Chapter 108 - Spirit Euros

  “I don’t want to save the world,” Yu Han said. “Nor conquer it. My goals are simpler. Stability, growth, and connection. You don’t have to want the same thing. We don’t need to journey together until death do us part. But for the near future, I’d like to build something great with all of you. And when you guys outgrow me, we can say goodbye with smiles on our faces and be on our way. Maybe one day, you’ll be back to visit, and I’ll still be here.”

  Fang Zhao, Li Yao, and Huang Niuniu fell silent. No one talked. No one concurred, yet no one disagreed.

  That was fine.

  It was better to plan with each other’s expectations laid out clearly. False expectations would lead to resentment. Uncommunicated expectations were never true.

  Yu Han expected his friends to do the same in due time. Otherwise, was the connection really genuine?

  “I’ll get us a fifth member.” Li Yao waved. “Let’s meet up again soonish. I have a lot to think about.”

  He patted Fei Rui’s shell in the yard, gave Mistress Miao a wink, then walked up the mountain trail.

  Fang Zhao bowed to Yu Han. He exchanged a sidelong glance with Huang Niuniu, then shook his head.

  “I have a great debt to pay,” he said. “I don’t disagree with Brother Yu’s intentions. In fact, I think your plans will benefit many, not just us. But please, remember the cruelty of this world. Without strength, we are nothing but ants. Even if we build up an empire, we can’t protect it.”

  The red-eyed boy then scratched his head. “If anyone can become strong, it has to be Brother Yu. You broke my curse. Core formation is nothing. Stability is within grasp. I hope the day Brother Yu finds the thing he wants, I’ll be there to see it. It will be glorious.”

  “Not reading the instruction manual,” Mistress Miao said, “is a self-induced curse. Glory comes to the intelligent, not the reckless.”

  Fang Zhao glared at the cat.

  “Did I say anything wrong?” The cat mewed.

  Yu Han wondered if Fang Zhao would throw a kick. Those veins on his forehead did look asura-like.

  The red-eyed boy bowed again and left.

  Fei Rui bid farewell at the doorsill, then went back to building his hidden stash in broad daylight.

  「I’m busy. I need to deeply work with super concentration. Yu Han, Soft Niuniu, don’t disturb me.」

  Cute little guy. Yu Han closed the door.

  “What?” Huang Niuniu sat on the bed, legs dangling from the edge.

  “Why are you so fixated on Fang Zhao?” Yu Han asked. What he actually wanted to ask was if Huang Niuniu had feelings for Fang Zhao. He wasn’t that dumb, though.

  “Then why are you so fixated on him?” Huang Niuniu shot back.

  “I’m not.” Yu Han frowned.

  “Yes, you so are.” Huang Niuniu crossed her arms. “All you do is talk about him and make plans around him.”

  “T-That’s.” Yu Han had no reply. That was true. Technically.

  “Even the Hidden Realm was about helping him level up,” Huang Niuniu said, her voice becoming more aggrieved. “And before that, it was his stupid cursed ring. All you think about is Fang Zhao this and Fang Zhao that. Just now, you wasted so much breath explaining your ideas to him. Are you supposed to be his ideaman, or mine?”

  Holy shit. Yu Han covered his grin. “Are you jealous?”

  Huang Niuniu threw a book at him.

  “Hey! That was hard to copy.” Yu Han caught it. “The binding will come loose.”

  “You’re jealous; your whole family is jealous.” She pouted. “What about me? Stop thinking about him, and start thinking about me more. Other than laser, you didn’t give me any ideas.” Her voice grew more silent. “Well, maybe you told me about the glowing phytoplankton things.”

  Her face flushed up.

  “Stupid man.” She kicked his leg. Lightly.

  ***

  The twenty Sea of Gold Chamber of Commerce tokens were with Huang Niuniu. Yu Han wished he could bring them to his dreamscape. Nothing was safer than an extra-dimensional storage.

  Unless, of course, another Outerplanar Threat invaded and stole everything.

  She would buy the ingredients for the Deep Sea’s Spites. For the four of them, if they had one bowl every day, it would cost 150 spirit stones a month each.

  That’s 600 spirit stones.

  Counting both Vitality and Strength Spites, that was 1200 mortal-grade spirit stones. Or 12 elite-grade ones.

  Or 0.12 earth-grade ones. But spirit stones at that level never went for market price.

  What was above earth-grade? Right, Royal Grade. 0.0012 Royal Grade spirit stones? Maybe I can make a spirit stone blockchain and call each fraction and spritcoin?

  Yu Han would check up on that with Little Three later. He went back to scribbling on his notepad.

  One bowl of spite would cost five spirit stones to make.

  Can we sell them at 10?

  It was expensive. A Rookie Disciple’s monthly stipend was 10 spirit stones a month.

  They would get this stipend for exactly one year.

  After the Rookie Tournament, they would become proper Outer sect disciples, and would have to work for their money.

  Deep Sea’s Strength Spite only increases Strength. But Vitality Spite helps recover lifeforce in addition to increasing Vitality.

  Yu Han could justify the price for the latter that way.

