Dominator Emperor

The auctioneer was so insistent because the appraisers from Chenggu Pavilion believed it had once sealed an incredible Ancient Medicine. Unfortunately, due to poor preservation, it had completely rotted away.

"The bidding starts at three hundred Prince’s Essence Jades." The auctioneer raised his gavel. After the first call, no one bid. After the second, there was still no one.

"It’s nothing but dregs now. It’s not worth three hundred Prince’s Essence Jades at all," a Pharmacist said, shaking his head. While three hundred Prince’s Essence Jades wasn’t an astronomical sum for the buyers present, spending it on a lump of mud was a terrible deal.

"Three hundred Prince’s Essence Jades, going for the third time!" the auctioneer boomed, preparing for the final strike of the gavel.

"Three hundred Prince’s Essence Jades. I’ll take it," Li Qiye said at the last possible moment.

Many people turned to stare at Li Qiye. Spending three hundred Prince’s Essence Jades on a lump of rotten mud was the act of someone with more money than sense. Someone shook their head and remarked, "That kid really has some nerve."

"Three hundred Prince’s Essence Jades! Are there any other bids?" the auctioneer called out. However, the buyers present had absolutely no interest in the lump of rotten mud. In the end, Li Qiye won it for three hundred Prince’s Essence Jades.

After Li Qiye received the lump of rotten mud, Sima Longyun sneered disdainfully. "Fine. Buy a lump of rotten mud and take it home. At least it proves you’ve been out and seen the world, that you’ve attended a grave auction. Three hundred Prince’s Essence Jades for a moment of vanity... I suppose for a poor country bumpkin, that’s a worthwhile trade."

Li Qiye had intended to simply put the item away, but Sima Longyun just had to provoke him. He chuckled and shot Sima Longyun a look. "What would an idiot like you know about Ancient Medicine? Only an idiot like you would spend ten million on a jar of useless beans!"

The moment his humiliating purchase was mentioned, Sima Longyun’s face turned livid. He finally retorted coldly, "Ten million. I, this young master, was happy to spend it. At least it’s better than some pauper spending a mere three hundred Essence Jades on a lump of rotten mud just to save face."

"Rotten mud?" Li Qiye glanced leisurely at Sima Longyun and smiled. "Only an imbecile would think this is rotten mud. Allow me to show a certain imbecile what true Ancient Medicine looks like!" With that, he broke apart the lump, which was held together by decomposing sludge.

As the lump of mud crumbled, a stream of Rotting Nether Beans tumbled out. Each bean was plump and large, its dark, sauce-like color tinged with a faint, pale gold. The moment they appeared, a fragrant, sandalwood-like medicinal aroma filled the air, invigorating the senses and making everyone who smelled it feel utterly refreshed.

"Rotting Nether Beans!" The buyers in the crowd were stunned to see the beans roll out. An Elder Pharmacist was visibly shaken and cried out involuntarily, "Those are Top-Grade Rotting Nether Beans! The color is already transitioning to gold! A single bean of this quality would fetch tens of thousands of Prince’s Essence Jades on the open market! This is the absolute peak of quality!"

"A million-year-old Top-Grade Rotting Nether Bean!" Even one of Chenggu Pavilion’s own Ancient Medicine Appraisers couldn’t remain seated. He shot up and came forward, staring in a daze as Li Qiye filled an entire jar with the Rotting Nether Beans.

This time, every buyer present was moved. A Pharmacist murmured, "How is this possible? With that level of decay, any other Ancient Medicine would have turned to dust. Yet not only did these Rotting Nether Beans survive, their medicinal properties have become even purer! Could the Legendary Pharmacist have done this on purpose during the burial?"

"I should have bid! A full jar like that is probably worth millions of Prince’s Essence Jades on the market! Top-Grade Rotting Nether Beans like these are always in high demand." A wealthy Ancient Saint couldn’t help but stamp his foot in regret.

Seeing the jar full of Top-Grade Rotting Nether Beans made Chi Xiaodao’s heart pound with excitement. He was in desperate need of them, and to think Li Qiye had obtained a whole jar of the highest quality for such an absurdly low price... It was simply unbelievable.

Chi Xiaodie also found it unbelievable. She stared at Li Qiye, no longer thinking it was a mere lucky coincidence. The "Little Ghost" she had once dismissed as a swindler was becoming more and more unfathomable, more mysterious by the second.

"Brother Dao, what is the principle behind this?" The Ancient Medicine Appraiser from Chenggu Pavilion hurried forward and bowed respectfully to Li Qiye. He had thought it impossible, but the Ancient Box had completely rotted away while the Rotting Nether Beans had only become more exceptional! There had to be a medicinal principle at work that outsiders were not privy to.

"It’s just another bit of common knowledge. A pity I can’t share it with you," Li Qiye said with a smile.

The Appraiser could only let out a soft sigh. It was perfectly normal for someone to keep such a secret. He bowed respectfully once more and didn’t press the matter.

