Destiny in Cinders

The question of whether hunting and gathering or agriculture was more stable was clear from how most humans chose to settle in one place. This logic applied to Void Embrace as well. Cultivating herbs as an industry was far more stable than going out to hunt beasts for parts. Granted, one might be able to make lots of profit when sudden waves of beasts appear, while herb crops could also be ruined by natural disasters. In the long term, however, the latter would prove to be much more stable.

An Jing would exploit the price differences between worlds. Apart from making some rather big profits in the beginning to gather some starting capital, he was more focused on stability. "I'll make a profit no matter what I buy or sell. It's starting to get to my head."

"Your purchasing behavior is too outlandish. It won't draw the attention of bigwigs, but I've no doubt that some minor figures have their attention drawn to you. And sometimes, it's the minor goons that give you more trouble than the bosses they serve. You'll be wrapped up in trouble if you don't handle this properly. If you don't have the power to protect the money you earn, it doesn't matter how much you make," Yvelbane cautioned.

An Jing shook his head. "Actually, those are good troubles to have. There's no way that the demonic cult would respond to rumors about a young scion spending a bit of silver here and there for mere trinkets. They're not spirit items with spirit properties, after all. Hearing about my run-ins with goons would mark me as some insignificant target. Staying off their radar is especially important if I want to buy proper spirit items later on to strengthen myself."

"Oh? You've already spent all the silver you brought over from Skysource. Do you want to use the Grandvoid Pathway to go back? Don't forget that people will notice if you disappear for days at a time. And if you come back right after the pathway recharges, it's a bit of a waste. You'd be unnecessarily leaving the pathway in cooldown."

"Of course not. I might be disguising myself as someone from a big clan who can afford to spend silver casually. However, I'm still one person at the end of the day. I can't plausibly have so much silver on my person. Dustdawners generally don't use currency bills either. It's only reasonable for me to have run out of money by now. That's why, to be able to spend more money, this young scion of Dustdawn will have to do something..."

He took out an exquisitely made bejeweled nightlight mirror. "I have no choice but to sell off a family heirloom to maintain my spending habits! Yvelbane, what do you think this mirror I got from Huo Qing will sell for on this side? Apparently you can get something like this from random roadside stalls in Skysource."

The sword soul shared his vision and could see the gray-silver base material and the twelve azure gemstones around it. It was a precious mirror that gave off light during the night. Sighing, it said, "This might be rare, but it wouldn't be worth much in my time. In the current era, however, it'd fetch at least thirty liang of silver or more. If the store wants to build a good relationship with you, they might even buy it at a much inflated price."

"Not nearly close, Yvelbane. You're a sword at the end of the day. You don't understand how vain we humans are when it comes to luxury goods." He put the mirror away as he calmed down. "I should really dive deep into this character of mine. That's why I need to be spending enough silver for them to take note of my spending power. Why else would they care about building a relationship with me? How else, then, would I get recognized by the elite circles of Keensight and get my hands on some spirit items?"

An Jing had been looking for a channel to purchase spirit items since he arrived at Keensight. He didn't need anything too precious, only things like feral-beast flesh, concoctions and the like.

During his month of quiet cultivation, he used the evergreen core to heal all his injuries. After clearing out his meridians, he was back to his peak as a martialist of the River Aura Stage. Despite his extraordinary constitution that made his body a vessel with much more capacity compared to most, he still had to fill it up with hard work before he would reach the Tide Aura Stage.

He had reached a bottleneck. He could either do it the hard way and cultivate for another month or two to reach that level or consume some nourishing feral-beast flesh or other spirit-item consumables to speed up his breakthrough.

Neither approach was better or worse. The only difference was that consuming spirit items would increase the speed of breakthroughs and build more of a foundation, speeding up cultivation time. Naturally, it cost quite a bit of money to pick this route, not that it was a problem for An Jing.

The real issue was that nobody sold spirit items openly in Keensight. He was well aware of that, of course. In North Han, the An clan's trading convoy frequently came across feral-beast flesh or other low-grade spirit items. They weren't sold to most customers. Only those who had long working relationships with the clan who were owed favors had the privilege of ordering from a special catalog.

Such was the case in Keensight as well. An Jing, disguised as a newcomer from Dustdawn, stood no chance at all in acquiring spirit items. There was always a better trusted buyer for any kind of spirit item, after all, and more often than not, it was better to store them for eventual use for their own factions rather than sell them.

Having pondered for a while to no avail, he eventually came across a solution. If he really wanted to get his hands on spirit items, he had to offer something that others wanted. If the spirit-item merchants weren't willing to sell him anything, he could just sell them spirit items instead! But what would he, an individual with no real backing, have to offer the interested parties of Keensight? Artifacts and talismans from Skysource, of course!

Naturally, he would have to be careful about how he went about things lest he drew suspicion. The purchases he made earlier were largely there to explain his willingness to sell a precious family heirloom—the bejeweled mirror. Why else would a Dustdawner scion part with something like that? All he had to do after that was to show them what other goods he had and express his interest in buying more!

"That's quite a good plan. But even in my time, if you pull something like this, you might run into crooks who would want to take advantage of you. They might resort to forceful means."

"Then I'll have no choice but to fight back." An Jing was quite confident in that aspect at least. "The guardian adept of Keensight is absent, so the strongest people here should be Fortification Realm martialists at best. Whether I can defeat them or not, fleeing shouldn't be a problem. If they decide to get rough, I'll rob them and escape to Skysource and sell it all. Then, I'll come back with a new identity."