Chapter 750

As fewer Gu Immortals still enter, Qin Bai Sheng closes his blessed land’s entrance, climbs the platform, and announces the auction is starting. Tai Bai Yun Sheng notices Fairy Li Shan and Hei Lou Lan are missing. Fang Yuan is puzzled too, since Fairy Li Shan would normally sit in the main hall by now. A secret room could explain her absence from view, but not without a greeting first, and no Hei tribe Gu Immortals are present either. They decide to send a letter asking after them, trusting their Snowy Mountain Alliance bond, though an ambush by Hei Cheng should still have let two Gu Immortals of their strength call for help. ^{ch. 750}

The first item is a stretch of sky chief clouds over one thousand three hundred square kilometres, rare even in treasure yellow heaven, formed slowly from the breath of the sky chief beast. Kept in an immortal aperture such clouds greatly raise cloud path Gu worm yield, more so with a resident sky chief beast group. Only a powerful rank seven or eight Gu Immortal can explore the intact parts of the immemorial nine heavens where they live. Bidding opens at twenty immortal essence stones. Tai Bai Yun Sheng bids thirty from his secret room, a cloud path Gu Immortal answers thirty five, and Tai Bai Yun Sheng jumps to forty five, enough alone to buy a desolate beast corpse, driving off that rival. Just as Qin Bai Sheng calls it sold a third time, a single room bids fifty five, and Tai Bai Yun Sheng secures it at sixty. ^{ch. 750}

He already keeps float ball tea. He plans jade hummingbirds next, and means to use sky chief clouds toward sky flowers and floating sparrowhawks after that. Fang Yuan confirms sky flowers grow on clouds and floating sparrowhawks often host cloud path Gu worms, and asks whether Tai Bai Yun Sheng now cultivates both time and cloud path. He confirms it: time path handles his healing, and cloud path covers what it lacks. His own cloud movement once reached flying master realm, an interest deepened after buying the killer move nine cloud ring cheaply from Northern Plains’ Inkman King, Mo Tan Sang. ^{ch. 750}

The second item is a rare group of black spirit antelopes, three hundred and twenty thousand strong with five beast emperors among them. It opens at ten stones, reducible with vertical rainbow ointment, and its soul path Gu worms draw soul path bidders before it sells for twenty eight. The third item, a complete and already improved set of Inch of Time Gu recipes from the Medieval Antiquity Era, rank one through five, needs only common materials. It opens at twenty two stones and draws heavier bidding than either earlier lot. Six headed snake’s skin can also reduce that price. The price climbs to forty eight before Tai Bai Yun Sheng jumps it by ten to scare off rivals. ^{ch. 750}

Tai Bai Yun Sheng is richer than Fang Yuan. Owning Landscape as Before and Man as Before, two time path healing Immortal Gu, he is much sought after in Eastern Sea. The Gu Immortal he saved at Yu Lu blessed land paid him about a hundred stones and owes him a favor. His Tai Bai blessed land runs thirty three times faster than the outside world, nearly matching Hei Lou Lan’s own super grade land. It yields him several to ten times the green grape immortal essence an ordinary rank six collects. Fang Yuan, by contrast, must constantly convert immortal essence stones into green grape essence, since his own aperture is dead, produces nothing, and periodically crumbles and shrinks. ^{ch. 750}

The price for Inch of Time still climbs to sixty six. Inch of Time cannot be used on a person, but it accelerates a Gu worm’s refinement, so work needing three days and nights may cost the refiner only moments. Fang Yuan proposes splitting the cost with Tai Bai Yun Sheng, who happily raises it to sixty eight, and after one more bidder adds a single stone, the two together close the purchase at seventy immortal essence stones. ^{ch. 750}

Item after item goes under the hammer, and the hall grows fiercer and more heated, with many Gu Immortals losing their composure. After dozens of lots, some low ranked Gu Immortals are already worn pale and exhausted. Rank six bidders thin out first, since their savings run only to a few hundred stones, while rank seven and eight hold thousands to tens of thousands, and long time holders hold hundreds of thousands more. Fang Yuan has only a few hundred stones. He wins little and waits out the rest. Qin Bai Sheng then announces that the Immortal Gu auction is beginning, and Fang Yuan’s eyes brighten along with every other Gu Immortal in the hall, since everything before this was only the prelude. ^{ch. 750}