Chapter 41
Chapter 41: Trap Made Using an Unidentified Material
Five minutes later, Liao Feijun came back with a dark face. He gritted his teeth so hard that it made cracking sounds.
He had red wine staining his chest, and he looked incredibly pathetic.
“Ning Xueshi!” he hissed the name fiercely. “I originally wanted to get rid of the enmity between us and resolve the grudge between our seniors through the relationship between us juniors, but I didn’t expect that you would not show me any respect at all! This brat stays in a public renting house and has never even seen an elevator before! And he wants to fight against me, Liao Feijun?”
“Young Master Jun! Young Master Jun!”
The young men and women who had come together with him saw the conflict between them, and they quickly went over to dissuade him from attacking Meng Chao. “All the guests today are important people. We can’t attack anyone in public, but we’ll have plenty of chances in the future.”
Liao Feijun sucked in a deep breath. “Don’t worry. I’ll just be dirtying my own hands if I attack this boy. Isn’t he the old bat’s new disciple? I’ll have plenty of chances to make him embarrass himself later!”
At the other side of the trade fair, Ning Xueshi apologized to Meng Chao in a flurry. “I’m sorry, Liao Feijun is a lunatic. Just ignore him.”
“I’m fine. But I didn’t expect that you’d be so feisty. You just went and poured red wine on him.”
Ning Xueshi’s face turned red. She did not expect that she would be so extreme either. No matter what, they were all harvesters. Even if their personal grudges ran deep, it was not good for them to turn into complete enemies.
But just now, she had been engaged in a noble topic of how they should contribute to society with Meng Chao, a strange boy who did not regard fame and riches with any importance, when suddenly, Liao Feijun, a good-for-nothing rich man’s son, came over to bother them. Ning Xueshi felt that her value in Meng Chao’s eyes dropped because of him.
She had been angry and anxious, which was why she splashed wine on Liao Feijun.
Fortunately, the trade fair officially began at that moment, and everyone’s attention was diverted.
The various strange, rare, and valuable materials were an eye-opener for Meng Chao. They also stimulated the memories of his previous life to the point that they were eager to come to the forefront of his mind.
But with his physical constitution, there was no need for him to buy high-quality rare materials to refine them into medicine. It was enough for him to feast his eyes upon those items.
As for the crystalized neurosphere, Ning Shewo used all of his skills to push the price up, and they managed to sell it for one million three hundred and thirty thousand. It was two to three times higher than the market price, and Meng Chao was extremely delighted.
With so much money in hand, he thought of buying valuable things that everyone missed.
But the people in the hall had good judgment. The price for each material was fair and just. Nothing as cliche as a normal high school student with a discerning eye buying a material that was supposed to be worth five hundred million with just fifty million happened.
Without anyone’s knowledge, two hours passed, and the trade fair entered the most exciting section.
A built man brought out a wooden plate and walked onto the stage. He said in a loud voice, “My dear experts, three days ago, Bloody Wolf Fighting Squad found an unidentified material in the depths of the fog. We don’t know its properties, its use, or its worth. That’s why we thought to bring it here. We wish that you would appraise it and we could find a buyer for it. If anyone is able to identify it, we will definitely give you appraisal fees.”
There were plenty of monsters, and they were constantly evolving and mutating. No matter how powerful a hunter was, it was impossible for them to be able to recognize all the materials in Monster Mountain Range.
But harvesters had been in close contact with all sorts of materials for years. They had a much better judgment compared to hunters.
A good harvester was usually a good appraiser as well. When powerful buyers and sellers gathered in a trade fair and a rare material was appraised and its worth set, it would usually be bought on the spot.
In time, the identification of unidentified materials became the last event of high-end trade fairs.
Of course, the harvesters were putting their reputations at risk. This was an incredibly risky event.
If they managed to identify a rare material no one knew about, their reputations would definitely shoot up.
But if they made a misjudgment, they could easily fall from their pedestals.
In no time, many harvesters and major buyers gathered together. Everyone was very interested in witnessing the splendor of the unidentified material.
“Wait!” At this moment, Liao Feijun suddenly stood up. With ill intentions, he looked in Ning Shewo’s direction. “I know that Elder Ning has recently taken in a successor. He can be considered to be my junior martial uncle. Just now, I spoke to Martial Uncle Meng, and I’ve been enlightened.
“Why don’t we let Martial Uncle Meng come up to identify this item so that everyone can see his skills? We can also judge just how good is Elder Ning’s judgment in choosing his disciples. What do you think?”
The crowd was stunned. Then, they became interested.
Ning Xueshi’s face turned red. She stood up and retorted. “Liao Feijun, enough with the nonsense. Mr. Meng is not my grandfather’s disciple, but his friend. He has nothing with the matters between our families. Stop going around randomly hurting other people!”
“A friend?” Liao Feijun laughed. “Elder Ning was poisoned by a snake, and it seems like he has reached even greater heights—becoming friends with just anyone. The spirit of retiring while one is at the prime of their life and being content with a normal life is something worthy to learn for us juniors.”
Ning Shewo’s face turned dark as a pan, but he could not fly off into a rage.
With his status, if he entered an argument with Liao Feijun, he would just be lowering his status.
Ning Xueshi was so angry that she was scowling. Just when she was about to take a step forward and ask that she could appraise the item, Meng Chao stepped forward.
“Alright, then let me see the item.”
He was never someone who could swallow insults and humiliation. He was already very angry about what happened to Ripple Force, and since Liao Feijun was in cahoots with Gu Ming, he was definitely not someone good. Now, since he provoked them verbally, he could vent on that boy.
Besides, he would awaken to many future harvesting skills later on. He would also remember the structures of future monsters after they evolved. He would definitely be contributing a lot in the harvesting circle at that time.
