"Initial Spirit Pill, first-rank Middle Grade." Tang Yan smiled. "By your reasoning, a pill like this can't be put up for auction?"

"It doesn't qualify." The old man waved a hand, thinking to himself that he'd known there would be nothing worthwhile here.

"This pill may only be first-rank Middle Grade, but set it beside an ordinary first-rank high-grade pill and it gives up nothing.

"It raises cultivation, and it lends powerful support to Origin Rank martial artists. An Origin Rank ninth-grade cultivator who takes it has a ninety percent chance of breaking through to Yellow Rank.

"More importantly, it can be taken again and again." Tang Yan spoke on at his leisure. "I won't trouble you with its other supporting effects. Why not take another look?"

"My apologies." The old man's tone gave no ground; he had no wish to say more.

"You'll regret this, old sir. Farewell."

"Keep boasting." Watching Tang Yan turn to leave, the old man sneered in disdain. If everything the young man claimed were true, how could the pill rate only first-rank Middle Grade? Second-rank low-grade at the very least.

"Truly no eye for goods." Once outside, Tang Yan let out a soft sigh.

In the end, the fault for this lay with Tang Yan himself.

A pill's grade was judged by weighing both the difficulty of refining and the strength of its effect.

The Initial Spirit Pill's effect was in no way inferior to a second-rank pill. The reason Tang Yan had set it at first-rank Middle Grade was that refining one demanded little in the way of martial strength. The process was painstaking, true, but any first-rank Alchemist with solid fundamentals could manage it through diligent practice.

Calling the Initial Spirit Pill a second-rank pill would not have been wrong either. And since the pill was something Tang Yan had brought from Huaxia, no one had more right than he to decide its grade.

Not yet grasping where the real trouble lay, Tang Yan walked on, turning over other ways to make money.

In his past life Tang Yan had spent most of his days moving through the hidden jianghu, yet he had brushed up against Earth's modern world as well, and understood a little of how worldly commerce operated.

Before long, his eyes lit up.

A long-term plan for making money slowly took shape in his mind.

Finding a spot where no one was about, he smeared a few careless strokes across his face, restored his true features, then strode toward Myriad Pill Pavilion.

He had no sooner reached Myriad Pill Pavilion than the clerk inside recognized him.

This was the young man even Master Ge treated with care. None of them dared slight him.

"Young Master Tang, please, come inside. I'll go inform Master Ge." The clerk greeted him warmly.

Tang Yan did not stand on ceremony and gave a nod. His gaze drifted across the room. There were plenty of people inside, yet one woman still caught his attention.

She stood about one meter sixty-five, a fitted white robe lending her figure a mature, distinctive grace. Her hair fell like spilled ink, draped loosely over her shoulders, and her large eyes held the clarity of autumn waters, bright and full of spirit, yet edged with a cold severity that kept others at a thousand li's distance.

Set against Lin Dongxue and Wu Xuan, this woman gave up nothing in looks, and her bearing was more transcendent still.

A beauty like that naturally drew the eye; gazes from across the hall kept settling on her.

She seemed long accustomed to such attention and showed no discomfort.

After that brief moment of wonder, Tang Yan's eyes narrowed, and a chill stirred in his heart.

Judge this woman by her surface and you would surely be fooled. She stood there in silence, not a trace of True Qi showing, and Tang Yan could not see through her strength at all. Yet that icy, forbidding air drifted from her, there and not there.

Few in the hall could sense anything amiss about her, but Tang Yan had read countless people in his past life, and he marked this woman as dangerous.

He turned his memory over from top to bottom and still could not place her. She must have come from elsewhere.

As he passed her, his nose suddenly wrinkled, and he drew several sharp sniffs at the air.

Feeling a strange man halt at her side, the woman frowned and turned her head to fix him with a stare.

"What a lovely scent." Tang Yan tipped his head back and mumbled it, then walked on. "She'd make a fine wife to take home."

It seemed she had never met anyone so shameless. The cold on her face thickened. As Tang Yan walked on, a chill shot down his back, and fine beads of sweat broke across his forehead in an instant.

Feigning composure, he kept walking. Only when that flicker of killing intent had come and gone did his heart finally settle.

That brief probe had confirmed two things for him.

First, the woman was injured. Second, injured or not, she was not someone he could afford to provoke.

"Brother Tang, you've come at last." Once the clerk had led Tang Yan into a reception room, Ge Ming hurried over to greet him.

A glance showed the red glow gone from Ge Ming's eyes. Tang Yan now had some measure of how swiftly Myriad Pill Pavilion got things done; it seemed a third-rank pill truly meant little to them.

"Haha, congratulations, Elder Ge." Tang Yan cupped his hands.

Ge Ming caught his meaning at once and knew well what he referred to. He laughed. "All thanks to Brother Tang's pill formula. Forgive these old eyes that day, for failing to recognize that you were the young master whose name shakes Yun City. So it turns out the true talent of Yun City's younger generation lies not with the Liu Family, but with the Tang Family."

"Not worth mentioning. It all comes down to my master's teaching." Once more Tang Yan trotted out his master's name as a screen.

"No need for courtesies with this old brother. What brings you to Myriad Pill Pavilion this time?" Ge Ming asked with a smile.

Thinking privately that these people were all old foxes through and through, Tang Yan spoke plainly. "Then I won't circle around it. I've come on my master's instruction, to discuss a piece of business with Myriad Pill Pavilion."

For a master and disciple who could hand out a third-rank pill formula on a whim, Ge Ming held no small interest. He asked at once, "And what business might your honored master wish to discuss with our Myriad Pill Pavilion?"

"Meridian Tempering Powder. Taken by an Origin Rank martial artist, it can improve the quality of the meridians to a certain degree." Tang Yan laid out the terms calmly.

"What?!" The words were barely out before Ge Ming shot to his feet, thunderstruck.

A formula that improved meridian aptitude was a rare thing in the whole of the alchemy world. If he could acquire it and deliver it to the head pavilion, that too would stand as a great merit to his name.

Tang Yan, sipping his tea, caught Ge Ming's shout with no warning at all and started so hard the tea sloshed over his hand. "Brother Ge," he said helplessly, "sit, let's talk sitting down."

Realizing he had lost his composure, Ge Ming hastily smiled in apology. "Forgive me, forgive me, I got carried away. Brother Tang, you mean to sell the formula this time?"

"Just so." Tang Yan nodded.

As an Alchemist himself, Tang Yan had expected Ge Ming's reaction.

He was confident he would come away from this with full pockets, for pills that improved the meridians were a rarity in this world.

Take Yun City. Its four great families stood evenly matched, each holding the others in check. But let one family raise up a junior of surpassing talent, and within a few years the other three would surely find themselves pressed beneath it.

So this formula, though it worked only on Origin Rank martial artists, was certain to be sought after by countless families great and small.

As a son of one of Yun City's four great families, Tang Yan understood well how much heart's blood the great clans poured into cultivating their young talents.

The day Meridian Tempering Powder appeared, the great families would scramble over one another to seize it.