“Hmph. Idiot. Warriors are Warriors — give up the branch you started in, spend a little money, and you can pick the other one instead.” The Son of Heaven snorted it through his nose.

“Ah, so it’s money that does it. Fine decisiveness indeed. Then with the strength of your illustrious Yun family behind you, carrying off this Immortal Spirit sword must be the easiest thing in the world?”

“One hundred and ten million!” The Son of Heaven did not go on wrangling with him. Cold-faced, he pushed the already sky-high hundred million to a new height that frightened the room. In a battle of words he was never going to be Zangshen’s match — and his sister had said one thing to him often enough: avoid where the enemy is strong, strike where he is weak.

“Heh. One hundred and thirty million!”

“…One hundred and fifty million!” The Son of Heaven ground the words out through his teeth.

“One hundred and seventy million!”

“…One hundred and eighty million!”

“Two hundred million! Ha. Yun Sihai, look at your face… surely your illustrious Yun family isn’t going to feel the pinch over a sum this trifling?” Zangshen’s manner was perfectly easy, as though two hundred million were the most ordinary and casual figure imaginable. The words themselves carried deep contempt and mockery besides.

“What a fine man Dugu Cheng is… two hundred and fifty million!!”

Thud… Out in the City of Stars plaza, the ones who had not fainted the first time fainted now.

“Three hundred million!!”

Crash. The ones who had only just got back on their feet went down again.

Mad. Every last one of them, mad!

Up on the stage September’s eyes had crinkled into smiling crescents. Before this, Liu Qiyue had told her that this Immortal Spirit sword would certainly sell for over a hundred million. Much as she had always trusted Liu Qiyue without reserve, some tiny scrap of doubt had stayed at the bottom of her mind… and now the price was a very long way past a hundred million.

Only Zangshen and the Son of Heaven were still calling. Nobody else put in a word. Plainly, the bidding this Immortal Spirit sword had touched off had stopped being about the sword at all… what these two were contesting was one more head-on trial of strength between rivals.

And the direct consequence of their deadlock was this: whichever of them stopped calling first was the one who had lost.

“Three hundred and thirty million!”

“Three hundred and fifty million!”

“Three hundred and seventy million…”

“Four hundred and twenty million!”

“……”

“Ai. All that money. What couldn’t you do with it.” Zuo Pojun shook his head privately. He had no real sense of money, never having gone without any from childhood on. But faced with figures counted in hundreds of millions, even a man like that had to recognize an outrageously astronomical number.

“Five hundred million Huaxia yuan… oh! It could put a hundred thousand poor children back into a warm classroom. It could turn a city buried in rubbish into a green paradise. It could make nine out of ten of the people of Huaxia willing to risk everything, even their lives… Oh, why must there be such a thing as money in this world? On my own person there has never been a single cent. Never. There is not another soul left to be found as unstained by money as I am.” Murong Qiushui sighed over it at length.

Zuo Pojun: “……” That last bit, at least, was true enough coming from this lunatic.

“Five hundred and ten million… Yun Sihai, you had better stop fighting me. This Immortal Spirit artifact is mine today, and even you have no standing to take it out of my hands!” Zangshen said it with a cold laugh. And with those words he cut off the Son of Heaven’s line of retreat.

“Idiot. My Yun family stands at the foot of Jinghua. What is the strength of some southern barbarian next to the strength of my Yun family! Five hundred and fifty million!!” Anger flared in the Son of Heaven’s chest and he struck straight back. Once a fight of this kind opened up between the two of them it was hard to bring to an end, because neither would ever be willing, in front of this many people — and above all at an auction belonging to Liu Qiyue, and certain to be watched by her — to be held down by the other. Face, to men like them, mattered more than anything.

“Six hundred million gold! Yun Sihai, do you still dare follow? If you don’t, then run along home. I’d like to take this Immortal Spirit artifact away early — wasting time is far too extravagant.” Zangshen was as flat as ever. Against the Son of Heaven’s constantly shifting face, he presented an unruffled steadiness.

“Seven hundred million!”

Those figures, one after another, counted in hundreds of millions, all but stopped the hearts of the ordinary players watching. What did it mean to be rich? Today they had seen it in full.

“Fine decisiveness! Then I bid… eight hundred million. Heh, a very handsome number.”

The Son of Heaven ground his teeth again. He was about to call when something stirred faintly at his ear, and a girl’s voice reached him… his sister’s voice.

One short sentence, and the Son of Heaven’s whole body jolted. It was as though a basin of cold water had been poured over his head. He came fully awake, with the cold sweat that follows a sudden waking all over him… One sentence from his sister, and he knew he had come within a hair of walking into Zangshen’s trap.

Impulse, and a quarrel over pride — terrible devils indeed.

He set his teeth, picked up his communicator quickly, and said in a voice that was very low but quite loud enough to be overheard, “Now — transfer a billion gold into my card! Now!!”

Setting the communicator down, he called out coldly, “Nine hundred million!!”

He had called nine hundred million and had a billion moved across on top of it. Could it be… that he was prepared to spend a billion and more, a price beyond all reason… for one Immortal Spirit artifact!?

