The Undying Immortal System

I arrived on the outskirts of a large city. My arrival point was an alleyway between two crumbling buildings. I was alone, had no money, had no knowledge of the local area, and had no real sense of where I should go.

Had my decision to escape the Su Clan been rash? Yes. I could have at least tried to somehow use a position under Rudy to learn a little about the outside world, but I had no interest in spending even another day inside that prison.

Teleporting out here had cost 30 credits, leaving me with only 10. If I died, I would get another 10, but that still wouldn't be enough for another teleport, but that was fine. I just needed to advance to Martial Disciple 2 before meeting an untimely end. That would give me enough credits to afford another teleportation.

With three Qi Gathering Pills, advancing to Disciple 2 would be a simple matter, but doing so would require having a cultivation technique that I could trust. In the future, I definitely needed to purchase one from the System so I could be sure it didn't contain any hidden dangers. Better yet, I should learn to appraise cultivation techniques so I know what dangers they hold. With its connection to the Earthly Dao, I couldn't fully trust the System, after all.

Before I could do any of that, I needed to rest. It was still the middle of the night, and I didn't fancy wandering around the streets of an unfamiliar city in utter darkness. I adjusted my robes so that they wouldn't get too dirty from resting on the ground and sat down to get a few hours of sleep.

I could only trust that the System dropped me in a truly out-of-the-way location.

First step, get money. I already made pills to accomplish this. Now, I just needed to find a place where I could sell them. I left the alleyway behind and began searching the streets for the right type of shop.

The area I was in was what I would consider the slums. Houses were in terrible disrepair everywhere, old women had laid out blankets on the street to set up make-shift vegetable stands, and there were men butchering livestock out in the open.

I was both annoyed and gratified that I did not, in fact, stand out from the crowd as I walked the streets. The fraying robes I had worn since coming to this world fit right in with everyone else in this part of town. Unfortunately, I doubted I would be able to sell pills worth several silver in this kind of location. I needed to find higher-class clientele.

The terrain the town was built on was somewhat hilly, which worked to my advantage. I found a relatively open hilltop and surveyed the city.

It was larger than I had expected. For some reason, I was expecting this to be a small medieval village with a population in the low tens of thousands. Instead, what I saw was significantly larger and more advanced in both size and scope. The population had to be well over a hundred thousand, putting it in the range of a modestly sized city.

Most of the buildings were cramped two-story affairs, with the occasional three-story dotted around. However, what the city lacked in terms of building size was more than made up for in quantity. These wood and stone structures stained the landscape for nearly as far as I could see.

From what I could tell, the city had two major areas of affluence. One was centered around a palace complex with dozens of buildings surrounded by tall red walls. The other was centered around a massive pagoda that towered over the surrounding landscape.

I took another look around, to see if I could find any other landmarks. That's when I saw it. Behind the palace, up in the forested hills, was what looked from here to be another large building complex.

I couldn't stop myself from muttering aloud.

"If I were a betting man, I would say that is the damned compound I've been trapped in. Which would probably make that palace the Su Clan's property. I guess I know where not to go."

I headed to the giant pagoda.

I moved through the streets of the city with purpose. I had no desire to draw attention by rushing, but I also wanted to give off the appearance of a man with a place to be. This… somewhat worked.

After exiting the slums and moving into the more lower-middle-class area, I still didn't look too out of place, but once I got to the upper-middle-class areas, I definitely no longer looked like a member of the general public. However, I did a decent job mimicking a working-class man making his way through the area on business. I may have received the occasional odd look, but no one stopped me or asked what I was doing.

I was lucky in that the area directly around the pagoda was not too upscale. There were some walled-off areas nearby, but I didn't need to approach them.

It took me a few hours to make my way to the pagoda, but the sun was still high in the sky. I had high hopes that I would be able to sell my pills, find an inn, and settle down before darkness became a problem.

I had no idea what the pagoda I had seen was. All I knew was that it looked like it was an important location where I would be able to find some high-end shops. I was pleasantly surprised that when I arrived, I saw a steady trickle of people both entering and exiting the building. They were grouped in twos and threes, and they were dressed like any other person on the street, not like monks or priests or anything. So, I concluded that it had to be a public building of some kind.

I climbed stairs at the base of the pagoda all the way to the top of its marble foundation. From there, I could see over nearly all of the surrounding buildings. Two sets of wide-open double doors granted entry inside. A couple of tall, wide, muscular men dressed in dark blue uniforms and wearing a no-nonsense expression guarded this entrance. One glanced at me but turned away after a brief look. I took this as permission to enter.