"So? How does the ’rotten mud’ I bought for three hundred Essence Jades compare to the useless beans you bought for ten million?" Li Qiye shot Sima Longyun a look and asked leisurely.

When others provoked him, he would slap them back without the slightest hesitation, showing them absolutely no mercy.

Sima Longyun’s expression turned utterly livid. Today, he had stumbled badly, not once, but twice. First, he’d paid an exorbitant price for useless beans. Then, when he tried to mock Li Qiye for buying "rotten mud," he’d been viciously slapped in the face by the outcome.

"Alright, our next item is another jar of difficult-to-appraise Ancient Medicine! The bidding starts at seven hundred True Master Essence Jades." The auctioneer presented another piece of Ancient Medicine that even Chenggu Pavilion had struggled to identify.

For some unknown reason, the Ancient Medicine in this jar had dissolved into a liquid, making it impossible to identify.

"I’ll bid one thousand," an Elder Pharmacist called out the moment the auctioneer finished speaking.

"One thousand five hundred," another Ancient Saint immediately countered.

"Two thousand!" In an instant, numerous bidders began shouting their offers, practically tripping over each other to bid.

............

Thanks to Li Qiye, a frenzy had begun. He had found an incredible treasure for the lowest possible price—turning three hundred Essence Jades into Top-Grade Rotting Nether Beans worth millions. This ignited a fervent interest among the buyers for the unidentifiable Ancient Medicines from Chenggu Pavilion. They all dreamed of getting lucky like Li Qiye and finding their own hidden treasure.

In the end, all the unappraised Ancient Medicines were sold, and for rather good prices at that. Unfortunately, the treasure-hunting buyers’ judgment was a far cry from Li Qiye’s, and none of them made any significant finds. As for the results, the buyers had no complaints. They had willingly taken the gamble and now had to accept their losses.

"Open the coffin! Hurry up and open it! Let’s see if there’s any top-tier Ancient Medicine inside!" Once everything from the tomb had been auctioned off, the buyers could no longer contain their excitement and began to shout clamorously.

One buyer exclaimed excitedly, "That’s right! Open the coffin! For a Legendary Pharmacist, it’s unbelievable that we haven’t found a single Medicine King or Seven-Change Soul Grass yet!"

Spiritual Elixirs and Herbs more than three million years old were known as Medicine Kings. Of course, Medicine Kings were exceedingly rare; countless Pharmacists spent their entire lives without ever seeing a true one.

"Fine, open the coffin!" Finally, swept up in the crowd’s fervor, Chenggu Pavilion decided to proceed.

As the Ancient Coffin was opened, all eyes were fixed upon it. Every buyer in the room held their breath, eager to see what lay inside.

After all, when any great figure approached death, they would always choose to be buried with the most precious and valuable treasures they had accumulated in life.

Everyone held their breath, wondering what this Legendary Pharmacist had taken to the grave. A Furnace God? Immortal Pills? More Ancient Medicine? Or perhaps even Medicine Dao Secret Manuals?

CREAK— With a long groan, the Ancient Coffin was finally opened. Inside lay a skeleton. It was small and frail, suggesting its owner had been a slight old man in life. Furthermore, the skeleton was hunched over, as if the man had died curled into a ball, a far cry from what one would expect of a grand burial.

What was chilling to see was that the entire skeleton was pitch-black, as if the person had died from poison. Inside the Ancient Coffin, besides the blackened, frail skeleton, there was only one other object: a three-foot-long item that resembled a ruler.

This ruler-like object, over three feet long and about a palm’s width, was made of wood. The entire thing was a deep, inky black with a clear grain, but no one could tell what kind of wood it was.

The skeleton’s right hand was clamped tightly around the three-foot-long, ink-black ruler, as if it were an object of immense importance.

However, upon seeing the small, blackened corpse and that the only burial offering was a simple ruler, the buyers couldn’t hide their immense disappointment.

"It seems this Legendary Pharmacist left his treasures to his descendants. There are no peerless artifacts buried with him," a buyer said, disappointed by the contents of the coffin.

"This Pharmacist may have died by accident," an Elder Pharmacist speculated upon seeing the blackened bones. "His entire skeleton is black. It’s possible he died while refining a potent, dangerous medicine and suffered a backlash from its properties."

An Ancient Saint, after carefully observing the ancient corpse, nodded in agreement. "That is indeed a possibility. For a Legendary Pharmacist, these bones possess not a shred of Divinity. An unnatural death is the only good explanation."

The Divinity of bones was something only true experts possessed. Generally, one had to be a great figure at the Saint Venerable or Saint Emperor Level to have it. For instance, if a Saint Emperor were to die, even if their corpse decomposed, some parts would never rot away—a finger bone, the Forehead Bone, an eyeball, and so on. These incorruptible parts signified the most powerful areas of their body in life!

Such bones, imbued with Divinity, could still fetch an extremely high price. A finger bone from a Saint Emperor, for example, if refined into a treasure, would possess a power that could not be underestimated.

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