cultivating goods were indeed rather scarce in Linhai, but in the end, Linhai was situated next to the Eastern Sea—the sea had unusual goods which didn’t exist on land and, despite not being the main ingredients for medicinal pills, had particular effects.

These Bixuan Court disciples reportedly had very slim chances of being sent by the group to go to Kunwu or the heartland to exchange supplies. Most of them wouldn’t get a chance to go to Kunwu their whole lives, so even if they obtained some materials which were considered uncommon by inland cultivators, they could only keep them for themselves. Now that they heard a fellow Daoist from Kunwu had arrived, they took out their possessions one after another and brought them to Mo Tiange to exchange for medicinal pills, spiritual plants, or maybe magic tools and the like.

Mo Tiange didn’t lack medicinal pills and had quite a few magic tools, but from the moment the demonic beast riot began, lots of cultivators passed away around her. Some of them were killed by her, and some others were out of luck and died next to her.

She obtained lots of magic tools from those unlucky cultivators. Since she normally didn’t lack spirit stones, she never exchanged them for money. Right now, she was taking them out and exchanging them with those female cultivators for strange materials. Of course, she definitely couldn’t use Yan Ruoshu’s and her two martial sisters’ possessions during the exchanges.

“Senior Ye.”

Mo Tiange was cultivating when she suddenly heard a voice outside. She pressed the space between her eyebrows to exit the Virtual Sky World then opened the defense formation. “What is it?”

The people outside were the two Aura Refining female cultivators whom Wei Haolan assigned to attend to her; one was named Yi Liu, and the other was named Yi Qiu. The two of them were a pair of sisters.

In Bixuan Court, the low level male cultivators were in charge of relatively exhausting miscellaneous tasks while jobs like personal attendants were all performed by female cultivators.

Reportedly, Yi Liu and Yi Qiu didn’t have good spiritual roots, so in the beginning, they were accepted into Bixuan Court as maids. But of course, in a cultivation group for female cultivators like Bixuan Court, their status was much higher than that of low level male cultivators. The siblings were also very diligent, and the job they had was to wait upon the Sect Head. Wei Haolan saw how diligent and capable they were, so she often watched over them. They were already in the eighth and the ninth layer of the Aura Refining realm now. If they could obtain Foundation-Building Pills, they might be able to make huge progress.

Mo Tiange suddenly remembered An’an, the little girl she met in the fisherman village. If that little girl could be as diligent as these siblings, her path towards immortality wouldn’t necessarily be hopeless.

Upon hearing Mo Tiange’s voice, someone entered the room—it was Yi Liu. She bowed respectfully then said, “The Secret Treasures Pavilion is holding an Exchange Gathering now. The Sect Head heard Senior Ye often exchanges goods with the martial uncles in the group, so she specifically sent someone here to invite you.”

“An Exchange Gathering?” Mo Tiange asked with surprise. She’d naturally heard of the Exchange Gathering before. Aside from opening shops or street stalls, transactions in the cultivation world could also be performed through ways such as bartering, auctions and so on. But generally speaking, the latter methods were transaction methods used by high level cultivators.

The higher the cultivators’ cultivation levels were, the more difficult the conditions for their required spiritual objects would be. Ordinary shops were all operated by low level cultivators, so how could they possibly have those things in their possession? Because of that, slightly more powerful shops usually held auctions so they could sell scarce materials they had at the best prices. The Exchange Gathering also came about for the same reason.

Nevertheless, Bixuan Court didn’t have many high level cultivators, so it could just simply do as Xuanqing School did; it could open a group shop and let the disciples buy and sell their goods there. It didn’t need so-called Exchange Gatherings or anything like it.

But on second thought, she recalled that they were in Linhai, where spiritual objects were scarce and high level cultivators were few—it wasn’t at all strange that the Foundation Building cultivators had to exchange some scarce goods between themselves.

“Senior Ye?” Seeing as Mo Tiange hadn’t replied for quite a while, Yi Liu once again called her.

“Oh.” Mo Tiange recovered her train of thought. “Show me the way then, and while we’re at it, you might as well tell me what this Exchange Gathering’s all about.”

