Shen Cui is up, I can hear her preparing a bath. I blink, I've slept for a lot more time than usual. I've got about one hour until I need to go to the academy. Gonna need to be careful and keep track of time when using dream path gu to explore dream realms in the future. I spend about half an hour cultivating until Shen Cui is done preparing the bath. Hopefully I'll have a nice surplus of primeval stones to use in cultivation once I sell some medicinal pastes to the Hu clan caravan.
After getting bathed and dressed I head on over to the courtyard, today is another day of martial arts. We spend half an hour practicing dodges, kicks and punches. The other half hour is spent sparring. The other students are paired with each-other, meanwhile my sparring partner is the martial arts instructor himself.
After the first tournament I haven't been paired with any of the other students in any spars thus far. Unlike the original Fang Yuan I am not a super-skilled five hundred year old demon, I am instead an absurdly strong teenager. Regardless of how skilled they would get, I would still win regardless of either their skill or my own skill with sheer brute force.
The other students are doing heavy spars, using all their strength in their blows. The instructor and I are doing very light spars instead. The instructor lunges with a karate punch aimed at my torso. I lean to the left and throw a straight right right next to his head. The instructor shakes his head. "Wrong. Synchronize your attacks with your footwork. The strength of your punches does not come from your arm, it comes from you pushing off of the ground with your feet. Let's try again."
We reset and re-do the exchange. He comes at me with a karate punch, I take a step forward while leaning to dodge. I move my elbow towards his neck during the movement, ending up with it almost touching his neck. The instructor nods. "That is good. Striking with the weight of your entire body is much more effective than merely using your arms and legs! Take care however because this will also leave you more exposed to a counterattack!"
We reset and continue sparring in this manner. We do a free exchange, the instructor then provides input on my response and we reset before re-doing the exchange with a better response. Thankfully it seems that focusing on the spars has served to lessen the yapping of the instructor, something that everyone in the class is grateful for.
—
Bells chime as I enter the shop. Looking above reveals that Cui Wen has installed bells right above the door. The shop looks much better after it got a cleanup, the furniture however still looks like it got mauled by an angry bear. There's no one in the shopping area at this moment, so I go to the storage room.
Inside is Cui Wen, along with two new people. The first is a young black haired man. He looks about twenty years old and is pretty fit, hopefully he's a hard worker as well. The second new person is a young woman. She is somewhat pretty, in that girl next door kind of way. She looks to be about twenty years old, same as the man. They look pretty similar to each other, so it's not out of the question for them to be related.
They're helping Cui Wen pack medicinal pastes. I look at Cui Wen. "How many pastes have you made by now?"
Cui Wen looks back at the piled boxes of medicinal paste. "Five hundred and eleven by now. We'll be able to make many more today, since yesterday we hadn't had much time to actually make the things"
That should hopefully get me enough primeval stones in case they have anything interesting to sell. I give Cui Wen a nod. "I'll go and negotiate with the caravan for this batch. Is there anything I need to know?"
Cui Wen throws a finished box of paste perfectly on top of a pile of paste boxes. "Yeah. If ya are confident that they'll like your product then you can sell it to them cheaper for the first time, since they'll come back to buy more tomorrow, ya can fleece them then instead. If ya're not sure whether they'll like it or not then fleece them as much as possible now."
That makes sense. The medicinal paste itself is both antimicrobial, thanks to the honey, and a potentish painkiller, thanks to the opium, so I'm fairly confident in its quality. Most of the medicinal paste being sold in the market is usually just ground up herbs. With nothing else to say to them I grab a box of medicinal paste and then leave for the market.
The caravan has set up in tents, where they are displaying and selling their stock. They are mostly selling rank 1 gu and rank 1 refinement materials. A very small amount of rank 2 refinement materials are being sold and an even lesser amount of rank 2 gu is on sale. The gu are stored in glass jars sitting atop wooden stands. with a piece of paper holding details about the gu stapled on the wooden stand. I browse their stock, to see if there's anything interesting.
Most of the gu are common offense and defense gu, like the:
Rank 1 rock fist gu : Temporarily makes a gu masters fist as tough as a rock for a minute. Allowing them to punch much harder. Eats any form of rock.
Rank 1 rock arm gu : Temporarily makes a gu masters forearm as tough as a rock for a minute, improving both defense and offense. Eats any form of rock.
Rank 1 rock shin gu : Temporarily makes a gu masters shin as tough as a rock for a minute, improving both defense and offense. Eats any form of rock.
Rank 1 cockroach skin gu : Temporarily turns a gu masters skin into tough insect chitin. Eats cockroaches.
Some of the gu are utility type gu, such as the:
Rank 1 flame gu : makes a small flame, allowing the gu master to light things on fire.
Rank 1 clay pot gu : has an internal storage of 1x1x1m3, allowing a gu master to easily carry things.
There is only a single movement type gu, the rank 1 leap gu. It supposedly improves a gu masters leap, allowing them to cross larger distances when jumping.
The rock fist gu and the rock shin gu are pretty good for me. They are priced at fifty primeval stones each, so they are not that expensive. They are also really easy to feed, which is another plus. The flame gu and the clay pot gu have also attracted my attention. The leap gu is inferior to my bloodstep gu, so I don't really care about it.
I ask the clerk, a rank 1 D-rank gu master, about them. "Can you tell me more about the flame gu and the clay pot gu? I want to know what their food is in particular."
The clerk nervously rubs the back of his head. "The flame gu needs to be fed fifty grams of tinder every week. The clay pot gu eats forty grams of green clay every three days."
Fifty grams of tinder a week? That means that going out and using it for a month would mean packing two hundred grams of tinder for a regular gu master, for me that's more than half a kilogram of tinder, at that point it's just better to carry a flint and steel. The clay pot is even worse, since green clay is not even native to our region. That explains why they didn't list their food, since no one would buy them if they were aware of those facts before the sale happened.
I shake my head. "Thanks for the answer. Who should I speak to in order to sell medicine in bulk?"
The clerk points at a neighboring tent. "The elder in charge of accounting is in that tent. They are the one in charge of medicine acquisition."
I give the clerk a nod. "Thanks."
Heading over to said tent reveals a troubled middle aged man surrounded by what I assume are servants looking through what I assume is the caravan's accounting. I cough to attract his attention. "Esteemed elder, this junior is here to-"
The elders eye twitches. "Quit it with the asslicking. Be quick."
I shrug and hand him the box of medicinal paste that I've got on me. "I've got medicine to sell in bulk."
The elder takes the box and hands it to a servant next to him. "The clan member in charge of medicine will appraise it's worth. How many of these have you got? "
Clan member, not elder. That means that they don't have many rank 3 gu masters. "I've got over five hundred boxes prepared. How long will it take for you to finish appraising them?"
The elder goes back to concentrating on the clan's accounting. "Half an hour at most. You can either wait here or come back later."
I give the elder a nod, leave to browse and see if there's anything interesting and come back after half an hour has passed. I find the elder somewhat more agitated than before. He is leaning on the table and staring thoughtfully at a piece of paper with calculations hastily scribbled on it. He gives me a look when I enter his tent. "We can purchase your stock at a quarter of a primeval stone per box."
I give him a nod. "I agree, I assume you will make the payment on delivery?"
His eyes go back to staring at that piece of paper. "I will hand it over to you personally after the delivery."
I give him a bow. "Junior th-"
He waves me away. "Fuck off."