16: Chapter 16 This is what I picked up.

Shanyuan City.

Under non-emergency circumstances, Beast Tamers and summoned beasts are not allowed to appear within the city limits, so Chu Ran had the Blazing Dragon Sparrow return to the beast taming space before entering the city.

However, many people still noticed the terrifying phenomenon in the sky.

"What was that?"

"It looked like the beast of some big shot."

"A beast? Its presence seemed even stronger than Elder Lu's from the Fengming Guild?"

"You've never even seen Elder Lu's Flying Roc fight, so how do you dare say his beast's presence is weak? Ever heard of hidden dominance!"

"Elder Lu is the number one Beast Tamer of the Fengming Guild, and his strength ranks in the top five in Shanyuan City. He shouldn't be weaker than this big shot..."

"Hard to say... I heard a Beast Taming Master appeared in Lin Feng City, and the commotion outside the Desolate Realm last night was caused by that master."

"Ah? I thought someone was setting off firecrackers early for the New Year."

At the gates of Shanyuan City, several Professionals noticed the Dragon Sparrow and were chatting in small groups.

"Holy crap! This is too fierce!"

Several Professionals cried out in surprise as they scrolled through trending videos on the forum.

"A small demonic beast vortex appeared in Lin Feng City yesterday, and it was suppressed by a Beast Taming Master leading two top-tier beasts!"

The events that occurred in Lin Feng City last night had been filmed by some people and posted online.

It has now spread to several surrounding cities.

"No wonder those experts from Shanyuan City were all rushing towards Lin Feng City yesterday..."

Chu Ran walked into the city area, checked his tasks, and found that there was still over an hour before the secret realm opened.

So, he planned to wander around Shanyuan City for a bit.

Shanyuan City was much larger than Lin Feng City; while Lin Feng City had about twenty basic dungeons and over thirty secret realms, the number of dungeons and secret realms in Shanyuan City was basically double that.

The number of Professionals was also significantly higher, to the point where various Professional guilds had emerged.

Professionals of the same class gathered together to establish guild organizations.

The most famous was undoubtedly the Fengming Guild, which consisted entirely of Beast Tamers; it housed many high-level Beast Tamers who would exchange experience and trade resources there.

Furthermore, the major guilds would organize sparring matches and competitions, where the winners would receive stakes put up by the other guilds.

The guild ranked first in each sparring session could basically obtain at least eighty million in prize money or equivalent value in materials...

Of course, these matches were not limited to guild members; Freelancers who hadn't joined a guild could also participate, provided they paid the registration fee.

As expected, some things can only be accessed once you stand at a certain height.

Before yesterday, Chu Ran had never known about these things...

Unwittingly, he walked to the entrance of a trading pavilion.

Ten Thousand Treasures Tower.

This... no, to be precise, this trading pavilion was located not far outside the secret realm district, making it convenient for Professionals coming out of secret realms to trade their materials.

Chu Ran happened to have a large amount on him, and he planned to use this time to sell them and then acquire a flying item, to save himself from having to walk everywhere in the city in the future...

Oh right, he almost forgot he also needed to buy a few secret realm invitation letters.

Chu Ran stepped into the Ten Thousand Treasures Tower and was immediately shocked by the sight inside.

Rich!

Inhumanly rich!

Looking at the interior decorations,

Chu Ran felt as if the balance on his Alliance card was about to spontaneously combust at any moment while standing there...

A beautiful woman dressed in a qipao immediately approached him, patiently explaining the locations of various sections within the trading pavilion.

"Where is the place for selling materials?" Chu Ran interrupted the woman's explanation.

Although the woman was slightly taken aback, she recovered quickly and said with a smile, "Sir, please follow me..."

After yesterday's series of battles, Chu Ran had collected quite a lot of items; some were materials dropped in dungeons, but those were only a minority, accounting for only a tenth of his current net worth.

It had to be said that while the demonic beast vortex had many beasts, the materials they dropped were by no means few.

Moreover, a significant portion of them were relatively high-grade materials.

They could be used to forge some high-grade equipment.

Besides leveling up, equipment, weapons, items, and Dharma treasures also played a large part in how Professionals increased their combat power...