“Yes.” Yi Liu led Mo Tiange out of the distinguished guest house then led the way while explaining, “This Exchange Gathering’s held once every few months. Senior Ye, you know that there aren’t many resources in Linhai for cultivating. Medicinal pills in particular—there aren’t many good concoctions masters, and we’re also short on many kinds of spiritual plants… Fortunately, however, we’re located next to the Eastern Sea. There are countless demonic beasts in the sea, and their beast cores can be eaten directly, so…”

“Beast cores can be eaten directly?” Mo Tiange cut her explanation off as she asked.

Yi Liu nodded. “Senior Ye doesn’t know? It’s just that when we eat beast cores, we have to use special methods to transform and absorb the spiritual aura inside them. Furthermore, different beast cores contain different amounts of spiritual aura. This is the purpose of the Exchange Gathering—we can obtain the beast cores we need by exchanging something.”

“… I see,” said Mo Tiange as she sank into thought. In Kunwu, beast cores had always been used for concocting medicinal pills. During the demonic beast riots that happened every several dozen of years, the demonic beast carcasses cultivators obtained would be used for refining tools, and the beast cores would be used for pill-concocting. Beast cores contained strange forces, so eating them directly might lead to spiritual aura deviations. Even if it didn’t lead to spiritual aura deviation, it would cause the spiritual aura inside the consumer’s body to be contaminated with a lot of impurities.

But unexpectedly, Linhai actually had methods to directly absorb the power of the beast cores. This was extremely valuable; maybe Mo Tiange could learn new ways of using the beast cores that would allow her to utilize the force of the beast cores more effectively.

“Senior Ye, we’ve arrived.” Yi Liu, who had taken her to a building, pointed at the attic and said, “It’s up there. Senior just needs to go up; Junior’s cultivation level isn’t high enough, so Junior cannot accompany Senior upstairs.”

Mo Tiange nodded. “Okay, thank you.”

“It’s what I ought to do.” Yi Liu bowed then moved to the side to stand together with the disciples guarding the door.

Mo Tiange went upstairs by herself.

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This loft was about the size of a side hall. There was a long table in the middle, and around that table were more than twenty seated Foundation Building cultivators which unexpectedly included males.

Mo Tiange was rather surprised. From the moment she arrived at Bixuan Court, none of the male cultivators she saw were in the Foundation Building realm; in fact, most of them were just low level cultivators in the second or the third layer of the Aura Refining realm. Nonetheless, among the twenty-odd Foundation Building cultivators before her, there were about five or six male cultivators—that was indeed not a small number.

She pondered the matter. It wasn’t like there were no male cultivators in Bixuan Court, and she’d asked around about this matter before. Male cultivators with extraordinarily good aptitudes were accepted as outer disciples and they could become official Bixuan Court disciples only after they performed Dual Cultivation with female Bixuan Court disciples. Since each of these male cultivators had a comparably intimate female cultivator by their side, they must be the Dual Cultivation partners of these females, right?

Once she saw Mo Tiange’s appearance, Wei Haolan, who was sitting in the master seat, immediately smiled then personally stepped forward to welcome her. “Fellow Daoist Ye, you finally came.”

Mo Tiange smiled back and greeted her before she turned towards the rest of the people to perform another round of greetings.

Upon seeing her greeting them, the cultivators sitting at the table stood up one after another to return her greetings.

Wei Haolan pulled Mo Tiange’s hand and went back to the master seat, directly allowing Mo Tiange to sit next to her. She then said with a smile, “Fellow Daoist Ye doesn’t have to be too restrained. The ones present here today are all Bixuan Court disciples, so this is just an inner Exchange Gathering.” She then said to the others, “Everyone, this is Fellow Daoist Ye who came from Kunwu. She’s proficient in the art of pill-concocting, so if you have anything you want to exchange with her, you have to use this opportunity well.”

Wei Haolan’s explanation caused everyone’s gazes to fall on Mo Tiange. A female cultivator chuckled and said, “Fellow Daoist Ye, you mustn’t be stingy today. All of us are hoping for your medicinal pills.”

The numerous Bixuan Court female cultivators Mo Tiange met during the past few days were all present here, so among the female cultivators who were currently present, Mo Tiange basically recognized more than ten of them. She smiled back and said, “I’ve never been stingy. As long as I have what Fellow Daoists want to exchange for, I definitely won’t keep them to myself.”

