Wang Jun shook his head. He looked past his sister’s ghostly figure, who was playing on the floor, before continuing. “I’m fine. Now what’s the story with the remainder of that thick pile?”
“Incident reports,” Elder Bai said. “Although the cost of the goods and the trade caravan itself are insured, I’m afraid that exporting anything outside the city will be impossible in the near future. All of these high-grade weapons will need to be sold within the Song Kingdom itself.”
“Were any of those goods Cha Ming’s?” Wang Jun asked. Elder Bai shook his head. “I would ask where the military was when these incidents happened, but I’m sure I know the answer,” Wang Jun said. “Prince Tian’s stupidity knows no bounds. It’s not only me that’s suffering, but his kingdom’s international credibility. Anything else?”
“None,” Elder Bai replied.
“Good. Let’s go get some good news,” Wang Jun said as he walked out the door.
“Don’t forget me!” the ghostly child on the floor said. Wang Jun ignored her like he always did.
It isn’t a poison, and it isn’t a curse, Wang Jun thought. Just what is it that’s causing me to see and hear these things? The average person would have gone insane by now.
“Young Master, I have an important message for you,” someone said suddenly. Hei Ling appeared out of nowhere and completely caught Wang Jun and Elder Bai unaware. Protector Ren appeared inside the room just in case.
Hei Ling looked at Protector Ren with what seemed like disappointment. “Here it is,” he said, placing a small piece of paper in Wang Jun’s open palm. “If Protector Ren was right beside you, I wouldn’t have been able to breach his defenses,” Hei Ling commented before walking out the door.
Wang Jun shivered but read the message. It lit up in his hands, leaving not a shred of evidence behind.
“I thought I asked to have him tailed!” Wang Jun yelled. “How the hell can he come and go as he chooses?”
The Jade Bamboo staff in the vicinity looked at him with shocked expressions. They’d never seen him lose his temper.
“Elder Bai,” said Wang Jun, “I want to speak with Li Ming tonight. Protector Ren, please follow me to the alchemist workshop.”
The man clung to him like his shadow—Hei Ling’s breach had reminded him of his own shortcomings.
They passed through many corridors before arriving at a room bustling with customers. At Wang Jun’s instructions, these customers were all in Prince Lei’s camp. Such an arrangement would only change if the supply produced by this workshop far exceeded his faction’s demand.
“How can I help you today?” a beautiful attendant in a green cultivation robe said.
“I need to speak with Master Ling Bai,” Wang Jun said.
“Right this way,” the attendant replied. Fortunately, they were inside the Jade Bamboo Auction House. Everyone here would recognize Wang Jun at a glance. He was soon brought into a small office in a remote corner of the workshop.
“How are things looking these days?” Wang Jun asked Ling Bai, who was just finishing his review of an important document.
“Things are going very well,” Ling Bai replied. “One of our peak-mortal-grade alchemists broke through and became a magic-grade alchemist. Our number of apprentices has doubled, while the number of low-leveled alchemists has also doubled. Many of these people have defected from Master Alchemist Zhou’s workshop. Due to his bad policies, we were able to rope them in without even offering them a pay raise.”
“How about sales?” Wang Jun asked.
“As you know, it’s difficult to increase margins on mortal-grade pills,” Ling Bai said. “However, our market share is sitting at twenty-five percent. It won’t be long before we cannibalize another fifteen percent of the market. Unfortunately, our market share on higher-level goods is quite low. This will take much time to fix. We’ll have to recruit an opposing master alchemist to make any progress on this front.”
“Keep up the good work,” Wang Jun said.
“Thanks, brother!” his little sister’s ghost replied. He ignored her and walked out of the room. His next stop was another secret meeting with the Black King. This time, he brought Protector Ren along as a precaution.
“Are you sure you want me to wait here?” Protector Ren asked doubtfully. They were in a quiet wine shop that offered private rooms.
