Ningbing, Xin Ci, Cui, Luli and I watch from the VIP section as the auction progresses. The auctioneer waves his hand dramatically. "What we present to you now is one of the strongest Gu worms in the Southern Continent!"
That draws the attention of a few people, but most of the hall is not that moved. The auctioneer's job is to be a hype man, if he doesn't try to hype up whatever he's selling then he's failing at his job. If someone falls for the mercantile hype man they only have themselves to blame if their pockets go empty on useless things.
He takes a single gu worm out of his aperture, before holding it for all to see. It has the aura of a rank 4 gu worm, which immediately gets some attention.
Even a rank 5 gu master would be interested if a rank 4 gu worm is to be sold, let alone a rank 4 gu master. If the rank 4 gu that they have for sale is truly rare or has a powerful effect then its price might as well match that of a less useful rank 5 gu worm.
The auctioneer extends his hand towards the crowd, before pulling out a single gu worm from his aperture. The gu worm has the aura of a rank 3 gu worm, and it is one that we have seen many times this night.
Rank 3 Puffed Fish Gu looks just like a pufferfish, it can hold in a gu worm and allow it to be transported between apertures without actually being refined. The fish opens its mouth, revealing the gu worm inside of it.
It has the aura of a rank 4 gu worm, and has the appearance of an extremely sparkly, transparent centipede. "This is Rank 4 Diamond Bones Gu! Its effect is to refine a gu masters bones to be even stronger than diamond! Its food is diamonds!"
The few in the crowd that were excited fall back down onto their chairs. Strength path is considered to be one of the weaker paths nowadays, with its main benefit being how cheap it is to cultivate.
A gu like White Boar Gu is useless after a gu master has already gotten all of the strength it can offer, leaving it free to be sold to others. This means that a single set of strength path gu worms can be used to make multiple strength path gu masters, but it also means that there's not much demand for the gu worms themselves.
That combined with the fact that strength path is not what it used to be, with the core gu worms used for cultivating it being either extinct or extremely rare, means that strength path gu worms are almost always sold for scraps.
Still, a rank 4 gu worm is a rank 4 gu worm, so there's no surprise when the auctioneer mentions the price. "Fifty thousand primeval stones is the starting price for this gu worm!"
That sounds about right. No one, including me, makes any bid for this gu worm. The fact that it's food is diamonds doesn't help either.
He didn't mention how many of them the thing eats, so for all we know it could eat more diamonds than it is actually worth. The auctioneer keeps the gu worm exposed for us to see for a minute or two, before quietly having the rank 3 Puffed Fish Gu close its mouth.
The fish gu is replaced with another fish gu, this one with a closed mouth as well. For the next gu worm the auctioneer doesn't bother building up hype, he simply has the fish open its mouth.
Inside is a pair of rank 5 gu worms, a pair forming a rank 5 Ying Yang Rotation gu to be more precise. The auctioneer shouts out. "This is a Rank 5 Ying Yang Rotation gu!"
Ying Yang Rotation gu is not a gu worm unknown to the world. Almost every gu master knows what it is, and almost every gu master knows that it's effect is completely healing any and all ailments, including resurrection after becoming a zombie.
Despite being well known it is also a very rare gu worm to find in the wild and even harder to refine, it being consumed after use makes it even rarer and more expensive. The auctioneer shouts. "Bidding begins at half a million primeval stones!"
I am the one auctioning this gu, as well as the two Ying Yang Rotation Gu that are to come, so I take a sip from a cup of wine and then watch as the bidding begins. Someone gets up from their seat and shouts. "Five hundred and fifty thousand!"
Someone else shouts their bid. "Six hundred thousand!"
Another person, this one from a VIP lounge, also begins bidding. "Seven hundred thousand!"
Yet another individual from another VIP lounge joins in. "Eight hundred thousand!"
The bidding is more intense, frenzied and desperate than it has any right to be. Ying Yang Rotation Gu heals all ailments, which happens to include rare and difficult to treat injuries and diseases.
