Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation
Zhou Yang fled out of Drunken Immortal Restaurant in a sorry state.
His glorious image had been completely destroyed when he learned that he was the reason they sacrificed their looks to earn money for the restaurant.
He also knew that if Zhou Yuanzhen and the others were unwilling, his crooked ideas would not have worked at all.
The clan could assign them to work in the restaurant as a clan mission, but the clan couldn’t force them to sacrifice their looks for profit. That would not only make the other clans laugh at them, it would also hurt the hearts of their clan members.
However, the reason Zhou Yuanzhen and the others were willing to listen to his crooked ideas was not only because they could get a commission, but also because they were self-aware enough to know that the clan’s cultivation resources weren’t easy to come by. They wanted to make themselves useful to their clan.
Their male counterparts were already working tirelessly on months-long clan missions, risking their lives fighting sand bandits and demon beasts, just to earn spiritual stones for the clan.
These girls simply had to use their body and they could get as many spiritual stones for the clan. What reason did the girls have to refuse?
Without the clan’s protection, these low-level female cultivators would have a hard time surviving in the immortal cultivation world, even with their looks.
They couldn’t simply receive benefits from the clan without giving anything in return. They had to do their part for the greater good.
However, it still wasn’t a glorious thing for the female cultivators of the clan to earn money with their looks.
Zhou Yang was ashamed of himself. Compared to his peers who had silently sacrificed themselves for the clan, he felt like a rice worm.
Technically, his contribution of discovering Haoyang Cave and the red flame iron vein was greater than those of all Yuan generation cultivators combined.
Zhou Yang thought for a while longer as he watched the passersby in the marketplace. Finally, he made a decision.
“Now that I’ve come to the marketplace, let me atone for my sins with my artifact refinement skills!”
The next day, Zhou Yang’s three peers from Yuquan Pavilion ran to the places with the most traffic in the marketplace and loudly shouted the words that Zhou Yang had taught them.
“Come one, come all! Fellow cultivators. Hear ye, hear ye! Yuquan Pavilion has been open for two hundred and thirty years. From today onwards, anyone who spends more than three hundred spiritual stones at Yuquan Pavilion will be allowed to order a Lower Grade 2 magical artifact for free. Anyone who spends more than five hundred spiritual stones will be allowed to order an Intermediate Grade 2 magical artifact for free. Anyone who spends one thousand spirit stones will be allowed to order an Advanced Grade 2 magical artifact for free. If the refinement of the magical artifact fails, the customer will be compensated at seventy percent of the original price.
“In addition, all custom-made magical artifacts rated below Grade 3 will be sold at 30% of the original price. If the refinement fails, we will refund 70% of the cost of the materials. Don’t miss this great bargain.”
Zhou Yang’s success rate of refining an Advanced Grade 2 magical artifact might only be around 30%, but since he was already an Advanced Grade 2 artifact refiner, he still had a success rate of more than 60% when refining an Intermediate Grade 2 magical artifact.
Refining a magical artifact was different from refining pills. In artifact refinement, the materials would not be completely destroyed upon failure as long as they were saved in time. However, the quality of the materials and resulting magical artifact would be lower than usual. This was the reason Zhou Yang dared to take orders wantonly.
Moreover, the most straightforward way for an artifact refiner to improve their skills and success rates in artifact refinement was to refine more magical artifacts. The more they refined, the higher their success rates.
It was the same for alchemists as well. Zhou Yang’s father, Zhou Xuanhao, for example, might only be an Advanced Grade 2 alchemist. However, his success rate in refining Advanced Grade 2 spiritual pills was as high as 50%, surpassing most of the other Grade 2 alchemists in Jinsha Square City.
His impressive success rates could be attributed to his track record of having refined Advanced Grade 2 spiritual pills hundreds of times.
Yuquan Pavilion used to accept custom magical artifact orders, but they were only limited to Lower Grade 3 magical artifacts. And since Zhou Minghan was the only artifact refiner qualified to make them, the orders had to be delivered back and forth between White Sand River Oasis and Yuquan Peak.
In addition to the logistics, there was also the issue of assembling the necessary materials to refine Grade 3 magical artifacts. Therefore, customers often had to expect their orders to be completed in more than ten years.
However, things were different now. Zhou Yang, an Advanced Grade 2 artifact refiner, had arrived at Yuquan Pavilion and could finally revive the custom magical artifact order business that Zhou Minghan had looked down on and had a hard time fulfilling in a reasonable amount of time.
Zhou Yang’s pricing was also very reasonable. For every successfully refined magical artifact, he would only charge 30% of the supposed value of the magical artifact. This was a highly attractive offer to rogue cultivators.
An Advanced Grade 2 magical artifact, for example, could be sold to a shop for at least 500 lower-tier spiritual stones. However, the materials necessary to refine such a magical artifact were only worth a hundred lower-tier spiritual stones at most.
Since it was easier for rogue cultivators to obtain the materials rather than a magical artifact, let alone refine one, they could only sell the materials at a low price and accumulate about five to ten times more spiritual stones to buy a magical artifact.
With Zhou Yang’s offer, all the rogue cultivators needed to do was bring their materials directly to the former and order a custom magical artifact for only 30% of what they had to spend. Even if the artifact refinement failed, they would only lose less than thirty lower-tier spiritual stones. A success, on the other hand, would be equivalent to earning at least two to three hundred lower-tier spiritual stones!
Double the investment, ten times the return!
Where else would they be able to find such a good bargain?
