Building a sect from scratch.

As a weapon crafter, Guantangbao was extremely diligent in collecting materials, a well-known "junk collector." Although most of them were unnecessary for her, whether she needed them or not was one thing, having them at all was a matter of principle. Therefore, she even bought a house in Chang'an City specifically to store her various materials.

Besides the various minerals, woods and other spiritual materials commonly used by artifact cultivators, she also had a lot of medicinal herbs and plants, because she was used to using these to exchange for pills made by alchemists. Although they were not as effective as those sold by sect merchants, they were cheaper.

Therefore, while other players were rummaging through their backpacks to find some miscellaneous pills and herbs, Guantangbao pulled out several boxes of them.

"These are Spirit Restoration Pills and Blood Clotting Powder, which I don't think you might need. But would this Mind-Stabilizing Pill be useful?"

Renxin Huadao asked curiously in a low voice, "A mind-stabilizing pill? What's that for?"

After thinking carefully for a moment, Guantangbao said, "It's said to nourish the soul, so it should be effective?"

Chakota nodded and said, "That's right, and not only that, it can also help with internal energy cultivation and breathing in spiritual energy after taking it."

Renxin Huadao looked at the small porcelain bottle in the box with a puzzled expression, his tone filled with disbelief: "Hiss... how come you would hoard this stuff?"

Guantangbao explained, "I didn't buy this. An NPC wanted a batch of spirit herbs from me and offered to buy them on credit. He didn't have the money to buy them, so he said he could use the pills he made to pay for them. I didn't want these, but all his Rejuvenation Pills and Blood Clotting Powder combined weren't enough to cover the cost, so he added a box of these. Apparently, these things are quite expensive!"

“The price for each pill transported by the Fu Lu Shou flying boat is about five or six spirit stones. The price fluctuates by no more than 30% depending on the quality. This bottle…” Chakota said, picking up a small porcelain bottle, pouring all the pills into his palm, counting them, and then said, “Two, four, six, eight… There are twenty pills in a bottle. I wonder what price you all intend to offer?”

The soup dumpling vendor was quite generous, waving his hand and saying, "I don't really know much about this. Just charge me whatever you think is appropriate!"

Chakota thought for a moment and asked sincerely, "The Tranquilizing Pills are indeed something we urgently need. These Tranquilizing Pills look to be of good quality. How about we price them at 120 spirit stones per bottle?"

"Fine, we'll go with your calculations! There are twenty bottles here, that's... two thousand four hundred spirit stones! Hiss... wait a minute, let me check again!"

As Guantangbao spoke, he took out all the Qiankun Bags from his game backpack and began to check them one by one.

"Oh no! There are still six bottles of bone-breaking and muscle-regenerating powder left!"

The soup dumpling excitedly pulled out a few more small porcelain bottles and asked, "Are these worth anything?"

“Hmm…” Chakota hesitated and said, “It’s not bad. A bottle this big… can probably sell for thirty spirit stones a bottle.”

"Sigh!" The soup dumpling sighed in disappointment, "It's not worth much, only 180 yuan in total!"

Nietzsche suggested, "Why don't we have Huadao make another trip? He has equipment that restores mana, so it should be almost full by now, right? If all else fails, just use some more potions and have him take you back to get it!"

The thought of having to wear that peony flower made Renxin Huadao's face turn green: "This...this...isn't that necessary?!"

The others also realized this and all wore malicious smiles. Huang Zhucao even patted Renxin Huadao on the shoulder with schadenfreude and said earnestly, "This is a task assigned to you by the organization!"

Wu Ke didn't hold back and made his request: "While you're at it, could you also bring me that black box I have stored in the community warehouse? It has my name on it, and it's in the warehouse!"

Nietzsche waved his hand and made a decision: "The rest of you stay here. Baozi, Huadao, and I will go back to get the things. If there's anything you want to buy, you can put it on the public account first and use the public resources in the community warehouse to buy it. We'll settle the details in the group later!"

Chakota was somewhat confused: "You...you can go directly to Middle-earth?"

Nietzsche said, "We have a teleportation array that can take us there. Do you want to come with us?"

"I..." Before Chakota could speak, the Jade Emperor suddenly stood up and asked excitedly, "Chakota! Are the monsters here only affecting people's souls and not actually harmful enough to be easily eliminated?"

Although Chakota was somewhat confused, he still answered earnestly, "Yes, that's how it is, but this influence is almost impossible to isolate. The more you come into contact with it, the more you will gradually turn into a monster..."

The Jade Emperor grew increasingly agitated, even clapping his hands forcefully, emphasizing, "Sisters! It affects souls! A wild monster with little fighting power! It only affects souls!"

"Fuck!"

The others also realized what was happening and one after another expressed their shock with profanities.

Renxin Huadao shook his head and exclaimed, "Those aren't monsters! They're experience! They're contributions! They're prestige!"

"That's right!"

The Jade Emperor turned to Chakta and said, "Chakta, I think you can hire—no, no, you don't even need to hire—we can clean these things up for you free of charge! We don't have souls! We're not afraid of them!"

"No...no soul!?"

Chakota was startled, his eyes nearly popping out of their sockets.

"Is such that……"

The Jade Emperor tried his best to explain the concepts of players and cultivating with puppets, and it took a long time for Chakota to understand that the disciples of the Taiyin Sect were all puppets controlled by so-called "divine consciousness" and had no soul.

Chakota frowned, and asked somewhat uncertainly, "But can't divine consciousness also be corrupted?"

"We won't be corrupted. To be honest, the reason we came here to find the Sword Sect is because we discovered a hidden grotto-world under the jurisdiction of the Taiyin Sect in Zhongzhou. That grotto-world was a sacrificial grotto-world that the Sword Sect used to resurrect Yinglong a long time ago! Inside, there are not only abandoned altars, but also many 'human sacrifices' that have turned into monsters! In addition, we also found a Sword Sect disciple's notes inside, which mentioned that those 'human sacrifices' had something called 'Yinglong aura,' which could affect cultivators... So, it sounds like the Soul Eaters you're talking about are very similar to the 'human sacrifices' in that grotto-world!"

The Jade Emperor chose to reveal the whole story, but the other players didn't quite understand his behavior. While he was giving his long speech, they started complaining in the team chat.

"Is it really necessary to explain things in such detail to NPCs? They should only be able to pick up keywords, right?"

"It feels like the Emperor is communicating with a real person. Is he really that immersive when playing games?"

"Actually, I think I can understand it, because even if you capture keywords, maybe if you explain in more detail, you can capture even more keywords?"

"No way! I heard that the AI ​​in this game is incredibly powerful. It has its own logic, and the dialogue isn't just about capturing keywords like in other games. It's real dialogue!"

"You must be dreaming! How could something so advanced be possible!"

"You never know! Anyway, I think the realism of this game is ridiculously high, it feels like it's from a completely different era than other virtual reality games!"

The group was exchanging glances and chatting animatedly in the team chat when they suddenly heard a long sigh coming from outside the courtyard—

(End of this chapter)