Equipment grades were also divided into seven levels: bronze, silver, gold, commander, monarch, holy spirit, and Totem.

Items did not have as many grade divisions, and most did not have level requirements for wearing them, so the combat power they provided wasn't much; they mainly provided special effects.

Like the stealth effect provided by the shadow cloak Chu Ran was currently wearing...

As for Dharma treasures, they were even rarer; generally, only Professionals of the Seventh Turn or higher were qualified to touch them. They were incredibly powerful, but the cost of each use was immense.

Therefore, Professionals with Dharma treasures were generally titans of their regions; they wouldn't easily reveal or use them, primarily keeping them as a final life-saving measure or a sharp tool to turn the tide in a moment of crisis!

The qipao beauty soon led Chu Ran to a small room.

Inside was an old man in his sixties.

"Uncle Zhang, there's a guest."

The beauty smiled at Chu Ran and said, "Sir, materials can be recycled here."

"Miss, could you check if you have invitation letters for the Withered Wood Forest secret realm for sale?" Chu Ran called out to the beauty who was about to leave, speaking calmly.

"Certainly."

...

Chu Ran walked up to the old man and found a chair to sit down.

"Withered Wood Forest? That's a Level 6 secret realm," the old man said flatly, adjusting his reading glasses.

Chu Ran smiled.

But since he was wearing the shadow cloak, the other person couldn't see it...

"How much are you planning to sell? If it's too little, the recycling price won't be high. Generally, youngsters like you can't produce much..."

Thud, thud, thud, thud!

In the next moment, a pile of materials immediately appeared in the room, stacked into a small mountain...

This directly dumbfounded the old man opposite him. He hurriedly stepped forward to confirm, swallowing hard: "Are... are all of these what you want to sell?"

Chu Ran nodded.

"Have some water, have some water." The old man beamed with joy, his attitude towards Chu Ran performing a 180-degree turn.

With so many materials, aside from some low-end bronze and silver-grade equipment, most of the others looked like they could forge gold grade equipment, and some could even be used to attempt forging commander grade.

The profit from recycling materials and then forging equipment could reach fifty percent, so trading pavilions were very happy to have Professionals sell materials.

They especially liked high-volume customers like Chu Ran!

However, despite his happiness, the old man had a certain amount of experience. He soon became suspicious and asked, "Hearing you speak just now, I get the feeling you're very young, no more than twenty years old at most. Where did you get so many materials?"

Such a large volume of materials was something some Fifth or Sixth Turn Professionals might only obtain in a year. This young man before him really didn't look the part...

"I have to verify the origin of the materials." The old man adjusted his glasses.

"As you wish."

Because the profit from materials was large, and accumulating them bit by bit was too difficult, some evil Professionals with bad intentions would go out to ambush and rob others of their treasures.

To prevent this situation, the Dragon Kingdom mandated that every Professional, upon awakening, could receive a free exclusive spatial item issued by the Professional Alliance.

This spatial item could tag the items stored inside it, and every spatial item's tag was unique.

This way, one could judge how many hands an item had passed through by the number of tags on the material...

The Dragon Kingdom stipulated that no one, except for officially certified trading pavilions, could sell second-hand goods—that is, materials that had been owned by two people...

Spatial items were very expensive, with ordinary ones costing hundreds of thousands. Every Professional was penniless when they first awakened, and few would specifically spend money to buy a spatial item.

Therefore, basically all Dragon Kingdom Professionals uniformly used the issued spatial items.

This greatly reduced the phenomenon of killing and looting within the Dragon Kingdom.

"They actually all have only one tag!"

In other words, the young man in front of him was the first collector of these materials...

"How did you obtain them?" The old man looked shocked.

"I picked them up. Equipment was falling from the sky in Lin Feng City yesterday, and I picked up a lot," Chu Ran said calmly.

Chu Ran had left in too much of a hurry during the battle yesterday, and the one-click pickup feature would definitely have missed some things, so it was truly possible that someone on the ground could have picked up some materials and made a small fortune from it...

"Was it the demonic beast vortex?"

"Yes." Chu Ran nodded.

"I see. Now we can talk about the price," the old man smiled.

...