Dual Realm Exchange System

The transition ended almost instantly.

One moment, Damian stood inside his bedroom in Rosewood Town with Stella and Ronan cultivating in the neighboring chamber.

The next, his surroundings had been replaced by polished stone walls, formation markings and the familiar furnishing of his private Guest Elder cultivation chamber within the Evergreen Sect.

Damian remained still for several seconds as Spiritual Energy flowed around him.

Compared to the almost overeager mana of Valoria, Shengyuan’s Spiritual Energy retained that familiar resistance he had come to associate with the cultivation world.

It filled the chamber in dense currents drawn upward from the minor spirit vein beneath his residence, yet even here, the energy possessed the same restrained, almost suspicious nature he had previously compared to a wary cat.

Damian breathed deeply.

After spending the last several days surrounded by Valorian mana, the difference was even more obvious.

Strangely enough, he had missed it.

His meridians responded almost instinctively, and the <Five Elements Harmonization Art> stirred within him as though reminding its owner that Body Tempering Level 4 was hardly the end of the road.

For a dangerous moment, Damian genuinely considered sitting down.

Just one circulation cycle, maybe two.

With <Cultivation Prodigy>, <Heaven-Devouring Circulation>, his absurdly high ambient-energy advantage and everything he had learned recently, cultivation had become almost addictive.

Every breakthrough made his body stronger, improved his Attributes and pushed him toward increasingly ridiculous possibilities.

Unfortunately, he had actual work to do.

Damian clicked his tongue and forcibly suppressed the impulse.

"Later."

The Spiritual Energy would still be here when he finished.

He left the cultivation chamber and passed through his Guest Elder residence, expecting to find some obvious sign that several days had passed during his absence.

Instead, the Evergreen Sect looked remarkably normal.

Outer and Inner Disciples moved along familiar paths, servants carried supplies between courtyards, and spiritual cranes crossed the sky overhead while cultivators traveled between halls, training grounds and mission offices.

Damian rubbed his chin.

Then again, he had only been gone for two or three days.

It was hardly enough time for the entire Evergreen Sect to collapse into flaming ruins merely because its newest Guest Elder had gone missing.

There was noticeably more activity than before, however.

More disciples crossed the paths in groups, and Damian spotted several carts transporting medicinal supplies toward the deeper regions of the Evergreen Sect.

The atmosphere felt busier without necessarily being tense, suggesting that the ongoing war had continued generating work without producing another catastrophe during his absence.

Good enough.

Damian turned toward the public district and his commercial tower came into view soon afterward.

He had expected noise from cultivators bargaining on the lower floors, and perhaps even a small queue after word spread about the bizarre foreign medicines being sold through the Evergreen Sect’s newest Guest Elder.

Instead, the building looked almost deserted.

Damian slowed.

"Hm?"

Only a handful of people stood near the entrance and nobody appeared to be shopping.

His expression immediately darkened.

Don’t tell me the goods had failed to sell?

That possibility seemed ridiculous after the reactions his Vials of Healing, Restoration and Vigor had received, but markets were markets.

Something could be incredibly useful and still fail commercially because of bad pricing, poor distribution or limited customer awareness.

Damian entered and immediately noticed that the first floor was empty, and more importantly, the shelves were empty too!

Damian stared with furrowed brows.

The potion sections had been completely cleared.

The counters were clean, the shelves bare, and even the display area prepared for some of his miscellaneous stock contained practically nothing.

His first thought was not optimistic.

"Did someone rob me?"

Damian immediately headed upstairs.

He reached the upper cultivation and administrative area shortly afterward and found Jian Rui, Bo Wen, Lin Meiyu and Shen Lian sitting in meditation.

The four were cultivating quietly enough that Damian considered leaving them undisturbed for several seconds.

Then Jian Rui’s eyes opened, and the young sword cultivator froze.

His expression changed so quickly that Damian almost laughed.

"Lord Damian!"

The other three reacted immediately.

Bo Wen practically launched himself upright while Lin Meiyu and Shen Lian abandoned their cultivation with considerably more dignity.

"Lord Damian, you have finally returned!" Bo Wen greeted excitedly.

Damian raised one hand with amusement. "I’m alive, relax."

Their relief was obvious.

Damian walked toward the main seat and sat down before looking toward Jian Rui.

