75: Chapter 74: Liuyang Market 75: Chapter 74: Liuyang Market PS: On the eleventh, the book will go on shelves, and after that, I will update more frequently to meet everyone’s requests.
During the new book period, various data are very important, as they determine a book’s success; there’s only one week left in the new book period, so I’d like to ask for help from all my friends.
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Hou Niao found that he had completed his mission.
Even though every outcome had exceeded his expectations, completion was still completion.
Guarding the Poplar Forest meant protecting just one person, but it could be considered completed; the gift was indeed delivered into the hands of immortal Guan Lao, and the little girl had been properly settled.
There was another incidental goal: did he need to take this opportunity to meet with Chong Ling?
It was difficult for him to find Chong Ling, but for Chong Ling to find him within Liuyang City was easy!
He decided to give the initiative to Daoist Chong Ling, waiting in Liuyang City for three days, after which he would wait no longer.
They say that having nothing to do keeps one light and carefree, but with nothing to do, Hou Niao felt only burdened; he didn’t know how to pass the time for three days.
Interacting with Anhe Daoist Sect?
Clearly, that wasn’t something a person of his status should do; relax in the Mortal World?
It seemed he also lacked interest in that; the only thing to do was to explore the markets!
He spoke the pure Anhe accent, so no one would suspect he came from across the border in Shan Country.
During those three days, he thoroughly explored the Daoist sect market of Liuyang City.
The wealth of resources richer even than Jin City caught him by surprise and filled him with admiration, and he silently marveled at the human cultivators’ imagination, noting that the only things he couldn’t find were those he couldn’t imagine.
Amidst all these dazzling cultivation supplies, he realized that his hundred and eighty low-grade Spirit Stones amounted to nothing.
The basic situation was that what he liked, he couldn’t afford, and what he could afford, he didn’t like.
Liuyang Daoist sector markets also had swords for sale, and loads of them.
As the standard for Daoists wandering Jianghu, it was almost as though everyone had one; this was an inevitable sight—you couldn’t very well swagger around the world with a lumberjack’s axe or a one-legged golden man, could you?
In comparison, the prices of Elixirs, Talismans, Array Plates, and other such items in the Liuyang Daoist market were very fair, especially in terms of quality, which was slightly better than that of Shan Country.
This fit with the Daoist Sect’s direction of cultivation, as they were particularly good at these things.
But when it came to swords, things got a bit flashy!
The prices were very high, integrating many cultivation materials, some of which Hou Niao felt were completely unnecessary; like his Lonely Sword Nameless, if it were put up for sale here, it wouldn’t go for less than several hundred Spirit Stones, so although he saw several good swords, he had neither the interest nor the means to purchase them.
After looking around for two days, he more or less set a target, first finding a small shop called ‘Flying Hairs’ specializing in skills.
Just like in Jin City, the markets in Liuyang City were also specialized, with very few comprehensive stores.
This small shop specialized in selling Skills, particularly focusing on Escape Techniques, hence the name Flying Hairs.
The battle at the Poplar Forest had taught him a valuable lesson; at this stage, his swordsmanship seemed unproblematic, but the issue lay in his mobility!
During the slaying of demons in the Poplar Forest, in many situations, he couldn’t come and go like lightning, or move with smooth agility.
Because of this weakness, many people he could have saved were beyond his help, leaving him impotent and powerless.
Battles within the Soul Realm were, after all, a bit different from those in the real world.
While there was no difference in the application of swordsmanship, the Soul Realm was just a corridor, and he rarely needed to consider mobility.
This shortcoming gave him a painful lesson in the Poplar Forest, a pain that still pierced his heart.
To mortal martial artists, it’s Qinggong, but in the world of cultivators, it’s Escape Techniques.
The Sword Mansion of Jin City had many such Escape Techniques, but unfortunately, he had not paid much attention to them last time; now, he wanted to see what practical Escape Techniques he could find in Liuyang and then compare them with those in the Sword Storage Tower when he returned, choosing the best among them.
He had already vaguely sensed that his approach to swordsmanship was starting to diverge from that of the Quanzhen Sect.
He believed in his choices, so he should not be rigid in his approach to Escape Techniques either; he needed his judgment.
The Daoist Method is the same for both the Daoist Sects and Demon Sects at the foundational level; everything below Tongxuan is fundamental, so there’s no need to make such a clear distinction.
The Daoist Record states that cultivators should not linger too much over Skills below the Tongxuan as the Skills learned now will become useless after advancing to higher realms, wasting a lot of time and energy.
Eventually, due to realm improvements, one will have to learn new Techniques, repeating this cycle until after reaching Tongxuan, where things start to look up.
This is the theory in an ideal state.
In this real world, unless a cultivator never leaves home, one can hardly avoid learning Techniques for self-defense—demon beasts won’t care why you choose not to learn combat Techniques; such is the nature of this world.
Hou Niao hoped that what he was learning now would also be useful in the future.
He could not think of anything that would last longer than swordsmanship, so he never ceased practicing the sword.
In the ‘Feathers Flying’ shop, he skimmed through all books on Escape Techniques, excluding those that were completely incomprehensible or already available in the Jin City Sword Storage Tower, leaving only a few interesting ones from which he selected five.
‘Grass Growing and Swallow Flying,’ ‘Water Extinguishing Technique,’ ‘Body Artifact Skill,’ ‘Fuyao,’ ‘Heavenly Five Feet.’
Choosing Cultivation Techniques in the marketplace, you can’t actually read the whole book in detail; you can only look at the name and the summary.
The real content can only be understood by buying and studying it yourself, sort of like opening a blind box, not like flipping through books from end to end in your own Quanzhen Sect’s Sword Storage Tower.
If someone with a good memory encounters a book with a short text, a single readthrough is as good as making a copy—so who would the shop sell it to?
Ten Spirit Stones is honestly not expensive, but it also made Hou Niao realize that the price would be steep once one actually skimmed through the content because one might have spent ten Spirit Stones on a low-rank Escape Technique.
That’s the difference between Technique shops and Sect inheritances.
In your own Sect, every Technique has been scrutinized by countless cultivators, small and big.
The immature, flawed, fanciful, and those with side effects are ruthlessly discarded, ensuring safety and guarantee.
However, this also removes the pleasure of treasure-hunting.
Technique shops are different; they do not guarantee that every Skill is genuine and even deliberately mix in many counterfeits, selling the thrill of the unexpected.
Otherwise, with the nature of these items being usable for a lifetime after a single purchase, such shops would have gone bankrupt long ago.
Where there’s real, there’s also fake, and what’s tested are your intuition and eyesight.
You have to accept the consequences of the gamble; if everything you buy is a counterfeit, you can’t blame anyone but your own lack of discernment.
Hou Niao didn’t plan to look at them now, preferring to wait until he returned to Jin City so that his journey wouldn’t be soured.
The second place was a rarely seen Cultivation blacksmith shop, which essentially creates weapons or various special-purpose tools based on the customer’s needs; these are more basic than Magic Artifacts.
For example, if you wanted an axe as tall as a person, a copper statue weighing hundreds of pounds, or an exceptionally sturdy bed, they would all be custom orders.
He had already placed an order and now he was there to collect it—twenty steel forks and twenty machetes, all made from the cheapest fine steel in the Cultivation World, but on a completely different level compared to mortal iron.
The individual price was very cheap, essentially just the cost of materials, but for forty pieces, it quickly returned him to a state of being penniless.
Spirit Stones really do burn a hole in your pocket.