Necropolis Immortal

“None of that nonsense!” Azureclad turned beet red and hectored, “Crimsonclad and I have gone through life and death together. Our families are also friends as well! What is wrong with the two of us discussing cultivation and dao together?”

“So have the Champion Duke and I gone through life and death together!” Qing Ting wasn’t going to accept his explanation so easily. “What, are you the only one allowed to have friends?”

Azureclad had the sudden misconception that the cutely naive Qing Ting was filling out her wings and no longer needed him anymore. When he came back to his senses, his sister had already taken Lu Yun’s arm and dragged him into the city lord’s manor.

“Your Grace,” commented a disgruntled young man dressed in traditional Chinese garb. “Do we let that Champion Duke go inside just like that?”

“And you!” Steaming mad, Azureclad rounded on the young man next to him. “Don’t you dare think about my sister!”

The young man blinked and fell quiet with embarrassment.

……

“Where are my crystals where are my crystals?” Qing Ting whispered as soon as they entered the residence.

“Right here, down to the last crystal,” chuckled Lu Yun.

“Good… You have perfect timing! I saw something in the marketplace yesterday and was worrying that I didn’t have any purple crystals. Let’s go to the marketplace right now!” She changed her mind and dragged Lu Yun back out.

He smiled ruefully the entire way. Though he’d barely just set foot over the manor threshold, he didn’t make any protests.

“Where are you going now, Qing Ting?” Having just entered himself, Azureclad frowned to see the two leave again.

“None of your business! Why don’t you go brave life and death with your vixen again!” Qing Ting blew a raspberry at her brother and pulled Lu Yun into the air, heading in the direction of the marketplace.

“It’s all because of that little bastard! Leng Che, we’re going after them to see what they’re doing!” A livid Azureclad rushed off in pursuit.

Anger flashed through the traditionally dressed young man’s face when he saw Qing Ting take Lu Yun’s arm. Just like Azureclad had said, he did have certain thoughts about Qing Ting.

……

Coiling Dragon City’s marketplace was enormous. Located in the southern quadrant of the city, it occupied roughly one and a half million kilometers of land. Shops and storefronts abounded, all of the major trading companies in the realm had set up branches here.

However, the Immortal Pagoda and Haotian Tower hadn’t had a chance to establish one of their own yet.

Now that the monopoly over supplemental dao was lifted, previously elusive supplemental kings emerged from their residences and entered the world. Many trading companies hired them as guest elders.

Such dealings used to be forbidden, but the Supplemental Dao Alliance had no other choice after the Immortal Pagoda appeared. Their blockade was aimed at the Ten Valleys of Evil, yet the Immortal Pagoda was plainly backed by the ten valleys. With the pagoda’s success, there was no point in continuing to enforce the monopoly.

If only the Immortal Pagoda distributed supplemental dao products in the Hongmeng, all of the realm’s treasures and purple crystals would flow to the ten valleys in an unceasing stream. That would result in tremendous losses for the Immortal Region over time.

But now with the revitalization of supplemental dao in the realm and increasingly frequent appearances from supplemental grandmasters and kings, that bestowed more choice upon Hongmeng cultivators and restricted the Immortal Pagoda’s development.

The treasure that’d caught Qing Ting’s eye came from the hands of a supplemental king. She hauled Lu Yun along in her wake and flew like the wind to the marketplace, barreling toward the biggest building in the district.

It was magnificently grand and sat in the core area of the southern quadrant, occupying nearly a third of the neighborhood and was the clear mover and shaker.

Firmament Pavilion was one of the top ten trading companies in the Hongmeng, It did business in all corners of the realm, and it was rumored that even arcane beasts and ghosts transacted with them. It’d poured significant effort into the second largest city of Azure Dragon Region, which had resulted in it dominating the Coiling Dragon Market.

Of course, this also played into the rules between the realm’s trading companies. Since it was the largest player in Coiling Dragon City, its peers monopolized other major cities and shunted the Firmament Pavilion to the sidelines.

This was the store that Qing Ting entered with Lu Yun. It was made of thirty-three floors, each with its own space formation. A dazzling variety of wares filled its shelves; the further up one climbed, the more valuable the products.

King grade treasures began to appear on the tenth floor. Qing Ting’s footsteps showed no signs of stopping and she continued rushing upward.

