After a long pause, Lan Xiaobu set down the jade slip, having summarized the key points. In the Great Cosmos, safety was generally assured, provided one didn’t court disaster. What constituted disaster? Flaunting top-tier treasures or techniques, encroaching on others’ interests, or provoking ruthless individuals.
However, Lan Xiaobu didn’t fully trust the information in these jade slips. They contained only commonly known details, omitting much that was obscure or sensitive.
For instance, the slips claimed private fighting was prohibited, with perpetrators held accountable, and that great divine ability users would use time-space retracing to investigate conflicts. Lan Xiaobu took this with a grain of salt. Would a great divine ability user have nothing better to do than perform time-space retracing for every skirmish?
The cosmic rules here were extraordinarily robust, and performing such a divine ability was no small feat.
Of course, for heinous acts of slaughter, a great divine ability user might intervene. But for every minor fight? Unlikely. Even with the strong rules here, Lan Xiaobu could, with effort, disrupt residual spatial principles after a fight. Not everyone cultivated their own Great Path like he did, but he believed at least ten percent of cultivators could do the same.
The law’s existence simply discouraged fighting. Even Lan Xiaobu would adhere to it most of the time. With resources abundant enough for cultivation, why stir trouble?
The jade slips also mentioned each of the ten worlds having a Dao Ancestor who established rules. Lan Xiaobu believed these were not cosmic rules but behavioral constraints for cultivators. The Great Cosmos’s cosmic rules were infinite, with even the edge’s principles beyond comprehension. If no one could grasp them, not even a Dao Ancestor could. How could someone who hadn’t mastered a world’s rules create them? Moreover, most of the Great Cosmos remained unexplored, so how could its rules be fully known?
If the Great Cosmos’s rules were truly set by a Dao Ancestor, Lan Xiaobu would leave immediately. Living in a world governed by another’s rules was no different from being in their private domain.
The slips also claimed the ten worlds combined were less than a ten-thousandth of the Great Cosmos’s size, highlighting its vastness, though Lan Xiaobu doubted the precision of that figure.
He left his cave and returned to the trading hall, intending to buy some Dao pills.
Since entering the Sage Path, Lan Xiaobu rarely used Dao pills or fruits except for healing. But the Great Cosmos records emphasized that Dao pills and fruits were major cultivation resources here, followed by Dao crystals and veins.
For him, after reaching the Sage Path, luck and cosmic principles mattered more than pills or fruits.
The largest trading hall in Chenji Market was the Half-Moon Trading Hall, where he had bought the jade slips.
Dao pills and fruits were trivial to him, but here, they were top-tier resources, sold on the top floor.
The Half-Moon Trading Hall wasn’t crowded, offering a pleasant shopping environment. You could browse freely, calling a clerk only when ready to buy. The rule was look, don’t touch—neither with hands nor divine sense, as items were protected by divine sense barriers. Touching with divine sense meant breaking the barrier.
The hall had only three floors, the top being the third.
The third floor had few items, neatly arranged with spatial stacking restrictions.
Lan Xiaobu scanned and was shocked to find not only Dao pills and fruits for sale but also luck and karma. Luck was likely stripped from a realm or a cultivator…
The thought of stripping luck from a cultivator sent a chill down his spine. If luck could be openly sold here, how could fighting be prohibited?
Perhaps it was brought by external cultivators, he reasoned. Since arriving, he hadn’t seen any fights or trouble. The karma items were sealed principles, clearly stripped from cultivators. These weren’t necessarily from those cultivating the Karma Great Path but personal karmic principles, usable for divine abilities or techniques.
These items made Lan Xiaobu even more cautious. He approached the Dao pills.
Looking at them, he questioned whether he had ever truly consumed Dao pills. He had eaten and even refined many, but these seemed different, with no prices marked.
He waved over a clerk.
“What does this Daoist need?” The clerk, a Creation Realm cultivator, appeared young but carried a decaying aura, likely nearing the end of his lifespan, unable to advance, and thus working here.
“Can you introduce these Dao pills?” Lan Xiaobu pointed.
The clerk quickly asked, “What attributes does the Daoist need? And what grade?”
Lan Xiaobu realised his mistake—he should have bought a Dao pill introduction first.
Seeing his hesitation, the clerk, with seasoned intuition, guessed Lan Xiaobu was a newcomer from a lower-tier universe.
Unfazed, as newcomers were common in the vast Great Cosmos, he handed Lan Xiaobu a jade slip. “This Dao pill introduction is a gift. After reviewing it, call me if you need anything.”
“Thank you,” Lan Xiaobu said, taking the slip and scanning it with his divine sense.
After a quick read, he realised his prior understanding of Dao pills was incomplete. He had thought attributeless Dao pills were the most valuable, but that wasn’t entirely true. Attributeless pills were prized because anyone could glean their needed Great Path principles from them.
Here, Dao pills had various attributes—luck, karma, time, space, and more.
They were graded into seven tiers: attributeless, low-grade, mid-grade, high-grade, supreme, post-chaos, and chaos Dao pills. The first few were straightforward, but post-chaos pills required refinement in chaos, hence the name.
Refining Dao pills needed more than just Dao fruits—top-tier flames and cosmic principles were essential. Any graded pill incorporated one or more principles, explaining their attributes.
Post-chaos and chaos Dao pills were legendary. Few could survive in chaos to refine a post-chaos pill, let alone incorporate principles. Chaos Dao pills, existing since the universe’s creation, weren’t artificially made and were nearly unattainable.
Lan Xiaobu called the clerk back. “I’d like one attributeless luck Dao pill, one low-grade space Dao pill, and one mid-grade wood-attribute Dao pill. How many Dao crystals?”
The clerk apologised, “Our hall is small, with only low-grade pills at best. We don’t have space, time, or luck pills, but we have a low-grade wood-attribute pill. We do have some attributeless five-element pills. Would you like those?”
Lan Xiaobu settled, “Then give me one attributeless fire-attribute pill and one low-grade wood-attribute pill.”
“That’s 10,500 high-grade Dao crystals,” the clerk said, eyeing Lan Xiaobu skeptically, doubting a newcomer from a lower-tier universe had so many high-grade crystals.
Lan Xiaobu was shocked. So expensive! He had thought cave rentals here were cheap, but these pill prices shattered his expectations.
Though he had some Dao crystals, they wouldn’t buy many graded pills.
