Three days later, Ye Liuyun stepped into the private booth of the auction house right on time.

“Never thought I’d actually come here to bid on pills,” he mused, still a little dazed.

He’d rarely relied on elixirs to refine his various energies before. But now he was absorbing so much power that, without pills to temper it, he no way to find enough resources for refinement—especially in the quantities he needed. Not just for himself, but for his two avatars as well. Even his beasts and women required them.

That only made him feel the lack of a truly high-grade alchemist more acutely.

The same went for weapon-refining master and array masters; it was just that they hadn’t seen combat lately and none of them depended much on external tools, so the need hadn’t shown itself. Yet once an emergency struck, it would be too late to go hunting for help.

Every booth was shielded by arrays that blocked spiritual sense; Ye Liuyun couldn’t scan them and had to rely on his golden pupils to see the cultivators inside.

The strongest among them was a lone old man at Seventh Heaven Returning Origin—someone he could handle himself. There was also a young noble at Sixth Heaven with two guards in He-family livery behind him.

Ye Liuyun didn’t bother asking He Yunzhang; probably just some elder’s offspring, nothing he cared about. Another woman in her thirties stood at Fifth Heaven, yet her two bodyguards were both late Sixth Heaven.

A while later a middle-aged man arrived—also Sixth Heaven—but from his bearing he was clearly government; two armored soldiers followed him in.

Most of the rest were Fifth or Sixth Heaven as well: some with guards, some clusters of youths. Seeing their levels, Ye Liuyun relaxed a little—he wasn’t worried about getting out alive now.

Glancing at the open seats below, he spotted only one other Seventh Heaven cultivator; everyone else was Fifth or Sixth. That calmed him even more.

“Looks like these pills are auctioned often; all the real heavyweights have already bought what they need. The big clans must have direct channels—no need to show up here.”

Reassured, he decided that if anything useful appeared later, he could bid without worry.

Yet once the auction began his heart sank again.

“Nothing special on offer—but these prices are insane.” Items that looked ordinary to him opened at over a hundred million top-grade divine crystals.

Any weapon above True Tier Seven wasn’t even priced in crystals anymore—they wanted origin source units. Some of the open-seat cultivators were already pushing seven units apiece.

Ye Liuyun kept silent and watched until the pills he needed finally showed up halfway through: ninth-tier elixirs for refining soul, bloodline, body and core energy—thirty origin units starting bid each.

By then few in the open seats could still compete; bids began drifting in from the booths instead—and Ye Liuyun joined every one of them, landing all four lots at fifty-something units apiece.

The lone Seventh-Heaven fellow only contested the soul-refining pill; when Ye Liuyun topped his fifty-five with sixty units it ended there. A mere five-unit margin—but to those scattered bidders it already marked him as an extravagantly rich rogue cultivator. Still none dared entertain any ideas against him amid so many experts present—and those inside booths barely spared him a glance through their windows (his golden eyes caught their expressions). They clearly had deeper pockets than this level of spending suggested:

“They’re skipping these piecemeal pills... waiting for that True-Tier Nine Marrow Washing Pill,” Ye Liuyun realized—and braced himself for heavier competition ahead mentally counting:

Four pills down: over two-hundred origin units gone.

“That marrow-cleanser will probably break three-hundred.”

To him one pill simply wasn’t worth such price—they were used to Lin Luoyi’s hand-made elixirs and never paid coin before

But that was the listed price; slapping the token down would be the quickest way to get it.

After mulling it over, he stopped worrying about the cost. If the resource was useful, expense didn’t matter. No matter how outrageous the price, one quick heist from a merchant guild by Raccoon-Cat would cover it.

The auctioneer now lifted out a huge bow mottled with rust and began his pitch.

“This bow was dredged from the Desolate Sea floor. Our refiners judge that, intact, it would rank at least Void-grade-5. Unfortunately, long immersion in the sea eroded its arrays.

“If you can hire a high-tier refiner to restore it, returning it to its former grade is entirely feasible. Opening bid: thirty units of primal essence.”

The description drew almost no interest.

The thing was oversized—clearly not meant for humans; even an Ancient Demon might find it clumsy. Add the rust, lost grade, and questionable material, plus the fortune you’d have to pay a master refiner for repairs, and most people sneered.

“Thirty primal units for scrap iron—your guild sure knows how to turn a profit!” someone mocked aloud.

Ye Liuyun’s golden pupils studied the bow: beneath the flaky rust lay a thick shell of corroded alloy; the core metal itself remained untouched.

Not only was the limb intact, but even its string had survived—a testament to extraordinary material.

He suspected corrosion had simply broken surface arrays—but if that were all there was to it, in-house refiners would already have fixed it.

No expert on arrays himself, he couldn’t be certain whether restoration was possible.

After asking around and getting zero bids, just as the auctioneer prepared to declare a pass-in:

“Thirty.” Ye Liuyun spoke up at last.

To him those raw materials alone were worth something—the metal limbs and especially that string still intact after eons in Desolate waters without being eaten by sea beasts could not be ordinary stuff; even his golden eyes couldn’t identify what beast’s sinew had been used.

He simply sensed both limb and string were rare finds—and if anyone tried bidding him up he wouldn’t raise another cent.