81: Chapter 81 Market Prices of Hundreds of Arts

The shop assistant finally finished wiping the Flying Sword, tossed the animal skin onto the counter, and looked up to see Jiang Yan standing in front of the iron cabinet for quite a while.

He walked over with a businessman's smile on his face, but his eyes swept over Jiang Yan—a plain blue long robe, no spiritual power fluctuations of a magical robe, no Sect token at his waist, and no Li family insignia either.

That smile faded a bit, turning into a routine greeting.

"Fellow Daoist, do you want to look at a High Grade Flying Sword? Would you like me to take it out for you to test?"

"No need." Jiang Yan turned and left the Qianbing Pavilion.

The scale of the Talisman shops was much smaller than the Magical Artifact shops; most were single-room storefronts, and some were even just a corner carved out inside a general store.

The prices were quite transparent—a Low Grade 1st-tier Talisman cost three to five Spirit Stones each, a Medium Grade 1st-tier was ten to twenty, a High Grade 1st-tier was thirty to fifty, and a Top Grade 1st-tier was seventy to one hundred and twenty.

He spent the time it takes to drink a cup of tea in a shop called "Spirit Talisman Pavilion."

The shopkeeper was an elderly man at the 4th level of Qi Refining, sporting a sparse goatee.

The Low Grade 1st-tier Fireball Talismans on the shelf were stacked neatly, each piece of Talisman paper cut to the exact same size, and the ink color of the Talisman patterns was very uniform, but the direction of the spiritual pattern circuits was slightly stiff—clearly mass-produced by the same person.

They were priced at four Spirit Stones each, or three for ten.

The Medium Grade 1st-tier Wind Blade Talismans and Golden Light Talismans were placed on the upper shelf, priced at fifteen Spirit Stones.

The High Grade 1st-tier Flame Explosion Talismans were locked in a drawer behind the shopkeeper, priced at forty Spirit Stones.

This shop had no stock of Top Grade 1st-tier Talismans, only a wooden plaque hanging on the wall that read, "Pre-orders for Top Grade Talismans require a 30% deposit, pickup in ten days, price negotiable."

When Jiang Yan walked out of the Spirit Talisman Pavilion, he had already calculated the cost of the Talismans in his mind.

Taking the lowest grade Fireball Talisman as an example, the cost of the Talisman paper was less than half a Spirit Stone, the cost of the spiritual ink was about one-third of the paper, and adding in the failure rate of refining, the total cost was at most two Spirit Stones.

The retail price was four, a 50% profit margin. This didn't seem as lucrative as Medicinal Pills, but Talismans had the advantage of a short refining cycle.

A skilled Talisman master could refine seven or eight Low Grade 1st-tier Talismans a day, while a furnace of Medicinal Pills could easily take several hours from start to completion, and the success rate was unstable.

He saw the prices for Formations at the end of the main street.

That shop was called "Hundred Formations Pavilion," with a very small storefront sandwiched between a general store and a pawnshop that bought and sold Yao Beast Materials; it was deserted.

Sitting behind the counter was an old woman with gray hair, who was using a carving knife to inscribe Formation patterns onto a fire copper base plate.

A faint rustling sound was emitted as the tip of the knife slid across the metal; her hands were very steady, and the depth of every stroke was precise.

Several sets of finished Formation Plates were hanging on the wall. A Low Grade 1st-tier Formation Plate plus Formation Flags started at two hundred Spirit Stones per set.

The Medium Grade 1st-tier jumped straight to five hundred to eight hundred, the High Grade 1st-tier was over one thousand, and the Top Grade 1st-tier was priced at two thousand Spirit Stones.

Jiang Yan estimated the cost of refining a set of Li Fire Killing Array—the fire copper base plate plus the Formation core Materials and the consumption of Spirit Jade, the total cost was just over two hundred Spirit Stones, yet the finished product could sell for over a thousand Spirit Stones.

But the refining cycle for Formations was too long; a set of High Grade 1st-tier Formations could take anywhere from ten days to half a month from inscribing the patterns to completing the testing.

Furthermore, there were few buyers and poor liquidity, making it unsuitable for quickly accumulating Spirit Stones.

The layout of the Spirit Material shops and Spirit Medicine shops was the most scattered.

Black Stone City did not have a dedicated Spirit Material market; most Spirit Materials and Spirit Medicines were sold mixed into general stores, with uneven quality and prices that fluctuated with the market.

In a general store at the entrance of West Street, Jiang Yan saw a few fragments of gold essence, priced at five Spirit Stones each.

Next to it was a small piece of cold iron the size of a fist, priced at thirty Spirit Stones.

On the bottom shelf sat a blackened Yao Beast bone; the spiritual patterns had almost completely dissipated, yet it was still priced at twenty Spirit Stones.

He asked for the prices of a few auxiliary medicinal ingredients at another shop that specialized in buying and selling Spirit Medicine.

The shopkeeper was a tall, thin man with high cheekbones and deep-set eyes; his eyeballs darted around quickly when he spoke, marking him as someone who had been calculating and frugal for years.

A two-hundred-year-old fleeceflower root, if the quality was good, was priced at twenty-five Spirit Stones.

A three-hundred-year-old ganoderma was priced at forty Spirit Stones.

Jiang Yan asked him if he had any poria or angelica over fifty years old; the shopkeeper dug out a few oil-paper packets from under the counter, asking eight Spirit Stones per packet for the poria and five for the angelica.

"Is the little Fellow Daoist an Alchemist?" the shopkeeper asked, his eyes darting over him.

"Buying them for someone else."

The shopkeeper let out an "oh" and didn't ask any more questions. But those rapidly darting eyes of his clearly expressed disbelief.

