The market wasn't just pill vendors and weapon stalls. Scattered throughout were recruitment booths for various cultivation sects, each trying to attract talented disciples from the upcoming ceremony.
Most had elaborate banners and enthusiastic recruiters calling out to passersby.
One booth, however, was notably different.
Alexei spotted a familiar figure sitting rigidly behind a shabby wooden table, looking like he was attending a funeral rather than recruiting disciples. A banner hung behind him reading "Aureate Summit Sect - Accepting Disciples."
Quan sat perfectly still. People walked past quickly, avoiding eye contact, clearly intimidated by the man.
He noticed the three of them and gave a slight nod of acknowledgment before returning to his statue impression.
"That's not going to recruit anyone," Alexei said flatly.
"No," Yan agreed. "No, it's really not."
They moved on, leaving Quan to his futile vigil.
Another half hour of walking brought them to their destination: a long street suffused with the faint scent of medicinal herbs. Both sides were lined with vendors selling spirit herbs, roots, flowers, and fruits.
"This is where I usually source materials," Yan said, sounding pleased with herself. "You can find some real bargains here if you know what to look for."
"Bargains?" Qingxue raised an eyebrow.
"My best find was a three-thousand-year Evening Glow Root that I bought for fifteen low-grade spirit stones. I sold it to a proper alchemy hall for seven mid-grade stones." Yan grinned. "Nearly fifty times profit."
"Yan! Back again?" A vendor called out as they passed. "Fresh Qi-Inducing Mushrooms and Frostmoss, top quality, fully intact!
"Yan! It's been a while! Need any Scattered Vine?"
"Miss Han..."
She waved politely at each vendor, clearly a regular customer. Alexei noticed how she kept her interactions brief.
As they walked, he found himself examining the various herbs on display. Most looked like generic fantasy plants, glowing slightly, unusual colors, probably poisonous if you ate them wrong.
His view was occasionally blocked by Yan walking in front of him. The woman had a tendency to lean over stalls to examine goods, and her figure was distracting. Not that he was looking. He was sixteen, not dead, but he also wasn't some hormonal idiot who couldn't focus.
"Yan!" A cheerful elderly voice called out. "I've acquired some new treasures. Interested in taking a look?"
Yan stopped. "Elder Hao. What've you got?"
The old man running the stall was thin and weathered, with a face creased by decades of smiling. His eyes crinkled as he gestured at his wares. "Only the finest herbs, as always. Freshly harvested, properly stored."
This was apparently the "sucker" who'd sold Yan that Evening Glow Root for a fraction of its value. Alexei studied him more carefully. The old man didn't look like an idiot. Which meant either he was terrible at identifying herbs, unlikely for someone running an herb stall, or there was something else going on.
His gaze swept across their group and lingered on Alexei for just a moment too long.
Alexei's instincts prickled. He'd seen that look before.
What the hell does this old man want?
Yan had already moved to examine the goods, picking up a fresh herb wrapped in what looked like condensed spiritual energy to keep it from wilting. She studied it, and Alexei saw her eyebrows rise slightly.
"You have some interesting items this time."
Alexei looked at the herb in question. A small tag on the stall identified it as "Purple Cloud Flower."
The display was impressive, dozens of different herbs and spirit fruits, all neatly arranged and labeled. Most of the labels had prices far lower than he would've expected based on the market they'd walked through.
"May I examine your wares?"
The old man's smile widened. "Of course. Please, touch whatever interests you."
Alexei reached for the nearest spirit fruit. The moment his fingers made contact, text appeared in his vision.
[Triple Yang Fruit:
Profound-Tier Mid-Grade Spirit Fruit.
Matured for 45+ years in high spiritual energy environment.
Market Value: 50-60 low-grade spirit stones.]
He glanced at the label on the stall: "Lesser Yang Fruit - 5 low-grade spirit stones"
"Triple Yang Fruit?" Alexei murmured, more to himself than anyone else.
All three people turned to stare at him.
Shit.
Yan looked down at what he was holding, then at the label, then back at the fruit. "What did you just say?"
Alexei's mind raced. Deflecting now would be suspicious, he'd already said it. "Uh... Triple Yang Fruit? I thought I saw... never mind, probably misread the label."
"No." Yan's eyes had gone sharp. "You said Triple Yang Fruit. Are you sure?"
