MPCW Ch. 100
·
17h
8
"That cheap?"
Fei let it slip before he could bite it back, and Alexei nearly swore.
That one reaction told him plenty. He had undersold himself so badly that Fei had forgotten to pretend otherwise. Still, he kept his face calm, because flinching now would be the same as opening his throat at a gambling table. Fei would see it, smile about it, and skin him alive on the next number.
"It's a one-time offer," he said, smooth as he could manage. "You brought me to the city, saved me some trouble, and you're the first clients here. I can put in a good word with the refiner, so you'll get a cleaner price than most outsiders. Don't expect me to give the same deal to whoever comes asking next."
Fei's polite smile didn't change much, but the corner of his mouth gave him away. He had caught the slip, and worse, he was having fun with it.
"Payment on delivery?" Liang asked, stepping in before Fei could start twisting the knife.
"Yes. Goods first. You pay after you've checked that everything is in order."
Liang gave a slow nod. He didn't have Fei's sharp smile, but he was already working through the price in his head, measuring the risk against whatever profit might be hiding under it.
"My family doesn't keep materials suitable for immortal-grade work. If your sect's refiner supplies everything, what would the total come to?"
Alexei took his time before answering.
He'd already stepped on one rake today. He didn't plan to find the next one by biting down on the handle.
"Three million mid-grade spirit stones. I still need to bring the request back so he can check the details, but unless he raises the price, that should be the final amount."
"That's..." Liang began, only to stop himself before the rest got out. He closed his mouth, breathed through his nose, then forced his face back into something polite.
Alexei raised an eyebrow.
"Reasonable," Liang said, though his tone made it damn clear that wasn't the first word he'd been about to use.
After that, the deal closed. They exchanged contact tokens so Alexei could reach them once the orders were ready for delivery. Liang's request was straightforward enough. He wanted an immortal-grade longsword forged from scratch. Fei's was trickier. He wanted his bonded weapon raised from heaven-grade to immortal-grade, but that job would have to wait until Liang's commission was finished. Together, the two orders came to nine million mid-grade spirit stones, assuming the work didn't run into trouble after it started.
Alexei didn't trust that kind of assumption, but he could still count the money.
He watched Liang and Fei disappear down the ridge path before turning back toward the hollow he'd picked out earlier.
Nine million mid-grade spirit stones sounded like a fortune until Alexei ran it through the sect's construction budget. Converted into MC-grade spirit stones, it came out to roughly 3,000 units. At the current pace, the sect would burn through that in about a month.
That made it useful. But it didn't make it salvation.
He pulled out his equipment and got to work.
---
The first job was finding out where the portal would spit him out, so he threw together a small test frame and took a look at the other side.
His luck turned out to be about as impressive as stale bread.
The first portal opened over a lava lake that ran all the way to the horizon. Ghasts drifted through the air, while striders picked across the molten surface below. They were useful creatures, but they weren't what he needed.
He broke down the frame from the Nether side before returning, then set up a simple five-second delay circuit with repeaters and used it to smash the inside frame after he came back.
The next few attempts didn't improve his mood.
One portal dumped him into a soul sand valley. Another opened inside a warped forest so cramped that the frame barely had space to appear. After that came two more lava lakes. Then there was a basalt delta, which might have been interesting if he were here to write a research paper instead of set up bait.
The seventh portal finally opened into a crimson forest.
He checked the surroundings twice before his shoulders loosened and he started building for real.
A crimson forest was what he wanted because it didn't need much explanation. Any cultivator seeing the Nether for the first time would understand the place fast. The local piglins carried gold, sometimes dropped weapons, and had just the right amount of threat to make killing them look profitable. The crimson trees added the final touch.
That was the hook. The first cultivators through the portal didn't need to understand the Nether. They only needed to see gold, weapons, and strange resources before their greed started doing the rest of the work for him.
He built the portal the same way he had built the one in Verdantree City. That design had already proven itself, so there was no reason to start tinkering with it now. The interior space came over the same way, until the whole thing looked like it had been pulled out of the city and dropped here.
By the time he placed the last block and lit the frame, midnight had already come and gone. The forest was quiet in that late-night way, with only insects in the dark and the occasional rustle somewhere between the trees.
He didn't head back. First, he went closer to the city and searched for a proper relay point. Once he found a spot that wouldn't cause trouble, he set up a transmission ender chest station, dropped a Nether Star into the chest, then stepped through.
