Tang Jie was a frequent customer of Spirit Platform Pavilion, so when he arrived, a student immediately brought him to Madam Shui.

Madam Shui emerged from the rear courtyard and smiled when she saw Tang Jie. “I guessed that you might come. I’m sure that you got a lot of good things from this trip to the Valley of No Return, yes?”

Tang Jie replied, “This student is incompetent and expended all his strength on seizing the Red Lotus, so my harvests elsewhere were limited. In thirty days, I was only able to get this.”

He took out the fiend pellet.

Madam Shui’s eyes brightened upon seeing it. “This is a Thunderbird fiend pellet. For you to have this, could it mean…”

“I was luckily able to obtain it.”

“How did you manage it?”

“It was nothing more than creating diversions and repeatedly hunting them down. While the fiends might have reached Spirit Sensing, they are still foolish creatures. Given enough time, it’s possible to slowly grind them down.”

Madam Shui gave him a profound look. “Everyone understands the method of slowly grinding down. If a single person could grind down the Thunderbirds, Thunderbird Cliff wouldn’t be one of the most dangerous places in the Valley of No Return. Forget it. It’s all your own business, so I won’t ask too many questions.”

She took the fiend pellet and looked it over. “Mm, it’s of excellent quality and preserved very well. It can’t be the Thunderbird King’s fiend pellet, could it?”

Tang Jie smiled and said nothing.

“Really?” Madam Shui could tell what Tang Jie meant, and looked at him in shock. This kid was truly bizarre. That he was able to kill the Thunderbird King meant that he had most likely wiped out the entire flock. She couldn’t help but sigh. “What a pity. It took many years of careful nurturing to develop the Thunderbirds into a flock, but you’ve killed them all in one go. Ten thousand beings must perish for a single person to succeed!”

“But it’s not like more can’t be born,” Tang Jie said as he took out four small Thunderbirds—one male and three females.

He had gotten these Thunderbird chicks after exterminating the flock at Thunderbird Cliff. He had gotten six in all, but he had traded away two males. He had kept these four for precisely this moment.

Madam Shui was taken aback by the sight of these four chicks, and then she realized, “You kept them alive on purpose?”

“To sell them back to the sect.”

Madam Shui laughed and pointed at Tang Jie. “Clever kid, you’ve got a good head on your shoulders. In killing the Thunderbirds and then keeping their chicks to sell back to the sect, you’re basically hoarding a rare product to drive up the price!”

Sealing the valley was far from enough to keep the ecology of the Valley of No Return in balance, and a significant investment was still required. Since the Thunderbirds on Thunderbird Cliff had been wiped out, if one wanted to keep the name of Thunderbird Cliff, the sect would have to send people out to find some Thunderbirds.

Finding Thunderbirds wasn’t exactly easy, and if the sect had to send an Immortal, the costs would be even higher. While this was probably nothing for the Basking Moon Sect, it was best to save where one could, and it was even better if someone offered them up.

Selling these four Thunderbird chicks to students wouldn’t make much money, and their value would be very different if they were sold to the sect, saving some important figure a lot of trouble.

To be more precise, Tang Jie wasn’t selling Thunderbirds, but the time of these important figures. This was especially so because he had sold off two males, keeping all the females. Fiend beasts were usually polygynous creatures, so he had perfectly matched them. There was no way somebody else would be able to take this business from him.

Madam Shui didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. The Valley of No Return had existed for many years, with the students responsible for harvesting and the Spirit Masters responsible for sowing. It was already the custom for predecessors to plant the trees so that their descendants could enjoy the shade. This was the first time she had met someone who reaped with the left hand and sowed with the right.

But even she had to admit that this was truly a clever ploy, and she really didn’t know how Tang Jie had managed to think it up.

She didn’t know of the modern world that Tang Jie had come from, where it was commonplace to dismantle a house one day and build up a house the next to destroy and build a road at the same time. Business could only be called business when it was created from nothing. Tang Jie had worked in the government for many years and was used to this trick, so he was able to play it like a professional.

Taking the four chicks, Madam Shui said, “Four chicks with that fiend pellet should be able to mature quickly. What’s your price?”

Tang Jie respectfully replied, “Madam can set it.”