The old man was watching, saying nothing but clearly listening to every word.
Double shit.
"I mean, I'm not an expert or anything..."
"Alexei." Yan grabbed another herb from the stall, the one she'd been examining earlier, and thrust it at him. "What about this one? What does it say?"
He touched it reluctantly.
[Purple Sky Flower:
Earth-Tier High-Grade Spirit Herb.
Core ingredient for Plum-Seeking Pills (Rank 6).
Market Value: 200-250 low-grade spirit stones.]
His eyes flicked to the label: "Purple Cloud Flower - 15 low-grade spirit stones."
He could lie. Say he saw "Purple Cloud Flower" like the label claimed. But Yan was already suspicious, and if she knew herbs well enough to recognize the mistakes herself, a lie would just make things worse.
"Purple... Sky Flower?" He made it sound like a question, like he wasn't sure.
Yan's expression went through several rapid changes. She picked up another herb. Then another. Each time she held one out, Alexei reluctantly identified it, and each time the name didn't match the label.
After the fifth herb, she set down what she was holding.
"You've got to be kidding me," she muttered, staring at the stall with new understanding. "Your entire stock is... every label is wrong."
The old man's smile had evolved into something beatific. "Is that so?"
His gaze lingered on Yan for a moment longer, then shifted. Slowly, he turned toward Alexei, as if he had been waiting for this part.
"You needn't be afraid. In the vast cultivation world, there exist abilities far stranger than simple herb recognition. Some can identify poisons by scent alone. Others can sense the age of spirit plants from across a room. Your gift is valuable, certainly, but nothing to fear."
The reassurance had the opposite effect. Alexei's paranoia spiked hard. He was starting to piece together what was happening. This wasn't incompetence. It was a test.
The old man had deliberately mislabeled everything, probably hoping to find someone knowledgeable enough to notice. Someone with exceptional talent for identifying herbs.
Someone he could recruit as a disciple.
And Alexei had just walked right into it like an idiot.
Damn it.
Yan grabbed Alexei's shoulders, eyes shining. "Do you know what this means? You're a natural at herb identification! That's an incredibly rare talent!"
"Is it?" Alexei asked weakly, already knowing where this was going.
She looked ready to start planning his entire future. "You could become an alchemist! A medical cultivator! Do you know how valuable that skill set is?"
The old man was watching this exchange with undisguised joy, practically radiating benevolent grandfather energy.
This was bad. Alexei didn't want to get dragged into some alchemist training program. He definitely didn't want this old man deciding he was some prophesied herb genius and refusing to let him leave.
Time to exit.
"I see," Alexei said, extracting himself from Yan's grip. "But we should probably keep moving, right? Didn't you say you had shopping to do?"
"What? Oh, yes, but—"
"Great! Let's go then." He started walking, forcing the other two to follow or be left behind.
Yan cast a regretful look back at the stall but followed. Qingxue came along silently. Behind them, he heard the old man call out: "Yan... ah..."
By the time Hao seemed to realize they were leaving, the three of them had already disappeared into the crowd.
"No rush," he murmured to himself, watching the crowd where the white-haired young man had disappeared. "No rush at all. We'll meet again soon enough."
His smile widened.
"After all, destiny has already made its choice."
----------
[POV: Yan]
After they left Hao's stall, Yan found herself doing mental calculations.
Spirit stones. So many potential spirit stones, just... gone.
She'd been thinking about Alexei's identification ability nonstop since the herb market. Most medical cultivators spent years learning to recognize even a hundred common herbs by sight. The really skilled ones might manage two hundred with perfect accuracy.
But Alexei? He'd correctly identified over twenty different herbs in under ten minutes, including two varieties that even she hadn't recognized. And she'd been studying medicinal plants for the better part of a decade.
The economic opportunities were extensive.
She could've asked him to identify just a few items, enough to prove the point without giving away the full extent of his ability. Then she could've negotiated with Hao, maybe taken one or two of those mislabeled herbs as "compensation" for helping the old man avoid losing five or six mid-grade spirit stones worth of inventory.
But no. She'd been too excited and caught up in the moment, and now Hao knew exactly how valuable Alexei was.
Well. Nothing to be done about it now. Next time she ran into Hao, and she would, because the herb market wasn't that big, she'd just have to pick up some of his "mistakenly labeled" bargains and call it even.