“I can’t take you with me for reasons I can’t speak of,” Wang Jun said. “I should be using a Void Transfer Talisman to arrive at your side directly. I don’t want a repeat of last time.”
“Suit yourself,” Protector Ren said. “It won’t be my fault if you die.”
Wang Jun nodded and walked out into a dirty street. The wine shop was quiet because the street was quiet. It was the perfect place for an ambush. Wang Jun gripped the Void Transfer Talisman tightly.
A few turns later, he entered yet another dark alley. This one contained a similar door to last time. No, that wasn’t it. It was the same door, but in a different location. This time, it opened for him without asking him the security question. Wang Jun proceeded down the staircase before arriving at the same room as before.
“I’m so glad you could make it here alive,” the Black King said. “Was my warning helpful?”
“It bought me a fraction of a second,” Wang Jun said. “I take it you weren’t contractually allowed to tell me anything?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the Black King said. “Everyone must be self-sufficient in this world, and you must never let your guard down. Now then, here are your profits from our latest transaction.”
He tossed three sacks onto the table. “The first was successfully sold at two times the list price. Your profit is based on selling at 1.75 times the list price, for a total of 11,667 high-grade spirit stones. Similarly, the next batch netted you 12,500 high-grade spirit stones. Finally, I managed to sell the last batch at 2.5 times list price. This netted you 13,333 high-grade spirit stones. Are you satisfied?”
“Very,” Wang Jun said, retrieving the bags and plopping two more on the table. “Please sell these two bags of goods for me. Sell one at 2.25 times market price, and another at your discretion.”
“Why all the caution?” the Black King said.
How could anyone be anything but cautious around you? Wang Jun thought.
“How can anyone be anything but cautious around you?” his sister’s apparition pouted. Wang Jun ignored her.
“Each bag contains 20,000 high-grade spirit stones’ worth of goods,” Wang Jun said. “How can I not be cautious?”
“That’s more like it.” The Black King laughed, summoning the usual contracts.
Wang Jun signed them only after cautiously inspecting them. “Will that be everything today?”
“There’s one more thing, but I’ll require a confidentially contract,” Wang Jun said.
The Black King shrugged and summoned another piece of black paper.
“I have a large quantity of immortal-jade core I wish to liquidate.”
“How much are we talking?” the Black King asked with interest.
“Five hundred jin,” Wang Jun said. “The estimated market value on the batch is 750,000. However, it can’t be sold to a buyer from within the Song Kingdom.”
The Black King thought for a while. “I can do it, but it will take some time. The Xia Dynasty has the lowest taxation rate on newly excavated products at ten percent. However, this is a restricted resource that can’t be sold anonymously on normal markets. For such a huge sum, I can sell it for a twenty-percent commission over and above the tax.”
“Ten percent,” Wang Jun said.
“I thought I told you there was no bargaining with me?” the Black King said.
“And without me you won’t be able to secure such a huge, effortless deal,” Wang Jun countered.
Both sides looked at each other tensely from opposite sides of the table. Meanwhile, his sister’s apparition was running around wildly chasing a rat.
> “Fine,” the Black King said. “Ten percent it is, but it will take six weeks to secure a buyer. You’re not holding the immortal-jade core with you personally, are you?”
“That would be a gross violation of my family’s policies,” Wang Jun said. “There is only one place where we can store such precious resources. If you pay me, I’ll even tell you where it is. I’m quite confident in its security.”
The Black King grunted. “No need. Will that be everything for today?” His eyes flickered to the talisman in Wang Jun’s hand. “I see that you’re learning.”
“I never fall for the same trick twice,” Wang Jun said. “Though I’d hate to use it. Could I interest you in providing me a secret way out? For a fee, of course.”
The Black King chuckled. He waved his hand, revealing a hidden staircase. “Follow this hallway, and you’ll arrive just outside the wine shop where you left your precious Protector Ren. Speaking of which, it seems that he’s actually taking his job seriously now.”
