BTTH : Wandering Soul

Looking at the auction house at the end of the street, Xiao Yan turned into a side alley and quickly put on a black robe. The black robe did not only cover up Xiao Yan's face, it also altered his skinny frame to seem a lot wider. Even if Xue Er was looking at the robed figure, she would not be able to realize it was Xiao Yan…

After being covered by a black robe, Xiao Yan let out a relieved breath.

Xiao Yan slowly walked out of the alley and went towards the auction house at the end of the street. Under the vigilant glances by the fully armored guards, Xiao Yan walked into the auction house without stopping.

As soon as Xiao Yan entered the house, the scorching feeling from the sun was replaced with a cool feeling. It made people feel as if they had stepped into a new world. Sweeping through the fancy hall, Xiao Yan quickly found a side room. On the door which led to the room were the shiny words "Inspection Room".

Walking inside, the room was quite empty and only a middle aged man who was obviously bored sat there. Hearing the door open, the man raised his head and, upon seeing the black robed Xiao Yan, his brow slightly furrowed. But immediately, the expression on his face changed to a professional smile: "Sir, do you plan on having something inspected?"

"Yes." Under the black robe, a dry and old voice lightly floated out. It was Yao Lao's voice!

Xiao Yan walked up and placed the monster core on the desk in front of the middle aged man.

The middle aged man picked up the core and observed it carefully. His eyes lit up realizing it's a rank 3 monster core. The expression on his face immediately changed and when he looked back at the black robed figure, his gaze had a hint of respect: "Mister, may I ask if you hunted this rank 3 monster?"

"Yes." The aged voice came out again.

He took the core and asked Xiao Yan to come a while later when auction would start. With nothing else to do, Xiao Yan decided to see if he'd get any medicinal ingredients for alchemy practice. He didn't have enough money yet, so he'd just see which one's are available and after auction he'd buy them.

After a while, under the lead of an waitress, Xiao Yan entered the already started auction.

Entering the hall where the auction was being held, the originally bright environment darkened while thunderous yells poured everywhere. It made Xiao Yan furrow his brows.

The auction was huge and the hall could definitely fit at least hundreds to even thousands of people. At this time, at the center of the hall, under a bright light, a red robed beauty was using her charming voice to describe the item in her hand.

Under the numbing and clear sound of the voice, the item that really wasn't worth much had it's price increase at an exponential rate.

Finding a remote seat, Xiao Yan quietly sat down and glanced at the beauty in the middle of the hall. With his acute observations, he realized that most of the people were here for her and not the items that were being auctioned.

Premier Auction House's top auctioneer: Ya Fei. She was an extremely famous beauty within Wu Tan City and her mature charm made many attracted to her. Of course Xiao Yan knew her from his memories.

After looking at the item in Ya Fei's hand, Xiao Yan lost his interest. He didn't have that much money to buy a piece of junk, even if the seller of that item was a beautiful woman. After tearing his gaze away from Ya Fei, Xiao Yan started slowly looking around the hall.

…..

To be honest, Ya Fei was a expert at creating the atmosphere. Her glances and smiles would make the price of the item go up exponentially for a while. In addition, every time the price was raised, she would send a charming smile to the person who just called out the latest price and they would forget their pain of overpaying for the item.

The atmosphere within the auction house was kept at a climax with her smiles.

"Hehe, everyone, the auction house has just received a new auction item. I believe, that a lot of people would be interested in it." After auctioning the latest item, Ya Fei suddenly paused and said aloud towards the audience. With a wave of her hand, a waitress quickly brought up a jade plate and in the middle of the plate were two glistening dark green cores.

"This is a core from rank 3 wood attributed monster. It can be used in variety of things including tier 3 pills, refine weapons imbued with its wood attribute, or even directly used to increase cultivation for wood attributed cultivators." Her attractive mouth lightly breathed the words and numbed the minds of many of the auctioneers.

"Rank 3 monster core? It's indeed precious!" a soft murmur started in the crowd, as for many it was their first time seeing rank 3 monster core.

Xiao Yan lazily leaned on his chair and watched the excited atmosphere within the crowd. Letting out a light breath, he thought: Looks like this rank 3 core will be enough to cover the cost of my training, at least for now. It's a pity though, I could have used it for tier 3 medicinal pill.

Generally speaking medicinal pills have cost equivalent to ingredients required for one tier higher pill. So roughly, tier 2 pill could cover cost of all ingredients required for tier 3 pill. From his memories he knew that tier 2 pill, foundation elixir was sold for 40,000 gold coins in the auction. But this was due to its rarity.

So he deduced that rank 3 monster core, as one of the main material for tier 3 or even some tier 4 pills, it'd go for at least 10,000 gold coins. So total 20,000 gold coins.

And as Ya Fei mentioned earlier, it wasn't just used for pills but also for weapons imbued with magical properties. On top of that if one has monster as pet, it could increase its power on direct consumption.

Though not a lot of people were alchemist themselves, or could make weapons for that matter, if they needed such items, they'd have to prepare raw materials themselves. This was one of the rules of alchemists. So the demand for such materials was always high.

The auction went on as price of the core kept increasing starting from 5000 gold coins. After reaching 15,000 gold coins most of the voiced died down. It finally reached for 23,000 gold coins and was sold. 

Xiao Yan was sure he could have sold it for more than 30,000 gold in imperial city or in alchemist association, due to it being main material for even some tier 3 medicinal pills. But he needed money right now, so he didn't think much.