"Senior Brother Lin, I'm buying three low-grade Heqi Pills at once. Can't you give me a small discount? I'm a regular! Let's say eight spirit stones for the lot," a refined-looking middle-aged cultivator pleaded with a long, miserable face inside the market cave.
Lin Haoming looked at him and sighed. "Lin Feiyang, my fellow Lin, you haggle every single time. You know I'm just an agent. The inner sect seniors set the price, and I have very little room to move. Your total isn't even ten stones, and you want a whole stone off? You're making it hard for me."
"How about I throw in some spent spirit stones as a sweetener?" Lin Feiyang suggested with a grin.
Lin Haoming sighed again. "Junior Brother Lin, you always use spent stones as add-ons. Those scraps combined aren't worth a single pill. You're putting me in a tough spot!"
"Manager Lin, this time is different! I've brought spent Mid-grade Spirit Stones!"
"Oh? I haven't seen those often. Fine, since we share a surname, I'll take the hit. Give me the mid-grade scraps, and I'll let the pills go for eight stones," Lin Haoming said, looking like he was suffering a great loss.
"Thank you, Senior Brother!" Lin Feiyang was ecstatic. He handed over a bag of thirty or forty spent stones along with eight low-grade ones. With these pills, he felt he had an eighty percent chance of breaking through to the 9th level of Qi Refining.
As he left, Lin Haoming felt the Merit Bead vibrate. The golden lines within it grew slightly more solid. He smiled; he had discovered that being a shopkeeper was a goldmine for Merit. By haggling and then reluctantly giving a discount to those who truly needed it, he generated genuine gratitude. It was far more efficient than hunting dozens of Mountain Armored Beasts.
Lin Feiyang was his Golden Goose for Merit—he provided gratitude every visit and, better yet, he worked in the scrap spirit stone warehouse. Over the past six months, Lin Haoming had acquired over a thousand spent stones from him without having to scour the market.
---
The Power of Mid-grade Stones
Lin Haoming retreated to his private cultivation chamber. He placed his Spirit Accumulation Bead onto the spent mid-grade stones. Just as he suspected, it worked. Though a mid-grade stone had a hundred times the capacity of a low-grade one—and thus took a hundred times longer to charge—it was worth the wait.
A Five Elements Spirit Gathering Array fueled by mid-grade stones was twice as effective as one using low-grade stones. Combined with his daily intake of Qi-Gathering Pills, one day of Lin's cultivation was equivalent to a month for a normal cultivator. In the last six months, he had effectively put in ten years of hard cultivation.
Despite this, he was still only approaching the peak of the 8th level. He sometimes felt depressed by his body's poor aptitude, but the unique power of his Merit Bead kept him balanced.
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Trouble Knocks
"Where is Lin Haoming? Tell him to get his ass out here!"
A roar shattered Lin's peaceful thoughts. He quickly hid his beads and walked out to the storefront. He found Ling Shengjie slamming his hand on the counter, looking furious. Standing beside him was an old acquaintance: Zhou Zhiye.
Lin Haoming knew immediately that this was bad news.
Ling Shengjie sneered, "So you're the ninth-generation descendant of Ancestor Lin?"
Lin Haoming braced himself. "I am. Senior Brother Ling, do you have business with me?"
"Leave this place immediately and I'll give you a chance to live," Ling Shengjie threatened coldly. "Otherwise... die."
Lin Haoming knew this wasn't an empty threat. Given Ling's status, he could kill an outer disciple and no one—not even Xie Ruolan—would likely care. Behind Ling, Zhou Zhiye wore a triumphant smirk.
---
The Grudge
Zhou Zhiye had viewed his defeat by Lin as an ultimate humiliation and had spent the last six months digging for dirt. He eventually discovered a juicy secret: Xie Ruolan, the dream goddess of many elite inner disciples, had originally been brought to the sect by Ancestor Lin specifically to be Lin Haoming's future Dual Cultivation partner.
Zhou Zhiye had gleefully brought this information to Ling Shengjie, Xie Ruolan's most obsessed pursuer. Knowing that his rival was currently working for his goddess in the market sent Ling into a jealous rage.
The only reason Ling hadn't killed Lin on the spot was a fear of upsetting Xie Ruolan and letting a different rival take advantage of the situation. For now, he just wanted the eyesore gone.