Time flew by.
In what felt like the blink of an eye, Luo Chen had sold out of every Fasting Pill and Myriad Wonders Pill on hand, and it was barely noon.
He didn't even need to calculate. With his current Spiritual Eye Art, a single glance was enough to tell him today's earnings.
One hundred spirit stones from the Fasting Pills, and four hundred and fifty from the Myriad Wonders Pills.
It might not seem like an astronomical sum, but this was the yield of merely half a month's work—and the raw materials had cost just two hundred spirit stones!
In other words, Luo Chen had cleared a net profit of nearly three hundred and fifty spirit stones!
One had to remember that barely half a year ago, he was nothing more than an impoverished little rogue cultivator scraping by on five spirit stones a month.
All he could say was that once proficiency was ground to a high level, alchemists were simply that formidable, that lucrative!
Of course, when it came to profit margins, Luo Chen had a crystal-clear tally in his heart.
What mattered more to him was his total net worth. Adding in the spirit stones he had saved previously, his reserves had surged all the way to eight hundred low-grade spirit stones.
This was an all-time peak for him!
Ah, selling the Flying Swallow Sword didn't count. Windfalls like that never lasted.
Only the wealth earned with his own hands felt truly solid and reassuring!
After a quick mental tally of his assets, Luo Chen began planning where to browse.
So many out-of-town cultivators had flooded Dahe Market, and word was that plenty of them were running stalls.
He wanted to broaden his horizons, check out some specialized cultivation resources from other regions, and see if anything might prove useful to him.
It truly went to show: when a man had money in his pocket, he had courage to spare.
In the past, he would have rushed off at this hour to purchase raw ingredients, hurrying straight home to continue brewing pills.
How could it compare to now?
Head held high, his gaze swept across the bustling Rogue Cultivator Market, filled with the arrogant satisfaction of a man looking at a crowd of paupers.
Yet the moment his eyes landed on that old daoist, Chen Xiuping, his momentum abruptly dropped several notches.
Seeing the old man packing up his stall, bustling about with a mess of sacks and cords, Luo Chen called out, "Daoist Chen, business was thriving today, I see! Sold out so early?"
"Heh, how could it compare to you, Daoist Luo?"
Chen Xiuping scoffed with a wry smile. "This old man slaved day and night just to churn out a few hundred talisman skins and rake in three or four hundred spirit stones. Meanwhile, you vanish for half a month, show up, and pocket five or six hundred in one go. I fall far short of you, far short!"
Between the lines, why did that sound entirely like mockery?
Gritting his teeth, Luo Chen painfully produced fifty low-grade spirit stones, packed them neatly into a small cloth pouch, and handed it over to Chen Xiuping.
"My path of cultivation has been fraught with hardships. Thank you for your support, Uncle Chen."
Though his heart bled at the expense, his words were thoroughly sincere.
The fifty spirit stones the old daoist had lent him back then had indeed played a pivotal role when his alchemy venture was just getting off the ground.
Back then, his Myriad Wonders Pill was still at the beginner level, with an abysmal failure rate.
It was entirely thanks to the spirit stone loan provided by Old Daoist Chen that he had weathered his darkest hour.
Taking the small pouch and feeling its heavy weight, Chen Xiuping fell silent for a moment.
This prolonged silence, along with his deeply emotional expression and even red-rimmed eyes—the latter simply caused by staying up all night crafting talisman skins—made Luo Chen feel genuinely uneasy.
Uncle Chen, please don't get all sentimental on me!
I can't handle this!
To Luo Chen's surprise, Chen Xiuping let out a heavy sigh and revealed news that caught him completely off guard.
"We're leaving."
"Ah!"
Luo Chen was stunned. "Where are you going?"
Chen Xiuping affectionately stroked his granddaughter Chen Shuyi's head. "A month from now, we'll be heading to the Divine Talisman Domain alongside the cultivators from the Divine Talisman Pavilion."
Looking at the old man and the young girl, a realization dawned on Luo Chen.
He couldn't help asking, "Has little Shuyi been accepted into the Divine Talisman Sect?"
"Not yet, Brother Luo Chen! But Shuyi is very confident that she can pass the trials!" Chen Shuyi tilted her chin up, her innocent face brimming with the fearless confidence of a newborn calf.
Chen Xiuping packed away the miscellaneous sacks and sat down upon the bluestone slab.
"Indeed, not yet, but I've already come to an agreement with an acquaintance among the Divine Talisman Pavilion cultivators. When they return to the sect this time, they will take me and little Shuyi with them."
"Next year!"
