32: Perfect Hedge

The faint glow of the bronze token flashed and vanished in the dim Immortal Cave.

Efficiency was one of Heavenly Secret Pavilion's most expensive commodities.

Almost without delay, the cold message was sent back.

[Danyang City Auction House, backstage Storage Room 'Wu', maintenance records of Formations for the past thirty years. Price: Ten Heavenly Secret Points.]

Lu Yuan didn't haggle.

He decisively confirmed the transaction.

Information was intangible, yet more lethal than any Sharp Weapon.

As ten Heavenly Secret Points were deducted, a complex and detailed record of images and text transformed into a torrent of data, surging into his Divine Sense.

He saw every Spiritual Qi fluctuation of the Formation.

Every component replacement.

Every signature and Mind-Cultivation Technique route of the Cultivator who performed the maintenance.

His Divine Sense rapidly traversed the sea of information, skipping over ninety-nine percent of useless data, and finally, like an eagle swooping down, locked onto an inconspicuous note.

[Formation Geng Node 3, material is 'Yin and Yang Stone'. Every day at noon, due to the convergence of Heaven and Earth Spiritual Qi, there will be a one-ten-thousandth of a second Spiritual Qi disturbance.]

[This is a normal phenomenon and requires no repair.]

One-ten-thousandth of a second.

Normal phenomenon.

These eight characters, in the eyes of others, were just normal maintenance records.

But in Lu Yuan's eyes, this was a structural flaw that could be infinitely magnified, a perfect leverage point that could move Mount Tai.

Directly buying a put option for 'dragon saliva jade destroyed'?

No.

That risk was too high, the volatility too great.

Directly interfering with a high-value target was like lighting a torch in the dark and shouting to hunters in the sky: I'm here.

Top traders never put all their chips on one point.

They build models, diversify risks, and use countless seemingly unrelated minor events to influence the final outcome.

This is called risk hedging.

Lu Yuan collected himself and left the Immortal Cave.

He silently blended into the bustling crowd of Danyang City.

Half an an hour later, in an inconspicuous shop in the market, he met the manager, Wang Wealthy.

Wang Wealthy was a rotund middle-aged man, with a perpetually pleasant, business-savvy smile on his face, and a pair of small eyes, squeezed into slits by fat, that gleamed with shrewdness to the core.

"Fellow Daoist, you seem new here."

Wang Wealthy enthusiastically poured tea.

"I want to buy insurance."

Lu Yuan was concise, stating his purpose directly.

"Oh? What does Fellow Daoist wish to insure?"

"The 'dragon saliva jade' at the Danyang Grand Auction."

Lu Yuan watched him calmly.

"Insure it against accidental damage."

Wang Wealthy's hand, pouring tea, paused almost imperceptibly.

Insuring an auction item that didn't belong to him—this was the first time he had seen such an operation.

But the smile on his face didn't change at all; it grew even brighter.

"Of course, of course! According to the rules, the premium is one-tenth of the 'dragon saliva jade's' estimated value, Fellow Daoist, what do you think..."

"Agreed."

Lu Yuan directly threw out a Storage Pouch.

Wang Wealthy's Divine Sense swept over it, and the smile on his face instantly became ten times more sincere.

Money makes the man.

As for how strange the man's preferences were, that wasn't important.

He swiftly issued an anonymous jade insurance policy, holding it with both hands and respectfully handing it to Lu Yuan.

"Fellow Daoist, please keep this safe. Three days from now, no matter what accident befalls the 'dragon saliva jade,' you can present this policy to me to receive full Spirit Stone compensation."

Lu Yuan took the policy, said nothing, and turned to leave.

Returning to the Immortal Cave, he immediately activated the Great Dao Options Exchange.

He didn't look at any targets directly related to the "dragon saliva jade," but instead scrolled down the trading list.

He was searching for those micro-events that were so cheap they were almost forgotten.

Soon, he found them.

[Target: At noon, the Danyang City Auction House handyman 'Zhang San' will suffer from diarrhea due to unclean overnight food and water.]