If someone has a child, spouse, friend, brother or other dear person suffering from one such ailment they would certainly bid desperately for this gu, that likely represents their only hope for saving someone close to them.
Multiple people faced with a situation like that meeting in an auction house, where a Ying Yang Rotation Gu is being auctioned, is quite the stroke of luck for me. Which is about what I expected when I decided to auction off all three of the ones I got from gacha rocks.
Xin Ci's expression turns somewhat sad and melancholic as the bid goes past one million. "Luck truly is one of the most important things when doing business."
That's true. No matter how experienced and skilled one is, no matter how much they research the market or how long they spend preparing, they will always be eclipsed by someone who just got lucky.
Even on earth, one could toil for their business for years on end, only to be eclipsed by someone who got rich from crypto shitcoins.
And for every person that got rich on crypto shitcoins, there were another hundred chasing their success, like moths drawn to open flames.
The bidding continues, reaching one million and a half, then two million, before stopping at two million and eight hundred primeval stones.
That's multiple times how many I had before I came to Wu clan's city. The auctioneer has the fish close its mouth, before swapping it for yet another one. This one opens its mouth to reveal another rank 5 Ying Yang Rotation Gu.
Everyone participating in the auction already knows what's going to be sold, the auction house does have to do some advertising and they handed us all a list at the start, but there is a specific reason that I chose this auction house in particular.
They don't advertise how many of a gu worm they sell. Usually this isn't a problem, the chances of someone selling two identical rank 5 gu worms is pretty low, but in my case it's crucial.
If the people bidding knew that there was another Ying Yang Rotation gu coming for sale, they wouldn't bid as desperately. They'd think 'I can just let this guy take it, less competition for the incoming gu worm.'
Because they didn't know another is coming they instead bid desperately for the first, and then just as desperately for the second. The auctioneer doesn't even get to announce the bidding price. "Six hundred thousand!"
Someone else shouts. "Seven hundred thousand!"
And so the frenzied bidding begins again. This one gu worm sells for a one million and two hundred thousand, the next and final Ying Yang Rotation Gu sells for one million and three hundred thousand.
We entered the auction practically penniless, and now we're leaving it with enough primeval stones to outright buy out multiple clans.
—
I carefully lay down all of the refinement materials required for my next refinement, before taking a deep breath and preparing the final touches.
Rank 4 Golden Bones Gu, which is the core of my current refinement, is placed inside of a red cauldron. The cauldron is made from phoenix jade, a particularly rare refinement material.
The cauldron itself goes on top of a phoenix jade furnace, the inside of which is filled with ironwood scraps dipped in the blood of a beast emperor phoenix eagle.
Filling the cauldron with blood from the same beast the ironwood was dipped in is the penultimate step, the final step before beginning the refinement is lighting the ironwood on fire.
I activate rank 3 Fiery Stream Gu, before slowly exhaling out into the furnace. Instead of air, what comes out of my mouth is a long jet of fire. The wood is quickly set ablaze, after which I stop exhaling and take multiple gu worms of a single kind from my aperture.
Rank 1 Oxygen Gu are thrown in one by one into the furnace. They look like little rotund fireflies, their activation condition is their death, upon which they unload a small burst of oxygen.
Each firefly makes the flames grow brighter and hotter. Where at first the fire was light orange, it slowly becomes paler and paler, until it becomes white, at which point the blood of the phoenix type beast emperor is ignited.
My brow begins to sweat as the fire turns hot enough to become blue. It's a good thing that I'm in the wilderness. If I was doing this in Wu Clan city it is likely that I would get a large fine for almost burning down a building.
The grass around the furnace starts to burn as well, although activating a rank 4 resist fire gu makes that a minor concern. I stare into the cauldron, where the blood has finally begun boiling the Rank 4 Golden Bones Gu.
Slowly the level of the blood inside of the cauldron starts to grow lower and lower, at the halfway point I stop throwing in oxygen gu into the furnace, and instead let the fire slow down on its own.