Twilight pressed in from the west. The lanterns hanging on both sides of the street lit up one after another, the orange-yellow light casting mottled patterns on the stone road.

Traveling merchants and Loose Cultivators began to disperse one after another, but the flow of people on the street did not decrease—on the contrary, it became even livelier.

A few Loose Cultivator demon hunters who had just returned from outside the city crouched in a street corner dividing their spoils; the corpse of an Iron-Tailed Lizard had been hacked to pieces, with the scales, beast bones, and poison sacs sorted and packed into several boxes.

A young man in gray clothes crouched nearby, clutching a few Spirit Stones in his hand, bargaining with the leader of the demon hunter team.

Jiang Yan found an inn. The sign hung with the characters "Li's," and the stone steps at the entrance were worn shiny, clearly indicating good business.

The shopkeeper was a chubby, elderly Mortal wearing a slightly worn silk robe, with a smile of harmonious business on his face.

Seeing Jiang Yan enter, he stood up from behind the counter and bowed quickly— "Immortal Master, please come in. This small shop is an enterprise directly operated by the Li family, and the guest rooms are all equipped with soundproofing Restrictions and warning Restrictions; it is absolutely safe. One Spirit Stone per night."

Jiang Yan paid the Spirit Stones, took the door tag, and went upstairs.

The guest room was at the end of the third-floor corridor, not big, about a square zhang.

The walls were inscribed with three layers of Restrictions—the soundproofing Restriction could completely isolate the street noise outside the window when activated, the warning Restriction formed a very faint cyan light film on the door, and a basic defensive Restriction covered the walls of the entire room.

The inscription method of the Restrictions was standard and unremarkable, at a standard Medium Grade 1st-tier level, but it operated very stably.

The curtains were thick and old, blocking the lights of the street below.

He sat cross-legged on the bed without lighting a lamp.

Moonlight leaked in through the gaps in the window lattice, drawing a few thin, silver-white lines on the floor.

The clamor of the street below was pressed into a blurry hum by the soundproofing Restriction; occasionally, a few bursts of loud laughter came from the next room, only to be swallowed by the walls.

He closed his eyes and laid out all the price information he had gathered during the day one by one in his Sea of Consciousness.

Magical Artifacts. Highest profit, with a markup of up to two to three times.

The refining cost of a High Grade 1st-tier Flying Sword was about a little over one hundred Spirit Stones, yet the retail price could reach three hundred to five hundred Spirit Stones.

He was a quasi-4th-tier Artifact Refiner, and refining 1st-tier Magical Artifacts to him was like a carpenter carving a wooden wedge—he could carve it better than others even with his eyes closed.

The cost could be kept under 70% of the market price, and the quality of the finished product could crush any opponent of the same grade.

Medicinal Pills. Profit of 60% to 80%, not as good as Magical Artifacts but with the advantage of rapid consumption.

A Loose Cultivator might use one Flying Sword for ten years, but they had to eat peiyuan pills and spirit-recovery pills almost every month.

Although his attainments in Alchemy were not as good as in Artifact Refining, refining 1st-tier Medicinal Pills was not a problem.

Talismans. 50% profit, lowest cost, shortest cycle. The cost of one Fireball Talisman was less than two Spirit Stones, and once skilled, he could refine over a dozen a day.

But the barrier to entry was also the lowest, and the competition was the most intense—there were at least several dozen Loose Cultivators in Black Stone City who knew how to draw Talismans.

Formations. Highest profit; a set of Formations costing two hundred Spirit Stones could sell for over a thousand. But the cycle was the longest, and there were the fewest buyers; he might not sell one set in a month.

His fingers tapped lightly on his knees.

Focus on Artifact Refining. Refining High Grade and Top Grade 1st-tier Magical Artifacts offered high profits and few competitors, allowing for the rapid accumulation of Spirit Stones.

Supplement with Alchemy—he would refine the purple cloud ganoderma he brought out from the Manghuang Mountains and those few two-hundred-year-old Spirit Medicines into Medicinal Pills; whether he used them himself or sold them, he wouldn't lose out.

He wouldn't touch Talismans for now, unless he was truly short on Spirit Stones and needed to quickly liquidate at low cost. Otherwise, he would only make some for his own use.

He opened his eyes.

The moonlight moved to the edge of the bed. He reached out and picked up the fine porcelain teapot on the low table beside the bed, pouring a cup of cold water.

The water was warm, carrying a very faint smell of sulfur—underneath Black Stone City was volcanic rock, so the well water carried some geothermal heat.

Then he began to plan what he needed to do.

The first thing: find an Immortal Cave to rent long-term.

An inn cost one Spirit Stone a night, which was thirty a month; it wasn't worth it.

Renting a lower-class Immortal Cave cost about a hundred Spirit Stones a year, which was much cheaper, and the Immortal Cave came with a simple Pill Refining Room and Artifact Refining Room, so he didn't need to look for another place.

But he didn't have enough Spirit Stones right now; he needed to earn some first, so he would stay at the inn for the next few days.

The second thing: buy auxiliary medicinal ingredients. Refining pills with Vermilion Fruit required several auxiliary ingredients to neutralize the fire poison and enhance the medicinal power; he had already deduced the list many times while in the Manghuang Mountains.

The third thing: gather information. The Li family of Xuri Ridge, the Taixuan Sect, and Cangwu Ridge.

Since Black Stone City was a gathering place for Loose Cultivators, there should be no shortage of well-informed people in the restaurants and teahouses.

He set the teacup back on the low table and closed his eyes again. He began to Cultivate the Taixu Nourishing Spirit Art.