Chương 11: Chapter 9 part 2

Ming Xuan Ji stood in the center of the cavernous, icy butchery wing, the dark Enigma Ring on her right hand glinting faintly under the magical luminescence of the preservation arrays. She took a slow, measured breath, locking away the anticipation bubbling in her chest, and replaced it with the absolute, cold serenity of a Heavenly Demon. With a subtle, perfectly controlled pulse of her internal Qi, she opened the dimensional lock on her [Void Storage Ring].

At first, Elandor, the veteran elven guild master, and Thare, the stoic dwarven merchant, maintained their rigid, professional composure. They had seen high-rank adventurers return from the fringes of the Zel'Mora forest before. They expected a respectable pile of monster carcass with valuable pelts, perhaps a few mana cores, and maybe the prized horn of a territorial beast. What they did not expect was an avalanche. The air in the room suddenly warped with a deep, bass-heavy thrum of displaced space. Thud. CRASH.

The first carcass slammed onto the heavy, reinforced stone table, a massive, toxic deep-forest wyvern. Its jagged scales resembled oxidized copper, and its long, spiked tail trailed off the edge of the table, scraping against the stone floor. Before Elandor could even blink, the spatial distortion pulsed again, wider and faster this time. Thud. Thud. Thud. Three heavily armored iron-tusk boars, each the size of a small merchant carriage, materialized and dropped onto the adjacent tables.

Their thick, metallic plating clanged loudly against the stone. Then came the crystalline spiders, their jagged, quartz-like legs still crackling with latent, dissipating lightning. Then a pile of shadow panthers, whose pitch-black fur seemed to actively absorb the icy blue light of the room. Then the razor-beak griffons. Then the scaled basilisk hounds. Within less than thirty seconds, Xuan Ji had unloaded precisely ten percent of her total spatial inventory.

The massive, sprawling stone tables that had seemed so cavernous just a minute ago were now entirely overflowing. The metallic, heavy scent of raw monster blood instantly overpowered the sharp cleaning herbs, filling the enclosed space with the thick, oppressive, and wild stench of the deep abyss. Elandor's jaw literally dropped. His long, scarred ears twitched violently backward in sheer, unadulterated shock as he stared at the mountain of lethal predators.

He took a staggering step back, his hand instinctively dropping to the hilt of his sword before he caught himself. Thare, the wealthy, unflappable dwarven merchant, actually stumbled. She had to brace her thick arms against a wooden pillar to avoid being crushed by the massive, leathery wing of a dead wyvern that had slumped off the edge of a table. Silence hung heavily in the room, broken only by the faint, eerie crackle of the crystalline spiders' fading lightning.

"…Lady Xuan Ji," Elandor whispered, his voice incredibly slow and hoarse. His wide eyes darted wildly from the wyvern to the iron-boars, trying to mentally calculate the sheer volume of slaughter before him.

"This… this is far more than we expected." Thare let out a long, low whistle, pulling a silk handkerchief from her pocket to wipe the sudden sheen of cold sweat from her brow.

"By the forge and the flame…" the dwarf muttered, her eyes wide with greedy, terrified awe.

"I've seen veteran, fifty-man hunting parties come back with less after a full month in the deep forest. And you… you brought this much out entirely alone?" Xuan Ji brushed a stray lock of raven hair behind her ear, keeping her expression utterly neutral and unimpressed. Internally, she was smirking at the glorious, classic NPC reaction.

"Is there a problem with the amount?" she asked smoothly.

"No! No problem at all, my lady!" Elandor replied quickly, his voice cracking slightly on the first word. He cleared his throat, trying desperately to regain a shred of his guild master dignity.

"It's just… we simply weren't prepared for this sheer scale. Even with the butchery completely empty and all our staff on standby, processing this many high-quality carcasses in one go will take considerable time. If we dedicate all our master skinners and bone-carvers, working day and night, it will take at least five days."

"Five days is acceptable," Xuan Ji replied, folding her hands elegantly within her wide sleeves.

"Proceed at a steady pace. I am in no immediate rush, and quality extraction matters far more to me than speed." Thare hesitated, stepping forward cautiously to examine the scales of the copper wyvern. She ran a thick, calloused finger over the beast's hide, then slowly turned her gaze back to Xuan Ji. The dwarf's expression grew incredibly serious.

"There is one more thing, my lady," Thare said, her tone shifting from shocked to highly analytical.

"While we can certainly process everything you've shown us here… I noticed the density of the mana leaking from your spatial ring when it opened. It was suffocating." The dwarf looked up, meeting Xuan Ji's dark eyes.