Madam Shui rolled her eyes. “If that’s what you want, I can give you 5500 spirit coins for these two. Don’t take this to be too small. A thousand kilometers from here, you can find Thunderbirds on Westwatch Mountain. A Nine Revolutions Spirit Master can go to get them and come back in a month, and the total costs will be close to ten thousand. I’m valuing you at half the work of a Spirit Master, which is an incredibly good deal. As for this fiend pellet, while it’s upper-grade, some of its energy has been extracted. If I want to make some profit, I can only give you five hundred at most.”

“My utmost thanks, Madam.”

Madam Shui took out ten spirit jades and five hundred spirit coins, handing them to Tang Jie.

Tang Jie was startled. “Why is there an extra five thousand?”

Madam Shui flipped her hand over, revealing the pearl that Tang Jie had given to her some time ago.

“This…” Tang Jie blankly stared at it, and then he realized, “The sect found out what it was?”

“Yes,” Madam Shui replied. “This is the Cosmic Breeze Pearl.”

“The Cosmic Breeze Pearl?” Tang Jie frowned. “What is that?”

He considered himself rather well-read in the academy, but he had never heard of some Cosmic Breeze Pearl.

Madam Shui replied, “It’s not strange if you don’t know, because this isn’t from the Rosecloud Domain.”

“It’s not from the Rosecloud Domain?” Tang Jie was flabbergasted.

It was no wonder he wasn’t able to figure out the pearl’s background. It wasn’t even from this world.

Madam Shui nodded. “Titans of old wandered the myriad domains, occasionally bringing back what they found. The six major sects all have Titans who wandered the universe, going between the various realms, so it’s not strange for the six major sects to have otherworldly objects. This Cosmic Breeze Pearl is something that a Titan of Godhead Palace found in their travels and brought back to Godhead Palace to research.”

“Something that an Immortal Platform Titan would bring back to research must be good,” Tang Jie hastily said.

Madam Shui knew what he was thinking and chuckled. “Naturally, but if a little Nine Revolutions Mortal Shedding expert could carry it, its value must be limited.”

Tang Jie bitterly smiled. “Madam is teasing me.”

Madam Shui laughed. “This Cosmic Breeze Pearl has two uses. The first is to store spiritual energy, and the second is to detonate spiritual energy.”

“‘Store spiritual energy’?” Tang Jie’s eyes brightened.

In the end, the cultivation world was no game. Excepting miracle medicines like Jade Serum, normal recovery medicines merely accelerated recovery rather than instantly healing the person.

The fact that this pearl could store spiritual energy made it very valuable.

“Correct!” Madam Shui replied. “But alas, the amount of spiritual energy it can store is limited to about two thousand drops of spiritual liquid, and every day, some of it will automatically dissipate. Moreover, the energy can be stored for only three days at most. After three days, all of the spiritual energy will leak out.”

Then it’s lacking in watertightness, Tang Jie thought to himself, but he said, “That’s still wonderful. But two thousand drops is rather low. It’s no wonder the Titans didn’t consider them useful.”

“Precisely.”

“Then what about detonating spiritual energy?”

“Have you heard of Heavenbane Lightning Pearls?”

“The Heavenly Extinction Sect?” Tang Jie was aghast. “Do you mean that ‘detonating spiritual energy’ means…”

“Yes, like the Heavenbane Lightning Pearl, it will detonate all its spiritual energy, the power depending on how much spiritual energy was stored in it at the time. The sect has done some tests, and if it’s full of spiritual energy, a single explosion will have power comparable to a Heavenbane Lightning Pearl.”

That strong? Tang Jie breathed in, but then he saw the indifferent look on Madam Shui’s face. It appeared that she didn’t consider the Heavenbane Lightning Pearl to be very strong at all.

Considering that the Basking Moon Sect was even selling Domain Astral Flames to the Heavenly Extinction Sect, Tang Jie immediately realized that Heavenbane Lightning Pearls really weren’t anything much in the eyes of true Titans.

Sure enough, Madam Shui said, “While Heavenbane Lightning Pearls might be strong, they can only flaunt their strength below Celestial Heart, so my Basking Moon Sect does not view them in high regard. As for the Cosmic Breeze Pearl, it is no Heavenbane Lightning Pearl. An explosion will damage the pearl, and after only a few detonations, the pearl will be destroyed. I gather that it leaks spiritual energy precisely because it was detonated before. A pearl that has never been detonated before would probably be able to preserve spiritual energy for even longer. Thus, if you want to use this pearl to store spiritual energy, it shouldn’t be detonated unless there is no other choice.”