Lu Yun took note of the pavilion’s treasures as they climbed. The ones here were refined in a different manner compared to the Haotian Tower and they were extraordinarily expensive. Many prices were several thousand or tens of thousands of times greater than the Immortal Pagoda and Haotian Tower.

But they had no shortage of customers.

King grade treasures available at the Immortal Pagoda came from Lu Yun’s supplemental grandmaster puppets. The same at Haotian Tower were random baubles that supplemental kings refined for practice. Their quality and quantity from both places were much lower than the Firmament Pavilion.

Hongmeng denizens were no fools. After some comparison, they were much more willing to spend more crystals for higher quality king grade treasures. After all, these treasures were life-saving at critical moments.

“Can it be that a supplemental king is also in residence at the pavilion? Well, that shouldn’t be a surprise since they’re ranked number seven among trading companies in the realm. They’re a mogul in the Hongmeng, so of course they’d have at least one supplemental king among their number.

“He probably didn’t dare show himself before the monopoly on supplemental dao was lifted.” Lu Yun came to a reasonable conclusion after momentary guesswork.

None of these king grade treasures showed signs of being recently refined—they had only been recently put on sale. Every single one of them was painstakingly crafted with scrupulous attention to every detail. The supplemental king of Firmament Pavilion was an extremely conscientious person.

His supplemental dao should be that of equipment dao; all of the treasures displayed were the product of at least a hundred million years of meticulous polishing.

“Stop!” When they reached the nineteenth floor, Lu Yun suddenly yanked Qing Ting back from charging up to the twentieth floor.

“What is it?” Qing Ting was highly flushed and incredibly excited—her beloved treasure was close at hand!

With a wave of his hand, Lu Yun summoned a flying sword sealed in purple crystal to his grasp. It was less than a meter long and sparkled with hazy light. When he infused his own force into it, the weapon rang with an imperceptible dragon croon.

“The dao rule within this sword is similar to the combat arts you practice. If you activate it, you’ll deploy force that’s double your current lethality,” he said to Qing Ting.

The sword was priced at a hundred premium crystal veins—the true price of a king grade flying sword.

“This gentleman has a keen eye!” A woman dressed in black quickly walked over with a flattering smile. “This sword is named Azuresky and its dao rule comes from a king grade evil dragon that one of our kings killed.

“Miss Qing Ting is the daughter of the Coiling Dragon city lord and possesses a dragon bloodline within her. If she refines this sword, not only will her strength increase to a new level, but so will her future cultivation greatly benefit from the addition.”

She plainly knew Qing Ting, but not Lu Yun. “This humble one is Heilin. Greetings to Your Highness Qing Ting and this gentleman.”

She bowed to the two guests. Although she didn’t think that they could afford the sword, Qing Ting was of noble status. As the overseer of the nineteenth floor, Heilin didn’t dare show less than perfect hospitality to the Coiling Dragon princess.

“The dao rule of an evil dragon?” Lu Yun paused, then continued with a chuckle. “The Firmament Pavilion is certainly bold! To use the dao rules of other creatures in your treasures! Aren’t you afraid of being attacked by the other cultivators of the realm?”

King grade treasures were labeled thus because of the dao rules they contained. However, they were conventionally derived from the supplemental kings themselves. If a king wanted to obtain a treasure tailored for their dao, they would split off a strand of their dao rules for the supplemental king to use.

Killing other kings and stripping their dao rules for use in refinement was strictly prohibited. This ban had been in place prior to the monopoly of supplemental dao. The Immortal Region, Supplemental Dao Alliance, Enforcer Alliance, Ten Valleys of Evil, Dragonhollow Mountain, and various heavyweights of the realm were in full agreement. It was a rule imprinted on the collective consciousness.

Even if someone nursed a blood feud with a king, they could only kill their enemy. The king’s dao rules had to be permitted to disperse into the Hongmeng.

If someone started this unsavory practice, it would inevitably lead to imitation and the hunting of low level kings for use in treasure refinement. The Hongmeng would dissolve into utter chaos.

Thus, Lu Yun was quite taken aback to hear that this sword was refined from a dao rule taken from a king.

“If I may, sir,” Heilin smiled. “The evil dragon was a first step dragon king and slaughtered untold innocents in its rise. After it massacred tens of thousands of cities on the realm’s frontier and devoured countless lives, it was listed on the Enforcer Alliance’s Bounty Ranking.

“When one of our kings slew the evildoer, one of the alliance’s kings personally stripped the carcass of its dao rule and gifted it to the Firmament Pavilion.”