The plan had begun some time ago, when he discovered a mine of Stellar Ocean Stones that he deemed too difficult to claim due to his rather humble origins.
If Yun Xie tried to sell them on his own, it would be like attracting a tiger directly toward himself.
He was not afraid of trouble, but he never sought it without any benefit in return.
Blindly selling the stones carried the scent of unnecessary problems and could even lead to his death because of others' greed.
To avoid such a fate and accumulate a thousand Yuan Stones, Yun Xie began to scheme.
The first step was to find a temporary sponsor. The answer to that was the Commerce Hall.
Two days earlier, he had pretended to have found the stones inside a ruin, generously providing a false location. And yesterday, after the elder's grandson verified the claim and also conveniently found "thirty stones," ten of them containing jade, they devised a plan to increase the value of the jade: a fake display.
Originally, each jade was worth two hundred Yuan Stones.
Although it accelerated cultivation and was single-use, over time the Qi inside would disappear, decreasing its market value.
However, if another need arose, that value could be increased.
And what did it have besides its beneficial properties?
It was exceedingly beautiful, a true luxury for women.
With his connections, Zhao Mingqin contacted Luo Qingyue, one of the most beautiful disciples of the Phoenix Pavilion's Outer Court, to stage a performance.
The performance worked: the original two-hundred-stone jade rose in value to five hundred.
Yun Xie, who remained calm throughout, was the true winner of everything.
He obtained the thousand Yuan Stones he wanted and still had a monetary inheritance in his hands. The true mine was not made of black rocks, but of real Stellar Ocean Stone ore.
Zhao Mingqin considered himself clever, but he had no idea he was merely a puppet in Yun Xie's hands.
With indifferent eyes, Yun Xie regarded everything as a game of chess, including himself, who on his own board was nothing more than a pawn.
"Thank you, Senior Brother Mingqin."
He waved his hand in gratitude.
"No problem, Junior." Zhao Mingqin was also polite toward him. "I'm leaving."
Watching the scholar depart, Yun Xie understood what was in his mind.
Zhao Mingqin saw him as a passerby, someone unimportant now that the plan was completed.
From now on, the two would go their separate ways.
Yun Xie had lost his temporary sponsor. If he sold any more jade, it would arouse suspicion, and they would eventually discover that the ruins were fake.
"For now, the Yuan Stones I have are enough."
Not being greedy, he took the storage ring, checked it thoroughly, and found eighteen hundred Yuan Stones.
The price of six jades for three hundred stones covered the five given to Zhao Mingqin and the one given to Luo Qingyue.
"All right."
Nodding, Yun Xie dismantled his stall and left the trading area.
Pico do Bambu.
In the northwest of the outer courtyard lay an area surrounded by silver-trunk bamboo with emerald-green leaves.
Yun Xie, a novice disciple of the Phoenix Pavilion who had not yet cultivated spiritual energy, lived there.
Approaching his humble home, a one-room bamboo hut, he maintained a calm expression.
Unbothered, he entered the house, revealing a ten-meter interior.
In this small space, there was a bed in the lower right corner and, in the upper corner, a simple one-door wooden wardrobe.
On the left side was a basin at the bottom and, above it, a desk.
Walking to the bed, Yun Xie removed all the Yuan Stones from the storage ring and threw them onto the mattress.
A pile of milky-white stones fell onto the bed, forming a small mountain.
This was the appearance of an original Yuan Stone, colored as such due to its formation.
It was made of the energy that exists throughout heaven and earth, known as Spiritual Energy.
Yuan Stones could be used both as currency and for cultivation.
Unlike Stellar Ocean Stones, which increased essence quality and cultivation speed, Yuan Stones directly enhanced the essence inside the dantian.
Previously, Yun Xie had obtained three hundred spiritual stones by selling two jades to the Commerce Hall. Now he had a total of two thousand one hundred Yuan Stones.
"Is it enough to open my dantian?" He placed his hand on his chin, questioning silently.
Yun Xie suffered from a problem of being insatiable.
He was talented. On the first day of cultivation he sensed spiritual energy in ten seconds and could absorb a drop per second, revealing the potential of a prodigy.
That should have been a cause for celebration, but it wasn't.
With such genius came a cultivation difficulty ten or even a hundred times greater than that of common cultivators.
"Two thousand Yuan Stones… if I fail again, I might as well give up my life…" Yun Xie joked, or perhaps not.
His eyes held a deep coldness, one capable of freezing the very air.
It was frightening to look at the young man standing over the bed.
Still cold as an iceberg, he sat on the mattress and crossed his legs.
With free hands, he grabbed a handful of Yuan Stones and stacked them on his lap.
Filling his lap with stones, Yun Xie closed his eyes and performed the Green Bamboo Breathing Technique.
One of the reasons novice disciples lived on Bamboo Peak was this basic breathing technique that they all learned.
A simple method that consisted of harmonizing with the heavens using the technique's breathing pattern and absorbing the energy present in the surrounding bamboo into the body.
Already accustomed to it, Yun Xie adjusted his breathing to perfection with ease.
Once in harmony with the Dao, he felt drops entering his pores.
They came from all four directions of the room's walls like leaking water, except instead of clouds, they originated from the bamboo near his home.
Absorbing them, Yun Xie guided them toward his primordial seed with his mind.
The primordial seed was the human embryo formed in the womb.
The beginning of everything for both mortals and cultivators.
For mortals, it represented the status of their birth as living beings. For cultivators, it was the beginning of transcendence.
To transcend, one had to cultivate the seed until it sprouted and evolved into the primordial origin, giving birth to the dantian.
Yun Xie's primordial seed, located in the central meridian two inches below the navel, was a black and desolate cell, ancient in aura, marked by sixteen lines that indicated his actual age of sixteen.
Yun Xie was not a reincarnated soul, but something was strange.
Why was his seed so ancient?