This time the Son of Heaven could not stay in his seat a moment longer. He shot to his feet and roared at the masked archer who had been standing behind him all along, “Move!!”

And this time the masked archer did not speak up to stop him either, because the lure of an Immortal Spirit artifact simply could not be resisted. Even if he had raised the reputation of Wings That Shroud the Sky again as a reason to hold back, it would no longer have stopped the Son of Heaven.

“Two tickets!” The pair of them reached the doors of the auction hall, and the Son of Heaven, forcing his impatience down, said it to the reception girl.

“Good day, sir. Two tickets come to 80,000 gold.”

“What — eighty thousand gold? What do you people think you’re doing?” The Son of Heaven’s face darkened on the instant. Even if the ticket were a solid lump of gold it would not be worth eighty thousand… and now they were robbing him to his face.

“Good day, sir. Our July Chamber announced the ticket prices for each period across the whole region some time ago. The time is now past half past nine, so the price has gone up two hundred times over the original… Why did you not come and buy a ticket earlier, sir?” The reception girl’s smile did not change, and she asked it very politely.

The Son of Heaven’s brow twitched, and for a moment no words came. The masked archer behind him stepped forward, handed over eighty thousand gold without a word, and took the two tickets.

And as they went to use the tickets, the reception girl added one more thing, still smiling all over her face, that very nearly made them bring up blood. “Gentlemen, as the seating in the auction hall is limited and sold out long ago, all we can sell you are standing tickets.”

Inside the hall, the bidding on the Violet Reaper Sword still had not begun, because September had spent a full three minutes on the sword’s provenance and its attributes. Anyone with eyes could see it was stalling, since after half past nine the ticket price for this auction rose to the sky-high figure of 40,000 gold.

By now even a fool understood completely that the July Chamber had not been mad when it set those ticket prices… it had been a scheme for raking in money, and an extremely sly and crafty one at that.

And it worked outrageously well. The price had exploded to forty thousand and everyone arriving now could only stand in the aisles, yet the white light flashing without pause was proof of how nearly beyond reason people went in the face of an Immortal Spirit artifact.

Forty thousand a head — how much would the takings from after half past nine alone come to…

A profiteer among profiteers!

“…So far as our July Chamber knows, this Immortal Spirit artifact is beyond dispute the first in the Huaxia region — indeed one might say the first in the whole world, and to this day the only one. If any friend here can win this sword today, he may proudly declare to the world that he is the first person anywhere to own an Immortal Spirit artifact. That is the sort of glory a man remembers all his life…”

September’s long speech went on, and as she watched the players coming in one after another, the smile on her face grew brighter and brighter.

“Pojun, Qiushui, I’m going,” Ye Tianxie said.

“Eh? Second Brother, you’re not staying to watch?”

“There’s nothing left worth watching. I can work out what happens next without being here.” With that Ye Tianxie took out a Return Scroll, meaning to go straight back to the farthest town he had reached on the road south.

And in the very instant he crushed the scroll in his hand and his body vanished, he happened to catch sight of the Son of Heaven, teleported into the aisle — and then his gaze fell, without meaning to, on the man behind him, the one dressed as an archer with his face covered… and in that one instant Ye Tianxie’s calm eyes turned savage beyond description.

Ye Tianxie appeared in a thinly peopled little town, his face still holding that terrible darkness, and a smile of the blackest kind came slowly to the corner of his mouth.

Good… very good… what a fine thing Wings That Shroud the Sky is!

This is wonderful!

You have succeeded, all of you, in making me truly angry.

In that case… even if you really do have wings enough to shroud the sky, I will see you struck out of the virtual gaming world forever.

The cold smile faded. He called out his Blood-Sweating Steed and rode south. Without any modern means of transport, and with the distance from the City of Stars to the City of Heaven’s Sun as it was, ten days was not going to be easy. He had never before let a game eat into his sleep, but these few days he had no choice but to ride through the nights as well. Having chosen to accept, he would not permit himself to fail.

The auction floor…

“…The reserve on this, the first Immortal Spirit artifact in the Huaxia region, is: five million gold!” When September’s long-winded introduction finally ended, the reserve that came out of her mouth surprised nobody.

Five million… an astronomical figure most ordinary people could not save up in a lifetime. And in the face of this Immortal Spirit artifact, that price did not chill the room in the slightest. Instead it set off a wave of bidding that rose higher with each one… and every price called was more alarming than the last.

“Six million! Toughest Man Under Heaven, master of the Rivers and Mountains Underfoot Guild!”

“Six and a half million! Red Leaf Raging Wind of the Red Leaf Pact!”

“Eight million! Thunderstorm of Battle Soul Hall!”

“Tch… aren’t you ashamed to call out anything under ten? Twelve million! Scattering Wind, Parting Slaughter, of the Invincible Gang!”

In no more than a few seconds the price of this Immortal Spirit artifact had shot past ten million gold, leaving the players watching the spectacle from outside utterly dazed… This doesn’t look a damn thing like an auction for a piece of virtual equipment…

“Twelve and a half million!”