The survival base formed around him as soon as the transfer finished.
He refilled the stasis chamber with pearls before heading into the main building.
The common room was dim when he came in. Qingxue had left a candle burning on the table, though the wick had nearly reached the end by then. She must have gone to bed while he was out. Her book sat closed beside the candle, with a strip of cloth tucked between the pages to mark where she had stopped.
He blew out the candle, crossed the common room, and left the main building before heading back to his own house.
---
The next few days were almost peaceful, and Alexei didn't trust that at all. Whenever this world got quiet, it usually meant the next problem was still on its way.
He wasn't exactly idle. He had material orders to plan, Liang's sword commission to sort out, and a few smaller jobs waiting on his desk. Still, none of it forced him to leave the house, which made the whole thing far easier to tolerate. He could work from his own room, eat when he felt like it, and enjoy a few days where nothing was trying to wreck his schedule.
For Liang's commission, he had settled on diamond almost as soon as the order came in. The blade would weigh around 800 kilograms, lighter than the netherite weapon by a fair margin, but that suited Liang better. And diamonds gave Alexei more room to play with the balance, which made it the better fit for a swordsman who relied on technique.
A natural sword-seed physique deserved a weapon that could keep up with clean movement.
The tricky part was making the sword look local. A diamond sword still looked like a diamond sword, which meant it looked about as natural in the Aurelon Dynasty as a glowing arcade machine in a tea pavilion. The inner structure could stay. So could the weight distribution and enchantments. The shell was what needed work, reshaped until it looked like something born from an Aurelon forge.
By the third day, the template was mostly finished.
On the fourth, Qingxue came into the workroom while he was adjusting the edge geometry. She set a cup of tea beside him, gave the floating schematics the same level of attention one might give a mildly suspicious wall stain, then walked back out.
For the two of them, that counted as smooth cooperation.
---
Above the hollow between the ridges, the new portal was still standing where Alexei had left it.
The young cultivators spotted it from the air before they even reached the clearing. A clean stone archway sat below them, in a patch of wilderness that had no business having a building in it.
That close to Obsidian Ridge City, nobody built anything without permission and protection. The beast territories were nearby, so fresh stonework drew trouble the way blood drew flies. A shed might be the first thing to go, smashed flat before anyone came back with more timber. If the builders put up something sturdier, some territorial beast could claim it, then turn the whole place into a nest while the workers were still wondering who stole their roof.
Yet this archway stood there untouched.
That was when the young cultivators stopped flying and started wondering who the hell had built an archway in a place like this.
They landed outside the clearing. One of them checked the ground while another studied the frame, searching for traps and hidden arrays. When nothing obvious showed itself, they tossed in stones, then sticks, then a few chunks of dead wood for good measure.
The barrier swallowed them all without so much as a spark.
After that, they caught a bird and shoved it through the light. For a few seconds, nothing happened. Then it shot back out with its wings beating wild, crashed into the dirt, and scrambled away from the archway as fast as its legs could carry it. That at least proved the portal didn't kill anything on entry, though it said jack shit about what was waiting beyond it.
One of the young cultivators stared at the archway, then said, "We should go in."
Nobody liked the idea, but nobody had a better one either.
---
The Nether portal had been open for half a day before the first cultivator came stumbling back out.
Purple particles scattered around his boots as he crossed the frame, but the look on his face said he hadn't been chased out. His hands were shaking, sure, but not from fear.
The place was loaded.
There was gold on the floor. The piglins had weapons on them too, and those weapons weren't scrap. They were artifacts whose old spiritual bonds had already gone cold, which meant they were sitting there claimable for anyone with the nerve to take them.
Even the land itself looked profitable. Every direction offered something worth prying loose or harvesting.
Only the lanterns were a shame. They hung there plain as day, but no matter what method he tried, they wouldn't budge. Whatever fixed them in place was beyond him, so he cursed them a few times and moved on.
He was back at his sect's gates before evening.
The elders heard him out, and at first they asked the usual dry old-man questions. How large was the chamber? How many creatures? What grade were the artifacts? Could the portal hold? Was the other side stable?
Then the questions stopped.
Once the elders understood what he had found, they stopped wasting time. By sunset, two elders and a group of senior disciples were already following him back through the portal, each of them wearing the same expression cultivators wore when they were trying very hard not to look greedy.