The inside of the pagoda was one large, massive store. There were counters everywhere, holding everything from herbs to weapons to camping supplies. At a quick glance, it looked like the pagoda contained everything someone might need.

As I stood near the entrance, taking in the sight of it all, a young woman wearing a formal, light-blue qipao dress with silver embroidery walked up to me. She looked me up and down with a severe sneer on her face.

"Can I help you, sir?"

"Uh… yeah, I would like to—"

She cut me off. "Can you even afford anything here? We don't do charity."

"No, I mean, I want… I have something to sell."

Several of the surrounding customers were watching by this point, and they were all smiling and snickering.

"What could you possibly have to sell? Get out of here before I have security throw you out."

"But… alright." I sighed in disappointment. This looked like the place I needed to be, but I didn't have the clout to enter. I might need to work on my appearance, but I didn't have the resources for that. I could probably get better customer service elsewhere, but this place shone with an aura of importance.

As I was exiting the building, one of the guards shoved me from behind.

"Don't come back."

I walked away with my head hung low as the people around me laughed.

After walking a solid block and a half away, I ducked into a small side alley. When he shoved me, that guard had stuffed a piece of paper into my collar.

Hey, circle round the left side of the building. You'll find a pub there called The Dragon's Breath. Go through the alley next to it and behind the pub, there's a side entrance to the pagoda there. Just walk on in.

This was… strange. Was it some kind of trap? They couldn't be in the business of robbing their poorest prospective clients.

Shrugging, I decided to just go with it. The worst they could do was kill me, after all.

I followed the directions and quickly found the aforementioned door. Unlike the main entrance, this one was built directly into the marble foundation and led into a basement area located below the pagoda's shop floor.

As I entered, a cheery voice greeted me.

"Hello, welcome to the Blue Wind Pavilion!"

I looked and found the same girl that had been so dismissive earlier. What was going on? The confusion must have shown on my face because she was quick to tell me.

"Sorry about that. It's how the regulars expect us to behave, and you know what they say, give the customers what they want. Sorry you got caught up in it. Usually, young men who walk into the front entrance wearing ragged clothes and a rather nonchalant expression are extremely wealthy. Most of the actual poor folk know to take this entrance."

I was shocked. "You treat people like that because they are rich?"

"Oh, yeah, of course. Everyone always fights over who gets to yell at the people who come in looking like beggars. With a little luck, you can earn a year's commission in less than an hour!"

"What?! How?!"

"Whenever you get a rich guy dressed like a poor guy, if someone looks down on them for being poor, they love to slap people in the face with their money. 'You think I'm poor? I'll buy everything in this shop!' That kind of thing."

"That… that works?"

"All. The. Time."

"So… you thought I was rich?"

She started laughing.

"Oh, no, no. Not at all. I knew you were genuine right away, but we still need to keep up with appearances for everyone else, right? Anyway, enough rambling about sales tactics. What can I do ya for?"

I felt like this place was giving me whiplash.

"I… want to sell some pills." I fumbled around as I took the two bottles out of my robes.

She opened them up and inspected the pills inside.

"Hmm. Mid-Purity Basic Qi Gathering. Efficacy looks decent. I can give you three silver each for them."

"What? They're worth ten!" They had to be. If the System had been wrong…

"Yes and no… Their medicinal efficacy is decent, but it's only in the high 80s, so we can't sell them locally. We guarantee 90% or more. Also, we only sell High-Purity pills here. We will have to pass them to a smaller branch, and they will sell them for ten silver. So, you see, you can't exactly expect us to pay you nearly that much, right?"

"Oh, uh, right…"

"Now, looking at you, you are a Martial Disciple 1 who just got awakened, right? And you're here. Selling pills that could be used to improve your own non-existent cultivation base, right? So, where did a guy who looks little better than a beggar get two precious pills? Why is he looking to sell them off? Why, and this is an interesting question for me, did such a person not know that he shouldn't have bothered trying to come in through the main entrance?"

She gave me a smile. "These, I'm guessing, are the questions you don't want me to ask. Therefore, the price is three silver."

I was slow to respond as I processed everything she had said. "Actually… those are questions I don't mind answering. I am a Martial Disciple 1, but I don't have a cultivation technique. I need to sell these pills to get enough money to buy one. As for where they came from, I made them myself."

"Ooo, a sixteen-year-old boy without any cultivation is able to concoct Mid-Purity pills? I'd like to see that!"

"Uh, okay?"

She smiled brightly. "Lovely, follow me."

She led me on a winding path through the building's basement. Unlike the open and spacious shop floor above, this basement was a labyrinth of twisting hallways.