“Thirteen million!”

“Fifteen million!!”

“Very good, this friend has bid fifteen million gold. Is there any friend willing to bid higher?”

“Twenty million!”

“Twenty million! The price now stands at twenty million. Is there any friend who—”

“Twenty million and five hundred thousand.” One man, cold sweat all over his face, clenched his teeth and raised the paddle in his hand. It was plain what an enormous decision that had taken him.

“Twenty million eight hundred thousand!”

“Twenty-one million!”

……

……

Once the price passed twenty million, the bids came less often and the raises grew smaller. Twenty million to buy a piece of virtual equipment was past the limit of what the great majority could bear. Some of the players who had paid an enormous price to get inside saw the figure explode to that height and could only sigh in silence.

And at the same time, the several men with the deepest family fortunes had all stayed silent… including the Son of Heaven, standing in the aisle under every kind of strange look.

“Thirty million… whoever takes it, dies.”

The cold voice carried a threat that pressed on the heart, and the tone and the words together carried an arrogance that treated nobody in the room as worth counting. Every eye turned toward him… a man standing in the aisle, and his name was Cloud-Piercing Sword!

An icy face, a fierce, cutting stare, and the reputation of seventh place on the level ranking. Thirty million made people gasp, but the four words that followed drew hidden frowns from a good many, and hidden sneers from others. The price he had named and the force he carried could hold a great many people down, true — but how many people in that room were simple figures? A tone like that would not bring him the effect he wanted. It would bring him the opposite.

“The first Immortal Spirit artifact in all Huaxia, and you think a paltry thirty million will carry it off? A little naive, surely. I bid forty million!” The speaker was the Pact Master of the Red Leaf Pact, Red Leaf Raging Wind. The Red Leaf Pact’s power was vast, and yet Red Leaf Raging Wind was surprisingly young — not yet thirty by the look of him — scholarly in appearance, easy in manner, very much carrying the air and bearing of a great house. The moment the words were out, Cloud-Piercing Sword’s icy eyes were on him. Red Leaf Raging Wind, smiling, met that stare without a flicker of fear.

Cloud-Piercing Sword had held sixth or seventh on the level ranking all along, but his was a name that felt deeply unfamiliar to anyone who had spent years in the virtual gaming world. Strong as he was personally, he had no great force behind him, so Red Leaf Raging Wind had no reason at all to be wary of him.

And in the same moment that Cloud-Piercing Sword looked at him, Cang Chen, sitting in his corner, turned his eyes back as well, took one look at Red Leaf Raging Wind, fixed his face in his memory, and turned his head away again.

Under the eyes of the whole room, Cloud-Piercing Sword chose not to go on bidding. He turned in silence and, through a small wave of jeering, left the auction house.

The Ling family, the Cang family, Blood Dream Heaven — the strength of those three taboo families ran far past anything an ordinary person could imagine. But under the weight of that agreement signed with the Huaxia government, their growth had been very severely checked, and the area worst affected of all was money. They lacked capital on a large enough scale.

Thirty million was the absolute limit of what Cloud-Piercing Sword could put up. And even that was a throw of everything he had, because he wanted this Immortal Spirit sword too badly.

He had failed. But — whoever takes it, dies — he had by no means said it for show.

“Fifty million!” The Son of Heaven, who had not said a word all this time, finally lost his patience and in one breath produced the highest price yet seen. Fifty million… a figure that made an ordinary player feel more and more as though he were dreaming.

With the Son of Heaven speaking, Zangshen was hardly going to sit idle. Almost immediately after him he raised his paddle and said in a clear voice, “Heh. You think fifty million buys the strongest piece of equipment in Huaxia? Rather shabby, for a man of Yun Sihai’s means. Since you offer fifty million, then I shall offer… sixty million!”

The moment Zangshen said it, the faces of the men who had been about to raise their own paddles changed, and they put them down again fast. A clever man could guess in a heartbeat what was coming next.

The Son of Heaven gave Zangshen a sidelong look and snorted through his nose. “Seventy million!”

“Eighty million!” Zangshen, perfectly unruffled, came in directly behind him once again, at a speed that made it plain he had not stopped to think at all.

“Ninety million!”

“Heh… I bid one hundred million.”

Thud… In front of the magic screens at the center of the City of Stars, a great swathe of players whose hearts were not quite strong enough finally could take no more and went over backwards onto the ground.

A hundred million… another new height, displayed in splendor and shock in front of every player in Huaxia, and in the world.

“Dugu Cheng, you are an Assassin. I imagine winning this Immortal Spirit sword would do you no good at all?” the Son of Heaven said, his face dark.

“Oh? Now that I don’t follow. I am an Assassin, true, and it is a genuine regret that I cannot use this Immortal Spirit sword myself. But I have no shortage of friends and companions at my side who use swords, so how can you say it does me no good… And if we are talking in your terms, Yun Sihai, then you are a Spear Warrior, a man who fights with a spear, and it rather seems this Immortal Spirit sword is no use to you either.” Zangshen said it without hurry and without heat.

(End of Chapter 231)