If I remove the cauldron from the fire the refinement will fail, rank 4 Golden Bones Gu would be dead and the refinement materials would have been wasted. If I interfere in the refinement anymore than I already have the result will be the same.
I wait for all of the blood to boil away, until finally I am left staring at a cauldron containing a rank 5 gu worm. I take the newly refined gu and immediately pour almost all of the primeval essence contained in both of my apertures into it for a single activation.
I've already gotten rid of all the body refinements I had on myself in preparation to use an entirely new set of gu worms on myself.
The rank 5 Golden Phoenix Bones Gu activates, instantly refining all of the bones in my body into those of a golden phoenix beast emperor.
This is the first gu worm I've refined for my strength path foundation, I still have more to refine, so I store the furnace and pot and teleport to another random place and begin preparations for refining another gu worm.
I spend the rest of the day refining gu worms. When I started the first refinement it was early morning, by the time I finished refining the last gu worm for my strength path cultivation the stars and moon have already taken over the sky.
Ordinarily refining this many rank 5 gu in a single night would not be just tiring, it would be literally deadly. Gu refinement can, and will, fail. The backlash from the failure can damage the soul, enough backlash to the soul can be deadly.
For me and my absurdly strong soul that is not an issue, and even if it were my luck practically guarantees almost all of my refinements to be a success anyway. The only refinement that I believe to be beyond its ability to ensure is the refinement of immortal gu, and even there it's only that I doubt it can make it a certainty, not that it can't make it significantly easier.
The absurd primeval essence recovery rate granted to me by my extreme physique is more than enough to allow me to use all of the strength path gu worms I've collected, so by the end of the day I possess physical power well above any rank 5 strength path gu master.
A set of body refinement strength path gu worms, combined with my human path dao marks mimicking strength path and the strength path dao marks I've gained from cannibalism means I have none to fear in the mortal realms anymore.
An immortal would still grind me into dust, the advantage given to them by having infinite primeval essence is too much to be overcome, but any ordinary rank 5 gu master will never be my match.
There's still some time left in the night, so I teleport somewhere in the wilderness one final time.
—
I sit down on the grassy hills of the wilderness, take a minute to appreciate the way the light of the full moon streaks through the treetops, get myself comfortable and activate Lion Roar Gu. A mill sized lion head made from solid stone appears in front of me, the lion head prepares to roar, but is stopped when I throw a rank 3 Big Strength Defecate Gu inside of it's maw.
The lion head starts cracking, becoming more and more unstable. I wait until it is on the verge of collapsing before throwing three Paper Crane Gu into its mouth.
First of them is a light blue Paper Crane Gu, followed by a dark green Paper Crane Gu and a pink Paper Crane Gu. Once the lion head has eaten all three it's condition stabilizes.
It starts shrinking, until it has shrunk to a third of its original size. The lion's head then starts loudly chanting. "Eat shit, eat shit, eat shit…"
The refinement of Eating One's Words Gu is complete. I stand up and walk over to the newly refined gu worm, before allowing it to eat the dao marks ingrained unto me by Poison Vow Gu.
A stream of green, liquid-like light passes from me to it, it continues chanting as it is eating the poison of Poison Vow Gu. "Eat shit, eat shit, eat shit…"
Once all of the poison of Poison Vow Gu is eaten by it, Eating One's Word Gu pauses, swallows, and then, presumably from eating shit, dies. The stony head turns into ordinary stone dust.
Both the vows I made with Ningbing and the one made with the clan leaders of the Bu clan and of the San clan are now null and void from my end. They still hold the dao marks and poison from Poison Vow Gu in their body, if they break their vows then the effect of Poison Vow Gu will trigger and kill them.
I activate my teleportation killer move, aim for the mountain where the two clans are and immediately find myself on top of a tower in a mortal village.
Attacking the clans directly is possible, but my goal is to refine blood path gu worms, not to just kill everyone and everything.
—
AN:
Shorter chapter, but found a good spot to end it >.>.
Hope you enjoyed the read!
If you find any mistakes please let me know so I can fix em.