"Young Master, your delivery arrived," the servant informed him politely, carrying a richly decorated metal box in his arms. Seeing the chest, his heart started racing. He had heard the description, but the box alone surpassed his expectations.
If the wrapping was already this nice, how would the actual item look? According to the information from his store manager, the seller called it the "Heart of Deity" from the Verdant Dusk province.
To see something so curious still make its way here, despite the recent commotion at the rift, was intriguing and only raised the value. In the past, they had their own channels to the depths of those mysterious lands, but something he was not privy to had happened, and they lost all forces stationed there.
All the more reason why he was especially excited about this. The clerk had reported that it held incredible power, comparable to the core of a Nascent Soul Realm beast. Although he didn't quite know what it could be used for. The Seventh master of the Shadow Mountain Association was no alchemist either, but he could hire one.
The gesture for the servant to place it on the table and leave him alone. He wanted to check on it himself. He could barely wait for the servant to close the door behind him on the way out before he unlocked the chest to have a look at the trinket that cost his shop a quarter of their earthly treasures.
In anticipation, his shaky hands raised the lid, exposing the treasure inside. Clean light escaped the box as his gaze rested on a ball of polished wood resting on red satin. It was a smooth purl with an incredible, twisted grain, giving off a bright green glow.
As the clerk reported, the power it held was clearly perceptible the moment the chest was open. It actually made his heart palpitate. The aura it gave off was even stronger than the core of a Nascent Soul Desert Lion King he had previously held in his hands. Maybe it was even stronger than that, maybe close to the core of a Soul Severing beast?
He quickly closed the chest again before he called for his servant to return. The young man hurriedly scampered back inside, bowing before him. "You called, young master?" he asked reservedly.
"Put out a request, I need an advanced alchemist to visit the Shadow Mountain Association," he ordered the servant. To process this kind of treasure, it would need at least an advanced alchemist. He worried it might even need a master alchemist. If that were the case, there would be no way to deal with it any time soon.
Master Alchemists were elusive experts and highly sought after. Unlike Advanced Alchemists that could be recruited with money or force, they were too strong, too rare, and too well-connected to deal with them in any other way but to beg them for cooperation and hope the request or reward would pique their interest.
"But don't we have an advanced alchemist in the association?" The servant asked, a little confused. It was true that the association had a private alchemist, but the problem was that Master Po Tian was not associated with him, but with his father.
"I respect master Po Tian, but we will need an advanced alchemist with some more repu- I mean expertise than him, to deal with this. No, go and set up a request for advanced alchemists at the information sects," he came up with a half-truth. It was true that it was probably too someone close to a master alchemist to process this heart. What he didn't trust was Po Tian's character.
He was just the Seventh Young Master; there was no way he would be able to keep this kind of treasure if his father found out. He would either try to use it for himself or reallocate it to one of his older brothers.
There was no way he would allow that. He would rather wait a couple of weeks for an alchemist than to allow this to be taken from him. With this, he would finally be able to break through to the Nascent Soul Realm; he was sure of it.
Once the servant had left his quarters, the seventh young master lifted the chest carefully and carried it over to an unassuming corner of his study. After pulling out books and bamboo slips from the adjacent shelf in a certain order, a secret door opened.
Inside was his collection of treasures. Not something as common as rare pills or herbs, but an assortment of the most exotic and mysterious items he had managed to procure over the course of his life.
Not all of them had a definite use; some had even been deemed worthless by some of the greatest experts, yet they all had an aura of mystery, especially because those experts had no idea how to process them.
There were ores and pieces of wood, ancient texts written in lost languages, and mysterious artifacts that had lost their luster but still carried the spirit of tremendous power that was lost to time. He saw them as a collection of untapped potential; others would have called this trash.
The collection of a man who, as the neglected son, could only gain things others discarded or were not interested in. However, he was convinced of their potential. Maybe he had to. But it was different for this heart. This was the key to his breakthrough!
He carefully placed the metal box on the desk inside. Sitting at the desk, he spent another hour marveling at the burl before he heard the calls of the servant who had returned from the errand. He closed the box, closed the secret room behind him, and returned to his quarters before receiving the servant.
"I have made a request at the Alchemist Association Branch, and placed several copies with various information guilds,2 the servant reported.
"Well done," the young master praised. "You may leave now," he added, eager to return to his study.
"Young master, the steward informed me that your mother wishes to have dinner with you," the servant said instead of leaving. He sighed. Lately, his mother had started nagging about his progress and his lack of drive. She couldn't understand his hobby, calling it a distraction and a waste of time.
He looked out the window. It was already evening. Where did the time go? Begrudgingly, the seventh young master got ready and followed the servant to have dinner with his mother, leaving the shiny new treasure unattended in his secret room.
Silence fell over the room. Nobody was around, but there was a sudden sound that disturbed the quiet. As if opened by a ghostly hand, the lid of the metal box in the hidden room jumped open, and a bright, green glow illuminated the exotic collection.
Numerous roots spread out from the seed, covering the desk, the shelves, and racks filled with weird collectibles. It was now much closer to the spirit vein and unobserved. It absorbed the surrounding powers before following the last command of its caretaker.
The seed began to grow, and the roots dug through the floorboards and into the ground. Passing through dirt, foundation, and bedrock, it burrowed its way down toward the fresh source of power, taking root at the heart of the Shadow Mountain Society.
As the sun sank below the walls of the crater and night fell over the city of pleasure and twilight, nobody knew that this was the last dusk it would ever experience. Soon, the tree would rise and swallow the Shadow Mountain Association.