Obviously, once one's cultivation reached the Nascent Soul stage, not many cultivators were still interested in crafting puppets or unusual spirit artifacts. Only three or four people competed with Han Li for a single round before he easily secured the item for one hundred and seventy thousand spirit stones. This brought him a quiet surge of delight.
Among the subsequent items the white-robed figure put up for auction, two more caught Han Li's eye. He spent one hundred and ninety thousand and three hundred and ten thousand spirit stones respectively to claim them. The second material was a particularly famous spirit artifact ingredient, and Han Li had to engage in a fierce bidding war with numerous cultivators, gritting his teeth at the price before finally winning it.
These few items had drained roughly seventy to eighty percent of the spirit stones in his pouch. Fortunately, no other puppet materials he needed appeared for the remainder of the auction, which let him breathe an involuntary sigh of relief.
When the last item was sold and the storage pouches on the jade table were finally emptied, the figure in white light seemed quite satisfied with how the auction had gone. After a brief pause, he spoke with a light chuckle:
"Our items have all been auctioned off. Fellow Daoists who have treasures to exchange may now come up here one by one to display and trade them. Let me say the ugly part first—since this is voluntary exchange, if a traded item turns out to be counterfeit or you've misjudged it yourselves, that has nothing to do with us. We merely provide the venue; all outcomes must be borne by yourselves. Additionally, following past custom, regardless of what you wish to exchange or how many items you've prepared to trade, once a successful exchange is made, we will deduct a fee of ten thousand spirit stones per person as a handling charge. From here on, you are all free to do as you please. So long as no one violates the rules, I shall merely be an observer."
This man was quite the straightforward type. After rattling off those few sentences, his figure flickered, and he materialized at the edge of the clearing in an instant before settling cross-legged into a meditative posture.
This scene didn't surprise the majority of cultivators present. Instead, figures shifted in the crowd, and several streaks of brilliant light shot forth simultaneously. One streak, clearly faster than the rest, retracted its glow first, and a figure shrouded in crimson radiance appeared behind the jade table before the others. Cupping his fists with a smile, the figure spoke in a hearty voice:
"I've taken the liberty of arriving first—my apologies. Kindly wait a moment, fellow Daoists."
The other streaks of light could only spiral back helplessly to their original seats.
Han Li smiled faintly at this.
When it came to exchanging materials, acting earlier generally gave one a slight advantage—it could prevent someone else from swapping away the very thing you needed before you had the chance. Still, this sort of occurrence wasn't that common, and the rarer the material one sought, the less likely it was to overlap with what others wanted. As a result, most cultivators could keep their composure and hadn't scrambled to compete like those first few.
The materials Han Li still lacked were rather obscure, so he had even less reason to worry.
Those who rushed to swap first were probably after items with very broad applications, which was why they had vied so eagerly.
Sure enough, the cultivator in crimson produced several rare materials and named the specific items he wanted in return—alchemy ingredients that could be used in multiple types of pills.
Within moments, several people stepped forward and traded for most of his materials. The man in crimson departed thoroughly satisfied.
The several cultivators who followed him up also managed their exchanges fairly smoothly, each obtaining at least something of value.
However, when a yellow-robed figure held up a brilliant blue metal and asked to exchange it for an obscure water-attribute material that even Han Li had never heard of, he received no takers despite asking three times. The man could only retreat in disappointment.
From that point onward, cultivators who returned empty-handed began to appear with increasing frequency. After thirty or forty people had taken their turns, those who went away with nothing actually outnumbered those who managed a successful trade.
Of course, this didn't mean the items these cultivators wanted truly didn't exist among the others present. Far more likely, the holders of desirable trade goods felt the offering wasn't worth the exchange, or what was offered simply wasn't what they needed—so they remained unmoved and didn't bother coming up to trade.
Thus, in a bar-for-bar exchange, the items brought out were not necessarily more likely to succeed simply because they were more precious.
There were also cultivators who spotted another person's materials but lacked the specific item the other party wanted, so they came forward to privately negotiate using other treasures instead. The number of such successes was vanishingly small, as most were met with cold refusal. Among the few who did succeed, one exchange involved Han Li.
Han Li's approach was straightforward. He offered several exceedingly rare thousand-year spirit herbs and a number of high-tier demon cores in exchange for the materials he needed. Both of these commodities were immensely useful to virtually any cultivator. While one or two such items might occasionally be found at a market auction, assembling this many at once was naturally far from easy.
The other cultivator hesitated only briefly before abandoning his original plans and nodding in agreement.
In addition to this, Han Li managed to trade away some of his stored goods for two more types of puppet materials. He was now only missing the two rarest items to complete his entire collection.
But these two materials were so extraordinarily scarce that it was unlikely any ordinary cultivator would voluntarily bring them out for trade.
"Han boy, what are you planning to use to exchange for materials? If it's anything less than exceptional, I'm afraid the others won't part with what they have even if they've got it," the Great Development Grandmaster suddenly transmitted through Han Li's spiritual sense.
"I've already worked that out. Most of the cultivators here follow the Demonic Path, and happen to have something in my possession that the Demonic Path regards as a supreme treasure, don't I?" Han Li replied evenly.