----------
[POV: Elder Ming]
Several hundred kilometers away, in a nondescript building that served as a Ghost Sect gathering point, an elderly man sat in the main seat looking like he wanted to strangle someone.
Ming was gaunt to the point of appearing skeletal. His cultivation robes hung loose on his frame, and his fingers tapped an irritated rhythm against the armrest of his chair.
"Let me make sure I understand. You've seen no sign of Heng. You've received no messages about his arrival. And you have, in fact, heard nothing from my grandson in the past weeks."
The gathering point steward was sweating. "That's correct. We've been watching for him as instructed, but—"
"Enough." Ming waved a dismissive hand.
The steward practically fled.
Alone in the room, Ming's expression darkened.
He'd arrived in the Verdantree region two days ago. Since then, he'd checked every Ghost Sect gathering point within a hundred kilometers, searching for any trace of his grandson. He'd even made a discrete trip near Aureate Summit Sect's outer territories, looking for signs of their target.
Nothing.
"Could I have been wrong?" he muttered. "Is that damn half-demon still hiding somewhere in the Silkspore Basin?"
It was possible. His divination techniques weren't infallible, especially when the target had artifacts that interfered with tracking. And Qingxue definitely had such artifacts, the Ghost Sect had confirmed as much.
The Soul-Anchor Pearl he'd given Heng was supposed to circumvent those protections. It was a rare treasure, purchased at enormous expense from contacts in the Obsidian Domain, and it was the only reliable way the Ghost Sect had to track the half-demon.
Which meant that by giving it to his grandson, he had effectively eliminated their primary tracking method.
He resisted the urge to slam his fist into the table. This entire situation was his own fault. He'd made guarantees to the sect, accepted a mission with specific deadlines, and now he couldn't even locate his primary target because he'd been too clever for his own good.
Finding a half-demon with concealment artifacts in the vast Eastern Territories without the Soul-Anchor Pearl? It would be like trying to find a specific grain of sand on a beach.
She could be hiding anywhere. Some remote forest, a cave system, an abandoned sect ruin... literally anywhere that provided enough spiritual energy for her to recover from her injuries.
He pulled out a communication talisman, held it between two fingers, and channeled spiritual energy into it. The paper burst into grey flames that hung in the air for several seconds before dissipating.
He waited.
No response.
He tried again with a second talisman. Same result.
Either Heng was too far away for the talismans to reach, or he was ignoring them.
"Foolish," he muttered, though whether he was referring to his grandson or himself was unclear.
----------
[POV: Alexei]
A full week had passed since they'd arrived in Verdantree City.
Seven days of walking through markets, examining herbs, touching random objects, and watching Yan's hopes of striking it rich slowly crumble into dust.
The "bargain hunting" plan was officially dead.
After discovering that Alexei could identify pretty much anything by touching it, Yan had stopped limiting herself to medicinal plants. On day two, she'd started bringing him to stalls that sold mineral ores, incomplete jade slips, damaged artifacts from secret realms, basically anything that might be valuable if only someone could identify it properly.
The results were...
Ninety percent of what they examined turned out to be either worthless or mislabeled. Fake jade slips with nothing recorded on them. "Rare minerals" that were actually common iron ore with impurities. "Ancient artifacts" that were maybe twenty years old and had never been enchanted in the first place.
Her dreams of easy profit died a slow, painful death.
By the end of the second day, she had to face an uncomfortable truth: Verdantree City's markets were full of scammers, and aside from Hao, who seemed to be accidentally scamming himself, there were no real bargains to be found.
The Eastern Territories were poor for a reason. And Verdantree City had more scam artists per capita than Moscow had subway stations.
The seed collection plan, however, was going surprisingly well.
Yan's strategy of buying only a few seeds of each variety had apparently triggered something in the local merchants' collective consciousness. By day three, vendors had started offering "bonus" seeds with purchases, rare varieties thrown in as sweeteners to close deals.
By day five, someone had invented "mystery seed boxes," cloth bags filled with random mixed seeds sold at premium prices to gamblers hoping to strike cultivation gold.
It was working disturbingly well. Alexei had watched multiple cultivators drop significant amounts of spirit stones on what amounted to botanical loot boxes.
