Chapter 2548. The Foundation Is Set — Building Stone Forest City

"I've already made the preparations, but quite a few superpowers are currently selling Western Continent materials, so we just need to wait a little to fetch a high price," Bai Qingxue said with a smile as she suddenly received a call from Shi Feng.

In the Eastern Continent, while rare materials from the Western Continent were precious and scarce, there were still some superpowers selling Eastern Continent materials. To get a good price without triggering major market fluctuations, they not only had to distribute stock across the Auction Houses of various kingdoms and empires, but also had to time things carefully — selling specific materials that the Auction Houses currently lacked in order to command premium prices. However, none of this was a problem for Zero Wing at this point.

"No need to wait. Let's sell off a portion right now," Shi Feng said after a moment's thought.

"So soon?" Bai Qingxue looked at Shi Feng, somewhat surprised.

The price gap between a quick sell-off and a slow, controlled release was enormous. After all, the market had its saturation point, and not everyone could afford those rare Western Continent materials. If they dumped them too quickly, the profits would be severely limited.

"Yeah, I'm in urgent need of funds right now. Sell as much as you can on your end," Shi Feng nodded.

If he had a choice, he wouldn't do it this way, but plans rarely survive contact with reality.

He hadn't expected that the Tree of Life's trunk really was a Sacred Artifact-grade item. Before, he'd merely entertained the thought — the most likely outcome would have been a Legendary-grade item at best.

And as a Sacred Artifact fragment, the Tree of Life sapling was terrifyingly powerful. Even in the Mana Meditation Room with the highest mana concentration, it wasn't enough — it was hard to imagine what other place could properly nurture the Tree of Life sapling.

What many didn't realize was that once a sapling formed, it couldn't just sit in one's inventory indefinitely like other items. The Tree of Life sapling could only survive for two to three natural days. Without suitable soil to plant it in, everything would have to start over from scratch…

Moreover, ordinary backpacks couldn't store it, since the Tree of Life sapling was classified as a non-storable item. Fortunately, Shi Feng's Epic-grade spatial backpack could hold some non-storable items — otherwise, once the sapling formed, it would be doomed to wither and die in the Mana Meditation Room.

In the Divine Realm, there were only three ways to increase a city's mana concentration.

The first was to construct buildings that boosted mana concentration. However, aside from the Mana Towers provided by the system, all other such buildings required players to locate their blueprints themselves. And design drawings capable of dramatically increasing a city's mana concentration were extraordinarily precious — their value exceeded that of Legendary-grade item fragments. Any faction that obtained one would absolutely never sell or trade it.

Currently, all of Zero Wing lacked any building that could significantly boost a city's mana concentration, so this route was simply not viable.

The second method was just as difficult — finding an Energy Core to install into the city's core magic array, thereby reinforcing the core array and boosting the overall mana concentration within the city.

The third and most commonly used method was to raise the city's level.

Elevating a city's level would also upgrade its magic arrays, which in turn would substantially increase the city's mana concentration. The catch was that promoting a guild city required enormous popularity and a great deal of patience — it wasn't something that could be accomplished overnight. Still, it was the most achievable of the three methods.

Stone Forest City, in terms of its prosperity and defensive capabilities, actually already qualified for promotion to a mid-tier city. The issue was that it still lacked sufficient fame and recognition, which required time to build up. Of course, there was a way to rapidly boost a city's fame — constructing a high-tier building.

A single high-tier building would instantly grant a massive amount of city fame and also served as one of the benchmarks for city promotion.

For Stone Forest City right now, just one high-tier building would be enough to smoothly elevate it to mid-tier status. Once that happened, not only would the entire city grow significantly larger, but the mana concentration inside would also jump by a considerable margin.

The problem was that he currently had no high-tier building blueprints. The only one he possessed was the design drawing for the Freedom Inn, a top-tier building. But constructing a top-tier building required not only various ultra-rare materials but also a massive amount of gold, with the exact amount varying depending on the scale of construction.

From what Shi Feng knew, the minimum cost was one million gold coins…

The construction materials for the Freedom Inn had actually already been gathered. The only thing missing was gold.

Currently, Zero Wing's accounts had fewer than fifteen hundred thousand gold coins in reserve. The gap between that and one million was enormous. The only way to bridge it was to quickly sell off those Western Continent materials — otherwise, trying to scrape together one million gold coins within two or three days was nothing short of a pipe dream.

"I understand. I'll prioritize selling the materials that are in short supply across the major kingdoms and empires as quickly as possible. If that's still not enough, I'll sell off the materials that are already more plentiful on the market," Bai Qingxue said, nodding as she looked at Shi Feng's earnest expression.

"Then I'll leave it in your hands."

After saying that, Shi Feng left the Candlelight Trading Company and personally began preparing for the construction of the Freedom Inn.