  Not to mention, if they used Fang Zhao’s storage ring to process materials from scratch, they might be able to bring down the cost of each spite to under two spirit stones.

  If the boy was willing that is.

  Yu Han searched through his stack of notepads and took one out.

  It had a simple sketch of the Outer sect Centrum’s Marketplace on the first few pages. The rest had the basic prices of many items sold there.

  The ingredient cost, the production cost, and the price of the end product. After running some analysis and conducting a few interviews, he came to a conclusion and wrote it on a piece of paper.

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  The value of spirit stones is greatly discounted inside the sect compared to the outside world.

  He underlined the word 'greatly' so many times the paper ripped.

  When Yu Han had changed 99 spirit stones to White Lotus Prefectural Kingdom’s gold notes before, it was approximately one spirit stone to one gold note. He had paid the spirit stones at the sect, and the familiar dispatched to deliver his sister the letter would also deliver an exchange voucher authorising a withdrawal of 99 gold notes to the Sea of Gold Chamber of Commerce's local correspondent. The collaborator would then give the familiar 99 gold notes, which it would deliver to Yu Han's sister when, or if, it found her. This greatly conserved the puppet familiar's fuel cost, so to speak.

  Little Three had admitted without shame that a 1:1 conversion rate between gold notes and spirit stones was only possible because they were in the sect. In the outside world, a spirit stone could fetch Yu Han a far steeper profit.

  Despite his hurting liver, Yu Han had sent his sister the 99 gold notes. That, more than anything, should be a testament to his changing character compared to Johan's.

  An average person earned about a hundred bronze coins a day in Riversong City. Even if they saved as much as 50 a day, that would take around 200 days to save up 1 gold note. The currency rates in the White Lotus Prefectural Kingdom were 100 bronze coins to 1 silver tael, and 100 silver taels to 1 gold note. It should be similar throughout the Lower Bounds. Depending on how the Great Xia Dynasty controlled currency, it might differ a bit but not by too much.

  All of this meant that it would take an average person 54 years and three months to save up 99 gold notes!

  Granted, his sister’s family could earn a bit more, being merchants. Give or take 30 years, if they took risks. If they were markedly lucky? It might still take more than a decade.

  She could buy ten Yu Family’s River Diners in the city, alongside a title of a minor landowning noble in the countryside of a commandery with that money.

  But if Yu Han wanted to earn 99 spirit stones in the sect? A few good months of ghoul hunting and sect stipends were more than enough. If they completed a mission in the hidden realm and hunted a bunch of monsters along the way? He and his team could earn that much in a week, maybe less. They had Fang Zhao's stone storage ring after all. He could process the parts and smuggle far more goods in than should have been legally allowed.

  It made sense that spirit stones had less value here. But that wasn’t the full story.

  Yu Han had done additional calculations, using rice price as an imperfect standard.

  Yu Family’s diner used to buy about six metric tons of the best quality rice for one gold note. They rarely had gold notes on hand though, so they would make deals with rice merchants similar to a rudimentary supply chain. The effective price at the end of purchasing six metric tons of rice would end up being 10,000 bronze coins.

  This was paid every six months.

  Yu Han had visited Italy a few months before his death. Because of various reasons, he had come to know the price of rice in Tuscany.

  On average, it was 500 euros per metric ton. It might have been even cheaper in countries like India or Vietnam, but he didn’t know the prices there.

  In Tuscany, six metric tons of rice were around 3000 euros. One gold note, outside the sect, was priced 3000 euros.

  Yu Han had sent his sister around 297,000 euros in gold notes.

  But was a mortal-grade spirit stone also priced 3000 euros outside the sect? No freaking way, though Little Three had put it in more elegant words.

  Maybe a mortal-grade spirit stone would be worth 6000, 9000, or even 30,000 euros! A 1:10 spirit stone to gold note conversion rate. Enough to buy 60 metric tons of rice.

  But in the sect?

  Ten kilograms or around twenty jins of rice cost one spirit stone.

  Even with the 1:1 conversion rate, that was value slashed a hundred times. Around 99% of the value gone up in smoke! And with the 1:10 conversion rate? Yu Han tried not to faint.

  There has to be more to this. Otherwise, the crappy economy of this crappy sect and world and empire would have long since combusted into a financial crisis so bad it would bankrupt the heavens.

  Every other item in the sect, even metal, wood, clothes, and spices had their prices increased compared to the outside world. Granted, they called it spirit rice, or spirit spices, or spirit iron.

  Some of them probably had added mystical effects because apparently, the ambient spiritual energy density in the Sunken Mountains Peninsula was far higher than in the Lower Bound Province. And it was higher still in the Outer sect and any place with permanent access points to the Hidden Realm.

  Here, spiritual energy was abundant, as were spirit stones. But in the Lower Bound province, where a clan or sect with even a Qi Gathering Realm cultivator would be considered ‘immortals’, spirit stones and any spiritual resource were rarer.

  Yu Han had tried to guess the price of Bushy Beard’s dagger in the sect. It was a good, steel dagger, but nothing spiritual about it. A well made steel weapon would cost one gold note. That was one spirit stone.