Smiles bloomed on everyone’s faces after they heard what Mo Tiange said. If there was anything special about today’s Exchange Gathering, it would be this Fellow Daoist Ye who came from Kunwu. Everyone else was a cultivator in Bixuan Court; their possessions weren’t that different from each others’, but this Fellow Daoist Ye, on the other hand, was a concoctions master. No matter how good beast cores were, they could never compare to same-realm medicinal pills. Thus, everyone tried to figure out which of their possessions could be exchanged for medicinal pills, and how many they could exchange for.

Wei Haolan swept her gaze over everyone present. “That’ll do. Everyone’s more or less here already—let’s begin.”

Once Wei Haolan spoke, those still in discussion all quiet down.

With a faint smile, Wei Haolan said, “According to the rules, we should do this one by one from left to right, but since we have a distinguished guest with us today, let’s start from the guest—does anyone have any objections?”

During this Exchange Gathering, the majority of the people came for Mo Tiange, so there naturally wouldn’t be any objections. Right now, a few dozen pairs of eyes were all looking at Mo Tiange.

Observing this situation made Wei Haolan smile again. She said, “It seems everyone agrees. In that case, let’s do it like that—we’ll start with Fellow Daoist Ye.” She then turned towards Mo Tiange. “Fellow Daoist Ye, you know all of us want to get medicinal pills from you; how many medicinal pills can you exchange with us?”

Mo Tiange took some time to think before starting to take medicinal pills out from inside her Qiankun Bag. One after another, jade bottles were placed on the table, causing those cultivators’ eyes to increasingly brighten.

After taking out approximately more than ten jade bottles, Mo Tiange finally stopped. “Probably just these. I’ve exchanged quite a few medicinal pills with Fellow Daoists in the past few days; these are just pills I concocted in a hurry.”

More than ten bottles of medicinal pills… Even Wei Haolan’s eyes brightened upon seeing them. Medicinal pills weren’t cheap even in Kunwu. Every year, they always sent disciples out to buy medicinal pills, but Foundation Building cultivators’ rations were only a small portion of those.

“Fellow Daoist Ye,” someone was unable to keep their calm and said, “What kind of medicinal pills are these?”

Mo Tiange pulled the bottle stoppers open one by one. “These are Aura-Purifying Pills; these are Restorative Panaceas; these are Mind-Clearing Pills; these are Look-Preserving Pills, and the rest are all Soul-Strengthening Pills. All of them are pills that can be consumed by Foundation Building cultivators.”

These medicinal pills were all concocted using ordinary spiritual plants that she bought from Xuanqing School’s shop. Previously, when she said these were just pills she concocted in a hurry, she just said that for them to hear. She was only a Foundation Building cultivator; even if she came from a famous school and was proficient in the art of pill-concocting, it wouldn’t be appropriate for her to come up with too many medicinal pills. Furthermore, she absolutely couldn’t take out or exchange the pills she made with materials taken from her Virtual Sky World.

Nevertheless, for Bixuan Court disciples who were trapped in Linhai, the medicinal pills she presented were already more than enough.

“Fellow Daoist Ye, what do you want to exchange them for?” Right after she finished explaining, someone asked impatiently while taking out a pile of things and arranging them for Mo Tiange to see. “See, I have all kinds of beast cores, and there are also some unusual spiritual objects produced by the Eastern Sea. See anything you fancy?”

Mo Tiange smiled. “All of them are fine for me, but these are all the medicinal pills I have—I’m afraid I don’t have enough for all of you.”

“This isn’t a problem.” Wei Haolan interrupted them, “Fellow Daoist Ye, how many pills are there in these bottles approximately?”

“En…” Mo Tiange started to calculate in her mind. Each bottle contained a varied amount ranging from ten to fifty pills. “I think there are more or less three hundred pills in total.”

“In that case, let’s make a small agreement first—everyone can only ask for up to ten pills; how’s that?”

There were more than twenty people present now. If each person was rationed ten pills, all of these pills would more or less be exchanged.

Everyone started their respective mental calculations. Most of them agreed, but there were also some who disagreed. “Then what if there are leftovers?”

Wei Haolan smiled and said, “If there are more medicinal pills, I’ll take them on behalf of our group then distribute them to you all. Is that alright?”