Chapter 3: Going Big

“Fatty, why is your soul sleeping inside this ring?”
“Have you never read a fantasy novel? The protagonist’s secret weapon grandpas always reside inside rings.”
“Fantasy novels are one thing, but what does that have to do with you?”
“Hehe, curious? Then shout out ‘Daddy Fatty’ right now!”

Fatty’s proud laughter echoed in Lin Chuan’s mind. Even though Fatty’s soul was currently resting within the ring, Lin Chuan could vividly picture his animated expression.
“Tch—so you just want to take advantage of me, huh? I’m your dad, there’s no way I’m calling you grandpa!”

Lin Chuan was initially puzzled, but once Fatty’s cheeky demand came out, combined with his understanding of Fatty’s character, he couldn’t help but see the mischievous intent behind it.
“Ah, as expected of my son, you immediately guessed Daddy’s thoughts. Hmm! Not bad! You’ve got some of Daddy’s old style!”

Ignoring Fatty’s “fatherly” remarks, Lin Chuan headed toward the busiest part of the market outside the city.
He was thinking of a quick way to earn twenty taels of gold—exactly like a cliché from his previous world’s fantasy novels: finding bargains at street stalls.

...

“Fatty, don’t you think this counts as cheating?”

Lin Chuan crouched in front of a stall selling ore, casually fingering a few dusty stones as he communicated with Fatty in his mind.
“Cheating?” Fatty’s voice sounded disdainful in his head.
“This is called making good use of resources! Do you know how many years it took me to accumulate this knowledge? A hundred thousand years! A hundred thousand years! On Earth, that’s enough time for cavemen to evolve into modern society three times over!”

Lin Chuan couldn’t help but laugh out loud, drawing a curious glance from the stall owner. He quickly coughed to cover it up and picked up a fist-sized brown ore.
“How much for this?”

“Five taels of silver, sir! Good eye! This was dug from the depths of the Black Wind Mountains, five hundred miles from here. It might contain spirit ore!”

The stall owner was a weathered middle-aged man with bright eyes.
“Spirit ore, my foot,” Fatty snorted from inside the ring. “It’s just ordinary iron ore at best containing some refined iron. Worth maybe one tael of silver.”

Lin Chuan put down the ore, clapped his hands, and stood up. “Too expensive. I’ll have a look around.”

After leaving the stall, Lin Chuan sighed. “This is the twelfth stall already. Why are they all selling this kind of stuff? Where are the bargains? In novels, protagonists just casually stroll around and find ancient artifact fragments or rare martial arts scrolls.”

“Do you think you’re writing a novel?” Fatty grumbled.
“The reality is, ninety-nine percent of stall owners outside the city can’t even afford the city entry fee. What good stuff would they have? Even if there were treasures, skilled cultivators with sharp eyes would have bought them long ago.”

Lin Chuan pursed his lips and continued wandering through the market.

The market outside the city stretched along the city walls of Tianyun City for a full twenty miles, bustling with people and a continuous chorus of hawking voices.
The air was a mix of spices, raw meat, medicinal herbs, and sweat, reminding Lin Chuan of the agricultural markets from his previous life—just tens or hundreds of times larger in scale.

“Wait, that old man selling herbs on the left,” Fatty suddenly said, “ask him the price of that red plant on his stall.”

Lin Chuan walked over, pretending to casually examine various dried herbs.

The old man’s herbs looked ordinary, mostly common ones used to treat colds and fevers. Only in the corner was a dark red plant shaped like a flame, carelessly tossed beside a pile of licorice roots.

“How much for this?” Lin Chuan pointed at the red herb.

The old man looked up. “Flame Tongue Grass, three taels of silver.”

“Flame Tongue Grass?” Fatty laughed uproariously inside the ring.
“That old guy is selling the Crimson Flame Spirit Herb as Flame Tongue Grass? What a jackpot! Crimson Flame Spirit Herb is the main ingredient for making second-grade pills, worth at least fifty taels of gold!”

Lin Chuan suppressed his excitement and bargained coolly, “Too expensive. How about one and a half taels?”

