The captives mostly consisted of women who were at a level of inner stage and outer stage. The usual bidding came to 400 qi stones for the women in the outer stage each and 760 qi stones for the inner stage women which included Lina Shu and Ye Qui.
The bidding started to heat up when it came time to start the bidding for men as they were weren't many women captives and many of the participants were women.
Bidding skyrocketed from 400 qi stones to 900 for an outer stage and Liu got sold for 1100 qi stones which was high for the inner stage because of the stunts he pulled in the name of Dao compression and the buyer must have been one of his victims. The inner stage captive's prices got out of hand as women started screaming numbers like 2600 qi stones and 2700 qi stones.
Finally, the main course of the auction began as they brought out 8 women and 2 men who were at the core stage of body refining. They first started with the women as the announcer began to describe each of their peak affiliations.
The bidding began but the usual bidders stayed quiet knowing that they didn't have the money to buy them and even if they did they would because the level of heat they would attract would be their demise.
After some quiet moments, a bid came from one of the men who were close to the stage and all eyes were on him ken wasn't an exception and focused on him and was disappointed as he was in the core stage, unlike the leaders who looked like they broke through to spirit condensation.
But the feeling he got from him was immense. After Ken completed his transformation the feeling that was miniscule before his transformation had become immensely magnified to the point that he became very sensitive to it. Ken has been experimenting with this feeling and found out that it was the killing intent people released.
People developed killing intent as they killed more and more but as he honed the feeling he got and got accustomed to it he started to feel the difference he got from person to person.
One was like fog which surrounded them but the other was like an ominous viscous which looked like it would suffocate you if you got near it. Ken called this murderous intent which he had but he sensed that this man had killed more people than him just by the intent.
The only stronger intent he felt was from the leader lady. Not even the man beside him had as much of them.
The guy close to the stage called out 3000 qi stones which through the people into a frenzy but other men in the core stage started bidding and after some back and forth the first guy won the bid with 6300 qi stones.
Ken was salivating as he thought about the money he could gather if he killed them but he quickly dismissed that idea. After the first bid, the frenzy dyed down as the subsequent captive women got sold proximally 6000 qi stones.
Ken felt like a frog in a well seeing the numbers his fellow candidates were throwing around. Ken had approximately 3000 qi stones including the stone he was given and the stones he had from the beginning. Ken thought this would have made him one of the richest candidates around but has was average at best from the looks of it.
As he was moping about his financial situation the time to bid on the men started. Compared to the uproar caused by this the previous looked like it was just a gust of wind as women who were known to be less volatile of the two genders looked like savage animals that were about to devour each other.
The women were even making threats that whoever snatched their prize would face them Among all this an elegantly dressed woman with a pink ponytail hair pleasantly said "I think the strong make the bidding. I 8000 qi stone."
As she said this Ken felt his hair stand as all the women erupted with killing intent and as they stared at her no one bid further so she became a winner. Some were hopeful they would get the second one but they didn't because ultimately he was snatched by the leader's curvy woman.
Ken slowly started to move but he sensed faint presence ahead of him and as he got closer he became sure another person was spying so he waited until it made a move. Shortly after time studying the technique, he figures they must also be from the shadow garden as it felt very similar to the chimera breathing art.
Ken got close without getting noticed and saw its face and recognized it as she was one of the 4 leaders of the dark moon and one of the top 50 candidates on the leader board which was proudly floating in the center of the city for all people to see.
The leader board appeared out of nowhere two weeks after the start and was empty but people flocked the central hall found out they could get extra rewards every week they stayed in the leader board and it would increase as they got to the top.
After that the big dual arena was packed by people but ken didn't go because the real monsters wouldn't show themselves now and reveal their trump cards. The real ones would come out on the evaluation day.
The dark moon was composed of shadow garden candidates. Groups like the dark moon were vastly outnumbered compared to the big groups but they had survived until now.
The group like this survived because they were needed by both parties and getting on the bad side created a lot of unnecessary troubles which were not the case for other neutral groups that got swallowed.