Utterly mad!!!

Zangshen picked up his own communicator and said calmly, “Go. Move a billion gold into my card… you have twenty seconds.”

He set it down, smiled faintly, and slowly called out a figure on another level entirely. “One billion!!”

An auction at the astronomical figure of a billion — in that moment it shook the hearts of countless players.

“Do you still dare follow?” Zangshen was still smiling, light as a breeze… as though a billion were, to him, the simplest figure there was.

“No. Of course I don’t.”

The Son of Heaven’s answer took every player in the room by surprise.

The Son of Heaven had shed the dark, shifting look of a moment before. He was smiling, and he even brought his hands together — clap, clap, clap. “An Immortal Spirit artifact is beyond doubt a precious thing. But a sky-high billion, spent on building up the forces under one’s command, would return far more than a sword nobody can use for very long. Since you hold your friends so dear, Zangshen, and are set on taking this Immortal Spirit sword, how could I, the Son of Heaven, deprive you of what you love? Zangshen — the Immortal Spirit sword you have bought for one billion is yours. The Dugu family really are rich enough to throw their weight about. My admiration, my admiration. Hahahaha…”

And with that, under Zangshen’s suddenly stiffened expression, he laughed aloud, turned, and left without looking back once.

The turn things had taken left the players in the hall blank for a moment, and then it hit them all at once.

“…Mr. Zangshen has now bid one billion for this Violet Reaper Sword… one billion gold. Is there any friend willing to bid higher?”

A higher price? Are you j— j— j— joking!! This is not ten gold, and not a hundred thousand gold. This is the astronomical figure of one billion!! However badly every man there wanted that Immortal Spirit sword… only a fucking lunatic would lay out a billion to buy it.

Zangshen’s class was Assassin, and even with this Immortal Spirit sword in hand he could not use it himself. There was no need whatever to pay a price like this… so a good many people had understood from the beginning that Zangshen was baiting the Son of Heaven, driving the price up hard and fast, and meaning to let go suddenly once it neared the Son of Heaven’s limit, so that his rival would carry off a sword he had no use for at a monstrous cost.

But nobody had expected that at the last moment the one who let go suddenly would not be Zangshen. It was the Son of Heaven… Or rather, Zangshen had not had time to let go at all, because that order to transfer a billion, given where everyone could hear it, had made it natural to assume there was at least a billion behind it. Nobody had guessed that it was only a smokescreen laid to blind him.

On the face of it Zangshen had won the exchange, since he had taken the Immortal Spirit sword in the end… but anyone with eyes knew that in truth the Son of Heaven had won it outright. And yet the final winner, the biggest winner of all, was the July Chamber.

A billion-gold sale was certain to leave a heavy mark on the commercial history of the Lost Continent.

“One billion gold, going once!”

“One billion gold, going twice!”

“One billion gold, third and final call!”

“Clang!” One stroke of the hammer settled it, and September called out, “Congratulations, Mr. Zangshen. This Violet Reaper Sword is yours… and thank you for your support of our July Chamber.”

The moment the gold gavel came down, the trade was complete. The Violet Reaper Sword was teleported into Zangshen’s pack… and his billion gold passed into the July Chamber’s accounts.

Holding the Violet Reaper Sword he had won, Zangshen smiled, and the smile was a bitter one. He had meant to sink the Son of Heaven properly, and the man’s expression and the sweat all over his face had shown plainly enough that his temper was fully roused… From what Zangshen knew of him, he would have gone on burning everything he had rather than give way. But the outcome had run entirely against his expectations, and the Son of Heaven had let go all at once.

It was not at all like the Son of Heaven, a man so easily driven by impulse and by pride.

Still, what was done was done, and there was nothing for it but to take things as they came. Zangshen brought his own state of mind back into order quickly. A billion gold was an enormous loss for anyone. In front of a great many people he took out the Violet Reaper Sword and traded it directly to the man sitting on his right, Divine Domain Fallen Star. “Fallen Star, this — the first Immortal Spirit sword in Huaxia, and beyond dispute the strongest weapon there is — belongs to you now… And I hope you can become the strongest Sword Warrior in my Divine Domain Pact. No — in all Huaxia!”

Countless envious eyes fixed on Divine Domain Fallen Star. A sky-high billion, and an Immortal Spirit sword beyond compare… The purple blade flashed in his eyes. His expression did not change, but both hands were shaking violently as he took the Violet Reaper Sword. He took it, then nodded hard and said, ringingly, in front of them all, “With such generosity from the Young Master, if I, Divine Domain Fallen Star, still cannot become the strongest Warrior, then I have no face left to remain at the Young Master’s side.”

Zangshen had settled where the Violet Reaper Sword would go in front of every person present, and in front of countless players watching from outside — a gift, and a goad at the same time. In a scene like that, under a sudden and powerful surge of feeling, anyone’s blood would have risen and anyone would have sworn a vow like that one. It made people marvel that Zangshen was indeed Zangshen: even having just been outplayed and left a billion out of pocket, he could pull himself back together that fast and turn the moment into a decision with enormous effect… Truly the Son of God of the South.

(End of Chapter 232)