The Radiant Light Sect was a fourth-rank sect. They had status, disciples, elders, a proper gate, and all the usual polish that made people step aside on the street. What they didn't have was the kind of muscle needed to swallow a treasure space this large without choking on it.
Especially not one sitting this close to Obsidian Ridge City.
The major families would hear about it. A city like that was packed with rats in clean robes, servants with sharp ears, merchants who bought gossip by the cup, and bored young masters who somehow learned secrets faster than they learned manners. Once the wrong people caught the scent, the Radiant Light Sect's claim would only last until someone stronger decided to test it.
While the disciples scraped gold off the floor and stuffed it into spatial rings, the elders talked through the problem. The longer they talked, the clearer the answer became. The junior who had come back through the portal had already been thinking along the same lines.
They couldn't hide the treasure space, so they had to be the ones who revealed it.
That way, the story started with them. They could say the Radiant Light Sect discovered the space, secured the entrance, and reported it before greed turned the whole thing ugly. That sounded responsible. More importantly, it sounded a hell of a lot better than getting exposed after trying to hoard the place.
If they moved first, the larger powers might still take the biggest share. They probably would. But they would have to leave the Radiant Light Sect something, if only to keep up appearances. If the sect got caught hiding it, those same powers could call them greedy and unfit to manage the site, then rob them with righteous speeches.
So the sect needed to work both sides. Spread the news before someone else did, then make the portal entrance look occupied before a stronger force decided to stroll in and claim it. They needed workers, guards, buildings, patrols, banners, anything that told latecomers the Radiant Light Sect hadn't just found the place. They had already put their boots in the dirt.
Once that was settled, the elders stopped circling the issue. They split the assignments, sent people where they needed to go, and got to work.
---
The new Nether portal was hauling in spirit stones at a rate that was starting to look obscene.
Before the second portal went up, the original one's daily income had already slipped toward 3,000. Once the new portal joined in, the total surged past 30,000.
That pushed the MC low-grade spirit stone count to roughly thirteen units a day.
Alexei kept doing the math while his hands stayed busy. He didn't really need to check it again, but old habits stuck, especially when those habits kept him from waking up broke. Thirteen units a day meant the construction budget wasn't bleeding out as badly as before. But it still couldn't keep up with everything he wanted to build, but at least the wound had slowed from a spray to a steady leak.
That was something he could work with, so he tucked the number away in the back of his head and put his attention back where it belonged.
---
Inside the survival base, he steadied the style template sword in his palm and let experience flow into it.
Duan had made the template months ago. It was a slim longsword about ninety centimeters from tip to grip, built for appearance rather than combat. The blade had the right shape, balance, and look, but it couldn't do much on its own.
That changed once the Nether Star came in. Fuse the two together, and the crafting table would save the design. After that, he could use the same weapon recipe while changing how the finished blade looked.
In plain terms, it was a skin system.
The idea sounded stupid until money entered the room, at which point stupid things often became very practical. These weapons weren't going to sit in a chest where no one could see them. People would wear them, show them off, compare them, maybe even start fights over whose blade looked more impressive. Strength sold the first sword, but appearance helped sell the next ten.
Experience wrapped tighter around the template and the Nether Star until their outlines started melting into the same glow.
Two minutes later, the light disappeared.
[Black Iron Sword:
+0 Attack Damage]
"Deconstruct."
The sword itself hadn't been important. What mattered was that the crafting table had taken the design, and from now on, he could put that look on any weapon that used the same frame.
He opened the menu, went into the weapons tab, and tapped the diamond sword recipe.
The icon split into three designs. One was the standard MC diamond sword, blocky, famous, and about as subtle as a toy from another world. It worked fine, but in the Aurelon Dynasty, carrying that thing around would make him look like a lunatic with expensive rocks glued to a stick.
The second design was better. It used the straight longsword pattern from the Aureate Summit Sect's standard-issue weapons, which he had unlocked a while ago.
The third was the one he wanted. It was the longsword template Duan had built from the sketches Alexei had taken out of local weapon catalogs. Once he selected it, the recipe icon shifted, replacing the old blocky sword with a narrow, tapered blade.
With that settled, he placed two diamonds and one unassimilated stick on the crafting table, gave the command, and watched the materials vanish as the finished sword appeared in his hand.
