The number on the receipt was followed by a long string of zeroes. Xia Fei counted and found that there were six! With the number ‘one’ at the front, that meant one million!
One million grade 5 Origin Crystals! If exchanged into grade 4 crystals at the discounted rate, that was four hundred million crystals!
It must be understood that this was the annual revenue for a mid-level clan, and it was all in grade 5 crystals. Those smaller clans could not make this kind of exchange even if they wanted to.
Xia Fei was rather taken aback. According to his calculations, he should have made around five hundred thousand, but it turned out to be one million, which was double his estimate!
“Haha! Xia Fei, you’re rich! Though you can’t be considered as rich as a country, you’re at least a wealthy man, probably even the richest in the Skywing Clan!” Oro said with awe.
Li Ning saw the confusion in Xia Fei’s eyes and sternly said, “There were several items in the transaction that our Boundless Heaven Trading Association was very short of, so the prices were somewhat higher than usual. Moreover, considering that this was a batch transaction, it’s reasonable for the total sum to be one million grade 5 crystals.
“Our Boundless Heaven has always been a trustworthy operator. In the future, please think of us if you have any other business.”
Xia Fei calmly passed over his card from Rock Private Bank. “Transfer it to my account. The Boundless Heaven Trading Association is so generous that I will certainly choose your esteemed association as my first place to do business in the future.”
Li Ning nodded. He took Xia Fei’s card and personally made the transaction.
“An anonymous account?” Li Ning was a little disappointed after he was done with the transfer. It was Xia Fei’s habit to keep himself hidden, and if this account had carried his name, Xia Fei would not have taken it out. Li Ning’s hopes of finding out Xia Fei’s true identity were shattered.
“Alright, sir. The money has been transferred to your account. I presume that you will take part in the Boundless Heaven Trading Association’s summer auction?” Li Ning smiled as he returned the card to Xia Fei.
Xia Fei nodded. “I will be back tomorrow.”
…
Xia Fei left Boundless City with an astronomical sum and his spatial ring a little lighter. Although Xia Fei had cleaned out all the extra things there, he had exchanged them for valuable Origin Crystals! Xia Fei had not lost out in this transaction.
Boundless City, the Boundless Heaven Trading Association’s headquarters, a large room with an excellent view of the mountains and rivers.
The seventeen-year-old Zhou Xiaoman had her head lowered over a topographical model, depicting a classical campaign from one of the many wars between gods and demons, the ambush at Nofish Peak.
Nofish Peak was a massive mountain, and at its summit was a salt lake with a diameter of tens of thousands of kilometers. The high altitude meant that there were no fish in the lake, hence the name. It was an important rallying area of the Demon Race and had a powerful garrison.
Coincidentally, the ones who had led this campaign were the Skywing Clan. These vicious, high-speed wolves had broken through the tight defensive line of Nofish Peak, tearing a gap through which the God Race warriors had charged in and essentially wiped out the garrison of thirty thousand elites.
A heavy sword without an edge, a fiendish blade to subdue demons. The battle of Nofish Peak was only one of the countless war achievements of the Skywing Clan. Zhou Xiaoman never got tired of researching this campaign. Besides her admiration for the heaven-defying speed of the Skywings, she felt admiration for their will to fight until they had achieved their goal.
Though Zhou Xiaoman was a girl, she liked to keep her hair short and dressed as a man. Alas, her exquisite face wasn’t something that could be concealed by her clothes. Anyone with somewhat sharp eyes would be able to tell that it was a girl’s body concealed behind those clean and simple clothes.
At this time, Zhou Xiaoman looked at the board and smiled. A battle started playing out before her as if it were a movie, and she was soon intoxicated in the details.
*Bang bang bang!*
Someone knocked on her door three times. Zhou Xiaoman put away the model and opened the door to see that her visitor was Chief Appraiser Li Ning.
“Has he been sent away?” Zhou Xiaoman sat back on her seat and softly asked.
Li Ning nodded. “He seems to have a rather decent temperament. He was rather surprised at the sum we had given him.”
Zhou Xiaoman snorted. “A bunch of criminals who eat their own kind. This group was daring enough to clean out the Galerain Society’s auction and kill twenty thousand people, meaning that they’re all brutal and savage people. We’re businessmen, and our greatest worry is finding trouble. We must be cautious when dealing with this kind of people.”
Li Ning pursed his lips. Zhou Xiaoman was the young miss of Boundless Heaven’s Zhou Clan. Despite her young age, she was already managing Boundless City and constantly spoke from the perspective of a businesswoman. However, those who knew her understood that Zhou Xiaoman was the most enthusiastic about fighting and killing. Alas, she was a girl, and her seventh brain region had suffered from the rare syndrome of being completely blocked up. She would probably have to spend the rest of her life only imagining battles.
As for Xia Fei, the sharp-eyed Li Ning had instantly noticed that these items had been plundered from the Galerain Society’s auction two days ago, so after settling Xia Fei, he had gone to Zhou Xiaoman to discuss what to do. Zhou Xiaoman had immediately decided to take everything and at a rather high price.
Xia Fei had no idea that he had already been marked by the Boundless Heaven Zhous as the perpetrator of the Galerain Society massacre, or that two hundred thousand of those one million grade 5 crystals was a favor—a request that Xia Fei and the faction behind him would not cause any trouble for the Boundless Heaven Trading Association.
This was truly rather laughable. Xia Fei, who had always been a loner, had no wicked faction backing him to speak of. While the Skywing Clan was quite vicious, they had never been ones to engage in shady business like murder and thievery.
