When wen Zhu heard about Cao Yun's sale, he was annoyed but it was within his expectations.
"He probably refined a ten-batch, that's the most classic recipe in the 'Four Seasons Cycle Classic'. Let him continue his small business, even if he does sell everything, he won't have enough to buy the pill he wants. But just in case, make sure that no one in the market accepts to sell him any ingredient.
The members of his sect are outside for now, so he won't be able to buy ingredients from somewhere else. And he won't even be able to ask for their help."
-
The next day, the same plump little man came by Cao Yun's small shop.
"Junior, your pill really was as effective as a Perfect grade is supposed to be. You still sell at 10 points, right?"
"Yes, dear customer, 4 Perfect Low-Level Qi Gathering Pills, 10 points each."
"Good, good. I'll buy one more for me and another one for a friend." The little man got ready writing a contract with the right amount of points. "By the way, Junior, how long should I wait before taking the other pill?"
"The safest would be to wait two weeks, but given its grade, ten days should be enough for your body to eliminate all toxins."
"Thank you, Junior."
The inner disciple took the two pills and gave the paper to Cao Yun.
-
The next day, no one visited Cao Yun. He waited almost all afternoon and wasted some precious time. But two days later, another inner disciple got interested in his shop. She was a mature woman walking with an umbrella.
"I heard from a friend that your pills are of good quality. Do you only have two left?"
"Dear customer, I'm selling the last items of my first batch today, but once I'm done, I'll have another batch ready."
"Fine. Then I'll take these two pills first. I'll be back tomorrow."
-
The news of Cao Yun selling another batch rapidly reached Wen Zhu's ears. Although he was prepared for it, he still got a bit uneasy. At first he thought that Cao Yun would not sell as fast. He just got lucky and met with two inner disciples. Wen Zhu tried to comfort himself. But if word got out about Cao Yun's pills, he would sell them even faster, but more importantly, it would hurt the sales of the Dragon's Fire Faction. If Low-Level Qi Gathering Pills could be bought so cheap, the customers would not accept to pay their regular price anymore.
Wen Zhu quickly sent a servant to fetch Cao Yun.
"Brother Chen. I'm happy to see you. These last few days, I'm always negotiating with these sly faction leaders to no avail... But I heard you made quite a profit."
"Only 50 points, Senior. I'm still very far behind what I actually need."
"Too bad... But I heard you're selling your pills for only 10 points, is it true?"
"Yes, Senior. Is there a problem with this?"
Wen Zhu feigned to be embarrassed. "Brother Chen, the truth is, it's way below the market price... Usually, these pills are sold for 20 points. If you sell too low, you're going to hurt other businesses. I'm afraid you'll get into trouble with the factions selling ingredients. If your price is too low, they may be forced by customers to sell their ingredients lower."
"Oh? But I heard that your faction had lowered the price of its pills to 12 points."
"Indeed, Brother. I'm really ashamed to admit it, but we had a bad batch lately. The pills are barely in the Perfect grade, only 90%, so we decided to discount them."
"I understand, Senior. But do not worry, I will increase my price. Tomorrow my pills will cost 20 points."
"Fine, Brother Chen. I hope you're still successful in your business. I'll go back to persuade these faction leaders, but they keep insisting on refusing to do any favor to the Heavenly Swallow Faction. That's really a problem."
He didn't show it too much but Wen Zhu was overjoyed. But he was also a bit confused. He didn't think that it would be that easy to make Cao Yun change his price. Could this 'Chen Guo' be an idiot?
-
The next day, Cao Yun set up his shop but he had changed the written note he always put before his pills. "Pure Low-Level Qi Gathering Pills - 20 points each"
The tall woman who managed the Dragon's Fire Faction's shop heard this and sent someone to check the quality of the pills. They really were all Pure grades. Immediately, she sent word to Wen Zhu.
"That little..." Technically Cao Yun was true to his word, it's just that he had also increased the quality of his pills. "Call Zhuge Si!"
Zhuge Si was the intendant of the faction and the right-hand man of Wen Zhu.