Lantern light ran along the blade and broke into blue-green patterns across the walls. The color sat somewhere between glacier ice and deep ocean water, while the edge was so straight and clean that staring at it for too long made him feel like he was probably doing something stupid.
He turned the sword in his hand and tested the balance. The diamond material looked damn good. No wonder rich cultivators liked showing it off. A blade like this practically announced that its owner had more spirit stones than sense.
Using it was another story.
He still preferred the original MC sword. It sat better in the hand. But Liang wasn't paying for Alexei to enjoy himself. The man wanted a flashy sword that suited his own taste, and this one did the job.
With the inspection done, he set the blade on the anvil and moved on to the enchantment.
The numbers were simple. Liang's commission came to eight million mid-grade spirit stones. Three million had already been swallowed by materials, leaving five million for the work. That put Spiritual Circuit V on the table, which was the one enchantment here that could drag the blade out of high-grade weapon territory and shove it into the immortal-artifact bracket.
Pricey as hell, but it fit the order.
[Diamond Sword:
Spiritual Circuit V
+8 Attack Damage]
He pulled the sword off the anvil and gave it a proper look.
The stick he had used hadn't been assimilated, so the blade hadn't turned into a full MC weapon. That meant no purple energy crawling across the surface.
Inside the blade, the spiritual circuit had taken shape cleanly. It ran deep through the metal.
Its attack power reached about 90% of the theoretical maximum, which was about as good as he could expect from mixed materials. The spiritual energy consumption reduction came in just under 45%. It hadn't touched the 50% cap, but in a real fight, that gap wasn't going to decide shit.
He stored the sword away, checked the time, and turned toward the door.
"Time to go."
---
Alexei appeared on the trapdoor platform he had hidden in the hillside outside Obsidian Ridge City.
He took a second to refill the ender pearl supply, then dug his way out through the concealed tunnel entrance and sealed it behind him before anyone could stumble onto it. Once he was back under open sky, he pulled out the contact token Liang had given him and checked the meeting point.
[Ironveil Gate. Northeast.]
He looked at the token, then up at the sky.
The sky didn't come with direction markers.
"Where is northeast?"
He stepped onto his sword and flew in the direction that felt the least wrong. If he screwed it up, he could just ask someone. Obsidian Ridge City was huge, but it wasn't so big that a whole damn gate could hide forever.
Somehow, he found it on his own.
He chose to count that as a personal victory.
Ironveil Gate stood on the northeastern side of the city wall. It was the kind of gate that made sure everyone knew it wasn't some back alley entrance for farmers and delivery carts.
Liang and Fei were waiting on top of the wall, and Alexei spotted them from the air long before he could read the name on the gate. They hadn't come alone. Two men stood a few steps behind them, both in their forties by the look of it.
Alexei dropped down in front of them.
"Did you bring the spirit stones?"
Liang gave him a polite smile.
"Eight million spirit stones isn't a sum one carries around for convenience. We hoped you would be willing to visit the manor and collect them there."
Alexei couldn't say he was surprised. Eight million mid-grade spirit stones weren't pocket change in any sense of the word. Even packed neatly, the pile would take up a room, roughly five meters across, five meters deep, and six meters high. The spatial rings people used in the Eastern Territories usually held a few cubic meters at best, while anything better cost so much that even old families didn't keep a whole drawer of them lying around for errands.
"Lead the way."
----------
[POV: Xu Ran]
Ran had served the Xu family for most of his adult life, which had taught him the difference between a bold decision and rich people finding a prettier way to be stupid. A bold decision had risk, reward, and some spine behind it. This one had eight million mid-grade spirit stones tied to its ankle and was already halfway down the well.
He had been against it from the start.
An immortal-grade weapon sounded grand. Put those words in front of the family head, add a bit of talk about destiny and the young family head's future, and suddenly every sensible objection became an old man's cowardice. But eight million mid-grade spirit stones wasn't pocket change. It was nearly 30% of everything the Xu family had built up over thousands of years, all for a sword.
That was the part that made him want to curse.
