Chapter 57.1: The Golden Left Arm Bone
Huo Yuhao and Wang Dong glanced at each other when the white-haired girl had finished. Huo Yuhao then turned back towards her and asked, “Are there different credit limits? If so, what are the different limits?”
The white-clothed girl smiled. “If I’m not mistaken, this should be the first time you’ve visited the Treasure Appreciation Auction. It’s like this: Our Treasure Gathering Pavilion will set different credit limits based on the personal situations of the distinguished guests who participate in the Treasure Appreciating Auction. We mainly judge your current cultivation, age, soul rank, and a few other factors in order to form a comprehensive evaluation. Don’t worry, our Treasure Gathering Pavilion will maintain a level of secrecy over this information; we absolutely won’t reveal any of your secrets. At the same time, we won’t ask what your background is. Your credit limit is based off of your ability alone. As such, we have a set of detailed confidential measures. Since it’s your first time coming to the auction, I recommend that you go and receive an evaluation first. That way, we’ll be able to confirm your credit limits, and you’ll also have a good estimate as to what you’ll be able to buy inside our Treasure Appreciation Auction. If the two of you wish it, I can take you there right now.”
Huo Yuhao glanced inquisitively towards Wang Dong, who nodded. “That’s fine. It seems I’ll have to trouble you to evaluate us.”
As the white-clothed girl lead the two of them to the east, they were occasionally drawn to the exhibition booths near them.
Wang Dong suddenly tugged on Huo Yuhao’s sleeve and pointed towards a booth; impressively, there was a soul bone within the booth. The soul bone was reddish-gold, and it was surprisingly floating within the booth. It looked to be an arm bone, its five delicate digits pointed upwards. Each of its fingertips released a faint, reddish-gold light. It wasn’t just them; almost everyone who walked past it would find their gazes drawn to it. Furthermore, the booth that the soul bone was located within was at least twice the size that of the other booths. Furthermore, the enormous crystal cover on it caused its reddish-golden light to glisten and cover the entire room.
There was a sign underneath the soul bone with a few words on it, but the two of them couldn’t clearly see what the words on it since they were were still walking.
Huo Yuhao turned to look towards Wang Dong, only to see an intense brilliance in the latter’s eyes. Wang Dong was also looking at him, and he whispered, “I can sense that it suits me.”
Huo Yuhao nodded. “However, its price…”
A resolute light flashed through Wang Dong’s eyes. “We’ll talk about it later.”
Naturally, there wouldn’t just be one good thing within the auction. Just like Wang Dong had seen the soul bone, Huo Yuhao had seen quite a few treasures that had filled his heart with thirst.
Wang Dong mainly paid attention to things that were related to a soul master’s cultivation, but Huo Yuhao also cared about certain precious metals and things that were related to soul engineering. For example, he’d seen a set of schematics that had been created by a Class 7 soul engineer. Though he didn’t know what kind of soul tool it was for, the words ‘Class 7’ were already sufficient.
Even though his teacher was a powerful Class 8 soul engineer who was as rare as phoenix feathers and qilin horns among soul engineers, the latter had told him that every single soul engineer had a different inclination within their research—every single soul engineer who’d reached Class 6 would definitely have their own specialties. It would be extremely beneficial for a low-ranked soul engineer to see the blueprints of a higher-ranked one. There were many commonalities between different blueprints, but no high-ranking soul engineer would easily let another person see his or her schematics. If they were to do so, it would become highly likely that certain features within their blueprints would be leaked. If that happened, the experience they’d gained after researching for many years would be free to study by other soul engineers.
For this reason, most high-ranking soul engineers would only rarely give their blueprints to someone that wasn’t their inheriting disciple.
Unfortunately, Huo Yuhao didn’t even need to ask to know that that set of schematics would very likely be comparable to a soul bone in price. That set of schematics wasn’t just some basic one written by a Class 7 soul engineer—it was a carefully written one; it was a schematic for a self-created Class 7 soul tool.
A Class 7 soul engineer might not necessarily be able to create a Class 7 soul tool. Upon reaching Class 7, the restrictions that limited a soul engineer would increase dramatically. Oftentimes, a Class 7 soul engineer would only be able to create a set of blueprints for a Class 7 soul tool once in their entire lives.
A highly ranked soul tool would contain special characteristics of the soul engineer who’d created it, but to create a soul tool such as this was enormously difficult. For example, a soul tool created by a Class 9 soul engineer would typically be an existence ranked as a strategic weapon to any country. There was a chance that even its creator wouldn’t be able to activate it. As such, the main reason soul engineers were still inferior to soul masters was because there were simply too few high-ranking soul engineers. Class 7, on the other hand, was the basic threshold required for a soul engineer to call himself a high-ranking one.
Though the two of them had already predicted that there would be relatively precious treasures here even before arriving, they realised that they’d still underestimated the power of the Treasure Gathering Pavilion once they saw the exhibitions present.
