3. Supply and Demand
Yu Soha passed over the comment offering forty spirit stones and opened the review posted above it once more.
He didn't even circulate his qi... and they dual cultivated for days?
The men who had dual cultivated with her always said they needed to rest after only a little while. Even when she gave them time to circulate their qi and waited, the yang qi she could draw from them never amounted to much.
She read the seller's explanation as well. It was not a medicine that changed one's constitution, he claimed, but one that replenished yang qi.
Even if it is nothing more than a simple replenishment of yang... if one could truly dual cultivate for days on end...
She looked through the open door at the courtyard beyond. The women of Baekhwa Palace had planted the yang qi gathered through dual cultivation and raised Night Blossom Trees from it. Pluck a treasure box from such a tree and open it, and one might obtain a spirit fruit, a magic treasure, or sometimes even a legacy. What emerged could only be known once the box was opened — but with the restoration of Baekhwa Palace so urgent, she had desperate need of whichever it might be.
And yet Yu Soha had still not managed to sprout a single tree. However much yang qi she tried to gather, the men wore out first, and she could seldom collect as much as she required.
If only it hadn't been for that bastard Gwak Cheolyong...
When dual cultivation refused to go as he wished, he blamed the women. Then he slaughtered every disciple of Baekhwa Palace. Drove a chisel into their skulls.
That worthless, impotent piece of shit...
Yu Soha clenched her teeth. She set down the edge of the blanket she had been gripping and took up the jade slip again.
The woman who had received yang qi for days said that circulating qi had come more easily than usual.
If I could gather yang qi for days and days...
Yu Soha looked once more at the courtyard, then gathered her focus upon the place where a comment might be written.
One hundred spirit stones.
Even she could not bring herself to post it at once. It was far too much money to stake on a single pill made by a man with no reputation. But that possibility — the possibility of gathering yang qi across days upon days — snagged at her far too sharply to ignore.
She checked the comment she had posted. After a short wait, others answered.
Yu Soha did not reply. She opened the comments further, but the alias Va-agra was nowhere among them. She rested the jade slip on her knee and waited, and a little later she checked again, to see whether a new reply had come.
A hundred spirit stones.
I shifted where I sat and read the comment again.
Burning a hundred of them on a single pill?
Suspicious to the bone and snake-hearted — I swear, there's no dirty trick they won't pull.
I answered the buyer.
I had thrown it out hard, just to see. If she came back with Got your hopes up, dipshit? Psyche, I'd be in trouble.
By private message I gave her the Thunder Pavilion branch and the collection code, and I took down the place where the pill was to be sent. I set the jade slip aside and lay down, then checked the comments once more before sleep.
No psyche. Not yet.
The next day, Jin Myeong came out with an unfamiliar pendant hanging at his waist.
"Senior. Is that something you just bought?"
When the assistant beside him asked, the bastard lifted the pendant for all to see.
"A Dust-Clearing Pendant. Dust and medicinal powder don't cling to the robes. Cost me twenty spirit stones. Hahaha!"
Jin Myeong spread an immaculate sleeve.
"You lot ought to get one each. Tremendously convenient, I tell you. Hahahaha!"
He laughed, obnoxious as ever.
Annoying bastard, as always. But more to the point — did the one called BloomingDay actually send the money?
I pretended I was off to the latrine and checked the jade slip.
For real?
The moment my shift ended, I went to the Thunder Pavilion. I presented the collection code, and the clerk checked the records and brought a pouch out from the back.
"One hundred low-grade spirit stones!"
He broke the seal in front of me and opened the pouch to show me. I looked in at the spirit stones inside — a pouch packed with luminous, bling-bling stones, and rising off them a frankly obscene fragrance of spiritual qi.
Haaa... I'm going to be rich...!
I took the pouch he handed over. I was so worked up my heart hammered. Until now, a wage in my life had meant rubbing away a full hour just to earn enough for two meals. But this — a few hours of rubbing had just coughed up ten months' pay.
"Your jade slip."
"Ah, yes. Here it is."
I held the jade slip out at once. The clerk logged the receipt and stamped it with the trading house's seal.
"Processed as one hundred spirit stones received. Your receipt is here."
"Thank you!"
I tucked the money into my pouch and took the jade slip back.
"Next!"
The clerk was already holding his hand out to the cultivator behind me.
