Molting the Mortal Coil

Sage was here to do two things. First, find a way to recover his missing hand. Second, appraise the unknown items in his storage ring. He’d been told that the Thousand Treasure was always above board and fair in their dealings. They would never steal from a customer or cheat them in any way. They were fair and honest and so big that other treasure dealers had a hard time competing. To make things even worse, if a skilled treasure dealer appeared, Thousand Treasure would simply hire them! Those little mom and pop operations can’t deal with a worldwide mega-mart.

Since they were everywhere they could take the common treasures of one region then distribute them to other regions where they were extremely rare and make a huge profit. Sage was guessing their true ability was just transportation of goods. If you could move things really far easily, then opening such a huge store would be very lucrative. Merchants always bought low in one place and sold high somewhere else. Someone that could rapidly bring goods from one place to another would make a killing.

Heading inside, Sage found the place to be spectacular. A huge open showroom, nearly thirty feet tall and hundreds of feet long and wide like a warehouse… yet it was only the first floor! There was a huge staircase in the middle of the room that went up to a second level. Even more amazing was that from the outside this building had looked like it was hundreds of feet tall as well. Asking for help, he learned that the Thousand Treasures always had five levels.

This first was for low level resources and Mortal Treasures. The second level house Magic Treasures and upper level resources. The third was by invite only and customers were served in private rooms and could have access to the most rare and unique items. The fourth level are offices and storerooms, while the final fifth level is always the auction house itself! Each Thousand Treasures location is different in their layout but the five levels are always the same. They aren’t always stacked up like floors or even in the same building, but every location always has all five levels with the same purposes. Good franchising, don’t mess up the system!

Browsing the store was easier said than done and Sage would have spent hours just looking up everything he saw in his books. Luckily, Thousand Treasures had accounted for this and each and every item had a small name card that displayed the name of the item, the price, and a short description of its purposes. They were also conveniently sorted by different types of items. Aisles of ores, cloth, refined metals, herbs, pills, the list went on and on. You could buy the base materials or the finished products here, everything was for sale. Sage was astounded by the sheer volume of goods.

Walking around he also noticed many empty places on the shelves and realized that an empty spot meant they were out of stock. Every shelf was actually a series of glass doors, with one item being behind each door. Shopping was simply writing a list and bringing it to the counters. Clerks would retrieve all the items from the fourth level and package them nicely for the customer. Sage noticed that anytime someone opened a glass door to inspect an item they would come under the scrutiny of the security forces. Not a bad system, sort of like dressing rooms. Just let people look around, but if they want to try it on you monitor them closely.

Sage initially thought he might find a few interesting treasures while looking for something to regrow his hand. The problem was the place was just too large, he felt like he’d spend days in here just walking around, let alone researching every item. Giving up, he just decided to browse casually. Only reading the details on items that caught his eye, and just wandering around otherwise. After about an hour he realized that everything he was interested in were out of his price range. Having never had so much gold at hand and even spirit stones available, he thought he was a rich man. Seeing the prices on items, he realized the ten thousand gold he had was basically nothing in here. He actually noticed a few of the materials he had in his ring going for prices in the tens of thousands of gold. Worse yet, he saw that the more expensive items had spirit stone prices on them and the ratio was at least ten thousand to one. The more expensive items didn’t even have gold prices on them, and had to be purchased exclusively through spirit stones.

Sage had really no idea what exactly he needed at this point so he chose not to start purchasing things aimlessly. Instead he went over to the sales counter and aimed to get his unknown items appraised. After waiting in a short line, Sage was led into one of a dozen private rooms. The appraiser within gave him a smile, “Good afternoon! How may I help you, Sir?”

Smiling, Sage brought out the couple dozen items that he had been unable to identify from within his storage ring. He chose to trust in the reputation of Thousand Treasures and allow them to see what he carried. Everyone had 100% faith in the safety, privacy, and security of Thousand Treasures so Sage decided to trust them. He also assumed that nothing he was carrying was that spectacular and so he should be fine exposing them to the appraiser. With the pile revealed, the appraiser laughed, “There’s no fee for appraisals on items you’re selling to us, nor for the first ten items per day. With this many…” he paused a moment to do a rough count, “I can appraise it all for a single Spirit Stone. I hope you can understand, Sir. Please forgive, it’s our policy to keep appraisers from being tied up all day.”

Agreeing to the price, Sage watched the appraiser carefully and listened intently to the descriptions of the items. The large part of the strange tools were actually all related to one of the Professions that he overlooked, Astrologer. The tools were used to measure the stars and planets, then they compare it to some tables and charts and this supposedly let them see the future. There was also a couple more tools that were profession related. The Feather Spade was a small delicate looking shovel that could preserve the state of Spirit Plants allowing them to be safely harvested. Another was the Prospecting Pendulum, which one held over special plates with arrays on them. The swinging of the pendulum could roughly measure the concentration of nearby minerals. So, with a plate attuned to Blue Iron, the pendulum could be checked to determine how much was around. Time consuming, but very useful.

The last mysterious tool was not related to a specific profession and instead a useful tool for everyone. The Bagua Compass would gently spin, the speed of which showing the concentration of qi in the area. At the same time it could also stop, the arrow pointing towards unusual qi related phenomenon. It could test qi density and help hunt for unusual places. It wasn’t of that much use to most cultivators, since they could sense these things with their qi perception. It was mostly for normal people, lower level cultivators, or most usually for use in special circumstances. Usually cultivators can sense when a lower ranked cultivator scans them with their spiritual perception so the Bagua Compass could be used while trying to keep their presence hidden.

The many crystals that seemed strangely fused to metals were actually called Gemsteels. They were a category of material that formed into crystalline shapes but when exposed to certain acids they would behave like metal. A quick dip would allow it to be worked like metal while a longer soak would bring it to a molten state. The puddle of purple liquid in a box actually turned out to be Violet Vitriol, which just happened to be one of the acids that could be used to work Gemsteel. The combination certainly made sense, Sage just hadn’t run across them in his quick browse through the materials guides he had.

The glowing orbs turned out to be the most interesting as he was told they were called Memory Spheres. If a cultivator sends his qi and spiritual sense inside it would directly transfer images into their mind. They could be messages, visual recordings, or even technique manuals. It was no wonder that Sage had found nearly two dozen of them, and they were such a basic item that they weren’t even mentioned in the manuals he got. Sage already thought they could be amazingly useful, but when he learned how much they cost he realized why they weren’t more common. A Memory Sphere required a large altar to record their messages, that was even more expensive to own and operate. A blank Memory Sphere cost about a hundred spirit stones, while the altar was thousands. He was told the big sects used them for everything and they were extremely common within those circles. To everyone else though, they were rare and expensive luxuries, used only to distribute recordings of spectacular events or to pass down their core legacies.