"It's like those lottery ticket promotions," he'd muttered to himself while watching a particularly enthusiastic buyer.
Qingxue, standing nearby, had given him a questioning look.
He'd explained. "In the mortal world, some businesses would give you a random chance at winning something when you bought their regular products. It made people feel like they were getting a little extra value for their money."
"That's actually quite clever."
"It's clever until you realize the odds are designed to favor the seller, not the buyer."
Which was exactly what was happening here. The Eastern Territories had thin spiritual energy compared to other regions, Yan had mentioned this multiple times, which meant that high-grade spirit seeds had abysmal survival rates when planted in local soil.
Even a full bag of seeds might only produce a five percent germination rate, and most of those seedlings would die before maturity.
One or two "bonus" seeds? Basically worthless. But cultivators were buying them anyway, convinced they'd be the lucky ones who managed to grow something valuable.
Gambling addiction doesn't care what world you're in.
The merchants knew the seeds were mostly unsellable through normal channels. Cultivators who explored dangerous areas often collected spirit herb seeds as potential loot. But most couldn't be bothered to sell them individually, so they'd dump whole collections on apothecaries and seed shops for cheap.
Those shops, in turn, knew the seeds wouldn't grow in the Eastern Territories' environment. So they paid bottom prices and let the inventory accumulate.
Until Yan came along asking for rare varieties, and suddenly those worthless seeds became premium "bonus items."
Everyone made money. Except the final buyers, who'd eventually realize their seeds were dead on arrival.
It was elegant, in a depressing sort of way.
---
Evening had settled over Verdantree City by the time they returned to the inn.
Alexei sat at the small table in Yan's room, a fox kit curled up in his lap, while Yan hovered nearby with her notebook.
The fox purred when he scratched behind its ears.
"Ready?" Yan asked, gesturing at the pile of seed packets on the table.
"Ready as I'll ever be."
She'd bought seeds from at least a dozen different vendors today, and each purchase had come with "bonus" rare seeds that might or might not be worth anything. His job was to identify them so she could update her collection records.
He picked up the first packet, touched the seeds inside, and waited for his system to display information.
[Moongrass Seeds - Yellow-Tier Low-Grade]
"Moongrass seeds," he said aloud.
Yan made a note. "We already have those."
Next packet.
[Frostwillow Seeds - Yellow-Tier Mid-Grade]
"Frostwillow seeds."
"Duplicate."
[Purple Cloud Mushroom Spores - Profound-Tier Low-Grade]
"Purple Cloud Mushroom spores."
Yan's pen paused. "That's new. Mark that as priority, mushroom cultivation is tricky but valuable."
They continued through the pile. Most were duplicates of seeds they'd already collected, some were common varieties being passed off as rare, and a few were literally just regular vegetable seeds with impressive-sounding fake names.
"Crimson Leaf seeds," Alexei reported, reading his system information.
"Which are actually just radish seeds," Yan muttered, making an angry mark in her notebook. "Some vendor is getting punched next time I see them."
After an hour of identification, they'd found seven genuinely new varieties worth keeping. Everything else was repeats, fakes, or worthless common plants.
"This is ridiculous," Yan complained, slumping forward onto the table. "There aren't any Earth-tier seeds at all. Barely any Profound-tier ones either. At this rate, we'll never complete the collection."
She was quiet for a moment, then added in a smaller voice: "If we could just go to the Obsidian Domain or the Frostpeak Domain..."
Yan's complaints about the Obsidian Domain and Frostpeak Domain weren't idle whining. Alexei had heard Qingxue mention both places before, and the reason neither was accessible had nothing to do with lack of desire.
The two domains were separated from the Eastern Territories by vast stretches of ocean where spiritual energy was so thin it barely qualified as existing. For cultivators below a certain threshold, crossing that ocean under your own power was simply not an option. The distance, the hostile environment, and the energy drain of sustained flight over hundreds of kilometers of dead spiritual wasteland... it was a death sentence dressed up as a travel plan.
The only way to cross between domains was by spirit ship, and those vessels were operated exclusively by the Immortal Alliance. They were massive constructs powered by vast arrays of spirit stones, capable of traversing the dead zones that lay between territories.
Expensive didn't begin to cover it.