Eventually, Yuquan Pavilion had become a hotspot in Jinsha Square City. Among the crowds were many rogue cultivators who had heard the news and come to inquire about its authenticity.
When customers entered the shop, they would be greeted by the sight of various medicinal pills, magical artifacts, and spiritual talismans. It was easy for people to find what they needed and hard for them to not purchase them. Needless to say, the sales of Yuquan Pavilion had greatly increased since Zhou Yang’s arrival.
Zhou Yang was no fool either when it came to receiving and prioritizing orders. Orders for custom Advanced Grade 2 magical artifacts would be placed at the end of the to-do list to make way for the orders for custom magical artifacts with lower ratings. This was all part of Zhou Yang’s strategy to allow him to use the refinement of the custom magical artifacts with lower ratings to improve his artifact refinement skills and success rates before attempting the refinement of the custom magical artifacts with higher ratings. This way, Zhou Yang could eventually bring up his success rates of refining magical artifacts with higher ratings to be at par with his success rates of refining magical artifacts with lower ratings.
Eventually, it became almost a custom for Yuquan Pavilion to be filled with customers, a sight that did not escape the eyes or envy of other shopkeepers in the marketplace. The artifact refiners from other clans were also waiting to see Zhou Yang make a fool of himself.
The service of making custom-made magical artifacts had always been available in other shops that specialized in dealing with magical artifacts. But the common consensus was that 1) none of them would ever accept orders for custom magical artifacts with ratings that matched that of the artifact refiner; 2) if they failed, they would refund only half the value of the materials provided; and 3) if they succeeded, they would charge a fee that was 50% of magical artifact’s market price.
Only by doing so could they guarantee a profit. Otherwise, they would be working for the rogue cultivators for nothing.
Therefore, in the eyes of these artifact refiners, Zhou Yang was destined to make a loss in the end. Who did he think he was? A Grade 2 artifact refiner?
It was not only the artifact refiners who saw Zhou Yang in this way. Zhou Xuanlin was still in the marketplace to buy spiritual items for his family and Zhou Xuanhao’s celebratory ceremony, and even he had doubts when he heard about Zhou Yang’s plan. Zhou Xuanlin even attempted to persuade Zhou Yang otherwise.
However, Zhou Yang’s plan had helped Zhou Xuanlin settle some accounts. As such, the latter didn’t bother to interfere anymore.
Zhou Yang did not care what others thought of him and his plan. After he had settled the internal affairs of the clan’s business at Jinsha Square City, he went to the Earth Fire cave that the Chen clan had opened on Jinxia Mountain and rented an artifact refining chamber. He was planning to stay there for a long time.
He had already planned for his absence at Yuquan Pavilion as well. While Zhou Ping returned to the clan with Zhou Xuanlin, Zhou Yu and Zhou Xiong would stick around the pavilion. As long as they followed his instructions, they would be able to maintain the normal operations of Yuquan Pavilion. If there was anything Zhou Yang needed to handle, they could use a voice transmission talisman to inform him.
As for Drunken Immortal Restaurant, it had been temporarily closed because Zhou Minghan had ordered the ladies to return to the clan and assist in entertaining a few distinguished guests at the celebratory ceremony.
Earth Fire was a type of high-temperature flame that originated from magma. Its temperature was much higher than that of Foundation Establishment True Fire. Moreover, its usage did not consume a cultivator’s mana. Thus, one would never have to worry about being too exhausted when using it.
Due to these benefits, the discovery of Earth Fire and its benefits by immortal cultivators had convinced alchemists and artifact refiners that have yet to reach the realm of Nascent Soul to switch from using True Fire to using Earth Fire when refining pills and artifacts.
After all, refining pills and artifacts required a lot of energy. The reliance on mana to maintain the heat of True Fire while refining increased the chances of failure due to the risk of not having enough mana.
This was especially true for the refinement of high-level pills and magical artifacts that could easily take several or dozens of days. Even a Core Foundation cultivator would have to expend a lot of vitality to maintain a sufficient mana supply.
Unfortunately, despite the benefits of Earth Fire, it was not a source accessible to just anyone.
First, one would need an immortal cultivator at least in the realm of Zifu to draw out Earth Fire from the magma. Then, one would need to ask an array formation master that had been rated Grade 3 or higher to set up a suppression array formation to suppress and seal the violent Earth Fire. Next, the person would need an artifact refiner rated at Grade 3 or above to refine a special purification magical artifact to purify the poisonous and evil aura contained in Earth Fire.
Without these steps, it would be impossible to use Earth Fire.
Therefore, the only ones who could truly build an Earth Fire chamber and use it were large sects and clans with cultivators in the realm of at least Zifu or above.
For cultivators from small clans like Zhou Yang’s, he had no other choice than to travel across the desert just to get to Jinsha Square City and rent an Earth Fire chamber from larger clans such as the Chen clan to refine large amounts of highly-rated pills and magical artifacts.
The Chen family had thirteen Earth Fire chambers in the Earth Fire cave of Jinsha Square City. The number of spiritual stones charged was according to the ratings of the chambers: Grade A, B, and C. The only Grade A Earth Fire chamber cost ten lower-tier spiritual stones a day; the four Grade B Earth Fire chambers cost three lower-tier spiritual stones a day; and the remaining Grade C Earth Fire chambers only cost one lower-tier spiritual stone a day.
Zhou Yang was only refining Grade 2 magical artifacts, so renting a Grade C Earth Fire chamber was more than enough..