The old man hesitated, “Two taels, lowest price.”

“Deal.” Lin Chuan paid readily and carefully tucked the “Flame Tongue Grass” into his bosom.

After leaving the stall, Lin Chuan grinned. “Good thing I found a few small bargains earlier to earn some silver. Now with fifty taels of gold, I can finally afford the city entry fee!”

...

“Don’t celebrate too soon,” Fatty poured cold water on him.
“You still need to find a discerning buyer. The fact that you could buy it here means no one outside the city recognizes this thing. So no one will spend fifty taels of gold on a Flame Tongue Grass. To turn it into fifty taels of gold, you have to enter the city.”

Lin Chuan’s smile froze. “...So I still have to scrape together twenty taels of gold for the entry fee first?”

“Smart,” Fatty said with glee.

The next half day, Lin Chuan and Fatty almost covered the entire market.

To Lin Chuan’s surprise, most goods’ actual value was close to their asking price.

They found a few items with some margin for profit: a cold iron ore mistaken for ordinary jade, a low-level talisman manual treated like a children’s picture book, and a poison-warding bead thought to be mere decoration.

“Counting everything except the Crimson Flame Spirit Herb, we earned about fifteen taels of silver today.”

Lin Chuan squatted by the roadside to rest, a habit he and Fatty had from their past lives watching beautiful girls outside university gates.

“One tael of gold equals eight taels of silver. At this rate, it’ll take... ten days?”

“If you earn fifteen taels daily like today, ten and a half days,” Fatty calculated precisely. “Congratulations, you’ve successfully turned yourself into a scalper.”

Lin Chuan wailed, tilting his head to the sky, “Where’s the traveler’s aura? The golden finger?”

“Hey, I am your golden finger,” Fatty complained. “The problem is that your capital is too low and the market outside the city is too low-end. Even a clever woman can’t cook without rice.”

Suddenly, Lin Chuan sat upright. “Wait, we’re thinking about this wrong. Instead of wasting ten days picking small bargains, why not go for something big?”

“Oh?” Fatty perked up. “Tell me.”

“Tianyun Tower,”
Lin Chuan pointed to a three-story wooden building in the center of the market.
“That’s run by the city lord’s office. If this were Earth, it’d be a government-run enterprise. There must be good stuff inside. And they collect so many items, surely some are beyond their own understanding of value?”

Fatty pondered briefly. “Makes sense. As an official institution, Tianyun Tower must have far more rare treasures than these small stalls. But do you have the money to buy anything?”

Lin Chuan smiled mysteriously:
“Who said we have to buy? We can sell information. You know so many treasures—just point out a few items Tianyun Tower doesn’t know the value of, tell them the uses, and we’ll earn consulting fees.”

“As expected of my son!” Fatty exclaimed excitedly. “Great idea! Let’s go to Tianyun Tower!”

Tianyun Tower was even more magnificent than Lin Chuan had imagined.

A three-story wooden structure with flying eaves and upturned corners, guarded by two men in standardized leather armor.

Guests entering were well-dressed, clearly not the poor stall owners from outside.

Lin Chuan straightened his faded coarse cloth clothes and braved his way inside.

At the entrance, the dazzling variety of goods overwhelmed him.

The spacious, bright first-floor hall was divided into sections: herbs, ores, weapons, armor, and miscellanea. Each section had counters staffed by employees in uniform.

“Tsk tsk, now this looks like something,” Fatty commented. “Much better than the junk outside.”

Lin Chuan approached a tall, thin man who looked like a manager. “Excuse me, do you accept treasure appraisal information here?”

The man sized Lin Chuan up with a sneer. “What kind of information?”

“Some items here might have unclear uses or unknown value. I can provide professional consultation.”

Lin Chuan tried to sound professional.

The man scoffed, “Kid, do you know how many appraisers Tianyun Tower has? Need you to give us lessons?”

Just as Lin Chuan was about to speak, Fatty shouted in his mind, “Second floor, third display case on the right, that black stone.”

