The Venerable Lingyun had been no more than a demon rogue cultivator, and its storeroom was naturally nothing to catch a great sect's eye.

A few spirit-treasures taken off some cultivator or other, a little spirit-medicine. The only thing that drew Liu Qianyun's attention at all was that jar of rare medicinal wine.

"What is this?"

Shen Yi took a dry branch from a somewhat disordered shelf and looked over at Liu Qianyun.

By the treasure-seeking divine ability he had taken from a rat demon's inner core, the branch carried the thickest aura of anything in the room.

"Oh — so the rogue cultivator was hiding something good after all."

Liu Qianyun glanced at it, mildly surprised, and then explained. "An Azure-Yang branch. This is the sort of treasure material a Dao-pillar needs. The quality is passable — three to five hundred years to refine — and it would just about serve as a supporting material for a third-grade pillar."

Shen Yi nodded.

He understood. Fit only as third-grade supporting material — set in a Dao Palace it came to roughly one Zhang Laifu's worth, and fell short of the Crimson-Eyed phoenix demon.

Seeing how calm he looked, and afraid he had taken it wrongly, Liu Qianyun added, "You may not be clear on this. For a cultivator in the early stages of Return-to-Void, third grade is in fact very high. When the prodigies among our Clear-Moon personally transmitted disciples raise their palaces for the first time, if they use a six-pillar method and merely half the pillars come out at third grade, they stand a chance at the gift of the Azure Luan's breath — and the honour of an Immortal Palace."

"Of course, I mention it only in passing. With Dao-pillars, one should measure one's own strength."

Liu Qianyun shook her head. "There was a senior brother in our sect once who chased the empty name of an Immortal Palace and forced the visualisation of third-grade pillars. He squandered 20,000-odd years of lifespan, and after all that trouble he did obtain a thread of the Azure Luan's breath…