"Next year, the Divine Talisman Sect will throw wide its gates to recruit disciples. Shuyi is only thirteen, has spiritual roots, and has been taught the basics of talisman crafting by me personally. She stands a very good chance of passing the entrance exam."
In those few short sentences, there was a profound weight of sighing and sentiment.
Standing before him, Luo Chen found himself stirred with emotion.
He had lived a hard life these past years, but so had Old Daoist Chen.
Though the old man had previously earned more than him, he had also needed to support a young granddaughter's cultivation and teach her the foundational arts of talisman crafting.
Learning any of the four scholarly arts of cultivation was a bottomless pit of expense.
Typically, only major factions could afford to nurture new talents. For Old Daoist Chen to take this on at merely the sixth level of Qi Refinement, one could imagine how grueling it had been.
Not only that, but the old man had squeezed every spare spirit stone from between his teeth to fund this distant journey.
Just thinking about it made the reality clear. Traveling from Dahe Market—the most remote corner of the Jade Cauldron Domain—across the Tianfan Domain and the Medicine King Domain all the way to the Divine Talisman Domain would be an unimaginably long trek.
An ordinary Qi Refinement cultivator might never travel so far in their entire lifetime.
To persuade the cultivators of the Divine Talisman Pavilion in Dahe Market to bring the two of them along, the old daoist had surely paid a hefty sum.
And that was merely the first expense.
There were the traveling costs along the way, followed by another year of living expenses once they reached the Divine Talisman Domain.
They even had to account for how they would survive if little Shuyi failed the entrance exam, or how they would continue to support her if she succeeded.
Just adding up those projected costs yielded an astronomical sum of spirit stones.
No matter how adept Luo Chen was at earning wealth, he couldn't possibly amass such an amount in the short term.
Yet all of that had been earned and scraped together, bit by bit, by Old Daoist Chen.
Amidst the bustling flow of the market, before the now-bare bluestone stall, the elder, the youth, and the young girl looked at each other in silence.
Chen Xiuping and Luo Chen were lost in the bittersweet memories of past hardships, while Chen Shuyi looked toward the future with eager yearning.
"Back in the day, I hauled this bluestone slab back from the mountains myself, just to distinguish my spot from the rogue cultivators spreading mats on the dirt and make it look a bit special."
"After I leave, head over to the market management office at the Jade Cauldron Sword Pavilion and change the name on the stall permit."
"This bluestone slab—I'm leaving it to you."
"Of course, from now on, you'll have to pay the full one spirit stone monthly stall fee yourself."
Toward the end, the old daoist chuckled softly.
Luo Chen's lips twitched, and gazing down at the smooth, polished stone slab, he drew a deep breath.
"Daoist Chen, this parting today isn't a final farewell between life and death. Why make it sound so mournful?"
"Come! Let this mid-stage Qi Refinement grand cultivator, Luo Chen, host a farewell feast for you both!"
Chen Xiuping froze for a moment, then seemed to recall something.
Stroking his beard, he burst into hearty laughter.
"Then I'll be sure to fleece you properly!"
Luo Chen waved a magnanimous hand. "A mere handful of spirit stones, nothing more! Let's go hold a feast at Zhongding House—today, the bill is on me!"
...
"Worry not of having no friends on the road ahead; who under heaven knows not your name?"
"Well said! I, Chen Xiuping, have few friends in this life, but you, little Luo, count as one. Let us drain this cup! If things ever go poorly for you down the line, come to the Divine Talisman Sect. Little Shuyi will surely have reached Foundation Establishment by then, and she'll look out for you!"
"Hah, looking down on me? How do you know I won't reach Foundation Establishment myself?"
"Give it a rest. Your spiritual root aptitude is even worse than mine."
"Say that again? One more word, and you're paying for this meal!"
"Ah, Fellow Daoist possesses the bearing of a Golden Core master! It was this old man's eyes that failed to see!"
By late afternoon, Luo Chen bid farewell to the grandfather and granddaughter, embarking alone on the walk home.
His face was twisted in a grimace.
"Profiteers, absolute bastards, every single one of them!"
"Just a set meal for two, plus an extra jug of wine and two plates of meat, and they dared to charge fifty spirit stones!"
"Who the hell told me Zhongding House wasn't profitable? Their Jade Cauldron Sword Sect is practically swimming in cash!"
Muttering curses under his breath as he walked, Luo Chen's brow suddenly furrowed.
Without altering his pace or looking back, he turned a street corner. As he did, a tiny wooden pangolin puppet dropped nimbly to the ground and slipped silently into the shadows.
Behind him, two figures followed at an unhurried, measured pace.
Chapter 53