Lin Chuan looked up at the second floor. “How about this—I’ll appraise one item free of charge. If I’m right, then we can talk about cooperation.”

The man eyed him suspiciously. “What do you want to appraise?”

“That black stone in the third display case on the right of the second floor,” Lin Chuan said confidently, “If I’m not mistaken, it’s not ordinary obsidian.”

The second floor was accessible only to VIPs. Lin Chuan’s shabby clothes made it impossible for him to have entered before.

The man’s expression changed. “How... do you know there’s a black stone up there?”

“I told you, I’m a professional.” Lin Chuan smiled.

The man hesitated. “Wait here.” He turned and went toward the stairs.

A few minutes later, Lin Chuan was led to an elegant room on the second floor.

Inside were the manager and a middle-aged man in a luxurious purple robe. On the table lay the fist-sized black stone.

“I’m Zhao Ming, chief appraiser of Tianyun Tower,” the purple-robed man began bluntly,
“We’ve had this ‘obsidian’ for three years but couldn’t determine its exact properties. You say it’s not ordinary obsidian—what’s your proof?”

Lin Chuan asked Fatty in his mind, “What now? Should I just tell them it’s a star core fragment?”

“Don’t rush,” Fatty advised. “Play it cool and pretend to examine it first.”

Lin Chuan nodded, picked up the black stone, and pretended to study it carefully.

The stone was cold to the touch, heavier than expected, with faint silver veins that shimmered subtly in the light.

“This is not obsidian,” Lin Chuan said, adopting the tone of an expert from a TV show in his previous life. “It’s a star core fragment.”

“A star core fragment?” Zhao Ming frowned. “What do you mean by star core?”

“It’s the core of a star,” Lin Chuan explained,
“When certain special stars fall, their core may not dissipate but condense into this black material. It looks like obsidian but is much denser, with these unique star-like veins.”

Zhao Ming exchanged a glance with the manager, who hurriedly left the room.

“Go on,” Zhao Ming said with interest. “What’s the use of a star core fragment?”

“Many uses,” Lin Chuan elaborated,
“First, it’s a top-grade material for forging spatial artifacts; second, it can be used to set up high-level spirit gathering formations; most importantly, it contains a trace of stellar origin energy, priceless to cultivators of star-based techniques.”

Zhao Ming nodded thoughtfully. “How can you prove this is true?”

Just then, the manager returned with a thick book in hand. Zhao Ming flipped through it quickly and stopped on a page, eyes widening slightly.

“There is indeed a brief record of ‘star cores’ in the ‘Compendium of Rare Objects,’” Zhao Ming looked up at Lin Chuan. “It says it requires activation by stellar energy to verify authenticity. Can you do that?”

Lin Chuan asked Fatty, “Can you?”

“Of course,” Fatty said proudly. “Though I have no cultivation now, I can still teach you a simple star summoning technique.”

Ten minutes later, in a vacant area in the back courtyard of Tianyun Tower, Lin Chuan followed Fatty’s guidance, forming hand seals and chanting over the black stone placed on a stone table.

“Remember, exaggerate your gestures and look devout,” Fatty coached. “In appraisal business, seven parts performance.”

Lin Chuan nearly laughed but forced a serious face and continued the act.

As his hand movements changed, the stars in the night sky seemingly brightened slightly. A faint silver light descended and landed on the black stone.

The silver veins on the stone’s surface suddenly glowed, flowing as if alive, and the entire stone emitted a soft silver radiance.

“Oh my…”

The manager gaped.

Zhao Ming stepped forward rapidly to examine the glowing stone. “It really is a star core fragment! We’ve treated it as ordinary obsidian for three years!”

Lin Chuan relaxed and wiped a non-existent sweat from his brow. “Believe me now?”

“Believe it, of course!” Zhao Ming completely changed his attitude. “Sir... Master, may I ask your name?”

“Lin Chuan.”

“Master Lin,” Zhao Ming said respectfully, “Would you be willing to serve as a guest appraiser for Tianyun Tower? The compensation is generous!”

Lin Chuan and Fatty cheered silently in their minds: “Success!”