Blood of the Army

by Tinalynge

  "We are humbled that you are willing to go to such lengths for us," Xue Wei was the one who answered. Although five percent more might not sound like much, but when it came to around five hundred beast cores, the five percent suddenly became quite noticeable.

  "Okay, the big question is – how many beast cores do you have, and what layer are they?" the manager asked, and then Xue Wei picked up his bag and spilled its content all over the table.

  "We are going to be here for a long time," Luo Zhirou could not help but say with a slight chuckle as she looked at beast cores rolling all over.

  "This is indeed around five hundred," the manager was equally shocked. Just how could one single person hunt down so many beasts at equal rank for their cores? Was he truly as prodigious as the rumors around him suggested?

  "We encountered a beast horde on the way over," Xue Wei explained. He knew there was no reason to be quiet about it as the news would spread from the soldiers anyway, and the Golden Chambers would be some of the first to know about it.

  "A beast horde?!" The manager was shocked. One has to know that although the beast hordes appeared on a weekly basis, it was where the armies were located. A Primordial Beast controlled each of the beast hordes, and for a Primordial Beast to find interest in their group, it was truly a lucky chance that they had survived.

  "What happened with the beast leading them?" the manager asked while almost holding his breath, but neither Xue Wei nor the two others could answer him.

  "We never saw the Primordial Beast," Xue Wei finally sighed. "One of the members of our group had colluded with the beast to have me killed, but he failed and paid the ultimate price instead."

  "A human colluded with a Primordial Beast? This is getting more and more outrageous!" the manager could not help but shout when he heard this, but Xue Wei just faintly smiled.

  "I see, so because of this Primordial Beast and human working together, you were attacked. I assume it was a weak Primordial Beast since it did not just do the deed itself. Makes sense for it to hide from your group, too." The manager nodded his head repeatedly as if he had just figured it all out.

  "Well, in that case, let us see how many beast cores you managed to harvest," the manager said as he glanced at the cores that were stacked on the table, and a few had rolled off to the ground.

  "You have four hundred and ninety-three beast cores. Of those, one hundred and eighty-seven are equivalent to a ninth layer Ordinary Warrior; two hundred and one equivalent to eight layer Ordinary Warriors; and the remaining one hundred and five is a mixture of random layers all beneath the eight-layer."

  "As a sign of our consideration, we will set the price of all of those as seventh layer Ordinary Warrior rank cores."

  After calculating how much this totaled, the manager mumbled to himself and waved his hand, after which everything vanished into thin air. Another wave of his hand caused gold to appear on the table. "This is your payment," he said with a smile.

  "What was that?!" Luo Zhirou was the first to exclaim. All of them had seen something that reminded them of magic, but they could not completely understand how he had done it.

  Seeing their three shocked expressions, the manager burst into laughter. "This is a storage ring. You can get storage treasures of all kinds, but they are incredibly rare and also very costly. Even if you had all the gold in the world, you would not be able to purchase one."

  "That expensive?" Luo Zhirou was shocked, and her petite hand covered her lips as she cried out.

  "Even the smallest of them are considered ranked treasures and not even most Heavenly Warriors can afford one. In fact, only a minority of them can."

  "If they cannot be bought with gold, then do you need blood stones?" Xue Wei suddenly asked. He had read many books and knew a lot of things, but he had never before seen a bloodstone.

  These bloodstones were different from ordinary stones. They were considered the blood of the continent, imbued with a strange energy that one could extract and use to strengthen their cultivation base.

  These bloodstones were similar to beast cores, but where beast cores were violent in nature and hard to process, the bloodstones were gentle in nature. It was easy to draw out every single ounce of energy.

  The manager raised an eyebrow when he heard what Xue Wei had asked, while Shen Mu and Luo Zhirou looked puzzled. "Bloodstones?" they asked.

  "You will indeed need bloodstones to purchase a storage treasure. Any ranked treasure has to be purchased with bloodstones unless it is half a step away being a treasured weapon."

  "Bloodstones are hard to get your hands on in the Kingdom of Heping. You can barely get your hands on a handful, as we have no bloodstone deposits, and all bloodstones are brought in from the rest of the continent."

  "It is also because of this that we do not have any cultivator cities in Heping Kingdom, nor do we have anyone who has managed to break through past the Heavenly Warrior rank, though someone speculates that your uncle might have done so. Otherwise, he might not have been able to kill as many Primordial Beasts as he has."

  Xue Wei knew about the bloodstones, but he had never before heard about storage treasures. He could not help but feel an urge to get one deep within, but he also understood that right now he did not have the qualifications to own one – just as he were likely to be killed for owning too precious an item.

  "Well then, let us calculate your friends' beast cores," the manager said with a smile and began to sort out their beast cores into ranks and strength. After making a final count, he also paid them thirty-five percent of their sales price, and then he smiled at the three.

