136: Chapter 136 There is indeed room for negotiation.

What was most critical was that once they paid this money, the reputation of their Alliance would be directly trampled into the ground by Tiansha Valley.

Envoy Zhang felt like dying at this moment.

A simple formality had actually ended up leaving him unable to step down from the stage.

In the end, after discussing it, they decided to just fight it out with them!

Even if they couldn't gain an advantage then, killing all those Core Disciples and keeping the secrets from falling into the opponent's hands would suffice.

If they cooked up an excuse of "heroic sacrifice" later, it would still be better than being this stifled now!

However, just at this moment, another Disciple arrived on the Flying Vessel.

But this time, what he brought wasn't an image-recording stone, but a message talisman.

The words in the message talisman were very simple: "Among all living beings, if I do not enter Hell, who will? Since you all are so sincere, then it's buy one, get ten free."

"One million Spirit Stones to redeem one Core Disciple, and we'll throw in ten Inner Sect Disciples."

When everyone saw this, their expressions first darkened. "Absurd, how shameless, how absolutely shameless."

"To think they would elevate themselves so high, and even paint themselves as the good guys!"

However, upon closer thought, the eyes of the Elders present lit up.

If one million Spirit Stones could redeem one Core Disciple plus ten Inner Sect Disciples, then dividing it up, the average cost per head would be less than one hundred thousand Spirit Stones. It actually seemed quite cost-effective!

But upon thinking about it carefully, it still felt like a loss.

"The 1 million is still unavoidable!"

"Wait!" Suddenly, someone realized something.

"The other side clearly just wants to make money!"

"That scum on the other side, they see that we can't make up our minds for the moment, and they're worried we'll do what we did with the Inner Sect Disciples before—just give up and say 'whatever happens, happens'."

"That's why they gave us a way to step down!"

The Righteous Alliance realized this, and the Tiansha Valley side naturally realized it too.

They both understood that the other side only wanted money and didn't actually intend to kill the hostages to threaten them.

Since that was the case, they could bargain!

Thus, after both sides conferred, they simply had the delivering Disciple take a message back.

...

Soon, Fang Yuan and Xiao Zhang came running back excitedly.

"Great King! Great King! They've replied! Let's see if they're paying the ransom!"

"How could it be that fast?"

Chun Xiaobai glanced at him impatiently and took the message talisman.

The message did indeed mention the ransom, but... a maximum of fifty thousand Spirit Stones per Core Disciple, and the condition of including ten Inner Sect Disciples remained unchanged.

"Damn it, cutting 1 million straight down to 50,000, this is a Dragon-Slaying Saber, motherf*cker." Chun Xiaobai cursed, "These old guys actually know how to do business!"

However, there wasn't much surprise on his face.

The reason he had set the ransom so high from the start was to leave himself room to bargain.

It's the same principle as a promotion; giving you a few things makes it look like you've profited, but in reality, they are still making a killing off you.

The higher the price is set, the more they feel they aren't losing out when they bargain later.

For Chun Xiaobai, as long as the other party was willing to bargain, it meant there was a possibility of a deal.

Chun Xiaobai immediately took out two new message talismans and replied to the old guys on both sides with a message.

With Fang Yuan and Xiao Zhang delivering them, the two message talismans quickly reached the hands of Envoy Zhang of the Righteous Alliance and the Grand Elder of Tiansha Valley, Zheng Tianyuan.

When they saw the message in their hands, their faces were filled with joy.

"There really is still room for bargaining!"

They immediately distributed the message talismans. When the Elders saw them, it was as if they had picked up a Storage Pouch full of Spirit Stones; everyone's faces blossomed with joy.

"Not bad, not bad, this effectively cuts the price in half!"

The message Chun Xiaobai gave was very simple: the price remains unchanged, one million Spirit Stones per Core Disciple, but the number of gifted Inner Sect Disciples increased from ten to thirty.

It's equivalent to buy one, get thirty free!

Calculating it this way, each head is only worth twenty-something thousand Spirit Stones!

As for the Tiansha Valley side, it was the same, except they added ten more Inner Sect Disciples for them.

Calculated out, it's only forty thousand Spirit Stones per Disciple.

Those old guys were so happy their mouths couldn't close.

But thinking about it carefully... Huh? It seems like it's still costing one million Spirit Stones to buy one Core Disciple?

"That's right..." The Elders were completely dumbfounded, "But... but why do I feel like I'm not losing?"

"Urgh!" Everyone stared in unison at the person who said this.

"You've lived for hundreds of years, and you can't even do the math?"

Everyone realized one after another that they had run into a veteran at doing business.

Originally, asking them to take out one million Spirit Stones to redeem one Core Disciple felt unbearable no matter how they thought about it. Now, they actually felt comfortable and happy spending this one million, and even felt they had made a huge profit!

They wanted to get angry, but they couldn't even summon the anger.

"Since when did Tiansha Valley become so good at doing business?"

Over at Tiansha Valley, they were also praising the Righteous Alliance, "There must be a business genius hiding among that group of hypocrites!"

Subsequently, they all looked at their respective leaders. Did they really want to pay one million Spirit Stones to redeem the people?

"Redeem my ass!" Zheng Tianyuan cursed, "Ten million Spirit Stones, Tiansha Valley would lose a layer of skin!"

And on the Righteous Alliance side, Envoy Zhang said the same thing: "Twenty million Spirit Stones! If this gets out, our Alliance will be finished!"

"Then what do we do?" "Continue bargaining with them!"

Those Elders were stunned, but could only bite the bullet and send another message talisman back.

Soon, this message talisman landed in Chun Xiaobai's hands.

He picked it up and looked; those guys were dead set on fifty thousand Spirit Stones per person, with the gift conditions unchanged.

"Do you really think you have a Dragon-Slaying Saber in your hands?" Chun Xiaobai sneered, but he wasn't panicked.

Anyway, these people were all free gains. Even at fifty thousand Spirit Stones each, it would still add up to 1.5 million Spirit Stones.

Not to mention there was still a group of "second-generation officials" who hadn't been put on the market yet.

Thus, Chun Xiaobai replied with another one: "The price remains unchanged, one million Spirit Stones per Core Disciple, but for every Core Disciple, I will gift ten additional Inner Sect Disciples."

In this way, the Inner Sect Disciples he had on hand were all just right to be "gifted" away.

The Elders on both sides received this message talisman and found that they had actually made a huge profit again.

"Originally it was over 20,000 Spirit Stones per Disciple, now it has directly become over 10,000 per Disciple."

"It doesn't seem like a loss!" They were all so happy their mouths couldn't close.

But upon thinking about it carefully, they felt something was wrong again.

"After bargaining for so long, it seems we still have to shell out twenty million Spirit Stones!"

"Doesn't that mean nothing changed?!"

But they knew that as long as they could bargain, there was still a chance. So they would just bargain slowly!

Subsequently, they directly wrote another message talisman and sent it out.