Chapter 82: Development 2

Inside the Mysterious Tavern, Zheng Yichen arrived. Without any pointless small talk, since they already knew each other somewhat, they got straight to business. This was his second time purchasing Enchanted Materials from the tavern, so he didn’t need to say much. He just had to give the list to the waitress serving him. Watching the waitress prepare to leave for the back, Zheng Yichen had a thought and called her back. “Lika, besides these, I also need some… Souls.”

He lowered his voice on the word “Souls,” just enough for her to hear. This request made Lika look at him with some confusion. “Trading in Souls has always been a major taboo. What do you need them for?”

Soul trade… well, it wasn’t that it couldn’t be done, but if you got caught doing it, you’d be invited for ‘tea’ by the Sanctuary Church. How big was an organization like the Sanctuary Church? Their reach extended from the royal cities of major nations down to small border towns! As for beast Souls, those were somewhat permitted for trade, within limits.

After all, fields like Alchemy and other Secondary Professions sometimes required Souls as materials for crafting. But beast Souls, compared to Human Souls, lacked a certain ‘sapience’. Items made related to Souls would inherently be of lower quality. And this ‘slight’ shortcoming resulted in a price difference of several times!

“I’ve been researching Alchemical Puppets recently,” Zheng Yichen said, patting his own body. The waitress before him had probably already noticed something off about this body… otherwise, she wouldn’t have brought up topics related to the body in two previous conversations.

“Would beast Souls work?”

“As long as the quality is good, they can work.” Zheng Yichen nodded. He knew about the saying that Human Souls contained sapience, but he didn’t really care. After using his method of physical, forceful purification, any sapience would probably get squeezed out to who knows where. That thing was less like a Soul and more like a compressed Soul Crystal…

So it didn’t make much difference what kind of Soul it was. Zheng Yichen only wanted quantity. After compression, the ratio of original Souls needed to obtain a high-quality Soul Crystal was as high as 1:30!

Of course, the Souls used back then were also heavily tainted by Negative Energy, with very little pure Soul remaining, which led to such a large ratio. If he used higher quality Souls later, this ratio could be lowered further. Besides… beast Souls were cheap. If a Human Soul’s price was 100, a beast’s was 1~5.

The price difference looked huge, but the profit margins were still substantial. However, not many people did this business. On one hand, there was the issue of containers for collecting Souls, and on the other hand, there were the risks involved. Still, the price Lika quoted surprised Zheng Yichen; it was unexpectedly ‘low’.

She didn’t hide the reason. “Soul trade has always been officially forbidden. Even beast Souls cannot be traded openly. However, we happen to have a batch of beast Souls that have been stored here for a long time.”

“Oh? What’s the story?”

Lika still wore a faint smile, her tone not changing despite the unusual topic. “Someone once purchased Souls from us, but they got into some trouble and ‘went in,’ so that batch of Souls has been stored until now. Because it’s been some time, the quality might not be very high.”

‘Went in’? That was a very down-to-earth way of putting it!

“That’s fine. They’re just for practice anyway. Quality isn’t important, as long as there are enough. I’ll take them all!”

The tavern was very efficient. The goods Zheng Yichen ordered in the morning arrived that afternoon. This was also because what he ordered wasn’t a large quantity and wasn’t particularly rare. The Enchanted Materials were just common things like enchanted iron and enchanted steel. You could buy them if you had the money, though most people didn’t.

The strength difference between materials like enchanted iron/enchanted steel and regular steel wasn’t huge. The former was only slightly stronger than the latter and could withstand Mana Erosion, but the price was nearly ten times higher! Unless you were crazy, or someone making Magic Artifacts, the choice was pretty obvious. This also showed how expensive Secondary Professions like Alchemy, Engineering, and even Enchanting could be.

The quality of the enchanted iron and steel was standard market quality. The beast Souls made Zheng Yichen feel a bit speechless. While it was rare that these Souls weren’t heavily tainted by Negative Energy, they were simply too weak! Some were so dispersed you could barely make out a form. As for consciousness within the Souls, that was long gone. To compare, they were only slightly better than the Souls of Wraiths… Zheng Yichen was talking about the purity of the Souls.

Any being that was killed, dying involuntarily, would have its Soul tainted by Negative Energy due to Grudge after death. This depended on the intensity of the Grudge at the time and the Soul’s subsequent experiences. If it dissipated directly, then it was dust to dust. But if the Soul suffered further torment or more painful experiences before dissipating, the Grudge it contained would multiply. The stronger the Grudge, the more intensely it attracted Negative Energy!

For those evil Mages, Wraiths saturated with Negative Energy were good stuff. Given the choice, they would see these ‘pure’ Souls as complete garbage! Not only would they scatter with a gust of wind, but they also had no consciousness, making subsequent stimulation for Corruption impossible. These things were just empty shells bearing the name of a Soul!

Such empty shells were still usable for Zheng Yichen. If the individual quality was insufficient, he could make up for it with quantity. The final compressed Soul Crystal would be similar anyway, the only difference being the volume affected by the quantity used.

Staring at this apple-sized Soul Crystal… although the number of beast Souls was large, each one was ultimately too weak. Using all the Souls, Zheng Yichen could only mold a piece this big. While it was three times larger than the previous piece… that was achieved using over ten times the quantity from last time!

The comparability was too low. Still, this large quantity already met his needs. The Alchemical Puppets he could make would be enough to distribute to various cover points. “I wonder how much return I could get if I sold this.”

Tossing the Soul Crystal in his hand, Zheng Yichen couldn’t help but entertain some small ideas. He really needed money right now and had plenty of ideas. The biggest problem was the lack of good channels. Rely on the Mysterious Tavern?

He couldn’t expect them to handle everything. Doing so would be almost like handing over all initiative to them. He needed to develop some channels that belonged solely to himself…