In reality, it wasn’t easy for the Treasure Gathering Pavilion to gather so many items. However, they didn’t know that. Though a Treasure Appreciation Auction on this level was still inferior to those that disciples of the inner courtyard could participate in, it wasn’t too far off. The two items that they’d seen had previously appeared within a Treasure Appreciation Auction held within the inner courtyard, but the price of a treasure of this level was naturally high… Because of this, no one had been able to afford it, and it had thus appeared within this auction for them to admire.
After walking for nearly a hundred meters, they finally came to the end of the western area. There was a light groove under the long desks which flickered with a crystal-yellow light; the gentle rays of light coming from it weren’t gaudy in the least, but filled with a sense of realism.
The white-clothed girl brought the two of them to the left side of the front desk, and a girl behind it rose to her feet immediately and said respectfully, “Greetings to the two soul masters. I’ll have to trouble the two of you to fill in this evaluation form. We’ll be able to calculate your credit limit within a few minutes.”
Two evaluation forms, along with delicate ink brushes, were given to them. The contents of the form weren’t complicated in the least.
Name and surname, gender, age, soul rank, martial soul, and past achievements.
There were only these six simple items that were required; the age of their soul rings wasn’t required at all.
Because of this, they felt much more at ease whilst filling in these forms. Huo Yuhao only gave his Spirit Eyes for the ‘martial soul’ field, and not his Ice Jade Empress Scorpion. Even in Shrek Academy, the number of people who knew that he possessed the Ice Empress were few in number.
After filling in their respective forms, they handed them in. Quickly, their evaluations were released.
The girl who was in charge of registration and calculating credit limits was somewhat stunned. The white-clothed girl who’d brought the two to the desk whispered to her, “Little Red, quickly.”
The lady behind the desk had a round, charming face along with a pair of small eyes, but her facial features were cute, making her look seventeen or eighteen. The instant she was urged on by the white-clothed girl, she looked towards Huo Yuhao and Wang Dong with a completely different look in her eyes; a somewhat intense light had appeared in them.
Huo Yuhao had seen this kind of gaze in the past; he would frequently see the female students in the academy look towards Wang Dong with a look like this in their eyes. Just who made him more delicate and prettier than a girl? However, the girl called Little Red wasn’t looking towards Wang Dong this time around; her intense gaze was unexpectedly directed towards the twelve-year-old Huo Yuhao.
She used an extremely respectful and gentle voice to speak to him, “Respected Sir Huo, I would like to welcome you to our Treasure Gathering Pavilion. I just did a quick investigation, and you do not have a credit limit within our auction.”
“Ah?” Huo Yuhao was stunned, “Why?” He barely had any money himself, and if he couldn’t use credit to purchase items here, he’d have to leave empty-handed.
Little Red could naturally see how he’d misunderstood her, and said hurriedly, “Mr Huo, please don’t be worried. You’ve been upgraded to a top-ranked VIP in our Treasure Gathering Pavilion, so you don’t need a limit. According to your current limit, you’ll have the qualifications to take away a single item from the Treasure Appreciation Auction every year without paying anything.”
“This…” Huo Yuhao was immediately stunned. He glanced towards Wang Dong, clueless as to what had just occurred.
The white-clothed girl also had a look of astonishment on her face. Little Red ignored her, and instead whispered a few words to the girl beside her. That girl, in turn, hurriedly rose to her feet and walked towards the back.
Little Red had already placed two cards on the table. One of them was red, and the other was purple.
Little Red handed the purple card to Wang Dong. “Mr Wang, your credit is a hundred thousand gold soul coins. You can only use it once this year, and you’ll have to go through another evaluation next year. At your current age, a purple evaluation is already the highest you can receive. You will receive a 10% discount on any items you purchase, and our prices here are cheaper than what you can find in the outside world, so they’re already extremely low.”
Wang Dong took the card and nodded, but he was still extremely stunned with regards to Huo Yuhao’s situation. According to common sense, even if the latter had performed extraordinarily after returning, he shouldn’t have a status that exceeded his own! After all, he was a control-type soul master. However, he could tell that that was precisely the case from the girl’s expression.
The red card had a golden streak on it, and Huo Yuhao unexpectedly felt a faint warmth come from it after receiving it. It was extremely comfortable to hold it.
This is…
Red Spirit-warming Jade? This is too extravagant!
Huo Yuhao had a look of astonishment on his face as he looked at the card in his hand. Only a small piece of Red Spirit-warming Jade was needed for a person to withstand the harsh winter. Naturally, this referred to ordinary winter, and not the one that existed within the Extreme North. More importantly, it was an extremely stable gem. Using it to carve a formation array was enough to the withstand soul power of anyone below a Class 6 soul engineer. It was a relatively uncommon material that was used for formation arrays. Though the card wasn’t large, it was worth a hundred gold soul coins at the very least. Furthermore, there was only an extremely small quantity of Red Spirit-warming Jade in existence!