Transcending Dreams - D2 - Chapter 52

“Very convincing,” Lan Yang laughed, clearly too giddy to care about his displeasure. “Alright, let’s leave and finish the tour of the common grounds. I delayed it long enough. I’m sure Elder Yu is cross with me already.”

“She did mention that,” William took pleasure in dimming Lan Yang’s smile. “A few times, actually.”

“Right,” Lan Yang cleared his throat. “You walked in with a long face. Did something go wrong with your meeting with Elder Yu?”

Plenty of things went wrong. Or right, if it was viewed from another point of view. Still, he wasn’t going to explain most of those details.

“It actually went well. Elder Yu was happy to help,” William simplified it to the extreme.

“Interesting, that must be a first,” Lan Yang said with doubt. “Elder Yu is never happy about anything… in fact, I’ve never seen her have emotions for anything.”

“I’m sure she would be happy to know your thoughts, Senior Yang.”

“… Have you never heard of brotherhood? You don’t go running to the elders and tell them everything,” Lan Yang narrowed his eyes.

“Who said I would say anything? Elder Yu seems to know these things naturally,” William commented as he transferred the Spirit Stones left on the seat to his spatial ring.

He counted how many Xu Feng had left for him. Eighty-two Spirit Stones. Far more than he had assumed. He approximated Xu Feng’s time in the Qi refining room and quickly understood why.

Around thirty of the Spirit Stones were for the fees the auction house charged for the Qi refining room.

“You’re right about that,” Lan Yang looked around as if Elder Yu was in the walls. “Let’s go. I’ll take you to the library. You’ll likely spend most of your time there at the start.”

“I do want to visit the library, but you told me we could visit the Jade Cauldron Peak first,” William replied as he followed Lan Yang out of the room.

“… That’s right, I did say that,” Lan Yang said slowly. “Why did you want to go there? If you need any elixirs, we can get them from the market.”

“Not that—Well, maybe that too, but I have corpses of spirit beasts that needed to be rendered into something useful.”

“Ah, that makes more sense,” Lan Yang nodded, stopping at the short line that William hadn’t noticed. A staffer was scanning the cultivators’ passes leaving the Red Floor.

“What’s this?” William asked, drawing some eyes at the question. He didn’t pay any mind to them after seeing they weren’t from the sect.

“There must be something wrong with the scanning jade in the lobby,” Lan Yang replied. “They are finicky things.”

William’s lips twitched in amusement. He didn’t expect bugs to exist in cultivator-made items just like they did in electronics.

Unlike lines in the mortal world, there was no such thing as ‘stuck in line’ when cultivators were involved, not in a traditional sense. It didn’t take longer than a minute for them to reach the front.

“Your pass, honored guest,” the staffer said with a smile.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

William pulled out his Inner Court pass and wordlessly handed it over. The staffer was similar to the others he had seen deal with guests. Young and still with a bit of hope for advancement.

He wondered again at what point the sect considered that hope low enough to transfer the staffers out to something like the Garden.

“Ah, I see you have a waiver for some of the fees here,” the staffer commented. “Your remaining balance comes to thirty-two Spirit Stones and forty Qi Stones. How would you like to pay?”

The staffer might have presented that as an option, but with the way his pass was being returned and the glance at his spatial ring, it was known there weren’t enough sect points to cover the cost.

“With Spirit Stones,” William replied.

“Wonderful,” the staffer smiled. “Please touch your storage item to the tablet and allow the automatic withdrawal.”

William stared at the offered tablet in surprise. It seemed like it had many uses. Interesting. He pressed his ring against the blank tablet, which pulsed a dull white.

He immediately felt a faint pulling sensation on his ring. It was weak enough that he could break it without effort, but after he confirmed the amount being retrieved from the ring, he allowed it.

The staffer pulled the tablet away with a slight bow. “Thirty-three Spirit Stones have been paid, and sixty points have been added to your sect account as change. Thank you for your patronage!”

William quickly stepped to the side, allowing the cultivator behind them to move up before following Lan Yang into the main chamber.

“The Jade Cauldron peak is best reached if we follow the edge of the common grounds,” Lan Yang commented as they walked to the exit. “You won’t see much, but it saves us the hassle of navigating the grounds. The end of the auction will occupy the teleportation formations for the next few hours.”

“Teleportation?” William asked in surprise. “Is it really that far away?”

“No. It’s a benefit for members of the Sentinel Peak,” Lan Yang smirked with pride. “We have direct access to any of the peaks. Within reason, of course. It saves a lot of headaches by letting me skip the entry procedures.”

“That does sound useful,” William was thinking about Xiu Jing at the Administration Peak and how she could be avoided. “That would have helped Sister Xiaoling—”

He stopped, wondering how he had forgotten about her.

“Junior Wei?”

William saw Lan Yang staring at him with furrowed brows. “I need to get Sister Xiaoling. Where do the sellers go to collect payment?”

A look of frustration passed by Lan Yang’s face. “Follow me.”

They turned around, returned to the lobby, weaved through the crowd, and entered a hallway just beyond the reception. A guard let them pass after glancing at Lan Yang.

William stopped abruptly in unison with Lan Yang when the hallway opened into a large room that might be the most concentrated area of power he had seen in this world. Of course, that was without considering the happenings in the Shard.

Nascent Soul realm cultivators lined the wall like common guards, only several feet from each other. The room was large, but not enough to accommodate twenty or so powerful cultivators to have enough space as they probably wished.

But they weren’t the focus. It was the trio in the middle. Two was which were deep in a conversation while the other looked bored out of his mind. The latter was the one who brought attention to their arrival.

“Oh, look who wandered in,” Wei Ming grinned. “Looks like you’re in luck, Brother Yun. You get to meet your sister’s savior before we leave.”

“Junior Wei?”

“Little Liang?”

Wang Xiaoling and Rong Yun looked at each other for a moment before chuckling in unison.

“Of course, Little Liang knows you,” Wang Xiaoling chuckled maturely. “He’s surprising me more and more.”

“And I should have known Junior Wei was connected to you,” Rong Yun agreed with a smile. “He has already shown his character by saving my sister. Now I see he’s resourceful enough to know such a fantastic merchant.”

William could barely watch. He didn’t know if Rong Yun was faking this, but he knew Wang Xiaoling was.

She couldn’t be this… he wasn’t sure how to describe it, but it didn’t feel right. Though, it did feel good to be called ‘Little Liang.’ Maybe she wasn’t angry at him and had just needed some time to think alone.

“Alright, we all get it. Wei Liang is the best. Very good. You two can keep patting each other on the back. I’ll be talking to Yang.”

William wasn’t the only one who couldn’t watch silently, even if they both had different reasons. Honestly, he preferred the painful conversation over being in the presence of Wei Ming.

It’s too bad he wouldn’t get his wish.