Chapter 3741 — The Top-Grade Foundation-Breaking Pill

Yu Jiang looked at Wei Zhao with a sneer, already certain that the Star-Ink Stone was as good as his. In his eyes, Wei Zhao would never have offered two Foundation-Breaking Pills as payment unless he had no other choice. Those pills were probably the entire fortune of this penniless rogue cultivator—there was no way he could produce more spirit jade than Yu Jiang himself!

But Wei Zhao spoke up and asked instead, "That may not be entirely true, may it? Out there in those pill display cases, I saw the same pills marked with different prices. Surely the shop does not buy them all at a single rate?"

At that, before the shopkeeper could answer, Yu Jiang beside him burst out laughing. Pointing at Wei Zhao, he mocked, "Just as I thought—a penniless rogue cultivator who has never seen the world. Let me educate you! Those pills marked at high prices are imported from Middle Island, personally refined by the master alchemists there. How could they possibly fetch the same price as locally made goods? A nobody like you, who came by his wares through some crooked back-alley channel—how could yours compare with the work of a Middle Island master? Hahaha!"

Wei Zhao only smiled faintly, offered no rebuttal, and in full view of the two of them lifted the lid of the box in his hand.

Hiss! At the sight of the two pills inside—snow-white through and through, with layer upon layer of pill halos faintly shimmering within—the shopkeeper could not help drawing a sharp breath. He rushed forward to examine them closely, even fetching a magnifying glass from nearby that was kept especially for the purpose.

Yu Jiang, however, saw nothing out of the ordinary. He could recognize them as Foundation-Breaking Pills, but after all he was only an ordinary cultivator—not a merchant who dealt in such goods like the shopkeeper, and certainly no alchemist who knew the trade from the inside. A pill like the Foundation-Breaking Pill only came to mind when one ran into a bottleneck during a breakthrough; at any other time, he had no occasion to handle one at all.

Still, the shopkeeper's bizarre reaction left him rather puzzled.

Just two Foundation-Breaking Pills—what was so remarkable about that? Valuable as they were, they were, when you came right down to it, an extremely common pill. Had they been Foundation-Establishing Golden Pills, that would have been another matter entirely!

Yu Jiang curled his lip in disdain, but for the sake of the Star-Ink Stone he forced himself to be patient and reminded the shopkeeper, "Shopkeeper, these are just two ordinary Foundation-Breaking Pills. By what you said yourself, they are worth three hundred spirit jade apiece at most. Even adding four hundred spirit jade, that still cannot compare with my bid of one thousand two hundred. One look at this pauper's sorry state and you know he cannot raise his offer any higher. There is nothing left to hesitate over, is there? Hurry up—let us not waste any more time!"

His ceaseless chatter finally broke the shopkeeper's concentration, cutting short his wish to examine the pills more closely. The shopkeeper paused and gave him a strange look. "You still believe this customer's Foundation-Breaking Pills are worth only three hundred spirit jade?"

Though the shopkeeper masked his expression well, Yu Jiang could still distinctly sense the mockery hidden within it.

Yu Jiang flushed red. Suppressing his anger, he shot back, "Are they not?"

The shopkeeper shook his head helplessly. Contemptuous as he felt, a merchant's first rule was ever to keep the peace and make his fortune; if he did not explain plainly here and now, this Yu Jiang would only keep pestering him. So he could only swallow his impatience and say, "You said it yourself just now—even among Foundation-Breaking Pills, how much spirit jade one is worth depends on its quality, does it not?"

"True enough. What of it?" A sliver of unease stirred in Yu Jiang's heart.

The shopkeeper explained patiently, "Take Foundation-Breaking Pills of ordinary quality: they can only guarantee a breakthrough through the early Foundation Establishment stage or its peak bottleneck. Once one reaches the higher Foundation Establishment mid-stage, their effect becomes hard to notice, so their buyback price is three hundred spirit jade at most. But those of higher quality imported from Middle Island can still guarantee a successful breakthrough even after the mid-stage, and those fetch a buyback price of four hundred spirit jade or more."

"So what? Surely you are not about to tell me that the Foundation-Breaking Pills this pauper picked up through some back-alley channel can match the quality of those made by Middle Island masters?" Yu Jiang cast Wei Zhao a cold, sidelong glance and, craning his neck, taunted.

"That is not what I mean," the shopkeeper said, shaking his head.

"Then there is nothing more to say!" Yu Jiang's heart instantly eased. He had truly feared that this penniless rogue cultivator might have somehow gotten his hands on two high-grade Foundation-Breaking Pills!

After all, unlikely as such a thing was, if the fellow really had the devil's own luck, there was still the slimmest of chances.

But before he could breathe easy, the shopkeeper gave him a look heavy with meaning, one in which exasperation and pity seemed mingled, and only then went on, "But besides ordinary-grade and high-grade Foundation-Breaking Pills, there is yet another kind—the top grade! In years past, the top-grade Foundation-Breaking Pills produced by the Divine Alchemist and Sage Physician Zhang Lifeng could guarantee a hundred-percent success even in the late Foundation Establishment stage. Surely you have heard something of this, honored customer?"

Zhang Lifeng, the Divine Alchemist and Sage Physician, was a towering figure who had risen from North Island and was by now a name card for the island itself. Any cultivator born on North Island who had not even heard of Zhang Lifeng would be too ashamed to show his face in public.

What the Divine Alchemist produces is surely of the top grade!

Yu Jiang had heard that saying, on everyone's lips, countless times already, and he had naturally heard of Zhang Lifeng's refinement of top-grade Foundation-Breaking Pills.

It was said that in those days, any single top-grade Foundation-Breaking Pill Zhang Lifeng casually put out would be bid up with ease to the sky-high price of a thousand spirit jade or more—sometimes even mountains of spirit jade might not be enough to snatch one up. Ordinary high-grade Foundation-Breaking Pills could not even be mentioned in the same breath.

"What do you mean by that? Top-grade Foundation-Breaking Pills can only be refined by a divine alchemist like Master Zhang. They command a sky-high price of over a thousand, and even then only those with deep connections have any hope of buying one. What in blazes could a penniless rogue cultivator like him have to do with such things?" Yu Jiang looked utterly baffled at the shopkeeper's words.

In his view, if a pauper like Wei Zhao might, by the devil's own luck, have some sliver of a chance at obtaining high-grade Foundation-Breaking Pills, then top-grade Foundation-Breaking Pills could never have the slightest connection to such a person—not one shred of a possibility!