Zhou Xiaoman’s passion was to research battles and deducing strategies, but she had explicitly inferred Xia Fei to be a representative of some evil faction. From this, one could see that passions were one thing, but accurately deducing things was something else entirely. Zhou Xiaoman had researched countless battles, but she was terrible when it came to deductions.
“Have you identified him yet?” Zhou Xiaoman looked outside the window and asked.
Li Ning shook his head. “He changed his appearance and used an account with a hidden name. When leaving Boundless City just now, he also used an unregistered compass. We have no means of identifying who he really is.”
Zhou Xiaoman pursed her lips, apparently dissatisfied by Li Ning’s incompetence.
“According to my deductions, these are ruthless people. Since they dared to turn the infamous Galerain Society upside down, they might have made our Boundless Heaven the next target.” Zhou Xiaoman slapped the table and stood up. “Unacceptable! Father entrusted me with Boundless City, so I must rely on formidable deduction abilities to protect it against the unknown. This is my duty.”
Li Ning felt a headache coming on. The young miss was obsessed with deductions, as everyone around her knew, but to say that her deductive abilities were formidable would not be quite right. These were naught but absurd guesses, but given Zhou Xiaoman’s status, none of them pointed this out and just played along.
Looking around, Zhou Xiaoman came up with an idea.
“I heard that he’ll be participating in our Boundless Heaven’s summer auction tomorrow,” Zhou Xiaoman hedged, placing a hand on her waist.
“Correct. I’ve already reserved a seat for him. As you ordered, to show our respect for him and also not to make him too conspicuous, I assigned him to one of the box seats on the second floor.”
Zhou Xiaoman placed a hand on her chin and sternly said, “Excellent! Put my seat next to his as well. Through meticulous observation and deduction, I’ll determine the true goal of those criminals! If they’re really targeting my Boundless Heaven, hmph!”
It appeared that Zhou Xiaoman was not ready to let Xia Fei go just yet. To tell the truth, while Xia Fei had recently been rather fond of stealing from others and rapidly advancing in cultivation, he had no plans of robbing the Boundless Heaven Trading Association. How had he become a criminal in the mouth of Zhou Xiaoman?
Li Ning wanted to argue, but seeing how stubborn Zhou Xiaoman appeared, he swallowed his words. “Forget it. Let the young miss have her fun,” Li Ning said to himself.
…
Early in the morning of the next day, Xia Fei arrived at Boundless City. He was in the same disguise as yesterday, and paired with Breath Control, he was incredibly difficult to identify in the crowd.
Today was the actual day of Boundless Heaven’s summer auction; there were even more luminaries of the White Horse Constellation here than the day prior.
“There are more people present today; many bigshots have appeared all at once. Something big might be about to happen,” Oro said as he looked around.
Xia Fei shrugged. “Maybe there’s something they want at the auction. In any case, it doesn’t have anything to do with us. I just want the Solid Gold Flying Cicada Pupa.”
He found a place with no one around and fed Furball a grade 5 Origin Crystal. Xia Fei was no longer a poor man, so he could freely feed precious grade 5 crystals to Furball.
“When the time comes, you mustn’t do anything stupid. I’ll be in trouble if I’m recognized,” Xia Fei ordered.
With his disguise, he naturally would not be recognized, but Furball was an extremely conspicuous existence. After all, how many people in the Law Realm raised Holy Beasts? Once Furball was discovered, Xia Fei would be in a lot of trouble.
After taking out the Boundless Heaven Association’s gold card, Xia Fei was led into one of the box seats on the second floor.
The Boundless Heaven Auction House was a grand structure built like a giant opera house. It could hold two hundred thousand people, and the box seats on the second floor were excellent seats. While there were somewhat more people the room, the chairs and refreshments provided were no different from what the people in the two-seater super VIP rooms enjoyed. Only those of very esteemed status could sit here.
Xia Fei found his seat and sat down. The people around him had all brought servants, but Xia Fei was alone. In truth, all twenty people in this room other than Xia Fei, whether servant or guest, had been sent by the Boundless Heaven Trading Association. After all, Zhou Xiaoman was an important figure, and Li Ning was worried that something might happen.
From his seat, Xia Fei could see the distant auction platform. He had an excellent view and did not need to rely on the screen like the majority of people.
Zhou Xiaoman sat to Xia Fei’s right. With her ‘insightful’ eyes, she observed Xia Fei. Xia Fei pretended not to see this girl who was dressed as a man, ignoring her completely.
After observing him for a while, Zhou Xiaoman determined that Xia Fei was very boring. Putting aside his ordinary looks, he was a taciturn person. Zhou Xiaoman had initially been planning to identify Xia Fei through his voice.
The guest steadily streamed into the auction house; Zhou Xiaoman looked around and pointed at a person coming in through one of the entrances. She said to an elder next to her, “Grandpa, that person is really interesting. He’s got a limp, his left foot traveling one inch farther than his right foot, and there’s even some green liquid staining his clothes. I deduce that this person sprained his right foot while doing a morning exercise and fell to the ground.”
The old man whom Zhou Xiaoman had called grandfather showed a very unnatural expression, awkwardly laughing as he praised Zhou Xiaoman’s deduction.
Xia Fei’s heart shivered as he thought to himself, ‘What sort of deduction is this? This man clearly got a hernia surgery, so he’s walking very unnaturally. As for that stain of green liquid, that’s absinthe. You can see from his brandy nose that he’s an alcoholic. He hasn’t been able to drink after his surgery, so he’s been getting antsy. He secretly had a drink before the auction.
“Unfortunately, his wife ended up finding out, so she knocked the cup of his hand, spilling it on this body. That woman behind him has a nasty scowl, and her sleeve also has a few green stains, clearly because they’re unable to clean all the spills up.”
