Only Seph changed into the blue robes of the inner sect disciples; Lilith liked her dragon scales so much and didn’t change.
As Seph got out of his cultivation tomb to his waiting friends outside, he got a mental command from the elder, “Seph, you are to take Lilith with you and go to the treasure pavilion I already told them to grant you and Lilith a treasure item each. These are all mystery items, and some of them are quite useless, honestly. I wish you luck in choosing something worthwhile.”
The mental command was annoying and invasive, Seph didn’t like that the elder had access to his brain at any time to give him commands like this, but he couldn’t complain then, since he was going to get a new treasure out of it.
The elder’s voice came back a few seconds later though as he said, “Oh, and I also sent a disciple to wait for you in front of the alchemist’s workshop, he will give you and Lilith a gift of yin cultivation pills, 100 for her and 10 for you, don’t let him scam you. You can also ask him to give you the tour around the sect that you missed.”
Seph thought, Motherfucker! 100 for her and 10 for me, what kind of warped math did he do to reach that number?
He was really mad at the obvious favoritism, but then he thought it must be because of who her father was, and they were trying to appeal to her. Meanwhile, Seph was an absolute nobody with no heritage in the yin cultivation world.
Lilith came towards him after he stopped moving for a while, and asked, “Are you okay?”
Seph answered, “Yes, don’t worry, the elder just sent me a couple of mental commands; looks like you and I will get new treasure items right now and a bunch of pills.” Seph put on his best smile for her to hide the fact that he had been jealous of her a few seconds ago.
Lilith looked excited as she said, “Well, that’s amazing; I could always use new treasures; not sure about yin cultivation pills though as I have too many. I guess I can always use them as currency in exchanges when their effect fizzles out.”
Seph raised an eyebrow and asked, “They fizzle out?”
Lilith answered, “Yeah, around the 6th stage of body dismantling, we will need to use death establishment pills if we want to break through the bottleneck and then even more to eventually get to death establishment. But even if we can’t afford those pills, we could always gather a group of our trusted friends and close a few scars of fate.”
Seph nodded in understanding. Meanwhile, Kafka was giving them their space and stroking a different kitten that he must have switched with when he went back to feed his abundance of cats in his cultivation tomb.
The young cultivator walked straight towards Kafka and said, “I am sorry we will bother you again, but we want to go back to the treasure pavilion; I still didn’t memorize the road, so we will be in your care.”
Kafka waved his hand dismissively as he said, “Think nothing of it. Come, let’s go back there.”
The group walked back through the sandy streets of the sect, often getting glances from inner sect disciples and outer sect disciples alike.
At one point, they even heard a distant scream again that Zhi Zixin surely caused.
Eventually though, they reached the treasure pavilion again, and they headed inside, but they didn’t go straight to the shop this time, and Silver Chan was actually waiting for them inside the building.
He welcomed them by saying, “You must have gotten the mental command too. Welcome back, Seph, and to you too, Lilith. Let me show you the part of the building that has all the magic items that we have.”
He led them to the right side of the shop, and immediately to the far right, they saw many magic items in glass casings. They were on different levels, scaling up; the widest shelf was at the bottom and then the shelves narrowed as you went up.
Seph asked, “How are we supposed to choose if the items are that far and we can’t touch them with our own hands?”
Silver Chan answered, “That’s the beauty of it; items like this are better left to fate. They are called mystery items for a reason. You never know what they actually do, so imagine if you just choose based on what looks strong to you, or what looks expensive. You’d probably never land a good fit. Meanwhile, if you leave it to fate, if you leave it to that sense that very few of us can control, you will land an item that’s the difference between life and death for you.”
Seph nodded even though he wasn’t convinced; he continued to peruse the items on the far shelves until something caught his eye.
A glass vial that had the shape of a teardrop, a rather big teardrop — it was about 35 cm tall; the bottle had a small neck followed by a cap made of gold that shut the bottle.
Inside the glass vial was sand, just sand. A lot of items caught his attention; these were fascinating treasures after all, but for that vial of sand, it was a weird feeling; like it was calling to him.
He couldn’t take his eyes off the item.
He tried using the Eye of the Appraiser on it before choosing, but nothing came back; the glass casing had a faint glow instead as he used the Eye.
Seph was confused, so he used the eye again on other items, and it still didn’t give him any results.
Silver Chan and Lilith had passed him by, and Silver Chan was looking back to see where they lost Seph, when he noticed him trying to use his appraising skill.
“Don’t try; it won’t work. We know that disciples with identification skills would try to use them to choose the best items, but that’s the thing — there is no best item here. There are items that will be great for you on your journey, and there will be items that might never even interact with you for you to find their secrets.” He said in a slightly louder voice for Seph to hear.
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Seph looked at him absentmindedly; it was like his entire being was focused on that item.
He thought, This must be the feeling he described; this must be my fated treasure item, and I don’t even feel like I have the power to ignore its call and walk around perusing the rest before coming back to it.
Seph just raised his hand and gestured for Silver Chan to come back.
Lilith and Silver Chan turned and came back to him, and Silver Chan asked, “Okay then, tell me which item is calling you?”