"Give me an account of what happened while I was away, starting with why the entire commercial tower downstairs looks like someone robbed it."

Jian Rui blinked in surprise, then smiled.

"Lord Damian, there was no robbery. Your goods sold out as early as yesterday."

Damian paused at that. "All of them?"

"All goods designated for public sale," Jian Rui confirmed proudly.

"The first day attracted many curious cultivators, but after several buyers personally confirmed the effects, demand increased greatly. By yesterday afternoon, there was nothing left to sell." Jian Rui added with a wry smile.

Damian leaned back in his seat.

Well, that was much better then.

Jian Rui retrieved a storage bag and approached respectfully.

"The earnings have been recorded according to product, quantity and transaction. After accounting for the agreed prices, the total sales amounted to eight thousand seven hundred and forty-two Low-Grade Spirit Stones."

Damian’s eyebrows rose.

That number was not insignificant.

Even with his rapidly collapsing sense of monetary scale, several thousand Low-Grade Spirit Stones remained a substantial fortune for ordinary Body Tempering cultivators and even many Qi Condensation cultivators.

Jian Rui placed the storage bag on the table.

Damian briefly inspected it with his spiritual perception before nodding, noting that Spirit Stones filled most of the internal space.

Rather than immediately pocketing them, Damian took only several dozen, as he merely wanted samples.

After his recent discoveries regarding Mana Crystals and Valorian ambient mana, taking genuine Shengyuan Spirit Stones back to Valoria for direct testing had become considerably more interesting than simply hoarding them.

Then another thought struck him.

"What about the Mana Crystals I left here?"

Jian Rui appeared slightly puzzled by the sudden question.

"They remain exactly where you stored them. Nobody has touched them."

"Bring all of them to me." Damian commanded seriously.

Jian Rui hesitated for only a moment before obeying.

He disappeared downstairs and returned several minutes later carrying another storage bag.

Damian accepted it immediately and felt a wave of relief, though the weight inside his mind was metaphorical rather than physical.

Those Mana Crystals had felt like valuable reserve stock before.

Now?

After discovering that ordinary Valorian mana density could rival expensive Shengyuan cultivation environments and that Mana Crystals themselves could potentially serve as cultivation accelerators, leaving them sitting inside the Evergreen Sect suddenly felt like storing barrels of gasoline beside a man playing with matches!

They were hot potatoes, very expensive hot potatoes!

Damian secured the storage bag in the system space right away.

With that settled, he pulled the Evergreen Sect exchange ledger toward himself.

"I’ll be placing another order today. Jian Rui, contact Mu Qingyao and let her know I have a new shipment available for the Evergreen Sect."

Jian Rui immediately rose.

"Yes, Lord Damian."

He left the commercial tower.

Damian opened the ledger.

The others remained nearby while he began searching through the higher-tier resources.

He did not need long.

There it was.

[Condensing Essence Pill — 100 Contribution Points per bottle.]

One bottle only contained one pill.

Damian’s eyes narrowed.

The price increase compared to Qi Nourishing Pills was obvious.

However, it also made sense.

Body Tempering cultivators were everywhere.

They made up outer disciples, younger clan members, common wandering cultivators and the broad base of the cultivation world.

Qi Condensation was different.

Within the Azure Water Sector, reaching Qi Condensation meant becoming someone.

Depending on seniority, background and minor realm, Qi Condensation cultivators could become Deacons or Elders inside organizations like the Evergreen Sect.

They formed the actual backbone of regional powers.

Foundation Establishment cultivators deterred enemy factions and determined whether a major force survived.

Qi Condensation cultivators were the people who actually kept that force running.

Naturally, resources capable of advancing them would never be priced like candy.

Even if producing a Condensing Essence Pill became extremely easy for some powerful alchemist, market control alone would prevent it from becoming cheap.

Why flood the market with something that directly strengthened the very people who might eventually compete with you?

Damian tapped the ledger thoughtfully.

That brought him back to an idea which had gradually been becoming more attractive.

Alchemy.

More accurately, the entire cultivation production chain.

Damian had the <Skill Upgrade System> and <One Proof, Eternal Proof>.

Training a profession normally required years of study, practice and wasted resources.

