700 Up the Stairs

Alex saw the stairway to the floor above and couldn't help but wonder if they sold Immortal rank items there.

Immortal rank… Alex hadn't seen anything other than skill books that had such a high rank before.

He had seen high grades for sure, but not high ranks.

Even he had made Immortal grade pills before. Making immortal rank pills, however, was just a dream.

Alex walked up the stairs and just before he reached the next floor, he was stopped by some staff.

"Sorry, fellow Daoist. You cannot go higher than this," the person said.

"I can't?" Alex felt disappointed. He had been expecting a bit too much. "I'm sorry, I thought there was more store up above."

"There is, but not for you," the staff said.

Alex was about to return when he stopped. "Pardon? Do you mean that I'm not allowed up there?" he asked.

"I mean no disrespect, Fellow Daoist, but only someone with a certain level of achievement or reputation can be allowed up there. Or, if you have some strong backing, we can take you on the merit of your backing's strength as well," the staff said.

Alex thought for a moment and said, "I'm a guest Elder at Flowing Brush sect. Does that count?"

"If you can bring back a letter of recommendation by Sect Master Qin, then we can let you enter," the man said.

"Good," Alex said, but he didn't leave. He wasn't going to waste time going back to the sect and coming back. He wanted to enter right now.

"What about Alchemy guild? Does it count as my backing?" Alex asked curiously.

"To a certain extent, yes," the man said. "But this time you will have to bring a high-ranking figure of the guild along with you."

"What counts as high ranking?" Alex asked. "Does this count?"

Alex brought out his True Heaven badge and showed it to the man. The man took a moment to see what it was, and when he did, his eyes went wide.

However, being a professional, he kept the look for maybe a second before removing it. Then, he put on a smile as he said, "Honored Guest, you should have begun with that."

Afterward, the man stepped to the side and left Alex to enter.

Alex entered the top of the stairs and looked around confusedly. There were no shops here at all. Then why did the staff say there was a store here? Alex couldn't make sense of anything.

He noticed a seating area next to a wall with a single person sitting on it. Aside from that, there was another staff guarding the door that lead to a room.

'Is that the store? A room?' Alex thought and walked up to the seating area to sit down.

He decided to wait and see what was going on for a few minutes, so he relaxed in the seating area next to the woman who didn't look like she wanted to speak at all.

After a few minutes, someone wearing Han family robes left the room and the staff by the door softly told the woman to enter.

Alex continued waiting, looking around at the mostly wooden pagoda, and started searching for a staircase.

'Seems like this is the final floor,' he thought. After waiting for maybe 5 or so minutes, the woman finally left the room.

"Honored guest, you may enter," the staff said to him. Alex nodded and entered through the door.

The interior of the room was small and cozy. There was an open window directly opposite the door. In the center of the room was a table surrounded on each side by two sofas, each of which was wide enough for 3 people to sit side to side.

The left sofa was empty, while the right one held an elderly woman with a wrinkled face and white hair.

She had a gentle smile on her face and a terrifying aura of a Saint realm expert.

Her white and blue robes were perfect with no creases at all.

"Ah, a young man. Please come and sit," she said.

Alex nodded with a smile and walked up to sit opposite her.

"May I know your name…" the woman's eyes drifted to his missing left hand and a curious look appeared on her face. "You wouldn't happen to be Yu Ming, would you? The guest elder of Flowing Brush sect, and a True Heaven Alchemist, Formation Master, and Talisman Expert."

"You know about me?" Alex asked with an unhidden tone of shock.

"It's my job to know about any and all potential customers," the woman said. "You happen to be one of the ones that are high in priority in this city."

"You flatter me a lot, senior," Alex said.

"I don't think you flatter yourself enough," the woman said. "It's not easy to do all of these things when you're not even 25."

Alex was genuinely shocked now. "You know my age too?" he asked with a serious face.

"And about your relationship with True Immortal talisman expert Hei Lin, amongst many other things," the old woman said and looked at the shocked Alex with a smile. "As I said, I need to remain informed about any potential customers."

"It seems like you went a bit overboard with that concept," Alex said.

"Don't worry, young man. Our customer's privacy is very important to us. The information we have, we won't give it to anyone," the woman said.

"You see, someone said the exact same thing to me once. A month later, I had a murder-hungry bastard kidnap me and nearly kill me in the middle of a forest. So, all your talk about privacy and protection doesn't mean shit to me," Alex said and looked at her.

The woman gave a surprised look. "I can promise our stor—"

"How did you find that information?" Alex asked, not giving her the chance to speak.

"Any information is available to buy at certain places," the woman said.

'An intelligence agency huh? Qin Shan did speak to be about those once,' he thought.

"Anyway, let's forget about all this," Alex said. "I came here because I wanted to buy something, but I don't see a store. Was I misled?"

"No you were not, honored guest," the old woman said. "I am the store."

The old woman brought out a few storage bags from her robes and placed them in front of Alex.

With just a simple look, Alex could tell that these were high-grade storage bags, capable of holding at least 10 cubic meters of space.

Some of these may even hold as much as his own storage ring, at least how much of it was available right now.

The old woman brought out two cups and started pouring some steaming, light green liquid into the cups.

"Please have some tea. It's made with the best ingredients our chefs could find," the woman said.

"Thank you," Alex said and drank the tea. As soon as the tea entered his throat, Alex could tell how amazing it was.

Within seconds, he felt like his mind was clear and awake. All the anger and annoyance he had been feeling was gone within moments and he was left with a fresh mind.

"My apologies, I forgot to ask you your name earlier," Alex said.

"It's alright. I am Ga Xueyuan," the old woman said.

"It's good to meet you, senior Ga," Alex said. "So, let's get to business please."

"Yes, what is it that you want to buy from me today?" the woman asked as she brought out some items from her bag.

"A Saint rank sword? Some talisman designs, Pill recipes, formation blueprint, maybe a prosthetic arm? What is it?" Ga Xueyuan asked as she brought forward all the different items.

The moment the items fell into Alex's eyes, they started shining with the bright light of wanting them.

"How do you have Saint rank items here? I thought that was for the floor below," Alex said.

"No, only Common and True rank items are found below. Saint experts don't like wasting time with normal store clerks you see, so I deal with them," The woman said.

"I see," Alex said. "Well, you have some amazing items, but that is not what I am here for."

"I am actually looking for a recipe to form pills," Alex said.

"Pill forming recipes? I would have guessed you to already had one given your ability to create Heaven grade pills," the old woman said.

Alex shook his head. "It's a low-tier technique and is unusable now," he said. "So I was hoping you had one, hopefully, an immortal rank too."

The woman looked at him for a moment and at the different items below. Once she became sure that he wasn't buying any of them, she reluctantly reached into one of her bags and pulled out a book.

Once out, she handed the book to Alex. Alex took it and was confused.

"Why is this not sealed?" he asked.

"There's no need to," the woman said. "You will find that Immortal grade skills of any kind are quite hard to remember, let alone learn."

"I see, so you are confident I will neither be able to learn it in the period of time it's in my hand," Alex said.

"That's exactly it," the old woman said.

Alex shook his head and looked down to check the book he had gotten. The outer cover looked quite good, almost pristine.

The yellow color seemed to be a choice rather than the book being old too. Then Alex turned the page and looked at the title of the technique.

[Profound Revolutions of Myriad Combinations]