The small courtyard held three rooms. The main house stood flush against the cliff wall, while of the two side wings, one was assigned to Hunter Thirty-One and Zhengang, and the other served as a storeroom. Once settled, Wei Yuan prepared to take a stroll through the market to see what was available and ponder his path forward.
He brought Hunter Thirty-One along, leaving Zhengang behind to watch the house and carve a signboard in the meantime.
Since Power Shamans were so easily duped, Wei Yuan intended to embark on the path of a Craft God in the Desolate Realm, gathering resources as quickly as possible, elevating his cultivation, and fighting his way out of here at an early date.
Directly beneath the grand canopy lay the central district, the commercial heart of the market, lined with dozens of shops large and small. Wei Yuan observed them attentively. The largest and most lavish establishments either sold high-tier Shaman Hunter equipment or infused gear with sacrificial power to ward off the sunlight.
Wei Yuan was quite intrigued by the shops that replenished sacrificial power, so he casually strolled in with Hunter Thirty-One.
The establishment was spacious, yet had surprisingly few goods inside. Cloth coverings were arranged neatly on shelves along the walls, accompanied by several armor stands displaying ornate suits of armor capable of attenuating the sunlight.
A long counter spanned the room, behind which rested a solitary, sluggish Great Shaman. His head lay at one end of the counter, while his tail draped over the other.
Seeing Hunter Thirty-One and Wei Yuan enter, the Great Shaman did not even bother lifting his eyelids. "If you want to replenish sacrificial power, register first. The queue stretches out twenty days."
Hunter Thirty-One hastily said, "My covering can't last twenty days!"
"Pay more," the Great Shaman replied, stingy with his words.
The moment Wei Yuan stepped inside, he had sensed dense sacrificial power emanating from the shop's back courtyard, where no work was currently taking place. Thus, he said, "Aren't you free of work right now? Could you accommodate us and replenish our sacrificial power first?"
The Great Shaman merely sneered. "I have no work right now, but I'm not in the mood to work."
"You—" Wei Yuan was just about to flare up when Hunter Thirty-One quickly tugged at him, whispering, "This shop belongs to the market master."
Wei Yuan snorted and said no more, allowing Hunter Thirty-One to pull him outside.
Once out of the shop, Wei Yuan inquired further and learned that this was the only place in the entire market capable of replenishing sacrificial power. This Great Shaman had always acted like this, working one day and slacking off for two, while all the Shaman Hunters swallowed their resentment in silence.
Only the market master could procure sacrificial power; no other Shaman could compete with him.
Before long, Wei Yuan finished a full circuit of the market, gaining a clear picture of the prices for various equipment and materials. He then purchased several hundred jin of desolate iron sand and carried it back to his lodgings.
This variety of iron sand could be found everywhere, but sifting it out bit by bit was time-consuming, which made its price exceptionally low. After running the numbers, Wei Yuan realized that even if his precipitation method extracted iron sand a dozen times faster than pure manual labor, simply buying the raw sand was still far more cost-effective.
Evidently, many criminals and even Shaman Hunters could only scrape by on picking out iron sand, which had driven the price down into the dirt.
Wei Yuan also procured a smelting furnace, an anvil, a forging hammer, cutting tools, and other essentials before heading back to the courtyard. On the way back, seven or eight Shamans trailed behind them, only dispersing once they confirmed where Wei Yuan lived.
Having seen Wei Yuan purchase blacksmithing and crafting tools, they knew a new smith had arrived in the market and followed along to locate his doorstep.
Wei Yuan paid them no mind. He buried himself in setting up the various tools and instructed Zhengang to hang the signboard first thing tomorrow morning, readying for business.
Meanwhile, on the second floor of the market's largest weapon shop, an elderly Shaman sat dozing off. Beside him, a Little Pretty Shaman kneaded his legs with soft, supple motions.
A young Shaman rushed in, and the Little Pretty Shaman instantly pulled her hands back like lightning, stepping aside. Seeing this scene, the young Shaman's expression darkened.
The elderly Shaman slowly opened his eyes and said coldly, "What's with the panic? Who allowed you up here?"
The young apprentice hurriedly bowed his head and said, "Just a moment ago, another craftsman arrived at the market. Word is he intends to open a desolate iron shop as well."
The elder was visibly displeased. "I thought it was something major, but it's just another blacksmith. Let him be. So long as he can't produce desolate steel, there's no need to pay him any attention. Wait until he has desolate steel to speak of it. Now get out!"
The young Shaman bowed his head and retreated from the second floor. The elder grabbed the Little Pretty Shaman's hand and placed it back onto himself.
Wei Yuan labored for several hours, finally assembling all his equipment. He then stoked the furnace and loaded all the iron sand into it to melt.
When the flames reached their fiercest, Wei Yuan let out a low roar directly into the furnace. The fire surged instantly, jetting out through the top flue.
Beneath the roar, the pitch-black iron sand turned a faint red in a flash. After a brief pause, Wei Yuan unleashed another war cry, this time imbuing it with several strands of karmic luck. A slender crimson thread shot from his mouth, causing the furnace flames to erupt a zhang high, turning every grain of iron sand bright red.
Two streets over, a Shaman strolled leisurely down the road, trailed by seven or eight bodyguards—plainly a figure of high status. He suddenly pricked up one ear; distinctly larger than that of a normal Shaman, it twitched as he listened intently. A moment later, he turned his gaze toward Wei Yuan's courtyard.
"Did a new artificer move in over there?" he asked.
An attendant replied, "Two Shaman Hunters moved in there. They bought that courtyard outright."
"Shaman Hunters? No. The Desolate Roar I just heard was rather intriguing, packed with tremendous force. Ordinary Shaman Hunters possess no such capability. Go keep an eye on them. If he turns out to be useful, we might just have to win him over."