“Since this item is so ordinary to a Titan, why did they bring it back?”

“An excellent question!” Madam Shui approved. She raised the small pearl to the light, and a cloud pattern appeared on its surface. “This pearl is able to store and detonate spiritual energy primarily because of the formation carved into the pearl and the material it is made from. This material is extremely rare in my Rosecloud Domain, and the technique used to carve the formation into the pearl is sublime. That Godhead Palace Titan brought this pearl back probably for these two reasons… For Immortal sects, a rare item can’t be considered a treasure. Rather, a genius way of thinking, an intricate design, or a spell art that can be passed down are far more worthwhile!”

Tang Jie’s mind was opened by these words.

Yes, while students might always seek treasure, for the major sects, a spell that could ensure the legacy of the sect was far more valuable.

It was precisely because their needs were different that this pearl had fallen into Gu Changqing’s hands, and through him, Tang Jie’s.

Madam Shui smiled. “The sect has researched the material and the formation-installing technique, so this pearl isn’t very useful to us any longer and can be returned to you. The extra five thousand can be considered a reward for your contribution to the sect.”

“If that’s true, isn’t that too little?” Tang Jie smiled mischievously.

He had offered up this pearl, and the formation technique within it might have raised the Basking Moon Sect’s Dao of Formations to a whole new level. This was an enormous contribution, so only giving five thousand was being rather cheap.

The four Thunderbird chicks alone were valued at five thousand.

Madam Shui rolled her eyes. “If you had offered up this pearl when that Titan had brought it back, let alone five thousand, we could have even given you fifty thousand or five hundred thousand. But the problem is that this Cosmic Breeze Pearl has been around for ages. It’s no secret in Godhead Palace, and even my Basking Moon Sect has managed to gather a lot of information about it. It’s just that we’ve never seen the real thing. How else could we have given you an answer so quickly?”

Tang Jie understood.

“However, besides these five thousand coins, the sect has also given you eighteen contribution points. Don’t you currently owe the sect 118 contribution points? These points mean that you won’t have to worry about this year’s interest.”

Madam Shui covered her mouth and laughed.

Tang Jie felt helpless, but considering how hard contribution points were to get, this was actually pretty good.

Madam Shui placed the pearl in his hand and also gave him a piece of fabric. “This cloth has the instructions on how to use it. Whether it’s storing or detonating spiritual energy, you need to act on the formation inside the pearl. Once you learn the method, you’ll essentially have a trump card. This can be considered the sect’s third reward for you, so know when to be content.”

“Many thanks, Madam!”

“Don’t be so hasty to thank me,” Madam Shui casually replied, and she snatched the money back. “Don’t forget that you still owe me ten thousand. It’s about time you settled that debt. This five hundred can be considered interest, and I don’t need any more than that.”

Tang Jie bitterly smiled. “Madam, is there any need to so quickly settle the debt?”

But to his surprise, Madam Shui’s face turned cold. “You think I don’t understand what you need? But this time, I have no choice but to collect the debt.”

Startled, Tang Jie quickly understood. “Nan Baicheng?”

Madam Shui lightly nodded. “As expected, you already know. I don’t really care too much about him, but he represents Yan Changfeng. He came asking me for help in collecting your debt, and it’s not like I can disrespect Yan Changfeng.”

Tang Jie’s heart turned cold.

He knew that Nan Baicheng was truly anxious to not let Wei Tianchong become the True Inheritor.

But this only spurred Tang Jie to fight even harder.

If Yan Changfeng were to come and choose for himself, Tang Jie would have nothing to say about who he chose. But since he had decided on this competition, Tang Jie wasn’t content to let him try and rig the results.

The more Nan Baicheng didn’t want them to succeed, the more Tang Jie wanted to test his limit.

At this thought, Tang Jie sternly said, “Master Nan is truly giving a lot of thought to selecting a disciple for the True Person, but his methods are rather lacking in fairness. And it’s not like I’m someone who backs away in the face of difficulty. Even if an Immortal blocked my way, I would still bravely press forward. I’m afraid that he’s bound to be disappointed.”

Madam Shui clapped her hands and laughed. “Excellent words. Then let me see how you do on this third mission. If you can really help Wei Tianchong get the True Inheritor spot, I will give you a chance at a gift from the heavens!”