Apotheosis

More than two hundred mysterious weapons were aligned in order.

The middle-aged shopkeeper carried a gold plated abacus in one hand. With the other hand, he fiddled with the beads. Aside from the rather loud clacking noise from the beads, no other sound could be heard in the room. At the end of his counting, he said, "There are 220 mysterious weapons, and each has a different cost. The total cost of your purchase is 22, 000 cubic crystals." Soon after getting the result of the calculations, the shopkeeper looked at Zen with a smile and said, "Since you have purchased such an enormous number of mysterious weapons, Weapon Pavilion will be happy to give you a discount of 10%. By rounding off the calculated amount to the nearest integer, we only need you to pay for the weapons with 20, 000 cubic crystals. May I know if you accept the price?"

The shopkeeper had agreed to sell the mysterious weapons at a lower cost. Zen thought the 10% discount was acceptable. So he nodded in agreement.

Shortly after that, Zen walked out of the Weapon Pavilion accompanied by the middle-aged shopkeeper. They found a Blessed Draft Bank at a corner of the trading market.

As Zen entered the Blessed Draft Bank, the bank's employees showed indifference to him. But as soon as Zen took his golden token out, the staff's attitude toward him changed. The staff of the Blessed Draft Bank knew that holders of golden tokens were either wealthy or noble. Thus, they had to treat these people kindly and provide them with considerate services.

A few moments later, an employee of the Blessed Draft Bank issued a bank note for 20, 000 cubic crystals and handed it to Zen, who then gave the note to the middle-aged shopkeeper.

Their transaction was concluded with this exchange.

The middle-aged man was very excited to have gotten such an enormous amount of cubic crystals from this transaction, but he tried not to

.

But before he reached the stage of auctioning the heavenly essence, Zen needed to melt the top-grade mysterious weapons inside his space ring.

Immediately, Zen searched through the top-grade mysterious weapons in his space ring and chose a pair of short cyan blue swords.

Zen laid these swords in front of him. Afterward, he interacted with the huge furnace in his mind. He hadn't summoned the black fire for a long time. The fire flashed across his mind like a happy bird and swiftly spread to that pair of cyan blue swords.

"Sizzling..."

In the blink of an eye, the two cyan blue swords were replaced by seven drops of heavenly essence. Zen marveled at the drops that were now floating in the air over his head.

As the black fire was about to engulf these drops of heavenly essence, a bottle showed up in one of Zen's hands. The drops slid into the bottle before the black fire could touch them.

The black fire flew around Zen's body like a human soul as though it were protesting against Zen for plundering the heavenly essence that it should have gotten.

At this sight, Zen flicked his space ring open with one of his fingers and took out a big golden axe.

With the same enthusiasm as before, the black fire swept toward the weapon.