The Eastern Territories' branch of the Immortal Alliance barely ran inter-domain routes at all. The fuel costs alone were staggering, and the Eastern Territories simply didn't generate enough commerce to justify regular service. The only exception was the Inter-Domain Prodigies Tournament, which happened once every thirty years and was apparently the closest thing cultivation had to the Olympics.
So why didn't merchants from wealthier domains just ship high-grade spirit plants to the Eastern Territories and sell them at a markup? Seemed like a business opportunity, right?
The answer was a cautionary tale that had become something of a legend in cultivation circles.
About sixty years ago, one of the top ten merchant families in the Obsidian Domain noticed exactly that opportunity. The Harrow Clan spent months planning in secret, carefully avoiding the attention of rival families. They quietly purchased enormous quantities of spirit plants and fruits at local Obsidian Domain prices, which were relatively low due to the region's abundance of resources. Once everything was secured, they loaded the cargo onto a privately chartered spirit ship and set sail for the Eastern Territories.
On paper, the business logic was flawless. They bought low in a resource-rich domain and sold high in a resource-poor one. It was basic economics.
What the Harrow Clan had failed to account for was the Eastern Territories' cultivators.
These were people who had grown up poor in a spiritually barren region. They haggled over everything. And we're not talking about polite negotiation, we're talking about the kind of grinding, penny-pinching bargaining.
The Harrow Clan arrived expecting to unload their cargo at premium prices and sail home wealthy. Instead, they found that Eastern Territory buyers wouldn't pay more than a fraction of what the plants were worth elsewhere. Not because they didn't know the value, because they simply refused to pay it, and they were willing to wait the sellers out.
After weeks of trying to close deals at reasonable prices and failing, the Harrow Clan started dropping their asking price. Then dropping it again. Then again.
By the end, they were selling high-grade spirit plants for prices that barely covered storage costs.
And the hilarious part? In their greed to maximize profits, the family had only brought enough spirit stones to cover the outbound voyage. They hadn't budgeted for the return trip.
They were stranded.
It took the Harrow Clan two full years to scrape together enough spirit stones for passage home, during which time they had to liquidate virtually their entire inventory at rock-bottom prices just to survive.
Meanwhile, back in the Obsidian Domain, the portion of the family that had stayed behind got caught in massive commercial upheaval. Without the capital that had been invested in the expedition, they couldn't weather the market shifts. The entire clan's position collapsed from one of the top ten families to a minor footnote.
The whole thing became a joke across the cultivation world. And it killed any remaining appetite for inter-domain trade with the Eastern Territories. Other merchants who had considered similar ventures quietly decided they'd rather not be the second cautionary tale.
The incident even spawned an expression, "pulling a Harrow," used to describe any business venture where someone outsmarted themselves into disaster.
Lasting fame, cultivation-style.
----------
[POV: Yan]
Yan sat at the small round table in the inn, brush in hand, dipping it in ink. She drew a red circle over two entries in her collection booklet: Protective Meridian Pills and Lesser Yang Pills.
Red circle meant complete. Every seed needed for those recipes had been gathered.
She flipped through the pages, cross-referencing her notes with the seed inventory they'd built up over the past week.
"Ninth-, eighth-, and seventh-grade Rebirth Pills are all set," she murmured, scanning the entries. "Sixth-grade only needs Yellow Dragon Fruit seeds."
Rebirth Pills were the backbone of cultivation medicine. Every cultivator carried some form of them, from the most basic versions used during Body Tempering all the way up to the high-grade pills used by Dharma Aspect cultivators facing tribulation. You needed recipes for every grade, because using a pill too far above your cultivation stage was a terrible idea.
Unlike consuming raw spirit fruits, where excess medicinal energy just lingered in your system harmlessly, pills had a nasty side effect when mismatched. The excess potency would accumulate as pill toxin over time, and worse, it created drug resistance. A cultivator who habitually took high-grade Rebirth Pills would find that lower-grade versions became progressively less effective when they actually needed them most.
"Foundation Establishment Pill still needs Emerald Jade Ginseng and Sunset Root," she continued, making a note.
She closed the booklet and stretched, feeling a vague sense that something was off about today.
It took her a moment to place it.
"Where's Qingxue?"
That was strange. Qingxue had spent the better part of the past week hovering nearby whenever Alexei was around. Today, she was conspicuously absent from the room.
