572: Chapter 573 The broken stone she picked up left the goddess petrified on the spot!

Yunyuan City.

Yingfeng Inn.

Su Chen assigned a room to everyone, choosing the one in the furthest corner of the top floor for himself, and everyone went to rest.

The next day.

Su Chen took Qian Duoduo and Wang Baobao out to scout the area.

"Shen Que" volunteered to go along, her reason being, "This humble girl has some understanding of Yunyuan City; perhaps I can be of help."

Su Chen glanced at her.

[Well, a free guide. Might as well use her.]

"Let's go."

The group walked along the main street toward the city center.

Yunyuan City was much livelier than Peng City. The streets were lined with temporary stalls selling Ores, beast bones, Medicinal Pills, and Magical Artifacts, with shouts from vendors rising and falling in succession.

The air was thick with a mixture of various scents.

Su Chen wrinkled his nose.

[This place is like a construction Materials market, dust everywhere. If I walk around once, I'll have to wash my white clothes three times when I get back.]

Qian Duoduo was looking around ahead of them.

His small eyes had already switched to "Gold Coin Scanning Mode."

Business opportunities, profits, price differences, arbitrage space—every single thing that passed before his eyes was automatically labeled with a number.

"Boss."

Qian Duoduo jogged over and lowered his voice.

"I just asked a few local thugs, and the black market news has been reconfirmed. The market opens tonight at the hour of the Rat, at the abandoned mine cave in the west of the city."

"What about the entry requirements?"

"They've changed."

A look of difficulty appeared on Qian Duoduo's face.

"What I heard before was an asset verification of ten million or a Golden Immortal's guarantee. But I just got the latest news today: the black market manager has temporarily changed the rules."

"How so?"

"They aren't accepting Immortal Stones anymore."

Su Chen's footsteps paused.

"What do you mean?"

Qian Duoduo scratched his head.

"The seller of that batch of immortal marrow—twelve portions—is doing it all through barter. They only accept rare spatial Materials."

Su Chen fell silent for two seconds.

The bullet commentary in his mind began to scroll at high speed.

[Bartering, only accepting spatial Materials.]

[This means the seller isn't short on money; they're short on physical goods.]

[Spatial Materials are strategic-level scarce resources in West Qingyou Continent because this continent has the thinnest Spiritual Qi and the fewest spatial cracks, so natural spatial Materials are produced the least here.]

[It's impossible for ordinary Cultivators to have such things in their hands.]

[So this rule directly filters out ninety-nine percent of the competitors.]

[The remaining one percent are either agents of major powers or Loose Cultivators who got incredibly lucky.]

The corner of Su Chen's mouth twitched slightly.

He remembered something.

A stone.

Before the Peng City auction, Qian Duoduo had picked up a piece of scrap material from the clearance section of the Lingbao Trading Firm's Peng City Branch.

It was gray, about the length of a hand-span, and its surface was as rough as a common pebble on the roadside.

At that time, Qian Duoduo had used fifty thousand high-grade immortal stones given by Su Chen to buy it.

Because Su Chen had swept a glance over it and felt that the stone's Law patterns were 'somewhat interesting.'

As for what exactly was interesting about it, Su Chen hadn't said much at the time.

But now he knew.

That stone was called the 'heaven-concealing void stone.'

An extremely rare spatial material.

Its rarity Rank was within the top thirty of the entire Tiannan Immortal Domain.

The problem was that its appearance was almost identical to ordinary Ore. Without an extremely keen ability to perceive Laws, it was simply impossible to identify.

The manager of the Lingbao Trading Firm's Peng City Branch didn't recognize it.

So they threw it into the clearance section to be sold as scrap.

Fifty thousand.

A floor price.

Su Chen had used the Law perception of the Great Sacrifice Technique to sweep a glance, and he knew something was off about this thing.

But he hadn't made a scene then; he just had Qian Duoduo buy it.

Now.