Wang Jun frowned but moved into the tunnel.
He passed through many hallways and staircases before finally exiting into the very room where Protector Ren was sipping away at a glass of wine.
“Let’s go,” Wang Jun said to Protector Ren, who dropped his cup in surprise. “We have a lot of work to do.”
The clock in Wang Jun’s office ticked away, adding pressure to Li Ming, who had just been cross-examined.
“So you’re saying that he’s managed to evade you seventy-two times, and that even a core-formation cultivator would have trouble doing this?” Wang Jun said. “We’ll have to change our plan of attack. I want you to go on a team mission.”
“With who?” Li Ming asked.
“With Hei Ling, of course,” Wang Jun said. “You’ll both be framing someone, and I want you to use this opportunity to dig into his real identity and his past. Can you do it?”
“I’ll try my best,” Li Ming said. “Many thanks for trusting me with such an important mission.”
Chapter 18: Possession
A week passed by swiftly. By the time it was over, Cha Ming had laid thirty-three formations at various locations, securing much-needed allies for the Wang family and Prince Lei. Meanwhile, the king’s condition improved continuously. His bodily functions stabilized, though he remained comatose. The spirit doctors were helpless until the poison was cured. Even Li Yin could do nothing more than tailor nutritional supplements that could be injected directly into his bloodstream.
“I finally get to finish what I started,” Cha Ming said as he isolated himself in a cultivation room below the Jade Bamboo Auction House. He’d put off his personal cultivation for as long as possible, and there was no need to delay any longer.
His advancement to late-foundation establishment had come with the side benefit of greatly reducing the amount of time required for cultivating the Seventy-Two Transformations Technique. Since he had already completed the gold and earth bone forging, he proceeded directly to fire bone forging.
Cha Ming’s brush moved fiercely as he painted one bone after another. He started with the bones in his legs and proceeded to his ribcage, his skull, and his spine. One by one, runes of fire shot into his body, overwhelming him with searing pain as the quality of his bones, tendons, and muscles were improved. His golden spine and earthen legs gained complementary red runic lines while his skull and ribs gained a third color.
After completing the rest of his body, he painted the most complex runes—the arms. While the spine’s core was gold and the leg’s cores were earth, his arms were aligned with fire. The violent red runes restructured his arm bones, shifting the gold and earth runes slightly to replace them as the core component. Rather than the beating of a thousand hammers, his bones felt as though they were scorched by a thousand flames. The entire process took a single day, a large improvement over the original three.
After finishing fire bone forging, Cha Ming proceeded to wood bone forging, which focused on the ribcage, where the vital organs were located. He painted the other bones on his body first, adding green runic lines to his arms, legs, and spine, while his skull gained a fourth color. Then he completed the ribcage with calm brushstrokes.
Wooden runes became the central component of his ribcage. As the last rune entered his bones, they were forged by the whipping of a thousand willows. His ribcage resembled tough, wooden runes. Like the three stages of bone forging before, the voids in his bones drank heaven and earth energy once more, increasing their gravity-manipulating abilities to five times his fist strength. His supporting muscles and ligaments also strengthened to compensate for this ability. The process was once again completed in a single day.
Finally, Cha Ming began painting the water-bone-forging runes. He first completed the remaining bones in his body before moving on to the most dangerous and painful part of bone forging—forging the skull. The runic bone structure he painted was complex and filled with lines that reached from one part of his skull to the other. Once he completed this rune, he felt the forging of a thousand gentle waves. The most painful migraine in existence caused him to almost lose consciousness as his skull fundamentally transformed into a soft blue rune.
As the forging proceeded, the power of his senses increased exponentially. His skull, though only being forged by gentle waves, felt like it was being pummelled by one tidal wave after another. The pain only lasted half a day before his bones and joints crackled with newfound power. While he had only reached the peak of bone forging, he could display the strength of a half-step marrow-refining cultivator. The voids in his bones changed structurally once more, making it possible to increase his weight to ten times his fist strength. His supporting muscles and tendons naturally changed accordingly. Now, should he wish to do so, Cha Ming could increase his weight to one hundred thousand jin!