[Call option price: 0.1 karma points.]

He bought it.

[Target: While handyman 'Zhang San' is rushing, the 'Fire Spirit Liquid' he is carrying will be knocked over due to unsteady footing.]

[Call option price: 0.5 karma points.]

He bought it again.

After doing all this, Lu Yuan closed the Exchange.

He calmly sat down cross-legged and began to Cultivate.

All the gears were in place.

All he had to do was wait.

Wait for time to reach that fatal moment called 'noon'... Three days later.

The Danyang Grand Auction was bustling with activity.

Backstage, outside Storage Room 'Wu'.

Handyman Zhang San was carefully carrying a jade bottle, which contained 'Fire Spirit Liquid,' a valuable auxiliary for Artifact Refining.

Suddenly, a violent, earth-shattering cramp seized his stomach.

Zhang San's face turned liver-colored, and cold sweat poured down.

He didn't dare to delay, enduring the churning pain, he quickened his pace, wanting to deliver the item as soon as possible before attending to his personal needs.

In his haste, he ran in the wrong direction.

He turned into a narrow passage where sundries were piled up.

It was then that his foot tripped hard over an exposed stone slab that had been piled there overnight.

"Ow!"

Zhang San cried out in alarm, his body losing balance.

The jade bottle he was tightly holding slipped from his grasp.

It arced through the air in a desperate parabola.

The jade bottle smashed against a certain spot on the storeroom wall.

That was precisely the location of Formation Geng Node 3.

"Bang!"

A muffled thud.

The jade bottle shattered, and the crimson Fire Spirit Liquid completely splashed onto the warm 'Yin and Yang Stone'.

The time was exactly noon.

The Yin and Yang Spiritual Qi between heaven and earth were undergoing their daily routine convergence.

The Formation node experienced that one-ten-thousandth of a second of disturbance.

The violent fire-attribute Spiritual Qi, combined with the Formation's imbalance, created the most intense conflict.

"Boom!"

A small-scale Spiritual Qi explosion occurred.

The power was not great.

It merely charred that small section of the wall and didn't even trigger the entire storeroom's alarm Formation.

But all the energy of the explosion, without leakage, poured into the wall behind it.

There, the 'dragon saliva jade', wrapped in layers of Restrictions, lay quietly.

The surface of the warm jade was covered with spiderweb-like cracks.

The next moment.

With a faint whimper, this rare treasure, capable of transforming Ye Chen, completely turned into a handful of dust.

In a distant Immortal Cave.

Lu Yuan slowly opened his eyes.

Two distinctly different messages arrived in his mind almost simultaneously.

[Contract settlement successful, 'Zhang San's Diarrhea Event' call option has been settled.]

[Contract settlement successful, 'Fire Spirit Liquid Spilled Event' call option has been settled.]

The Exchange's notifications were cold and precise.

The profit was so meager it was negligible.

The other message came from Wang Wealthy's communication jade slip; his voice was filled with just the right amount of regret and business-like efficiency.

"Oh, Fellow Daoist Lu, what bad luck! The 'dragon saliva jade' you insured was completely destroyed just now due to an accident. What do you say, would you like to come over now, or should I send the compensation Spirit Stones to you later?"

...Danyang City, City Lord's Mansion.

In an elegant quiet room.

Ye Chen was gracefully playing chess and tasting tea with City Lord Chen Changqing, his demeanor composed and dignified.

A servant hurried in and whispered a few words in his ear.

Ye Chen's gentle smile froze.

The white jade chess piece he held between his fingers silently and imperceptibly turned into the finest powder.

The powder sifted through his fingers, falling onto the expensive chessboard, leaving a small, glaring pile of grayish-white dust.

An unprecedented surge of irritation and stifling frustration rose wildly from the depths of his Dao Heart.

He vaguely felt that the invisible, intimate connection between him and this world had been forcibly severed.

His always-successful 'luck' seemed to have... been stolen.