Chapter 4847 — The Private Auction
The Blossom Guardian · Page 2 of 3
"Ask whom? Zhang Lifeng? I haven't even met him. Am I to go ask Cai Zhongxuan and Hou Guanqi?" Wei Zhao thought it over. Among the people he knew, the more accomplished pill refiners seemed to be only those two—and both were merely registered disciples of Zhang Lifeng. Yet he did not believe their attainments in pill refining surpassed Qing Xuanzi's; it was likely they could be of little help in this matter.
"Isn't that little girlfriend of yours quite formidable—the one who got you the Divine Farmer's Cauldron?" Ghost Thing said instead.
"You mean Jingjing?" Wei Zhao was startled, then shook his head. "Jingjing is a pill refiner too, but not in the traditional sense. She excels at high-tech pill refining along unconventional lines. I doubt she could help with Qing Xuanzi's problem."
"Are you dense? That bargain disciple who delivered himself to your door is already a seventh-grade pill refiner. Unless you truly find Zhang Lifeng, what ordinary pill refiner could solve his problem? Better to take a different approach and try your little girlfriend—who knows, she might have a way. It costs nothing to ask." Ghost Thing curled his lip in disapproval.
"You have a point." Wei Zhao made up his mind, and at once left the Eastern Sea Pavilion and returned to the Hong Merchant Guild. He wrote a letter detailing Qing Xuanzi's matter and had Chai Laoshi send it to North Island. Han Jingyi had by now also arrived at North Island and was together with Shangguan Lan'er.
But sending a letter was no easy task. Every branch of the Hong Merchant Guild had special spiritual birds for communication with headquarters, but the Eastern Continent was simply too far away for ordinary spiritual birds to cover, so conventional means had to be used.
To go from the Eastern Continent to North Island by the usual route, aboard a treasure ship, would take at least two months round trip. But that was only the regular logistics channel; if one made use of special long-distance communication channels, bypassing the treasure ships and employing special flying spiritual beasts to relay the message directly, the time could be cut considerably.
Such flying spiritual beasts capable of crossing two Cloud-Tier Islands were rare, however, and large-scale domestication alone was a major problem. To coordinate them uniformly and extend a communication network to all five Cloud-Tier Islands, including the Eastern Continent, was even more difficult—something no single merchant guild could possibly sustain on its own. Only a specialized transport house had the capacity.
In truth, even the transport houses could only manage this by borrowing extensively from the resources of the great merchant guilds. Thus all the major guilds, the Hong Merchant Guild included, could cooperate with them to transmit messages—though it cost no small amount of spirit jade.
After having Cui Mingshan deliver the letter in person, Chai Laoshi asked Wei Zhao: "In three days the second auction will be held—a private auction. Would you like to go and take a look?"
"Oh?" Wei Zhao was momentarily taken aback. He seemed to recall Chai Laoshi mentioning it once before, but after meeting Wang Xinyan and Huang Xiaotao, the matter had long since been cast from his mind.
"If you have no pressing business, you might as well take Miss Huang and the others to see it. I hear the private auctions are in fact far more worth seeing than the guild auctions—all manner of curious and exotic things emerge in endless succession. Not only is it livelier, but there are far more buyers and sellers as well. It should be quite interesting," Chai Laoshi suggested.
"Is that so? Does one need any qualification to enter?" Wei Zhao asked.