The group of four had been inside the house for around an hour talking about their experiences, the information they had gathered and just joked with one another before they finally emerged to greet the crowd once again.
Outside the courtyard were still a large number of experts waiting patiently for them, showing distinct curiosity towards the two apparent newcomers. Could they perhaps be the ones behind the pills and the formations?
As they exited, many glittering sets of eyes shone with excitement as they landed on Bai Tianyi.
Although Bai Tianyi had the appearance of a child, his spiritual energy was the strongest amongst the group. Many simply surmised that he had some sort of constitution that made aging difficult, but that he was actually older than the others, thus explaining why his strength was stronger.
Sensing all these gazes being thrown at him, Bai Tianyi smiled wryly. Although he could make formations, it was not him that had made the formations being exchanged by Lin Xiao and Hei Gou, and he knew nothing about pill making at all—if he knew about it, then he would not have coerced Xue Wei into becoming an alchemist.
The one who was being overlooked the most was Xue Wei. His Qi levels were not the highest, his spiritual energy surpassed as well. He only had two eyes and he didn’t even seem to be the tallest amongst them.
In every way that one looked at it, he just appeared average, and in fact, they felt he should be proud of even being a part of this group.
It was not before they noticed that he was walking in front of the three others that they frowned and became slightly confused.
What follower would walk in front of their masters? That made no sense whatsoever.
Some of the more intelligent ones present started to look at Xue Wei with another kind of gaze, one with a shining light.
Xue Wei noticed a few of the people starting to cast their gazes towards him and he decided that these people, the ones who could figure out so much from such little information, were the ones he would be willing to work with.
Xue Wei preferred working with intelligent people. They knew how to behave while the less intelligent ones could cause problems or be blinded by their greed or misguided way others tell them to behave, which end up with them sacrificing long-lasting benefits for the sake of a quick rise in power or favour with the wrong person.
From the crowd of slightly more astute people, , Xue Wei took interest in a woman dressed in purple as well as a young man dressed in blue beside her. Both of them had four eyes each, their bearing was rather outstanding, their temperaments and aura pleasant and cool. Their appearances were also amongst the cream of the crop, they were definitely no ordinary people.
“Young Master, Young Miss, please, if you are interested, then we would like to welcome you inside,” Xue Wei said, looking directly at the two figures, and gesturing for them to enter inside.
Hearing Xue Wei’s words, both of them were at first rather stunned, but they recomposed themselves and with a smile on their faces, accepted the invitation heartily.
“All of you stay outside,” both of them ordered the people who had come with them,while they themselves went inside.
Both of them were core students so they were incredibly familiar with the residence that belonged to the core students. When they stepped inside, they quickly walked with Xue Wei towards the guest room, located on the first floor where one would welcome their guests.
Xue Wei began to brew some tea using his spiritual energy to form a flame that heated up the water, and some spiritual tea leaves he had gotten long ago while buying herbs.
This kind of spiritual tea was a luxury back in Chang’an but Xue Wei had never had much of a use of it, he had just purchased it at random, but now he admired his past decisions as he had a perfect reason to use it.
A pleasant fragrance wafted throughout the room, the tea so fragrant that nobody could help but feel eager to try it out. Even Xue Wei, who was not usually into drinking tea very much, could feel how the spiritual energy within his body was starting to rotate at a faster speed than before.
After finding some teacups, Xue Wei poured a cup of tea for each of them and sat down. While he had been brewing tea, everyone had remained silent, all of them had instead been observing him, curious as to what his purpose for inviting them in was.
As he sat down he took a sip of the fragrant tea, he felt his spiritual energy being replenished, he even had a sense that it was being saturated and even to some extent, expanded. If he had known how good and useful the tea was earlier, then he would have purchased much more spiritual tea back when he had the chance.
Xue Wei saw how the others reacted as they also tasted the tea. Neither Lin Xiao nor Hei Gou cultivated their spiritual energy, but a big, relaxing smile spread across their face after drinking it—their souls were being nourished by the tea.
The quartet of eyes on both the woman and the man turned focused while they tasted their tea, displaying a small amount of shock as they felt the surprisingly strong changes it did to their bodies.
“I am Xue Wei,” Xue Wei introduced himself. “These are my brothers, Bai Tianyi, Hei Gou and Lin Xiao,” he continued, gesturing to each of them as he announced their names.
“We have come to Yan Dalu from outside of this continent. We come from a continent called Chang’an, Chang’an is a continent where Qi cultivators are superior in numbers to spiritual cultivators, and they are also the strongest experts.
“Because of this, we have many pills and other things which are capable of aiding a cultivator who wishes to cultivate their Qi,” Xue Wei was speaking calmly, neither slow nor hurried. The pace at which he spoke was measured and placid, with each word he said being carefully thought out.