If they were in the outer regions, he might've swallowed it. Over there, Dharma Aspect experts threw their weight around like drunk bastards in a gambling den, and a city could get dragged into a feud before the tea went cold. But the Eastern Territories weren't like that. The threats here had limits. Before Liang reached the Dharma Aspect realm, a proper heaven-grade weapon would've handled anything he was likely to run into. And once he did reach that level, the situation would change on its own. His master wasn't some decorative name on a visiting card. He was an old-guard Dharma Aspect cultivator. With that sort of backing, Liang didn't need an immortal-grade sword to settle some petty question of status.
Yet the Xu family was about to spend eight million spirit stones anyway, just so their young heir could walk around with a blade far above his current level.
Even if the weapon was genuine, it was still too early. In ten years, maybe the gap between it and a heaven-grade weapon would become clear. Today, it was mostly an expensive shine on something he couldn't fully swing.
And the seller was another pile of shit.
Ran watched the white-haired teenager walking ahead of him and tried to figure out what the fuss was supposed to be.
At a glance, the boy was nothing special. He was above average in height and built sturdier than most boys his age, but his face was so forgettable it could vanish in a room with three people in it. The white hair stood out, but this was the cultivation world. A man could cough up blood, fall into a cursed spring, eat the wrong glowing mushroom, then come back with silver hair and a third pupil. Strange looks didn't prove a damn thing.
The problem was his cultivation.
Ran had checked the boy's cultivation himself, and no matter how much he disliked the answer, it stayed the same: Foundation Establishment, barely past the starting line. In any decent sect, that was the realm where outer disciples spent their first year or two trying not to embarrass themselves. For a boy who looked eighteen at most, it wasn't shameful, but it sure as hell didn't make Ran want to trust him with anything called immortal-grade.
Every bit of sense he had scraped together over decades of serving a serious cultivator family told him this was either a scam or a joke. He hadn't decided which one pissed him off more.
Still, his face stayed calm. He wasn't some street dog who barked at every stranger passing the gate. The Xu family had rules, and guests were guests until the master said otherwise.
----------
The walk through Xu Manor was taking an unreasonable amount of time, which was a polite way of saying the place was too big for people who apparently hated efficiency.
Alexei had been following the group for nearly half an hour, through courtyards, covered walkways, garden paths, and buildings. The manor was impressive, he could admit that much. The pavilions were well-built, the gardens had been arranged by someone with a good eye, and the whole place looked expensive.
But he wasn't here for a tour.
"Can we fly?"
Ran, the older of the two middle-aged men, looked back at him.
"This is a restricted area of the family compound. Flying is not permitted."
That was the end of it. Ran had a gift for killing conversations.
Alexei let it go, but he kept watching.
The Xu family's people had grown up inside these walls, surrounded by wealth and family rules, until looking down on outsiders had become as natural as breathing. That included the outsiders currently walking across their oversized estate to deliver something they had asked for.
Picking a fight before getting paid was bad business, and he hadn't survived this long by mistaking pride for profit.
The money was still the money. Once the deal was finished, he could have all the opinions he wanted.
"We're here." Liang stopped in front of a mountain face where a massive stone gate had been carved straight into the rock.
Alexei looked up.
It was at least fifteen meters tall, covered from top to bottom in formation patterns, with carved layers and hidden joints packed through the stone until the whole thing looked ready to stop an army rather than let anyone through. Ran pulled a seal from inside his robes and tossed it forward. It expanded in the air, slammed into a matching recess on the gate, and locked in with a heavy click.
Light ran through the formation lines. The glow spread across the gate, slipped into the surrounding rock, and a deep rumble rolled through the ground beneath their feet.
Alexei waited for the giant gate to open.
The mountain kept rumbling. Dust trickled down from the upper edge of the gate. The glowing lines kept crawling across the carvings. Then a smaller door opened around the side.
He stared at it.
The door was barely two meters tall and half as wide, tucked into the rock face just around the corner from the giant gate. The massive stone gate, after all that noise, hadn't moved at all.
He looked from the small door to the giant gate, then turned to Liang.
"This way."
Liang walked toward the side door.
Alexei didn't ask whether the giant gate was decorative, ceremonial, or broken. He had the strong feeling that none of the answers would improve his day, and since he was about to go inside the mountain either way, he kept his mouth shut.
He followed the group through the small door and into a tunnel that stretched a little over a hundred meters ahead. The walls were lined with brickwork made from some material he didn't recognize.
