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Compared to a small place like "Qingyun Valley", Hongya Marketplace was much larger.
This marketplace was established atop a mountain peak two to three hundred feet tall, including the nearby hills within its bounds, housing hundreds of shops.
Zhou Chun walked in and could easily spot the figures of cultivators moving about on the mountain.
Only such a hustle and bustle could truly befit the term "marketplace."
Being a safe place, Zhou Chun looked around and then leisurely began to stroll through the marketplace, seeking an opportunity to learn about the whereabouts of the Zhou Family.
After the earlier incident of being attacked, Zhou Chun was definitely more cautious in gathering information.
He could not afford to let others easily associate him with the Zhou Family, potentially harboring malicious intent against him.
After wandering around the marketplace, Zhou Chun soon entered a shop that seemed decent.
This shop, named "Wu's Grocery Store", was not big, and there wasn't even an assistant in sight, just an elder in green clothes reading a book on a chair.
Upon seeing Zhou Chun enter, the elder in green glanced up at him, and realizing he was not a regular customer, said lazily, "Greetings, fellow daoist. All the items for sale in our store are listed there, with fair prices, honest and old alike."
After speaking, he gestured with his mouth towards a white cloth on the wall covered in black characters.
His manner hardly reflected the idea that "the customer is god."
But Zhou Chun knew that this was normal in this world.
Those who could open a shop in the marketplace were either highly cultivated and wealthy individuals with skills of their own,
or they were stores set up by sects or families, managed by their disciples.
In either case, compared to common loose cultivators, their status was significantly higher.
In such a situation, expecting them to treat Qi Refinement Realm cultivators who visit the shop as "gods" was implausible.
Moreover, even in his previous world, the number of street-side shops that managed to do this was few, and it was already good if they didn't overcharge customers!
Naturally, Zhou Chun would not take offense at the elder's attitude.
He did not look at the list of items on the white cloth but instead cupped his hands towards the elder, saying, "Shopkeeper, you are kind. I have a few magic artifacts that have been discarded, does your esteemed store wish to purchase these items?"
"You wish to sell magic artifacts?"
The elder in green showed a moment of surprise, then set aside the book, squinting his eyes to scrutinize Zhou Chun.
Seeing Zhou Chun's young and handsome face, he frowned slightly, seemingly unable to believe that such a young junior cultivator could be one of those bandit cultivators who make a living by robbery and murder.
If not a bandit cultivator, then how could someone of Zhou Chun's age and cultivation level have spare magic artifacts to sell?
Various thoughts ran through the mind of the elder in green, and after a good while, he nodded slightly and said, "Then show me the items first, if there's no issue, our store may consider buying them, depending on the situation."
Their type of grocery store bought and sold all kinds of things.
Without further ado, Zhou Chun took out the magic artifacts he obtained from those two loose cultivators, as well as two first-grade low-quality magic artifacts he had on him, and presented them.
For cultivators, magic artifacts, spells, talismans, elixirs, formations, all have different grades.
Generally, they are classified into first, second, and third-order, further divided into lower, middle, and upper grades within the first order.
Typically, first-order magic artifacts are used by cultivators in the Qi Refinement Realm, second-order for those in the Foundation Establishment Stage, and third-order for cultivators in the Purple Mansion Phase.
The value of a magic artifact, besides its overall grade, also depends greatly on its usefulness, performance, and other factors.
The magic artifacts Zhou Chun presented were single-purpose attack artifacts, without any remarkable special abilities, merely artifacts used by novices who had just entered the world of cultivation.
So, after an appraisal, the two artifacts he got from killing the loose cultivators were returned to him by the elder in green, keeping only the two genuinely discarded ones.
Then, looking at him, he said, "The quality of these two magic artifacts is still acceptable, and it's clear that the artifact refiner had some skill. Our store is willing to take them for twenty Spirit Coins each."
"As for these two artifacts, fellow daoist would be better off dealing with them at the makeshift stall market inside the marketplace. Perhaps there will be newcomers who've just stepped into the cultivation world willing to buy them as their first magic artifact."
This outcome somewhat made Zhou Chun feel a pang of sympathy for the two deceased loose cultivators who had fallen by his hand.
It turns out that even a grocery store wouldn't buy back the artifacts those two fellows used, showing just how miserable their situation truly was.
So, he did as the elder in green suggested, took the two returned artifacts, and carefully counted the forty Spirit Coins given by the elder.
After leaving "Wu's Grocery Store", Zhou Chun really did go to the makeshift stall market in the marketplace, just as the shopkeeper had suggested.
The makeshift stall market is a staple in every marketplace within the cultivation world, where cultivators conduct free trade, and also a place rife with fakes.
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All it took to spend a whole day in the street market was to pay the market managers one Spirit Coin for a stall fee, and you could even sit in meditation and cultivate there.
The assumption, of course, was that someone would actually be bold enough to enter a meditative state and cultivate in such an environment.