“Here in Yan Dalu, everyone cultivates spiritual energy, however this is not the only way to cultivate. I know that if you were to cultivate both Qi and spiritual energy at the same time, then the speed with which you cultivate your spiritual energy would surely decrease, however, my experience tells me that this is a worthy trade off.
“Spiritual energy users have many benefits in a fight, and as long as one is at a range they can even be seen as invincible, however, if someone were to get close, they are as strong as a paper tiger.
“By cultivating both Qi and spiritual energy, one is capable of eliminating the disadvantages yet gaining the advantages of both. You have spiritual energy to take care of ranged attacks and Qi to deal with anything that gets close.
“However, this continent has no good martial arts for Qi cultivation, nor does it have techniques to refine heaven-and-earth essence into Qi beyond the Heavenly Warrior rank.
“Therefore, this is where we could be quite useful.” Xue Wei smiled. He had not even asked the name of these two people, neither whether they were interested in a business deal with them; he had just begun speaking, but as he spoke he could see the eagerness in all eight eyes of the young man and woman.
“We have pills, we have formations, we have techniques: we have anything that might be useful to create Qi cultivators again,” he smiled.
“Now tell me, are you interested?” This was his pitch. He had said what he wanted to say and now the ball was in their court.
“My name is Gu Bing’Er,” the woman introduced herself. “I am the youngest miss of the Gu family. I am very interested in these things you can offer,” she did not hide her interest at all, her eyes shining brightly. “Apart from the Gu family, I am also a part of the Rising Sun Association. Let me know, is it the Rising Sun Association or the Gu family you wish to strike a deal with?”
The young man was silent while the woman introduced herself but when he saw her finishing, he quickly found an opportunity to introduce himself as well, “I am Yuan Bailong. I am similarly a member of the Rising Sun Association but also a member of the powerfulYuan family.”
“Both of you are from the Rising Sun Association?” Xue Wei raised an eyebrow in surprise. When they had been standing outside, while they were near to each other, they did not seem as if they were part of the same group.
“Well, the Rising Sun Association is mainly controlled by three forces; the Gu family, the Baili family and the Yuan family. Although it is one association, it has three branches and we do not work together unless there is some outside factors that forces us to band together.
“Although our families seem equal, the fact is that the Baili family is the strongest amongst the three families and it is using its powers to suppress the other two branches, both within the academy but also within the Capital itself.”
It was Yuan Bailong who told Xue Wei about this. This was something that not many were privy to, as you had to have intimate knowledge about the actual situation and only members of the families did so, everything else was just rumors.
“I see. Well I would be happy to do business with both of your families, and also your branches of the association. However, should we make a deal with your association, I am only doing business with your respective branches, I must speak to the leader of the Baili family before I know whether or not I wish to work with them. I do not work with stupid people.”
Although this sounded extremely arrogant, both Yuan Bailong and Gu Bing’Er felt that he had the capital to be arrogant.
“So what would our business transaction actually involve from you and require from us?” Yuan Bailong was mostly concerned about this.
“Well, the first thing we need to do is purify the Qi within your followers and family members,” Xue Wei said with a sigh. “It is not difficult to raise their rank to Ordinary Knights, but if you want to be able to advance in rank any further, then you need to have purified your Qi to a reasonable level. With your current techniques, it will never be pure enough to advance in rank.
“All the Qi you guys have refined has come from passively absorbing the heaven-and-earth essence. It is not the actual result of cultivation, and if we wish for you to be able to cultivate later, then we need to do something about the purity.
“Fortunately enough, I have a recipe for a Qi Purity Pill, a very simple pill that can be taken in batches and helps purify the Qi. It is also used when one consumes too many low ranked pills and get pill impurities building up in their bodies, then these Qi Purity Pills can get rid of the waste.
“Right now I have around two hundred of these pills, but I will need to refine a couple of thousands if not tens of thousands to be of any real use to you guys, since there is so many of you.” Xue Wei sighed. “Fortunately, each batch produces around fifteen pills, so it should not take too too long.”
“After that I will hand you some Qi cultivation techniques that allow you to absorb and refine the heaven-and-earth essence properly. Finally, I will teach you martial art techniques and then provide you with the pills that will help increase your strength.”
Listening to Xue Wei, the eyes of Gu Bing’Er and Yuan Bailong were filled with astonishment. They had never expected that Xue Wei had planned so far ahead and had all the things they were lacking. They just thought he would throw them some pills or formations and that was it, but it seemed as if he had truly thought it through and was willing to assist them significantly.
“What do you want from us in return?” Gu Bing’Er asked tentatively, she was worried that Xue Wei was going to ask for something impossible, but Xue Wei just snickered. “We will need some herbs, some gold coins, and your support. We also need some help deciphering some information and locating where some rumors might have originated from,” he said slowly so that they could hear every single word he said.