Seph just pointed towards the vial of sand; Silver Chan raised an eyebrow and said, “Hmm, I didn’t see anyone choose this item before; it has been sitting there since forever. Well, you can’t go against your fate, I guess. Even though sometimes fate has horrible plans for you.”
Lilith seemed to be interested in what he said and asked, “What do you mean?”
Silver Chan seemed excited that she finally directed any words to him and hoped that meant she forgave him and said, “Sometimes fate literally hands you the item that will lead to your death. People always have this assumption that everything fated for us is the best thing for us, that we ourselves would choose if we had the power. But if you ask me, that’s just wishful thinking, and blind trust in a deity’s plans for you; that hopefully your deity must surely have your best interests in mind when they write the story of your life. But that’s hogwash; think of the children that die before adulthood, think of the men and women who die a year after marriage or after bringing a new life into this world, think of the elderly that lose their houses for whatever reason and end up homeless at the end of their days. If those are the plans of a deity, then it’s a sadistic fuck of a deity that wants to see you or your loved ones suffer for their own amusement.”
Lilith immediately thought of Karma and how her father got betrayed, everything was going well with his plans, until suddenly he lost it all, he lost all the work he ever put towards achieving his revenge, or even his plans to make things better after he got his revenge.
Silver Chan went to the shelves and revealed a hidden compartment that had a wheel; he turned the wheel, and the shelves moved until the shelf with the vial of sand came within arm’s reach of him.
He got it out and handed it to Seph and then turned the wheel again to put the shelves in the same order they were in before.
Seph held the vial of sand solemnly as the feeling of being called or fate to have that item was overwhelming; the sand looked like gold dust inside the vial, but he was sure it’s sand for some reason.
He used the Eye of the Appraiser on it again, hoping that he could finally learn what this item was for.
Appraising…
Name: Dream Sand
Type: Magic Treasure
Quality: Super Rare (Mystery)
Description: In the realm of dreams, nothing is as it seems. Except for those who can master their visions, they can create unimaginable things beyond what a human or an immortal could envision. They can learn and not fall into the mistakes that the Wakers would make.
Seph felt there was profound wisdom behind those words, but he couldn’t for the life of him understand what this item could do. Which brought him down from his high state to the ground once again.
Lilith and Silver Chan gave him all the time that he needed, and once he was out of his stupor he told them, “Let’s continue, and find Lilith’s treasure.”
They started walking the path again and watching all the items, Lilith didn’t seem to be interested in anything, and once they made a full circle to the last shelf from the left, Baby the bone dragon flew from Lilith’s head where she usually likes to stay, and landed on a treasure item that was on the top shelf.
She sat on top of the item and tried to bite its casing with her teeth, but to no avail; she didn’t give up though.
Lilith watched what was happening and said calmly, “I want the item that my dragon chose, please.”
Silver Chan thought it was weird to let your pet choose the treasure item, but he knew better than to object.
He did the same process he had done with Seph’s item and brought the shelf down to ground level.
Baby was adamant about breaking into the glass casing and didn’t move the entire time trying to bite it.
Once the shelf was on the ground level; Silver Chan tentatively tried to reach for it, scared of Baby. But he didn’t go far as Baby finally broke the glass casing and took the item from the inside and flew back on top of Lilith’s head while chewing on the item.
Silver Chan looked with exasperation at the shattered casing and said, “I guess we won’t be using that again then.”
Lilith said, “We are sorry; if you need spirit stones for the damage my Baby had done, I wouldn’t mind at all. Just tell me how much, and sorry for the inconvenience.”
Silver Chan said, “Oh, it’s nothing; don’t worry about it. I was just overreacting really.”
Lilith bowed to him slightly and then took the item from Baby, who gave it to her after some tugging between them.
It was a piece of metal the likes of which Lilith had never seen before.
It looked really dirty and old, and had a rust layer on top of it, but she could see different colors underneath the rust.
She wasn’t worried that the rust layer would hurt Baby, since Baby lacked a natural digestive system, like Sun, for example.
She consumed her meats by absorbing it through magic.
Baby was growling and wanted to take the metal back, and Seph thought to divert her attention, so he took out a piece of the pork steaks he got for her and held it up for her.
She looked between the steak and the metal for a while, like she was choosing, and finally she let out a puff of fire that she was using to cook the steak, and then she ate the cooked part. She kept on doing this until the last part, which she ate raw because she didn’t want to scorch Seph’s hand.
She then rested on top of Lilith’s head, laying her head on top of her crossed forefeet, and started purring in satisfaction.
Seph took the chance to check the metal with his Eye of the Appraiser.
Appraising…
Name: Dragon-touched metal
Type: Magic Treasure
Quality: Super Rare (Mystery)
Description: Dragons love it for reasons unknown. Is it treasure or is it trash? It depends on whose treasure and whose trash.
Seph and Lilith both started nodding in satisfaction together, so Seph asked her, “Did you find something out?”
“Not really, but I have a good feeling about this; I never saw Baby go after an item like she did with this one, so it must be something good for her at least.” She said nonchalantly.
She then followed. “Anyway, let’s go check out the alchemy workshop, and receive those pills you told me about.”
The duo bowed to Silver Chan and went out of the treasure pavilion to meet with Kafka, who was waiting for them while playing with his cat.
