Yi Lin instinctively flinched, holding the crystal up like a desperate, pink shield.
"It's... it's really good!" he squeaked.
The Sect Master was close. Too close. Yi Lin could see the fine lines around his eyes and the single grey hair in his left eyebrow.
"Ten golden coins," Chen stated. His voice was a low rumble. "For this."
He didn't reach for the crystal. He just... stared at it.
"Y-yes!" Yi Lin's mind was racing, trying to build a believable lie. "It's... it's a Dimensional-Convergence-Spiritual-Enhancement-Matrix! From... from a hidden realm I fell into! It... it helps cultivation! A lot! Ten coins is, honestly... I'm practically giving it away!"
He was sweating so hard he was pretty sure he was developing a heat rash.
The Sect Master's gaze flickered from the crystal to Yi Lin's terrified, earnest face, and then back.
"A hidden realm. You."
"I'm very clumsy!" Yi Lin offered.
The Sect Master ignored him. "Why," he asked, his voice dropping even lower, "is it so expensive?"
"Because... of the... convergence!" Yi Lin was flailing. "It converges... dimensions!"
"Silence."
Yi Lin's mouth snapped shut with a click.
Sect Master Chen finally lifted a hand. He didn't touch the crystal, but held his fingers a few inches from it. He closed his eyes.
Yi Lin had no idea what was happening, but the air around them suddenly felt thick and heavy. It was like the pressure in his ears right before a thunderstorm.
A faint, almost invisible shimmer surrounded the Sect Master's hand. He felt a tingle on his skin, a strange, static-like energy that made the hairs on his arm stand up.
Yi Lin watched, his breath held, as the Sect Master's brow furrowed.
Chen, a Level 10 Qi Refiner, was pushing his spiritual energy toward the pink object. He was trying to see inside it.
To him, any normal object, be it rock or wood or even cheap iron, was like glass. He could perceive its internal structure, its flaws, its very makeup.
A low-level spiritual item would be even easier, shining with a faint Qi pattern that he could read like a book.
But this...
His spiritual energy hit the crystal and simply... stopped. It didn't bounce off. It didn't penetrate. It was like trying to punch water, but the water was also a brick wall.
He pushed harder. The air crackled. The disciples in the background, who had been watching with detached curiosity, now looked uneasy. They could feel the Sect Master's power building.
"What is he doing?" Yi Lin whispered, his hand starting to shake under the invisible pressure.
The Sect Master's eyes snapped open. His face was pale.
He saw... nothing. Absolutely nothing.
The crystal was an opaque void to his senses.
He looked at the disciples. Their faces were blank, confused. They were idiots. They just saw a boy with a pink rock. They couldn't feel what he had just felt.. which was the complete and total absence of a result.
They would have tried to scan it, found nothing, and declared it a rock.
But Chen was a Level 10 cultivator. He had built his own cultivation art, the 'Hundred Pebble-Pushing Fist', from a single, damaged manual he'd found in a ruin.
He knew the difference between nothing and nothing.
A normal rock would show him something. Grains. Impurities. Its mundane nature.
This... this was a mystery.
"If I can't see through it," he thought, his heart suddenly picking up its pace, "it means one of two things. It is either an utterly mundane, perfectly polished piece of pink glass..."
He looked at Yi Lin, who was trembling so hard he looked like he might vibrate apart.
"...or," his thought continued, "it is a heavenly treasure so profound, so far beyond my comprehension, that it seals itself from the prying senses of lesser beings."
This mortal... this latrine-cleaner... he was too stupid and too terrified to be a con artist. A con artist would be smooth. This kid looked like he was about to piss himself.
He'd just stumbled upon it. He had no idea what he was holding.
And he was selling it for ten golden coins.
But what if?
What if this... rock... was the key? The thing that could push him past the Level 10 bottleneck he'd been stuck at for five. God. Damn. Years.
He looked at the crystal one more time. A pink rock... or his one chance at advancing.
"Shit," Chen muttered under his breath, so low Yi Lin couldn't hear.
He made his decision.
"Fine," the Sect Master said, his voice flat.
Yi Lin blinked. "F-fine?"
Sect Master Chen reached deep into the pocket of his (patched, but clean) robes.
For a second, Yi Lin thought he was pulling out a weapon.
Instead, his hand emerged holding a small, heavy, brown leather pouch.
With a flick of his wrist, he tossed it to Yi Lin.
Yi Lin, whose reflexes were currently super-charged by pure terror, fumbled the catch, but managed to secure the pouch before it hit the mud.
It was heavy.
He didn't dare open it. He just looked at the Sect Master, his eyes wide.
"Ten golden coins," the Sect Master confirmed, his face an unreadable mask. "Now, the... item."
Yi Lin's brain finally caught up.
"Yes! Yes, of course! Good choice! You won't regret this! It's great for... convergence!" Yi Lin babbled, his hand shaking for a whole new reason. He carefully, reverently, placed the pink crystal into the Sect Master's outstretched hand.
The second the crystal left Yi Lin's skin and touched the Sect Master's, two things happened at once.
First, a series of bright blue screens flooded Yi Lin's vision.
[Mission Complete: First Sale!]
[Payment of 10 Golden Coins Received!]
[Failure Penalty: Soul Annihilation - CANCELED]
[Congratulations, Host! You are not dead!]
[Reward Unlocked: 1x Dimensional Slime Ranch (Starter Pack)]
[Reward Unlocked: 1x Pink Slime Egg]
Yi Lin's knees gave out. He just... folded. He dropped to his knees in the mud, clutching the pouch of coins, and let out a sound that was half-laugh, half-sob.
He was so busy being not-dead that he completely missed the second thing that happened.
The exact moment the Sect Master's hand closed around the crystal, the "ownership" transferred.
The mysterious, impenetrable seal that had hidden its nature from the outside world... vanished.
Sect Master Chen, who was preparing to take the rock back to his office and meditate on it for a month, was suddenly hit by a wave of energy so pure, so vast, that his vision went white.
It wasn't just Qi. It was... more. It was life. It was creation. It was a torrential, endless, overwhelming flood of something that made his own spiritual energy feel like a muddy puddle next to a boundless ocean.
He saw it. He saw all of them. A pulsing, swirling, galaxy of pure, raw energy locked inside a tiny pink crystal.
He stumbled back, his eyes wide with a terror and an ecstasy he had never known.
A divine object!
He had just bought a divine fucking object...
...from the latrine-boy...
...for ten golden coins.
He looked at the crystal in his hand, which now, even to his naked eye, seemed to pulse with an unholy, beautiful light.
He looked at Yi Lin, who was kneeling in the mud, crying and laughing like a lunatic.
He looked at the other disciples, who were just staring, utterly clueless.
Sect Master Chen did the only thing a wise, powerful, and suddenly terrified man could do.
He ran.
In a blur of blue robes and a cloud of dust, he was gone. No glide, no float. Just pure, unadulterated "I need to go into seclusion right now" panic.
Yi Lin finally got his breathing under control and looked up.
"Huh? Where'd he go?"
He was alone in the training yard, surrounded by baffled disciples. He looked down at the heavy pouch in his hand. He peeked inside. Ten round, shining, beautiful golden circles.
Then he looked at the timer in his vision.
[Mission Time Remaining: 23 hours, 48 minutes, 05 seconds]
He had made it.
Yi Lin grinned, a wide, goofy, tear-streaked grin.
"Holy shit," he whispered, pushing himself up out of the mud. "I'm gonna be a rancher?"