Alexei was sitting in the corner with the fox in his lap, scratching the little creature behind its ears. It looked like it had achieved enlightenment.
"She said she wasn't feeling well," Alexei said, not looking up. "She wanted to rest early."
Yan frowned. "Not feeling well? She's a Dharma Aspect cultivator. What could possibly be making her unwell?"
Cultivators at that level had bodies that could shrug off most physical ailments. Illness wasn't really something that applied to them in the traditional sense.
"She didn't say specifically," Alexei replied, still focused on the fox.
Yan stood up, mildly annoyed. She was a medical cultivator, if something was wrong with Qingxue, she could at least offer a preliminary diagnosis. The fact that Qingxue hadn't even mentioned it felt like a slight.
She walked over to the bed, where a suspiciously lumpy shape was buried under the covers.
"Qingxue, I'm a medical cultivator. If something's actually wrong, I can—"
Qingxue sat up abruptly, like a startled cat. Her face was flushed.
"I'm fine!"
Yan stared at Qingxue. Qingxue stared at the wall. The fox in Alexei's lap blinked slowly, completely indifferent to the tension in the room.
Yan decided that this was not her problem to solve right now.
"Clearly you're fine. My mistake," she said, turning back to the table. "I still have seeds to organize, so I won't disturb you."
She sat back down and picked up her brush, but didn't immediately start writing.
Alexei, from his corner, glanced between Yan and Qingxue with a slightly confused expression.
"Is she really okay?"
"She's fine. Nothing to worry about."
"You sure? She looks—"
"She's fine," Yan repeated, in a tone that clearly communicated, stop asking questions.
Alexei, to his credit, seemed to pick up on the signal. He shrugged and went back to petting the fox.
---
Two more days crawled by.
The low-tier seed collection was essentially complete. They'd covered every vendor in Verdantree City's market district at least twice, and the returns had diminished to almost nothing. Every worthwhile seed that could be found through street-level searching had already been found.
Which left the high-tier seeds still completely out of reach through normal means.
Yan had a solution for that, though it hurt to implement it.
She spent a full fifty mid-grade spirit stones at the local Immortal Alliance branch to post a formal bounty task. The parameters were simple: anyone who brought in non-duplicate Earth-tier or higher spirit seeds would be compensated from that fifty-stone pool, with payment scaled to the quantity and quality of what they delivered. The pool would deplete as payments were made, until the stones ran out.
If anyone found Heavenly-tier seeds, which would be extraordinary luck in the Eastern Territories, the price would be negotiated separately.
The task deadline was set for the final day of the sect recruitment ceremony.
It wasn't glamorous work. It wasn't even particularly efficient. But fifty mid-grade spirit stones posted as a public bounty would attract far more attention than three people wandering the streets asking vendors if they happened to have anything rare.
Cultivators were opportunistic by nature. Dangle enough money in front of them and someone would come through.
The posting fee alone, ten low-grade spirit stones, the Immortal Alliance's standard handling charge, made Yan wince. That was an absurd amount for what amounted to paperwork.
Back home, that would've been... actually, Yan didn't think in terms of mortal currency. She thought in terms of spirit stones, and ten low-grade stones for a single transaction felt like robbery.
The fifty mid-grade stones for the bounty itself had been pooled together from multiple sources. Aureate Summit Sect had contributed some. Qingxue had quietly added from her own reserves, a small emergency fund she kept stored in Alexei's inventory, which had now shrunk from a comfortable cushion to thirty-three low-grade spirit stones.
Yan's contribution was... nothing.
She was, in the most literal sense possible, broke.
Every spirit stone she'd had going into this trip had been spent on seed purchases, travel costs, and inn fees. The bounty posting had used the last of what she could scrape together from sect funds. She had no personal reserves left whatsoever.
Which meant she was now entirely dependent on Qingxue for day-to-day expenses.
Yan had accepted this reality with surprising equanimity. She was a pragmatist at heart, pride was a luxury she couldn't afford, and the mission mattered more than her dignity. Besides, Qingxue never made a fuss about it. She simply covered costs when they came up, without comment or complaint.
Still. It stung a little.
"I'll pay you back," Yan told Qingxue that evening. "Eventually."
Qingxue just shook her head. "Don't worry about it."
Easy for her to say. She was the one with money.
Yan sighed, leaned back in her chair, and stared at the ceiling.