"Faction Leader, I heard about this little Chen Guo. He's very impudent to dare compete with us."
"How long can we sustain a price of 8 points for our Low-Level Qi Gathering Pills?"
"8 points?! This will hurt us if we keep it up more than two days. I imagine many people would buy quickly fearing for the price to go up, so we'll lose quite a bit. As we're almost in the last third of the month, our resources are getting thinner. We should still be able to get by for two days, but three might be pushing it. But if we do, we'll also have to limit the number of pills we sell, so that we don't make too much of a loss."
"See to it! Try to attract as many people as you can! Our best bet is to prevent inner disciples to even see his shop."
-
In the market, the mature woman from yesterday came back to Cao Yun.
"What?! You increased your price?!"
"Sorry, dear customer, but it turns out I was quite lucky with my new batch. These pills are no more Perfect, they're Pure."
The woman looked more closely and saw the quality written on the paper with the price. "Is this accurate?"
"Instructor Meng Jia witnessed the refinement, he can vouch for it."
She seemed to hesitate. "I heard that these pills are 10% more potent and even contain less toxins."
"The volume and mass of the pill are the same, so more medicinal essence means less toxins as well. You'll get more effect and you can use them more often."
"Fine, I'll take two of them. But I hope what you said is true."
"Dear customer, I'm ready to gift one for free to you if these are not to your liking."
With today's transaction, Cao Yun had gathered 90 points, he had finally reached 301 points, crossing the 300 level. This month, he would get four spirit stones instead of three and he could use the array formations for one more hour.
"Will you be there tomorrow as well?"
"I'm sorry, dear customer, tomorrow is the training day of the first-years. But I'll be there the day after. Please come back."
-
That night, Cao Yun used the last of his small spirit stones and advanced in his cultivation. He opened his fifth meridian, the Kidney Meridian. The day after, he was back with the other first-years but they had no time to talk with each other. Chief Instructor Peng made the training even harder than last time. Each week seemed to be a new kind of torture. As soon as you thought you could deal with it, you realized that you couldn't.
-
The next day, Cao Yun was back selling his three Pure Low-Level Qi Gathering Pills. This time he got two visitors. The mature woman came by first.
"Junior, I acknowledge the quality and efficiency of your pills. I will buy one more for a friend of mine. Do you think you'll get other Pure pills later?"
"Dear customer. I was lucky in my refinement. I cannot guarantee that the next one will be as good. But I'm confident in saying that there will be a least one Pure pill yes."
"And when will this new batch be on sale?"
"I'm waiting after the sell of this one, dear customer."
"Will the price be the same?"
"For the same quality, the same price."
Then, the plump little man came by. "My friend told me you were still selling two Pure Low-Level Qi Gathering Pills. I feel like I should have waited and bought them instead of the Perfect ones."
"Dear customer, I'm sorry, I really wasn't lucky in my first batch and could not make a single Pure pill."
"Fine. I'll buy the other two. My friend told me you were sure of getting at least one Pure pill in your next batch, when will it be?"
"Tomorrow, dear customer. Now that I'm sold out, I'll get to refine it immediately. And yes, I can guarantee at least one Pure pill. I might even get lucky enough to produce more."
Cao Yun was obviously lying to all these customers, but he first needed to establish himself. That's why he had started by the Perfect pills at a lower price. When the customer was hooked, he amped the game with Pure pills. He also needed to establish scarcity to make them come back as soon as possible and sell everything before the Dragon's Fire Faction could do anything.
Luckily for him, the factions were all reluctant in forcing Cao Yun out. They all still hoped to recruit him at some point. And even without that, Wen Zhu knew that he had connections with Xiao Xuefeng and was personally taught by Meng Jia.
Nonetheless, it was becoming a real headache for him. At first he thought that Cao Yun only had a ten-batch, but it seemed that he had made another one. If there were more Pure pills within, it would start to be a real problem.
"Zhuge Si, divert some of our better alchemists into producing Pure Low-Level Qi Gathering Pills. We really need to teach Cao Yun a lesson. Outside of our Dragon's Fire Faction, there's no making profit through selling pills."