  Here, many marketplace vendors offered to buy it for around a 100 spirit stones. That one time Yu Han claimed the dagger cost 150 spirit stones to mess with Huang Niuniu? He would have only made a 50% profit. The vendor might have resold the dagger later for a one hundred per cent profit.

  It wasn’t that rice or steel by themselves were valued higher. It’s just that the base currency, mortal-grade spirit stones, was valued much lower. Some cultivators could even make them out of thin air after all! Thinking back, it was Yu Han purchasing gold notes with spirit stones, not the other way around. The value of gold notes had gone up 100 times, making the value of spirit stones go down a hundred times. Outside of spiritual energy-rich areas, was this relationship reversed? But did that even make sense?

  Yu Han could take a hundred spirit stones, convert them to a hundred gold notes, travel outside, and buy a hundred daggers. If he directly took the spirit stones outside the sect, he could probably buy ten or even a hundred daggers for each. Then he could bring the daggers back and sell them for 100 spirit stones each. Rinse and repeat, and soon enough the sect master alongside Adam Smith's dead spirit would be burning him on a stake at the land god temple square, his crime being a practitioner of the demonic dao of the infinite money glitch. The worst witchcraft imaginable.

  There had to be more to the story. He was missing something crucial about spirit stones. Did the fact of it being inside or outside the sect itself have some mystical connotation, the price difference being attributed to not just scarcity? Maybe he could not even bring spirit stones directly outside the sect?

  But then Little Three's admission didn't add up. She clearly said he would get more out of each spirit stone outside. Unless she lied. But why would she? Here he was, looking at a leopard through a tube. He could see the spot but not the whole animal.

  Yu Han would rather believe she did not lie, but did not reveal the whole truth either.

  Here was a fact.

  The sect must be conducting trade with other forces. Was the currency they used spirit stones, gold, or something else?

  Maybe they used a special variety of spirit stone? They came in many grades, and also colours like the ones he’d seen Qiao Jinhai use to cultivate. Those were different from the ones circulating internally in the Stormy Reef Sect. Perssumably they were of a higher grade, since Qiao Jinhai was probably a foundation building realm cultivator.

  But he was using the spirit stones outside his Verdant Blade Sect.

  So a spirit stone’s utility as a cultivation aid did not disappear, but somehow the financial utility did?

  Can’t be that simple. How would the powers that be even regulate that?

  Yu Han played back his conversation with Little Three again. Something clicked.

  …unless Little Three never referred to spirit stones in general but the Sea of Gold’s one thousand mortal-grade spirit stone token?

  That’s what Yu Han had used. He did not walk in with a thousand spirit stones from the treasure hall or marketplace.

  It was Sea of Gold’s currency. Did only Sea of Gold Chamber of Commerce’s spirit stones retain their original value outside the sect? Did it perhaps somehow normalize to whatever the value of spirit stones were in the local area? So that inside the sect one spirit stone was worth one gold note, but outside it was a hundred?

  ….if so, these sleazy merchants were ripping them off, plain and simple. It wasn’t daylight robbery. It was the tax of the uninformed.

  Okay Yu Han. Calm down. Don’t break into Little Three’s cubicle. She’s stronger than you and will charge an arm and a leg for the inconvenience.

  Yu Han rubbed the sides of his temples with his thumbs, closed his eyes, and breathed deep, in and out. He was a grown man! He could let grudges go!

  Fang Zhao said that at higher levels, cultivators can manifest spirit stones with will alone, whatever that means. But I don't believe the sect has all the higher level cultivators trapped in a room somewhere materialising spirit stones 24/7. They'd revolt faster than falling stock prices after a bad CEO tweet. So where do they get most of their mortal-grade spirit stones? Do they mine it? Or are there some sort of magical manufactories using arrays and whatnot? They have such a neat, hexagonal shape. Almost machine-cut.

  Moral of the story, no wonder merchants braved the high seas and pirates to trade spices!

  In the sect, those 99 spirit stones Yu Han had sent his sister, only had the purchasing power of 2970 euros, not 297,000. One mortal-grade spirit stone was 30 euros, not 3000, let alone 30,000. The sect gave a rookie a spirit stone stipend of 300 euros a month. Or spirit Euros. Whatever.

  It was more than enough not to starve, even if a Cultivator needed more calories to function. But not enough to sustain cultivation. Good thing they did not need to pay rent.

  Okay. Ten spirit stones for a bowl of Vitality Spite. Would people buy that?

  Yu Han hadn’t researched the average earning potential of Cultivators based on levels yet.

  I need to find out how much common monster parts sell for.

  Ten Level 1 to 3 Filth Eating Ghoul cores sold for 1 spirit stone. But that was only at the Night Alchemists’ Yard exchange. Cores had aspects, and those cores were hard to sell in the marketplace. The 288 cores from the hidden realm should be more sellable. Especially the 75 from monsters above level 4.

  Same with meat, skin, blood, and bones. They were stored in Fang Zhao’s factory ring.

  Around mid-afternoon, Tan Ruoxuan came, leading a well-dressed older man.

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