This fifty-thousand-coin 'scrap' might just be the key to him getting the twelve portions of immortal marrow.

Su Chen's mood improved considerably.

He turned his gaze toward "Shen Que," who was walking behind him with a submissive air.

"Shopkeeper Shen, how much do you know about spatial Materials?"

Xie Jinghong's heart skipped a beat.

Here it comes.

He was starting to need her professional knowledge.

She had already planned her strategy.

First, pretend not to know much, then slowly display amazing professional expertise to make Su Chen realize her value, and then naturally raise her status in the team.

The classic 'pretend to be a pig to eat the tiger' routine.

"This humble girl... knows a thing or two," Xie Jinghong said in a low voice.

"Spatial Materials are divided into three Ranks. Low Grade is used as base material for spatial storage artifacts, Medium Grade can be used to construct nodes for teleportation arrays, and High Grade is the core raw material for refining spatial Magic Treasures."

"The common spatial Materials on the market in the Immortal Domain are mainly Void Shards, Primal Chaos Void Stones, and Purple Void Spirit Sand, with prices ranging from one million to ten million."

Su Chen nodded.

"Hmm, then what about the heaven-concealing void stone?"

Xie Jinghong's footsteps came to an abrupt halt.

Her heart skipped a beat.

heaven-concealing void stone?

He actually knew about the heaven-concealing void stone?

That was a top-tier spatial material ranked in the top thirty of the Tiannan Immortal Domain! Even the main treasury of the Lingbao Trading Firm only had a stock of barely a thousand pieces!

Every single piece was valued at over twenty million high-grade immortal stones!

How did a poor kid in the Great Saint Realm know about Materials of this level?

Xie Jinghong suppressed her internal shock, her face still maintaining the "knows a thing or two" expression.

"The heaven-concealing void stone... this humble girl has heard of it. It is extremely rare and its appearance is no different from ordinary Ore; only experts proficient in the Law of Space can identify it."

"If it were to appear on the black market, how much would it be worth?"

Xie Jinghong calculated rapidly in her mind.

"A conservative estimate would be over twenty million. If the quality is superior and the size is large enough, people would fight for it even at fifty million."

Su Chen didn't say a word.

But the corner of his mouth curled up.

An extremely tiny arc.

Qian Duoduo didn't see it.

Wang Baobao was munching on a spirit fruit and didn't notice.

But Xie Jinghong saw it.

That arc made her heart sink.

She only knew that Su Chen had asked a question about the heaven-concealing void stone.

And when he asked the question, he wasn't seeking knowledge.

He was seeking verification.

He had a heaven-concealing void stone in his hands.

The moment this thought flashed through Xie Jinghong's mind, her entire body stiffened.

Impossible.

How could a kid who just ascended from the Lower Realm have one?

Unless.

Unless he used some method to pick it up for nothing from somewhere that didn't know its value.

Xie Jinghong's brain was working at high speed.

Somewhere that didn't know its value.

Somewhere that would sell a heaven-concealing void stone as scrap.

Her pupils suddenly constricted.

A scene flashed through her mind.

Peng City, Lingbao Trading Firm Branch, clearance section.

Last month, the Peng City manager had reported a batch of unsellable clearance goods. She was busy handling the main guild's affairs at the time and had casually signed off with "handle it yourself."

In that batch of clearance goods, was it possible that an unidentified heaven-concealing void stone had been mixed in?

No.

Impossible.

The appraisal process of the Lingbao Trading Firm was the strictest in the entire Tiannan Immortal Domain; every piece of Ore had to go through at least three rounds of appraisal before being put into storage.

It was impossible for a heaven-concealing void stone to be missed.

Impossible, absolutely impossible.

Xie Jinghong took a deep breath, pushing down this uneasy thought.

What she didn't know was that the head appraiser of the Peng City Branch happened to have taken leave last month to return to his hometown to worship his ancestors.

The apprentice who filled in for him...

...had only been learning for three months.