Chapter 1339: Unusual Number of Nascent Soul Realm Cultivators
Shaking his head as he threw the regret of losing a mere ten spirit stones to the back of his mind, Chu Yang followed the eccentric merchant inside the city. Planning to take a look around the city first before he began looking for information on how to safely pass through the mountain range, both to learn more about the place and to keep an eye on the eccentric merchant whom he felt would be useful to the sect in the future. Intending to wait until he was informed by Elder Dust Fairy about whether or not he would be recruited by the sect, something that would take a bit of time, as the current communication talisman he had used wasn’t powerful enough to reach all the way back to the Star Shattering Sect and first had to go through a few of sect’s recently established outpost for information transfer.
After all, long distance communication talismans were expensive. Even more so those that could be refused… And Chu Yang unfortunately only had a few one-time use communication talismans on him for emergency situations and he found no need to use one of them at the moment, as he wasn’t really in a hurry, and it would at most take a few hours before he would get a response. Time he could use to learn more about the Mountain Demon City and at the same time also learn more about the eccentric merchant who might end up becoming a member of the sect’s information network in the future…
“Hm? Something wrong?”
As Chu Yang followed beside the eccentric merchant while lost in his own thoughts, the merchant suddenly came to an abrupt stop, causing Chu Yang to turn and ask him what was wrong with a somewhat confused expression on his face. Not seeing anything around that might have caused the merchant to stop so abruptly.
“Indeed, something is wrong, there are far more powerful cultivators in the Nascent Soul Realm around than normal. Meaning that something should have happened to attract these Nascent Soul Realm cultivators… And from my knowledge, the only thing that can attract so many Nascent Soul Realm cultivators is the uncovering of a secret realm left behind by a powerful cultivator or an ancient ruin.”
“But… How is this a problem? It’s not like they will cause any trouble in the city, as long as we don’t get involved with the secret realm, we should be fine.”
“Hehe, you wish, these cultivators are ruthless! The moment the secret realm or ancient ruin is uncovered, they will need someone to scout the way forward for them so they can avoid running into deadly traps and formations.”
“And weaker cultivators serve as the perfect scouts for them, as they have no real way to resist the command of these stronger cultivators… I see what you mean with it being a dangerous time for us to have entered the city.” Nodding his head as he understood what the eccentric merchant meant with it being a dangerous time for them to enter the city, Chu Yang wasn’t too nervous about it, as he was more than confident in keeping himself safe with his current strength.
At most, he would just be forced to show off the strength of someone in the Nascent Soul Realm and he should be able to avoid getting taken advantage of.
The problem was the eccentric merchant was not like him and was only at the Peak of the Foundation Establishment Realm. If someone at the Nascent Soul Realm wanted to use him to scout the way forward through a secret realm or an ancient ruin, he would have no way to fight back.
Relying on the guards of the Demon Mountain City to help out wasn’t really much of an option either, as they were likely also interested in exploring the secret realm or ancient ruins and wanted to make use of weaker cultivators to scout the way forward for them as well.
Of course, there was also the chance that the reason for so many powerful cultivators to have gathered inside the city was because of the emergence of a powerful spiritual herb or something similar to it, but considering how confident the eccentric merchant looked, Chu Yang decided to believe in his words.
After all, compared to him, he seemed far more experienced with this kind of thing.
If he said that it was a secret realm or an ancient ruin, it was most likely true. After all, the merchant had no real reason to lie to him about something like this.
So, with that in mind, Chu Yang and the merchant both continued to slowly make their way through the busy streets of the city, the merchant unwilling to leave before selling his wares, while Chu Yang didn’t really feel a need to leave the city.
In the end, Chu Yang followed the eccentric merchant to a secluded corner of a relatively busy street where he watched him set up a simple cloth with different trinkets that he would be selling on top of it before he sat down and began trying to entice passing cultivators into buying these trinkets that were essentially just decorations with a few simple formation carved into them to make them shine or do other unique but useless things that appealed to some cultivators looking for things to decorate their cultivation rooms or homes with.
Shockingly, Chu Yang saw how these simple and easy to make trinkets were sold for several dozens of spirit stones. Making him question the mental capacity of the different cultivators buying them.
However, after asking the merchant about it, he found out that most of the cultivators inside the city were wandering cultivators and weren’t too familiar with smaller scale formations and were normally only aware of those larger formations that were easier to find. Resulting in most of these cultivators paying a bit extra just to check out these smaller formations due to their uniqueness.
More importantly, at the end of the day, a dozen spirit stones weren’t that much to someone in the Nascent Soul Realm and would be more than worth it if they could satisfy their curiosity regarding these unique smaller formations. Allowing the eccentric merchant to carve out a small but solid market inside the Mountain Demon City where countless wandering cultivators passed through on a daily basis with no lack of those in the Nascent Soul Realm.
Funnily enough, due to the increased number of Nascent Soul Realm cultivators present inside the city at the moment, the eccentric merchant managed to sell off all of his trinkets in a relatively short time of a few hours.
During this time, Chu Yang didn’t just sit still and watch the merchant going to work, but instead went around the different stalls trying to ask into the situation that had caused so many Nascent Soul Realm cultivators to show up.
Luckily, even though most of the merchants didn’t know much about the situation and ended up giving a response not that different from the eccentric merchant, there were still a few who had managed to find out more about the situation from conversations they had overheard when more powerful cultivators visited their stalls.
In the end, Chu Yang found out that the reason why so many Nascent Soul Realm cultivators had gathered together at the Demon Mountain City was because a large ancient ruin had recently been uncovered by someone from the Explorer Union.
As a result of this, the Explorer Union had sent out a request for anyone at the Nascent Soul Realm or above to help in exploring the ancient ruin.
Although there wasn’t any payment attached to the request, everyone understood that the Explorer Union wasn’t interested in the treasures inside the ancient ruins and instead just wanted to fully explore the place. Meaning that any treasure they found inside the ancient ruins would be theirs.
Because of this, a lot of Nascent Soul Realm cultivators had happily rushed to the Demon Mountain City in preparation for exploring the ancient ruins.
Of course, a contributing factor to so many Nascent Soul Realm cultivators showing up was also because of the Explorer Union’s reputation throughout the continent.
If not for their stellar reputation and having no bad record in regard to taking advantage of wandering cultivators, so many wandering cultivators in the Nascent Soul Realm would have never shown up in the first place.
Asking a bit further about the situation after finding out about this, Chu Yang also managed to find out that the day for setting out to explore the ancient ruins would be in the middle of the day when the sun was at its highest point.
Looking up at the sky, it would only be a few hours until that time came… And looking at the decreasing number of people moving around in the streets, it became clear that the Nascent Soul Realm wandering cultivators should have already started to pick up scouts for the coming exploration of the ancient ruins…