Damian could potentially learn the foundational Skill, accelerate mastery through repeated work and then use Skill Points whenever efficiency justified the expense.

And alchemy did not begin at the furnace, but in the soil with Spirit Planting and Herb processing.

Then the other great cultivation crafts followed naturally, Artifact Refining, Talisman Crafting, and Array Making.

Damian had already purchased the Potion of Growth in Valoria precisely because he wanted to explore that direction.

If an herb normally needed one hundred years to mature, but a combination of Valorian plant-growth magic, magical fertilizers, cultivation formations and growth potions reduced that cycle to months—or even weeks—the consequences would become absurd.

There was also cross-realm cultivation to consider.

Shengyuan medicinal plants evolved while absorbing the more resistant, inward-focused Spiritual Energy of this world.

What happened if those exact plants were cultivated under Valoria’s abundant and cooperative mana instead?

Would they die? Grow faster? Become stronger? Or even acquire completely different medicinal properties?

Damian smiled faintly.

That experiment alone could become an entire industry.

He returned his attention to the ledger.

The Condensing Essence Pill was only the beginning.

[Essence Surge Pill — 300 Contribution Points per pill.]

Its function was straightforward enough as it was the Qi Condensation equivalent of the Qi Acceleration Pill.

It improved cultivation efficiency for cultivators operating within that realm.

Damian immediately marked it.

Then came another familiar concept.

[Essence Purifying Pill — 1,000 Contribution Points per pill.]

Damian winced at the price tag of a thousand.

The Essence Purifying Pill served a role comparable to the Marrow Cleansing Pill, cleaning accumulated impurities, medicinal residue and problems within a Qi Condensation foundation.

That price alone told him how precious proper foundation maintenance became at higher realms.

Damian added it to the shortlist and continued searching.

There were pills for stabilizing fresh breakthroughs, pills supporting element-specific cultivation, medicines for recovering Qi, and even resources for damaged meridians and internal injuries.

Several immediately appeared commercially interesting, while others were too specialized to justify purchasing before he tested the basic progression line.

Unfortunately, Damian found nothing at Foundation Establishment.

Apparently, resources at that level were either controlled directly by the Evergreen Sect leadership or were sufficiently rare that putting them into an ordinary Contribution Point catalogue would have been ridiculous.

Damian sighed.

"Poor Ronan."

The veteran had finally attached himself to someone capable of producing impossible progression resources, only to discover that Damian’s current supply chain still stopped one entire tier beneath him.

Anyway, that fellow would survive, probably with a lot of alcohol.

Hmmm, maybe buy him some spiritual wine to drink?

Damian moved into the manual section and this was where things became more interesting.

He marked a foundational Spirit Planting manual, then an introductory Alchemy inheritance.

He also planned to get an Artifact Refining manual, a Talisman Crafting foundation manual, and finally, an Array Formation primer.

None were advanced inheritances, but Damian did not need those.

The <Skill Upgrade System> made foundational access considerably more valuable to him than it would be for another person.

Once the relevant Skills and Specializations existed within his system, he could build upward and even Limit Break.

Damian leaned back while mentally organizing the plan.

First test the new Valorian products.

Then acquire the Condensing Essence Pill and Essence Surge Pill for Journeyman progression testing.

Acquire enough manuals to establish the four major production arts alongside Spirit Planting.

After that, determine whether Potion of Growth and Valorian plant magic could compress medicinal-herb growth cycles.

If even half of those experiments worked, buying pills from the Evergreen Sect might eventually become unnecessary.

Damian’s fingers tapped slowly against the ledger, finding that he liked that possibility immensely.

Buying resources created dependency whereas producing resources created power.

He had just reached the section containing several unusual seed varieties when Shen Lian looked toward the staircase.

"Lord Damian, we have visitors."

Damian paused, sensing that more than one set of footsteps were approaching.

The people climbing the commercial tower moved with the confidence of individuals who knew perfectly well that nobody present would stop them.

Bo Wen’s expression became strange, Lin Meiyu straightened, and Damian slowly closed the ledger.

Interesting.

He had only been back in the Evergreen Sect for a short while, yet apparently news of his return had already traveled faster than Jian Rui.

Damian rested one arm against the master seat and looked toward the entrance.

Soon, several rather interesting guests appeared at the top of the stairs.

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