  "Thank you for doing business with us. Can we perhaps help you with something else?"

  This was what Xue Wei had been waiting for, and he cleared his throat. "I am looking for a wood jade carving. I am not looking for anything too outrageous, just a simple figure."

  "A wood jade figure?" The manager was surprised, but then he laughed. "Sure," he said, "I can get you a wood jade figure. If you want a simple one, I can give it to you as a symbol of gratitude for having brought your large batch of beast cores to us."

  Although wood jade carvings were expensive for commoners, they were truly nothing compared to the vast amount of beast cores that Xue Wei and his friends had brought.

  "Miss Tie, bring me three of the horse figurines made from high-grade green wood jade," he ordered, and the female attendant instantly bowed in acknowledgment before she hurried out of the room.

  Moments after, she returned with three fist-sized figurines, all shaped like horses in various poses. These horses were all made from high-grade green wood jade.

  All the different kinds of wood jade were categorized into low, medium, high, superior and profound. A shop like the Golden Chambers did not even carry low or medium grade wood jade; they only carried high and superior quality.

  The profound kind was simply so rare and hard to get one's hands on that when they did emerge, they would have to be auctioned off. And most of the time, the price would be paid in bloodstones.

  "Take these," the manager accepted the three horse carvings and gave one to each of the youngsters. "If you have more to sell in the future, or to buy, then please come to our establishment again."

  Having said that, the three youngsters all stood up and bowed deeply to the manager with cupped fists.

  "Thank you for your hospitality," they said in unison before they all left the room, feeling excited beyond belief. Although they were not poor before, they were now relatively rich, and they had even acquired for themselves wood jade carvings, which made them incredibly happy.

  "Onwards to find clothes and a present for now!" Luo Zhirou exclaimed as she grabbed Xue Wei and Shen Mu around their arms and dragged them with her out of the shop.

  Chapter 8 - Fabrics

  They left the shop and headed for the next house. This house was filled with clothes, furniture, cutlery, and other things that one could need for everyday living.

  This was, for
tunately, the next shop they had been looking for. As they entered, they looked around with eyes filled with wonder before they moved towards the clothes area.

  Xue Wei looked at the fabrics and sighed in praise. They had all kinds of colors and patterns. From embroidery of flowers, phoenixes, dragons, to all kinds of mythical beasts, they had plenty of options.

  There was every kind of pattern, and the fabrics were all of the highest quality. Some of them had embroideries made from pure gold and silver; others had the clothes weaved from various kinds of silk. There was even silk produced by Primordial Beasts! That was the silk from the Thunder Spider. A spider that would make a spider net at the top of trees and soak its body in thunder, which made its silk much more durable and carry traces of lightning.

  There was also another kind of silk made from a Primordial Beast, but it carried traces of immortality and was as expensive as a treasured weapon, and hence not easily accessible to people.

  The Thunder Spider made many nets everywhere in the forests, and coming across it was not too rare, but the silk made from the Immortal Larvae was something completely different.

  The Immortal Larvae was a Primordial Beast with traces of immortality. As long as it had energy in its body, it was impossible to kill, and the silk it spun was also impossible to break for ordinary weapons.

  This fabric was without a doubt the most expensive of all the fabrics present, but there was also the medium ranked fabrics that had been created from Fierce Beasts, before one went to the low-grade materials made from mortal beasts.

  Everything that Xue Wei had been wearing so far had been created from mortal beasts. It was the finest quality that one could get, but it was after all still made from mortal beasts. As a result, it had no effect during battles. It could be penetrated by any weapon, and it held no extra power or abilities.

  "This is so expensive!" Luo Zhirou said with shock as she looked at the fabrics in front of her. Although they had just sold hundreds of beast cores, they could not afford clothes made from the Thunder Spider's silk.

  The middle-ranked clothes that were made from the silk of Fierce Beasts were more affordable, but even this made Luo Zhirou's and Shen Mu's hearts sting with pain.

  "Well, we have been invited to the palace for a banquet," Shen Mu said as he grit his teeth. "I will not be happy if I am not looking dashing! This little amount of money, I will earn it again one day."

  With Shen Mu having said this, Luo Zhirou seemed to have agreed as she nodded her head. Xue Wei also agreed that it was a great investment, but his reasoning was a bit different.

  "Although we are going to the banquet, these are clothes that will prove beneficial to us in the future," he said with a slight chuckle.

  "Look at this fabric. It is made from the silk of a Blazing Flame Spider. It has an inherited flame within and has some resistance to fire. Even if you were to enter a burning house, your body would not catch on fire, and you would not even be able to feel any discomfort."

  "Although this is useful in battle, I am more interested in the inherited flame. If you insert some of your Qi into the clothes, you can even make the clothes sprout fire out of nothing. Having fireballs appearing in the middle of a fight can be of great use!"

  The fabric that Xue Wei held in his hands was red like blood, and on it was golden embroidery of a dragon.