They passed through three more stone doors before reaching the end of the tunnel. Each door took a different key, followed by the same slow grind of stone as the mechanism pulled it open. By the time they stopped in front of the final barrier, a large grey metal gate blocking the passage ahead, he had spent more than ten minutes on a walk that should've taken a fraction of that.
Ran pressed a formation talisman against the gate and kept his hand there. Half a minute later, the metal started sinking into the floor.
The chamber behind it was several hundred square meters. Spiritual lamps lit up across the room in sequence as the gate lowered, showing a high ceiling, bare walls, and a floor cut into square compartments. Each compartment was roughly three meters across. Alexei swept his eyes over them and counted somewhere between forty and fifty, with about half packed to the top with spirit stones.
The stones didn't leak even a wisp of spiritual energy. Whatever lined those compartments, it sealed the energy in completely.
Ran glanced over the room. "Each compartment holds one million mid-grade spirit stones. Eight million fills eight compartments." He turned back to Alexei. "The sword?"
Alexei reached into his inventory and pulled out the sword.
The nearest spiritual lamp struck the blade, and pale blue-green light spilled across the floor. The whole room reacted before anyone could pretend they hadn't. Ran, naturally, was the first to recover, because men like him would rather choke on blood than look impressed in public.
He took the sword from Alexei and turned it slowly in his hands. His thumb traced the line of the guard before his grip shifted, testing the balance with a small tilt of his wrist. When nothing strange happened, he passed it to Fei.
For judging a sword-type artifact, Fei was the one they needed. Everyone in the room knew it, too. A Dharma Aspect swordsman didn't need to be told how to read a blade. He had probably spent more years looking at swords than most people in the room had spent breathing.
Fei took the sword and raised it toward the lamp, letting the light run along the edge before rolling the blade to study the flat. A slow tilt sent pale blue-green reflections shifting through the diamond, but he didn't rush the inspection. His gaze kept returning to the edge.
A loose strand of grey hair slipped from his head and brushed across the edge.
He watched it fall.
A sword like this should've cut it cleanly. It didn't.
"There's no sharpness on this blade."
Ran straightened at once. "So it is defective."
Of course he was pleased. He had been waiting for the sword to disappoint him, and now he thought it had finally obliged.
Fei lifted a hand.
"I didn't call it defective. I said it has no sharpness. Those are two very different problems." He turned the blade over, set a finger against the edge, then slid it along the metal. "This is an immortal-grade artifact, no question about that. The problem is that it cuts like a metal stick. As a blunt weapon, it works. But as a sword..."
He passed the sword to Liang, then looked back at Alexei.
"Can you explain that?"
Alexei answered in the same calm tone. "The primary circuit has to settle before anyone adds secondary enchantments. Sharpness has to connect with the energy flow already running through the weapon, and if that flow hasn't settled yet, the new enchantment won't sit cleanly. The mismatch puts pressure on the circuit until the damage spreads through the structure, and by the time you notice something is wrong, the weapon's already half-ruined. A decent refiner won't rush that step unless he's trying to rob you."
Fei waited until Alexei finished, then rubbed his chin and nodded. He had seen that mistake before, usually on some unlucky fool's treasured weapon after a cheap refiner had smiled, taken the money, and ruined it beyond saving.
"How long before the enchantment can be added?"
"The sword was forged recently, so it needs a few more days before I can add an enchantment without damaging the circuit. Sharpness is a separate commission. Profound-grade costs two million, earth-grade costs three million, heaven-grade costs four million, and immortal-grade costs five million."
Ran's face darkened. "So that's your game? We pay first, then you start adding charges?"
"No. The sword costs eight million. You paid eight million, so you received the sword. Sharpness was listed separately from the beginning. If you assumed it came included, that's a misunderstanding. It isn't a price change."
Ran wanted to argue, but there wasn't much room to swing without hitting himself in the mouth. He could complain all he liked, but unless he had a contract saying sharpness was included, he was only dressed up as the victim.
The other middle-aged man, Gu, turned to Fei. "Your assessment?"
"The explanation holds. For a complex circuit, staged enchantment work is normal among serious refiners. The sword is genuine, and the circuit work is the finest I've seen in decades." Fei's gaze returned to the blade in Liang's hands. "A blunt immortal-grade artifact is still an immortal-grade artifact, but sharpness isn't exactly decorative on a weapon."
Gu looked back at Alexei. "Once the sword is ready, how long will the immortal-grade sharpness take?"