Inside the courtyard, after Wei Yuan roared three times, molten iron began to flow from the furnace. Hunter Thirty-One and Zhengang poured the molten metal into molds, casting it into standardized iron ingots.
Wei Yuan picked up a freshly cast ingot and inspected its luster, thoroughly satisfied. He had infused three strands of karmic luck into his final Desolate Roar, which significantly raised the purity of the molten iron and saved a vast amount of hammering work.
The newly cast ingots were already of respectable quality; they could be spent directly as currency or forged straight into arrowheads.
Hammering was a primitive craft, so Wei Yuan taught the technique to Hunter Thirty-One and Zhengang, having each employ their Shaman power to hammer out rough arrowhead blanks, while he returned to the main hall to close his eyes and rest his spirit.
He called it resting his spirit, but in truth, Wei Yuan had used his divine sense to open a domain where more than three hundred Wei Yuans were already tackling various tasks.
One hundred analyzed all incoming information and studied the Desolate Realm's environment, another hundred optimized artifact crafting in the Desolate Realm, and the remaining hundred dissected operational strategies.
This domain was entirely an illusion, simple and stark, surrounded by boundless void. Each Wei Yuan possessed only a desk and a chair; whenever a research topic was completed, it would be placed on a bookshelf, turning into a book.
For now, the domain held just a single bookshelf, bearing a mere dozen volumes or so.
Yet most of those books pertained to optimizing Desolate Realm artifact crafting. Armed with the fruits of these few studies alone, Wei Yuan's craft was already touched with divine skill, completely winning over Zhengang and Hunter Thirty-One.
After waiting a while longer, Zhengang and Hunter Thirty-One had finished forging most of the iron blanks, hammering out a total of two hundred rough arrowhead blanks before respectfully inviting Wei Yuan to take over.
What followed was an exceptionally well-practiced routine. This time, Wei Yuan did not use Zhengang's hooves, wielding the hammer personally instead.
At Wei Yuan's command, Hunter Thirty-One positioned an arrowhead and applied a Desolate Roar to heat it. Wei Yuan then swung his hammer, imbued with karmic luck. With a single strike amidst flying sparks, the arrowhead's quality underwent a total metamorphosis as vast amounts of impurities were expelled, leaping directly from a rough blank to an exquisite piece.
Hunter Thirty-One roared, then Zhengang roared; Zhengang roared, then Hunter Thirty-One roared again. Wei Yuan swung his hammer like the wind, and in the blink of an eye, two hundred arrowheads were forged, every single one of exquisite quality.
The reason he chose to forge ordinary arrowheads was that a single strand of karmic luck could elevate an arrowhead from ordinary to exquisite, tripling its value. Yet forging desolate iron into desolate steel required a thousand strands of karmic luck for a mere hundredfold increase in value. By comparison, with the same single strand of karmic luck, crafting ordinary arrowheads yielded far greater returns.
Following this entire process, which took less than two days in total—and barely half a day in the Desolate Realm—Wei Yuan had transformed iron sand worth two hundred jin of desolate iron into two hundred exquisite arrowheads worth six hundred jin.
In other words, within a single day of arriving, Wei Yuan had earned enough to buy eight houses in the market. Once he grasped this fact, Hunter Thirty-One, who had toiled for decades in the Desolate Realm without ever affording a home, revered Wei Yuan like an immortal god.
However, Hunter Thirty-One's karmic luck had already been squeezed dry, leaving no new contributions for the time being.
Combined with the hundred jin of desolate iron forged before their arrival, this formed Wei Yuan's starting capital in the market. Tallying his funds, Wei Yuan summoned the fat Shaman again and asked, "Are the courtyards to the left and right for sale?"
Seeing the exquisite arrowheads stacked neatly on the adjacent table, the fat Shaman naturally no longer judged a Shaman by his size. He bent forward with all his might, folding his massive frame again and again until he was actually lower than the seated Wei Yuan. With a fawning grin, he said, "Of course they're for sale."
Wei Yuan pointed to the arrowheads on the table. "Take however many you need."
Assessing their value, the fat Shaman took only forty. "This is more than enough."
Wei Yuan picked up three more arrowheads and handed them over. "A tip for you."
The fat Shaman dropped to the ground at once. "Thank you, Boss!"
Wei Yuan remained seated and said, "Do another thing for me."
"At your command!"
"Tear down the courtyard walls on the left and right. I want them joined into one."
The fat Shaman bounced straight up from the ground. Amidst a series of rumbling crashes, he finished demolishing the dividing walls, joining the three courtyards into a single grand compound.
By this point, Zhengang had already hung the signboard above the courtyard gate. A dozen Shaman Hunters were gathered outside, looking up at the board, all bearing peculiar expressions.
Only then did Wei Yuan remember that he had not given himself a Shaman name, and had forgotten to tell Zhengang what to write on the signboard. Even now that it was hung, Wei Yuan still had no idea what was actually carved on it.
As more and more Shamans congregated outside, Wei Yuan realized something was amiss. He rose and walked out of the courtyard, looked up, and was instantly stunned.
Inside the market's largest artifact shop, the young apprentice rushed up to the second floor once more, only to find the old Shaman and the Little Pretty Shaman entangled together, leaving his heart shattered all over the floor.
"What is it this time?!" the old Shaman roared.
The young apprentice kept his eyes glued to his toes, secretly catching glimpses of the heartbreaking sight from the corner of his eye as he said, "That newly arrived Shaman hung up his signboard."
"So what if he did? What's the fuss?"
"The signboard reads: Craft God of the Great Desolation."
Chapter 878