A few people were working down here, but nothing like what I had seen above. Most of the space was taken up by boxes filled with all sorts of random knick-knacks. More than anything, this part of the building gave me the feeling of a low-rent pawn shop.

Once she found the right room, the girl grabbed a flower and threw it at me.

"One blue peony. That will be 50 copper. I'll put it on your tab. Come. Come."

She hauled me away to a room further down the corridor.

"Alright, here you go. Lowest-grade alchemy workshop. That will be 2 silver per hour. Sorry, but we don't rent them out for shorter time slots." She sounded both cheerful and consoling. "Now, go ahead, let me watch."

This whole encounter felt so strange. I honestly couldn't tell if she was mocking me or if she legitimately believed in me. I think she was doing her best to do both simultaneously so that whatever happened, she had acted correctly.

Performing alchemy while someone watched was a new form of pressure, but my decades of practice smoothly guided me through the process, even if I was somewhat nervous. I only had one chance here, and I couldn't afford to screw up. I went slow and burned away the tainted, chaotic strings with all of the focus I could muster.

While I had been concocting my most recent pills in Rudy's workshop earlier, my only focus was on efficiency. I wanted to make as many pills as my limited energy could create, so I was willing to lower their quality to get a higher quantity. That would have been the wrong play here. Quantity wasn't important. One good pill was all I needed.

I burned through way too much energy, but I was satisfied with the result. I handed the pill over to the curious young woman who quickly analyzed it.

When she spoke, her voice was airy and aloof.

"Sigh, I guess it was too much to hope to see a boy without cultivation make a Mid-Purity pill. Still, at least you could make a High-Purity one." She giggled at her small joke. "Hmm. I guess since you could at least make something, I should give you some kind of benefit. How about 10 silver for the High-Purity and 5 for each Mid? So, 20 silver total. That's about as high as I can get for you. Minus expenses, that comes to 17 silver 50 copper. Deal?"

"What? Huh? Yeah… I mean, deal."

"Great." She smiled and handed me a small bag of coins. "Here you go. Do you need anything else?"

"Can I use this room to make more pills?"

She laughed. "You did pay for an hour here. It's your time to waste. You can even buy some more ingredients from us if you want, and we'll definitely buy any Mid-Purity or higher pills you want to sell us. But let me ask you, do you have the energy to make more pills?"

I had expended nearly 80% of my reserves.

"Uh… No, I guess not."

"So, do you need anything else?"

She seemed to expect me to ask for something.

I thought about it. I weighed the bag of coins in my hand. 17 silver. It should be more than enough to rent a room and feed myself. Worst comes to worst, I could come back here each day and make a couple more pills to sell. I could get by. But there was something I needed as soon as possible.

"What's the price of a fire qi cultivation technique?"

"Hmm, a cultivation technique… What kind are you looking for? I assume a Rank 1 technique since you're a Martial Disciple? How good of one do ya want? Low-Yellow? Peak-Yellow? Profound? Higher? We may not have it here, but the Blue Wind Pavilion can source items from across the entire Nine Rivers Continent!"

"Yellow? What do you mean by Low-Yellow and Peak-Yellow?"

She gave me a funny look at that question. "Cultivation techniques are both ranked and graded. Rank 1 is for Martial Disciples, Rank 2 is for Martial Masters, and so on. Within a Rank, they're graded into Yellow, Profound, Earth, or Heaven. Then, they're further divided into Low, Mid, High, or Peak."

"Martial Master? That's the level above Disciple? But… why those names? Why Yellow?"

"The heavens are profound, and the earth is yellow." The cadence of her speech was practiced and fluid. "It's from the poem 'The Thousand Character Classic,' you know?"

As she spoke, the language knowledge I had purchased from the System activated in overdrive to resolve the translation issue. She had only spoken four words, "天地玄黃." Heaven, earth, profound, yellow. The meaning behind these four words was immense. It was a description of the cosmos and its grandeur.

"So, Heaven is the best, then Earth, Profound, and the worst is Yellow. Alright… What is the, uh, cheapest technique you have?"

"Cheapest, eh?" She smirked at me. "I could let you have a Low-Yellow one for 10 gold, but I doubt you want it, nasty side effects on that one. Lowest priced technique I would recommend? Say, 50 gold. It's still Low-Yellow, of course, but it's a bit better. Want to take a look?"

"No… no need."

"Alright, anything else?"

Again, she seemed to expect something from me.

I sighed. "Yeah… Yeah, I guess there is. I want to make a deal."

"Wonderful!" Her face broke into a brilliant smile. "Let me take you to the boss."