"With our sect's refiner handling it, about a day. I'll pass the commission along today and bring it back once the work is finished."
Alexei held out his hand, and Liang passed the sword over with reluctance. Once the blade was in his hands, Alexei stored it away, left them a contact token, and walked out.
---
Four days later, Alexei came back.
Liang met him at Ironveil Gate with only Fei and Gu at his side. Ran hadn't come this time, so the whole thing shed some of its ceremony. They still took the same tunnel down, because some places didn't need a second route. They only needed fewer witnesses.
In the vault, Alexei brought out the sword and handed it over.
Liang took it, set his thumb against the edge, and dragged it across slowly until the blade opened his skin in one clean line. As blood welled from the cut, his casual expression faded. He studied the edge again, then sent his awareness into the blade. Whatever he sensed inside seemed to scrape away the last bit of doubt that had been sitting behind his eyes since the first visit.
After that, he passed the sword to his master.
Fei didn't waste breath on talk either. He tested the edge with his own finger, got the same clean cut, then turned the sword over to check the flat. Once he was satisfied, he handed it back with a nod.
Liang took the sword back.
Gu let out a breath and paid the sharpness commission.
----------
[POV: Fei]
Fei had seen too many cultivators rise, shine, rot, and vanish to care about reputation by itself. Give a man a few victories, a loud sect behind him, and a crowd of idiots ready to clap, and suddenly everyone called him a genius. He had watched that story play out so often that it barely earned a blink from him anymore.
Weapons were different. Weapons didn't brag. They showed what the refiner could do.
That was why this sword bothered him.
The circuit work was too clean to dismiss. A junior refiner would've left traces of effort everywhere, the same way a boy trying to sound like a man deepened his voice until everyone wanted to laugh. There would've been extra turns in the channels and wasted spiritual flow. This blade had none of that. Every part of its structure fed into the next, guided by smooth control that only years of refinement could produce.
An immortal-grade artifact like this couldn't be blamed on luck. Luck might let a fool stumble into a decent blade once in his life, but it didn't carve spiritual energy structures this cleanly, nor did it place every circuit where it needed to be. Whoever refined this sword knew the craft down to the bone, and they had clearly gotten their hands on materials that would make most refiners smile politely before reaching for a knife.
That kind of work didn't come from some backroom tinkerer.
It came from a senior master, or someone trained by one.
Fei's gaze shifted from the sword to the boy who had delivered it, and that was where the whole thing started to stink.
The commission had cost thirteen million mid-grade spirit stones. A sum like that could make smaller clans cough blood, yet the sword had arrived in the hands of a teenager at the Foundation Establishment realm. He could twist the facts around until they looked sensible, but every explanation led somewhere unpleasant. The boy might not be the harmless courier he appeared to be, or the sect behind him might be hiding something.
Fei was old, not stupid. He knew when a board had pieces missing, and this one had too many empty spaces for his liking.
That was dangerous.
Still, he couldn't ignore what sat in front of him. The sword was what the commission had promised. It had arrived on time, and the explanation for sending the sharpness separately held up under scrutiny.
His own sword had followed him through more years than most sects managed to survive, so handing it over to a refiner wasn't something he could do lightly.
It was a proper bonded artifact. He could feel changes in the sword almost as clearly as changes in his own hand, which made its current problem all the more frustrating. The blade had reached its limit, and if he wanted it to keep up with him, its grade had to be raised.
That was where the whole thing became dangerous.
Raising an ordinary weapon was one thing. Touching a bonded artifact was another. If the refiner made a mistake, the blade wouldn't be the only thing damaged. The bond could twist, crack, or collapse, and by then regret wouldn't be worth a damn.
He had searched for years, only to run into the same two kinds of disappointment. Some refiners didn't have the skill. The ones who did usually had too little experience with bonded artifacts for him to trust their hands near his sword.
So he had issued the commission, but he hadn't thrown trust around like a drunk tossing coins at a brothel. Payment would only come on delivery, and Liang's sword came first. If the mysterious refiner couldn't handle his disciple's weapon properly, then Fei sure as hell wasn't going to let him anywhere near his own.
But Liang was standing there with the finished sword in hand, and the work spoke for itself.
A refiner who understood staged enchantment work and could create circuits like the ones he had just seen was the person he had been trying to find.