After arriving at the Hongya Marketplace, Zhou Chun found indeed that the number of cultivators had increased substantially, with the number of cultivators running a stall and those patronizing the place being about half and half.
Since cultivators usually prefer peace and quiet, unless they encounter a situation where the price cannot be agreed upon, the street market wasn't overly noisy.
Zhou Chun actually saw several loose cultivators who appeared to have casually laid out a few items and were sitting in meditation in front of their stalls.
Seeing this, Zhou Chun pondered for a moment before he also paid a Spirit Coin to secure a stall, laying out two magic artifacts and some miscellaneous items, thus starting his own stall.
Of course, Zhou Chun's real intention was not to run a stall, but to use it as a pretext to chat casually with other loose cultivators running their stalls, trying to subtly probe for the information he wanted to know.
In just less than two days of running his stall in the marketplace, Zhou Chun successfully sold two magic artifacts for the price of thirteen and fourteen Spirit Coins respectively.
However, gathering information did not go as smoothly; many of the loose cultivators running stalls had heard about the Sanjue Sect being divided, but where the Zhou Family had gone after breaking away from the sect was something no one knew.
Seeing this, Zhou Chun could only patiently wait for an opportunity within the marketplace.
On the third day of his arrival at the marketplace, a loose cultivator at the tenth level of Qi Refinement suddenly appeared at the street market.
This elder, whose hair was already streaked with white, laid out more than a dozen items as soon as he set up his stall, including freshly picked Spiritual Medicine, Spirit Ores that looked to be dug up from unknown places, and slightly damaged magic artifacts.
Upon seeing this, many of the cultivators running a stall looked at the elder with a strange light in their eyes.
Generally speaking, cultivators who sold a bit of everything were quite likely to be those bandit cultivators who specialized in killing and robbing treasures.
Or even if they themselves were not bandit cultivators, they had strong connections with bandit cultivators, responsible for dealing with the treasures the latter had looted.
But while many thought so, unless someone had a good relationship with the person interested in a particular item on the stall, no one would bother to intervene.
Instead, most of the time, because the items dealt with by bandits would be slightly cheaper than market price, it would attract many cultivators eager to take advantage of a bargain.
However, when those cultivators looking for a bargain stepped forward to ask for prices, they immediately left in a huff.
Because even though the elder was running a street stall, his prices were not much cheaper than the market rate, leaving little room for reselling and making a profit by flipping the items.
As such, the crowd that had gathered quickly dispersed.
Zhou Chun, who noticed this, suddenly had a glint in his eyes and also stepped forward to inquire about the prices.
"Fellow daoist, how much for this piece of Spirit Ginseng?"
He pointed at a yellowish-white Spirit Ginseng on the stall that still had some soil on its roots and asked in a low voice.
"Wild Ginseng with a herb age of over one hundred and fifty years, only for twenty-four Spirit Coins, the price is firm!"
The elder looked up at Zhou Chun and stated the price indifferently.
Upon hearing this, Zhou Chun couldn't help but frown and said, "Wild Ginseng harbors accumulations of Evil Qi, and to be used in medicine, one must first expel the Evil Qi. Over twenty Spirit Coins is indeed a bit costly!"
The elder, hearing this, immediately frowned and huffed, "Hmph, if it wasn't for the fact that the methods of expelling the Evil Qi from these spiritual objects are in the hands of those sects and families, would a hundred-year-old Spirit Ginseng sell for so little?"
After saying that, he glared at Zhou Chun, "Young man, buy it if you will, but if not, stand aside and don't waste my time!"
"Ah, I was just saying, why be angry, fellow daoist? Bargaining is all part of business, after all," Zhou Chun shook his head and then scanned the other spiritual herbs on the stall, adding, "How about this; I'll take all the spiritual herbs you have here, fellow daoist. Could you please offer me a discount and knock off a few Spirit Coins?"
The elder, hearing this, kept a stern face and said, "No, not a single Spirit Coin less. If you try to haggle, I'd rather give them directly to the medicine shop!"
Seeing this, Zhou Chun immediately softened his tone, looking at the elder with a pleading expression and said, "Please, have some mercy. Couldn't you just help a junior out? It's not easy for someone of my cultivation level to earn Spirit Coins. You must understand, having come from humble beginnings yourself!"
"Heh, I help you, but who will help me?"
The elder kept sneering.
He then looked at Zhou Chun with a mocking expression, "Stop playing the pity card in front of me. With such cultivation at your young age, you must be a descendant of a cultivating family, seeking to buy Spiritual Medicine at a low price from a street market and then sell it to your family at a higher price. I've been wise to that trick for more than a decade!"
"Cough cough, fellow daoist, you're overthinking it; I have absolutely no such intention," Zhou Chun coughed awkwardly, rushing to deny it.
Even though in truth, he did harbor such thoughts, but they were not at all as the elder had described.
But evidently, the elder didn't believe him, simply snorting coldly without saying more.
In the end, Zhou Chun could only purchase the Spirit Ginseng for the price of twenty-four Spirit Coins.