  "I will be taking this," he decided straight away and turned to look for an attendant. Here, the fabric had still not been turned into clothing, as every piece of clothing was tailor-made, but it could be finished within half a day as they had tailors waiting at the back of the store, spending all their time sewing clothes for the customers.

  "I want this," Luo Zhirou had also made a decision on what fabric she wished to wear. It was a blue fabric with a pattern of water lotuses made from a Water Lotus Larvae. It had its name because, although it was a Fierce Beast, it was usually found amongst the water lotuses in the wild.

  This fabric had a gentle nature of water, and if one injected energy into the fabric, one could summon water globs just like the fireballs of the fabric Xue Wei had picked.

  At the same time, it was very sturdy and had a high amount of defense. When it came to what element was best suited for defense, it was without doubt water and earth. Water was formless, able to both defend and attack, and this fabric had a beautiful balance of both.

  "I will take this then," Shen Mu made a decision too as he took a black fabric. There were no embroideries on it so far, but the material had a beautiful sheen to it, and when he ordered it made he was likely to also ask for embroideries around the edges, just simple borders to make it lively.

  This black fabric was the most expensive one of the three. It was made from a Void Larvae, a Fierce Beast that was skilled in hiding in the cracks of the world. It was even capable of splitting the void and teleporting away, which made capturing it incredibly difficult, and finding its silk even more so.

  Seeing that all three of them had already found the fabric that they wished to purchase, three attendants came to their aid.

  "Please follow me," all of them said in unison as they each picked a roll of fabric and started walking towards the back of the shop.

  There were multiple rooms, and inside of all these rooms were various treats and drinks on a table to the side, but there were no chairs to sit down on.

  "Please stand in the middle," the attendant asked Xue Wei as she took a notebook and a pen from a pocket and a measurement tape from another pocket that she held up against him.

  Xue Wei stood in the middle, and the woman measured his entire figure, after which she scribbled down his measurements on the notebook.

  "The clothes will be ready for you to pick up in seven hours," the woman said, and Xue Wei nodded his head.

  "Please follow me," she continued, and they went to the counter where Xue Wei was given a small gem. This gem had the character for the number eight carved into it. "When you come back, please use this gem as proof of your order. You pay a deposit now, and the rest of the price when the clothes have been fitted to you."

  "Sounds good," Xue Wei nodded his head in approval and placed ten gold coins on the counter, which was the deposit. Another seventeen would have to be paid when he came back to pick up the clothes.

  While he paid, Luo Zhirou and Shen Mu also exited their rooms and paid their deposits after getting a gem each. Luo Zhirou's had the character for nine while Shen Mu's had the character for the number ten.

  "Well then, now we just need a gift," Luo Zhirou said, but the three of them turned silent. It was not that they did not wish to purchase a gift, but who knew what was useable for the Crown Prince.

  "Well we can always just give him some gold," Xue Wei sighed. "Although he has all the resources that he can wish for in the imperial family to boost his strength, he has to have his own economy to bribe officials and pay his servants, keep his mansions thriving, and so on."

  "Does he not get paid an annual amount of money from the taxes?" Shen Mu asked, puzzled, and Xue Wei nodded his head. "All the children of the king gets their yearly salary, if you will, as a part of the tax-payers money, but at the same time the King has many children and the kingdom is in constant war with the beasts, meaning armies are in constant need of being maintained. He cannot afford to splurge on his sons."

  "I see." Shen Mu nodded his head, feeling enlightened. Although the Crown Prince would receive some minimal allowance for simply being a prince, he still had to earn money elsewhere to afford the things he needed to pay for.

  "We have to be careful when we go to the banquet," Xue Wei warned them. "We know no one there, and at the same time we have already drawn attention to ourselves. The Crown Prince is likely to try and draw us into his camp, but we have just arrived in the capital, so joining a faction just like that would be too reckless."

  Luo Zhirou and Shen Mu were silent, but after a bit of thinking, they nodded their heads.

  "I think it is true that we have to be careful with
whom we support," Shen Mu said after a bit of consideration. "But at the same time, I also need to be loyal to the royal family. I am after all the next City Lord of Tiankong City. Serving the royal family will be for the best, and the King has long since favored the Crown Prince. As long as he is alive, he will be steady in his position."

  "So you want to be reeled in by the Crown Prince?" Xue Wei asked with a frown, and Shen Mu nodded his head hesitatingly. "I understand why you feel indecision, but my family has never been close to any royalty, and this can become an opportunity for us to change this. If I manage to strike up a relationship with him, even if that is with me being his vassal, then I would be able to improve the growth of my family in the future."

  "I see," Xue Wei knew that it was pointless to try and discuss it with him, and thus he just respected his friend's decision.

  "I will do what Shen Mu does," Luo Zhirou said after a bit of consideration. "I wish to be a supporter for Shen Mu, and I will follow his decision."