"Faction Leader, it will hurt us a lot. If we have less higher pills to sell, we probably won't make it until the end of the month. We could be forced to borrow some points from another faction."
"I know, but he won't be able to make a profit."
"Faction Leader, how long can we keep it up? Wouldn't it be better to crush his little business?"
"How do you suggest we do that?"
"We could buy one of his pills and claim it was not Pure. Not by much, maybe just short of 1%. Even if Meng Jia witnessed the process, it's always possible for a pill to lose some of its medicinal essence if it's not properly stored."
Wen Zhu got thinking. "This plan is a little bit too dangerous. Xiao Xuefeng also seems interested in this boy. And Meng Jia may seem to be very relaxed, but I can assure you that if we try to claim he made a mistake, we'll pay it dearly. For now, just make ten Pure pills and sell them at 20 points as well."
"Faction Leader! This is a huge loss!"
"I know... I'll try to think of a way."
-
The next day, Cao Yun practiced alchemy in the morning with instructor Meng. He refined his first Cold Blood Clotting Pill with success. The process was a bit more difficult, so he only produced Perfect pills and even one below at only 88%.
In the afternoon, he put on sale all the Pure Low-level Qi Gathering he had, 7 of them, with the same price, 20 points.
The plump little man came first. "Oh? You were very successful!"
"Indeed, dear customer! More than you can imagine! I made a batch of ten and 7 of them were Pure."
"So you already sold the other 3?"
"Oh, no! They were neither Perfect nor Pure pills..."
The man's interest got picked. "Wait, with your previous pills, it's not possible for you to fail such a recipe... Do you mean... ?"
"You're very perceptive, dear customer. I was blessed with a fantastic result. But I'm waiting for these 7 pills to be sold before I sell anything else."
"Wait, I'll ask some friends to come and buy all of them from you. Can you put the other pills on sale?"
"Dear customer, I'm sorry, I only intend to sell these 7 today. But if they're all sold, I'll put one of the other pills up to sale tomorrow."
Cao Yun wanted to attract as many inner disciples as he could. Inner disciples did not care about offending the Dragon's Fire Faction. As a matter of fact, they did not even know its actual name. They knew this faction existed, but they did not care much about the affairs of the outer disciples.
Outer disciples were in the sect for five years at most. Inner disciples had vowed to stay there all their life which could last hundreds if not thousands of years were they talented enough to become Spirit Warriors.
That morning, the plump little man left and came back with at least five other inner disciples and the mature women. Each one bought a pill. The stool of the Dragon's Fire Faction was snubbed by the inner disciples but many outer disciples got a really good surprise.
By waving the shadow of his True Essence pills around, Cao Yun had hooked even more fish today. He was starting to believe that he should have been a merchant in a past life. He now had 481 points, and most of all, inner disciples were talking about his pills. Perfect or even Pure Low-Level Qi Gathering Pills were not that impressive, especially for Mortal Warriors. Even middle to late Mortals would not bat an eye. On the other hand, True Essence pills could only be refined by luck, so the idea of a junior making 3 of them and selling them got many people talking.
These 3 pills were the last ones Cao Yun had. He now needed to make more of them, but he could only do so with a cauldron. However, he was still short of 19 points. After selling his first True Essence pill, he would have enough points to ask for a brand new cauldron.
Then he just had to space out the sale of his pills. It would give him enough time to make two new batches and maybe get even more True Essence pills. Of course he only needed 500 points for the Praying Demon Pill, but the more points he got, the more advantages he would receive. Now that the Dragon's Fire Faction had forced him to start his business, he would not stop by himself.
He still got the idea of buying more ingredients in prevision of his next sales. However, as soon as he tried to buy anything, the sellers got real quiet and made up all kind of excuses not to sell to him. The Dragon's Fire Faction and maybe the other factions as well were clearly putting pressure on him.
But, wait! What if they also refused to sell him the Praying Demon Pill even when he got all the points he needed?