Three days had passed since he began the process. Only a single step remained to break into the marrow-refining realm. After adjusting his condition, Cha Ming directed his attention to the immortal-jade core in the Clear Sky World. It melted into a puddle like the rest and was rapidly absorbed by the mystical artifact. Gray runes lit up all over the white brush. He got to work quickly, painting one intricate detail after another. The amount of “ink” available for this stage of bone forging was just as much as the previous ones. However, this ink needed to be spread out across a much larger runic diagram.
He constructed the array piece by piece, bone after bone. He used the gray ink to first paint his spine. The runes were completely different than the ones he had painted previously. Instead of providing a framework, it was filled with thousands of tiny supporting runes. The same was true for the legs, the arms, the ribcage, and the skull.
Cha Ming rested every few hours to replenish his qi and resplendent force. On the first day, he’d only completed the spine. On the second day, the arms and legs. On the third day, he finished the ribcage and skull. He was covered in sweat by the time he finished the translucent gray skeleton. It was the same gray that connected his qi pathways to his Dantian and organs. Once he drew the last connecting line, the entire gray skeleton burst apart and shot into every single bone in his body. To be more precise, they shot into the voids in his bones.
There was no pain this time. After all, he’d already completely forged his skeleton. Instead, each rune he painted crawled into a void. His senses followed a gray rune inside a single void, where he saw what seemed like a small five-colored world complete with black-and-white specks. The gray rune floated to the world and gently imprinted itself on it and underwent a fundamental change.
The moment the gray rune appeared, the world in the void rapidly shrank onto a single point and exploded into a spiraling vortex. It was like the birth of a tiny runic universe that began expanding ever so slowly.
Cha Ming felt the urge to try something. He willed the vortex to shrink, and in the blink of an eye, he felt his weight lessen. He willed it to expand, and his weight increased.
He also noticed that h
e could shift the miniature universe’s orientation. At his command, the universe retracted its energy, and he became weightless. Then he flipped its orientation and allowed a small amount of energy to leak out. To his surprise, he felt his body outside the void float upward. Thousands of voids were operating in tandem, and with but a thought, all of them retracted their energy. He became weightless once more, but this time he was floating in the air. This flotation was fundamentally different than what a foundation-establishment cultivator could accomplish with a magic treasure. Instead it resembled the flight of a core-formation cultivator.
At the same time, Cha Ming’s bones lit up with a black-and-white light as the five-colored runic diagrams combined with the glowing gray runes in each universe spiral. The runes formed two cycles—one of creation and one of destruction. Pain wracked his body as his bones were tempered by destruction qi and reformed by creation qi. With each step in the forging process, his bones became increasingly milky and translucent. The destruction and creation even seeped down into his marrow. Each wave of creation and destruction lightly brushed the marrow, greatly increasing its quality.
It wasn’t long before his skeleton was fully comprised of gray jade runes. They contained hints of the original elements and creation qi that forged them as well as traces of the destruction that had tempered them. Cha Ming exhaled a breath of impure air as what used to be his bones became ashes that littered the cultivation chamber’s floor. His body pulsed as his heart spread the blood created by the new marrow into his body. It flowed to his muscles, organs, and skin, nourishing them and vastly improving their functions.
By the time the process was completed, two weeks had passed. Cha Ming extended his enhanced senses to the lobby just outside the Jade Bamboo Auction House and found Feng Ming waiting there while patiently cultivating.
How unusual, Cha Ming thought. Something must be wrong.
As he moved to go greet his friend, he noticed that not only was the room covered in dust, but even the protective formations had been damaged by his breakthrough.
Corrupted Crimson Page 20