His gaze shifted from Liang and the sword in his hand to the teenager across the room.
"There is something I would like to ask."
----------
Fei looked at Alexei like a man checking the final line of an expensive contract.
"Can your refiner add something that lets the sword recover from wear?"
"You mean surface cuts, edge damage, old nicks, that kind of thing?"
Fei nodded. "As long as the sword isn't broken beyond use, I want it to restore itself over time."
"That can be done. My refiner calls it an auto-repair enchantment. If the blade isn't snapped clean through, cuts on the surface or edge will close over time. Old damage goes with it."
"Can it be applied to a bonded artifact?"
"Depends on the bond. A stable bond shouldn't cause trouble, but my refiner can't confirm that from across the room. They'd have to inspect the sword directly. If the structure is clean, it should work."
Fei drew his sword and held it out.
"This sword has followed me for a long time. I have been seeking a refiner who can raise it to immortal grade without harming the bond structure. I would like to place a commission. Charge the cost to the Xu family. Once the work is completed, I will see that your sect receives payment."
Alexei looked the sword over.
[Galewind Mystic Gold Sword:
Spiritual Circuit IV
Sharpness IV
Hundredfold Temper III
Mystic Wind II]
"If you want the auto-repair enchantment added to your current commission, the total comes to four million."
Fei ran his thumb near the crossguard, stopping beside a shallow nick that had been worn into the blade years ago. A sword that saw combat couldn't stay flawless for long, unless its owner kept it locked away like some pretty display piece.
"Then include immortal-grade sharpness and auto-repair."
"The total would be nine million. Is that fine with you?"
"Yes. Pass the commission to your refiner."
Alexei took the sword and stored it away, then turned his attention to Gu, who had been watching the whole exchange. Now that Fei had finished, Gu no longer had a reason to stay quiet.
"Can your refiner add the auto-repair enchantment to Liang's sword as well?"
"Yes. Three million for that one too."
Gu clearly didn't like hearing another three million added to the bill, but he didn't bother with the useless act of pretending he might refuse. "I'll have the stones ready."
Alexei stored Liang's diamond sword as well, then left.
---
Four days later, Alexei came back to the vault.
Fei and Gu were already waiting inside, and Liang showed up a few minutes later. Once everyone was there, Alexei brought out Liang's diamond sword and passed it over first.
Liang took the sword, checked the edge with two fingers, then pushed his awareness into the blade. The small scratch near the base had vanished, and that alone made him stare longer than he meant to. When he looked back at Alexei, whatever comment had climbed up his throat got swallowed down before it could make him sound like an idiot. He stepped back.
Fei received his sword next, though he didn't need to inspect it for long. The bond told him the truth before his fingers had settled properly around the hilt. The work had pushed the weapon past its old limit, raising it to mid immortal grade, with the nick near the crossguard gone as cleanly as the scratch on Liang's blade.
"The repair is already active."
He checked the sword once more before sheathing it, because some things were too good to trust at first glance.
Gu cleared his throat. "What is the final total?"
"Twenty-five million mid-grade spirit stones."
Gu had known the number before he asked, but hearing it spoken aloud still made his expression slip. He smoothed it over quickly, because men like him didn't clutch their chests in front of guests.
He breathed out through his nose. "Leave three compartments untouched."
Alexei didn't argue. He pulled out his netherite pickaxe and walked to the nearest section of the vault.
There were twenty-four full compartments in total. Leaving three meant clearing twenty-one, so he raised the pickaxe and brought it down. Packed spirit stones cracked loose from the pile, and the broken cluster vanished into his inventory before it could hit the ground.
He moved along the grid after that, breaking off one chunk after another with steady swings. Spirit stones vanished by the cluster, and soon entire sections of the vault had been stripped bare.
Ran stood a little apart from the group, watching Alexei work through one compartment after another. He had opposed the deal from the start, but the worst part was that he couldn't call it a scam anymore. The sword wasn't fake, and after Fei's confirmation, the staged enchantment couldn't be dismissed as a trick either.
Everything about the deal checked out, and that was why it left such a foul taste. A scam could be exposed, and a trick could be punished. But this was a fair transaction that had gutted a noble clan in front of its own elders.
He kept his face calm as Alexei cleared the last of the twenty-first compartment and stepped back.
The money of an aristocratic clan wasn't so easy to take.