But if he wanted to do that, he would need a certain amount of fame. Only when his words carried weight would others believe him.
‘Young Master Jun, is it? I’m sorry, but since you decided to put your face under my boot willingly, I have to stomp on it a couple of times, or I would be disrespecting you,’ Meng Chao thought.
Ning Xueshi did not stop him, and Meng Chao strode to the stage and received the other experts’ gazes on him in a relaxed manner.
His confidence moved the built man from Bloody Wolf. He lifted the veil and said respectively, “Mr. Meng, please appraise it.”
A brilliant light shot to the ceiling. When it was reflected off the colored chandelier, the whole hall was filled with a variety of colors. It was as if there were seven-colored ripples swimming about the hall.
Even the harvesters who had a lot of knowledge could not help but cry out in surprise. They rose on their tiptoes to stare at the item.
Lying still on a fluffy red velvet was a pearl the size of a goose’s egg. It shone with a crystalline hue, and each layer was dyed in a variety of colors. It was like dozens of landscape paintings that used a lot of vibrant colors were gathered in the pearl. It shone with a different colored light based on different angles.
“What is this?”
“What a beautiful pearl. This looks like the crystal core of a superbeast. We just don’t know what sort of superbeast it is.”
“The spirit energy is really thick. The superbeast must have used decades or perhaps even a century to gather that amount of spirit energy. It’ll be great for our cultivation!
Everyone gathered their gazes on Meng Chao.
All of them were curious. What made this boy who wore a wrinkly high school student’s uniform so amazing?
Meng Chao cast the pearl a glance, and he immediately had an answer in his head. Just when he was about to speak, he saw an enchanting light flash in the depths of the crystal core, and his pupils shrank. He gasped.
“Could it be?”
Meng Chao held his breath and observed the pearl carefully. His expression turned graver with each passing second.
He walked three rounds around the unidentified object while drawing close to it. He studied it for three minutes and even asked Ning Xueshi to bring out a magnifying glass that was specifically used to identify items.
The more he looked at it, the more focused he became, and the more immersed he was. It looked as if he was about to crawl into the item itself.
He took a full five minutes, and everyone grew impatient. They started talking noisily. Then, Meng Chao sighed and shook his head before he said, “I don’t know.”
The crowd burst into a ruckus. ‘If you didn’t know, why did you put on a show and observe it for such a long time? Do you think that our time is not valuable?’
Liao Feijun smiled.
“Do you know?” Meng Chao looked at him askance and let out a cold huff.
He was not tooting his own horn.
This was an unidentified item. If even he could not be one hundred percent certain of it, no one in the current Dragon City would be able to identify it.
“I know a little about it.” Liao Feijun was in high spirits. He strode to the stage and pushed Meng Chao to the side rudely. “There is an etherealized plant called Single-eyed Grass growing in the depths of the fog to the south of Dragon City. It’s the favorite food of a local monster Golden-furred Pig.
Single-eyed Grass only bears fruit once every three years. After bearing fruit hundreds of times, it will bear a mutated fruit called Ghost-eyed Fruit. When Golden-furred Pigs eat this mutated fruit, they aren’t able to digest it. It stays in their bodies and turns into something similar to stones in their bodies.
“Ghost-eyed Fruit has gentle properties, so it can coexist harmoniously in a digestive system. But Golden-furred Pigs are Grade Three superbeasts Red-tailed Golden Python’s favorite food. Once a Red-tailed Golden Python eats a Golden-furred Pig with a Ghost-eyed Fruit in it, even if the pig is digested and absorbed into the python’s body, the Ghost-eyed Fruit will be stimulated by the digestive fluid from the Red-tailed Golden Python and form a new shell.
“After decades and even a century, this Ghost-eyed Fruit will be refined into the Red-tailed Golden Python’s crystal core. Let’s use a term from the fantasy novels on Earth and say that it’s the Red-tailed Golden Python’s Dantian region. It would be an apt description to describe the crystal core as such. Now, it has a brand new name—Aquatic Dragon’s Eye!
“Vice Captain Zhao, might I ask if you got this Aquatic Dragon’s Eye from a Red-tailed Golden Python?” Liao Feijun asked the man from Bloody Wolf with a grin.
Mr. Zhao was shocked and impressed. He nodded repeatedly and said, “Young Master Jun, what you said is true. This crystal core is indeed something we obtained from a Red-tailed Golden Python. We also found quite a lot of fur and carcasses from Golden-furred Pigs near its nest. There was even a lot of Single-eyed Grass around it!”
Many of the people in the field, the buyers, and the sellers heard it, and they were also very impressed.
Many of them were able to guess that the pearl was a python’s crystal core.
But they would not have been able to speak as logically as Liao Feijun and figure out what python breed it was and how the crystal core was formed. The details he mentioned made it seem as if he had seen it with his own eyes.
“As expected of Young Master Jun. You know a lot, have great memory, and also great judgment!”
“You’re not like that brat at all. Ha! Forget about the fact that he can’t identify that it’s from a Red-tailed Golden Python, he didn’t even know that this is a crystal core from a python-type superbeast. Why is he still thinking about becoming a harvester?”
“Elder Ning must be desperate now. How could he look for such a successor?”
“He’s not a successor. Didn’t you hear them just now? He’s a ‘friend’. Hahahaha!”
Noise rose all around them.
It was Liao Feijun’s friends causing a ruckus.
The grandfather-granddaughter pair were so angry that their hands trembled, and they felt their hearts ache for Meng Chao.
Ning Shewo glared at Ning Xueshi and said gloomily, “You were too rash just now. You became enemies with Liao Feijun and dragged our young friend into this mess. He’s just a high school student, and even if he has received a lot of guidance from Old Fire Relayer, there’s no way he could identify all the materials in the depths of the fog. He fell hard this time!”