I returned to the post that had kicked up all the controversy and left a comment.
Ugh, these idiots. Cultivate, if you've got time for this.
But just then, someone using a familiar alias left a comment.
Wait... is this whole mood suddenly sliding straight into pure profit?
I can smell it. The smell of money.
I had no idea whether these guys even understood the concept, but in the modern world there is a thing called supply and demand. And according to that theory, what happens if you suddenly choke the supply in a situation like this?
You hit the jackpot. Hahahaha!
I didn't leave a comment. I went shopping.
First stop was the pill shop.
"Do you have True Origin Pills?"
"We do. Ten low-grade spirit stones a pill."
"Just three, then. Hahaha!"
The merchant put the pills into a small bottle and handed it over.
Perfect. Now let's buy some ingredients for the money printer.
I pocketed the bottle and chose my herbs — Crimson Yang Herb, the auxiliary ingredients, and the rest. Then I stopped in at the artifact shop to look at a small Steady-Flame Furnace. Even while the merchant set the flame and went on about other goods, I stayed glued in front of the furnace.
"If I leave it like that, I don't have to keep regulating the fire?"
"It holds a set flame with ease. Many who refine pills come looking for these."
How many times had I gone through the trouble of separating the components, only to scorch the medicinal nature away at the very end?
"How much?"
"Forty spirit stones."
Tight, but I could afford it. The problem was that in a cultivation world crawling with suspicious bastards, stroll around announcing I struck it rich! and you'd be found as a corpse the next day.
Just in case, I ought to buy a few talismans and head back quietly.
I made a last stop at the talisman shop and bought an assortment. In a fight, after all, gear is everything.
Whether because it was still daylight, or because I had spread my divine sense and picked my way along with care, no one followed me.
The moment I returned to my quarters, I took out a True Origin Pill. I remembered Jin Myeong shaking an empty bottle and telling me to call him senior.
All right. Shall I try a little capitalist cultivation of my own?
I swallowed the pill and folded my legs. Following the circulation method, I drew the medicinal power in and gathered it at my dantian. It wasn't long before I nearly screamed Anastasia!
Th-this can't be real... At this rate I might break through a realm before long...?
I resettled my posture and kept circulating. On an ordinary day I would already have been stretching my legs and reaching for the jade slip, but now I had no thought of stopping halfway.
If I down one of these every day...
I might have Jin Myeong calling me senior in no time.
And so, after savoring that circulation down to the last drop, I savored the grinding of the ingredients I had bought that day and refined them into Viagra. What came of it was no fewer than three pills.
I set aside the one meant for BloomingDay, placed the remaining two in front of me, and opened the gallery.
Oh?
I propped my chin on my hand and read on.
· · ·
This time no one bid higher. I answered at once.
Yes!
I bit my lip as I traded messages with the winning bidder. I kept wanting to grin, and I was afraid I'd write the meeting place wrong.
Hahaha! I'll have to run the auction this way again tomorrow.
Swollen with hope, I barely slept. And the next day, after enduring Jin Myeong's hazing, building a comrades' bond with Soyeon, and somehow getting through the work, I went straight to the Thunder Pavilion and sent the Viagra.
At last, the day had come.
The moment Yu Soha received Va-agra's message, she ran to the Thunder Pavilion. She tucked the pill into her robes at once and made for the Radiant Splendor Pavilion.
Inside, female cultivators were adorning guests seated before vanities. On one side a hairpin was being set into a guest's hair; on the other, floral motifs were being drawn at the corners of the eyes with a jade brush.
When Yu Soha took an empty seat, one of the female cultivators approached.
"Where will you be going?"
"To the Pavilion of Ultimate Bliss."
"Ah. Then shall I make you a little more eye-catching?"
"Please do."
The cultivator lightly tipped up Yu Soha's chin and studied her face.
"Peach Blossom makeup will suit you well."
She breathed spiritual qi into the jade brush and spread the rouge on thin. Each time she changed brushes, she formed a hand seal at her fingertips and set the powder fast.
"It won't smudge even if you dance the whole night through."
"Will it hold if I sweat a great deal?"
"Of course. When you wish it gone, you'll have to lift it off with an art as well."
Yu Soha nodded and closed her eyes. A little later, the cultivator let her hair down, swept it back over her shoulders, and held out a mirror.
"How is it?"
Yu Soha looked into the mirror.
"Splendid."