Chapter 077 – Another Winter
At the gate of the black market, in that nameless little pavilion, Li Yuan pored over the entrance registry.
This registry was made in three parts. Each gate of the black market checked and recorded incoming goods. Those entries were then collected before nightfall and compiled into a single volume, which was delivered to Senior Li for review.
Only after Senior Li’s red brush stroke approved it would those goods go on sale. Most of the time, though, he simply skimmed the pages and stamped his seal without much scrutiny.
So, the items Li Yuan was looking at now were those just cleared for sale that very morning. If he had come earlier, he could have known ahead of time exactly what would appear in the market today.
He flipped through the notebook quickly, but his finger moved idly across the entries, reflecting his mixed hopes. He needed several things—
One was a ninth rank demonic beast. Ideally one with a gentle temperament, good at scouting, and adept at concealment. If possible, he also wanted a tank type creature, something capable of home defense and providing support. He was fed up with lacking a reliable pair of eyes. When he’d been waiting to ambush Ren, he’d been reduced to hiding in an undergrowth, waiting for the right moment. He wanted an edge in tracking and surveillance.
The second was eighth rank demonic beast meat to further stimulate his shadow blood. This, he hoped, would help him break through to seventh rank. But channels for eighth rank demonic beast meat were scarce. Most of it went straight to the sect master, deputy sect master, and elders, leaving none for everyone else. He’d even jokingly considered slaughtering Senior Li’s own ashen spiritmares, but he wasn’t anywhere near strong enough to pull that off undetected. For now, it remained only a wild idea.
The third was advanced skills. Li Yuan had come to realize that Archery, Tracking, Beast Taming, and Spearmanship were foundational skills. They served more as stepping stones than as signature moves. His Spring-Autumn Blade had three forms—Spring Thunder, Spring Awakening, and Leaping Abyss. Ultimately, if cultivated to the peak, these three forms could fuse into a single, ultimate skill—something ordinary basic skills could never match. He wanted to see if the black market offered any high-ranking martial arts that might help him broaden his horizons when his cultivation hit a bottleneck.
The fourth was cultivation techniques. Since his body could accommodate two types of shadow blood simultaneously, he wondered if it could hold a third. He had no idea if that was even possible, and advanced cultivation techniques rarely appeared for sale anyway. But if he spotted a likely lead, he’d certainly investigate. He wasn’t interested in any incomplete manuals like the Return-Willow Technique, which ended after ninth rank. If he took on something new, it had to include a more advanced pathway. Though Senior Li said he could always forge his own path, Li Yuan knew he wasn’t ready to create a brand-new technique from scratch just yet.
After a thorough look, Li Yuan sighed and put the registry aside. He hadn’t found a single item on his wish list.