"You clearly have significantly higher-ranking specimens still in your possession. S-tier. Perhaps even higher." Xuan Ji didn't confirm or deny it, merely lifting a single, elegant eyebrow.

"Our teams here in Theloca are highly skilled," Thare continued, her voice earnest.

"But we do not have the specialized alchemical tools, the enchanted mithril saws, or the grandmaster butchers required to properly extract the maximum value from creatures of that caliber. If we try to butcher an S-tier beast here, the latent mana will leak, and the materials will degrade. You will lose millions in potential value." Elandor nodded vigorously in agreement, having recovered his wits.

"Thare is completely right. High-ranking monster carcasses can last for months if preserved correctly in a high-grade spatial ring like yours. If you have better materials… it would be vastly wiser to sell them in Elyndria. The imperial capital has the main continental branch of the Adventurer's Guild. You would receive vastly better prices, flawless extraction, and access to royal buyers." If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Xuan Ji remained quiet for a moment, her eyes narrowing thoughtfully. She had already planned to travel to the capital of Elyndria. According to Lira, it was the home of the Grand Abyss Dungeon, the deepest, most lethal subterranean labyrinth in the Zareth Kingdom, and the perfect place to test the absolute limits of her Heavenly Demon Scripture. Now, she had a pressing, undeniable economic reason to go as well.

If this measly ten percent of her "trash" loot was enough to overwhelm a heavily fortified frontier city, her actual boss-tier drops, like the Earth Wyrm she had killed on day forty, would be entirely wasted here.

"I understand your counsel," Xuan Ji said finally, nodding her head in a gesture of respect for their honesty.

"Process what is on these tables. I will take the higher-ranking materials with me when I depart for the capital." Thare looked visibly relieved that she wouldn't be forced to butcher a legendary beast with standard iron tools.

"We will begin work this very hour. You should receive the first partial payment within three days, with the full sum completely settled by the fifth."

The next five days in Theloca passed in a blur of quiet, unbothered luxury. After surviving in the brutal, unforgiving wilds for so long, Xuan Ji allowed herself to fully sink into the lavish hospitality the Vael family provided, shedding the last remnants of her wilderness paranoia. Every morning, she took a short carriage ride to the guild to silently observe their frantic, bloody progress. But the afternoons belonged entirely to her rest.

In the evening, she carefully had a conversation with the Marquess and Lira regarding common sense in this world. She casually faked her situation as a traveler from the far eastern part of the world, beyond Zel'Mora forest. Every day, she took impossibly long, scalding baths infused with rare oils that smelled of lavender and crushed mint.

She ate absurd, monumental amounts of perfectly cooked food, much to the quiet astonishment of the kitchen staff, absorbing the caloric energy directly into her Dantian to refine her physical vessel. Though the effect was minimal, her enjoyment was off the chart. During these quiet days, Drelion also arranged for his family to return fully from the neighboring fortified city of Valdren.

One sunlit afternoon, while Xuan Ji was sitting on a stone bench in the private gardens, the Marquess approached her, accompanied by his family. His wife, Lady Elara, was a graceful, composed woman with kind eyes and a distinctly noble bearing. Beside her stood their two children: a tall, awkward sixteen-year-old boy trying desperately to look brave, and a shy, twelve-year-old girl with golden hair hiding behind her mother's skirts.

As they approached, Lady Elara didn't offer a polite curtsy; she dropped into a deep, full bow, her eyes glistening with unshed tears.

"Lady Xuan Ji," Elara said, her voice trembling slightly with overwhelming emotion.

"You saved our home. You saved my husband. We can never, ever truly repay the debt we owe you, but please know that as long as the Vael bloodline endures, you will always have a safe harbor in this city." The teenage boy stammered out a heavily rehearsed but deeply earnest thanks, bowing rigidly. But it was the little girl who finally broke Xuan Ji's stoic facade.

The twelve-year-old stepped forward timidly, her small hands shaking as she offered up a clumsily tied, beautiful little bouquet of freshly picked blue gardenias.

"Thank you for saving my dad," the little girl squeaked, her face turning bright red before she darted back behind her mother. Xuan Ji accepted the flowers with gentle, careful poise. For a brief second, the 27-year-old gamer beneath the terrifying martial artist felt a profound, aching warmth in her chest. Back on Earth, she had thousands of viewers. People spammed emojis, donated digital currency, and typed out praises in chat rooms. But it was fleeting. It was data on a screen. This was real.

The lives she had saved were breathing, crying, and standing right in front of her.

"It was my honor to ensure his safe return," Xuan Ji said softly, offering the little girl a rare, genuinely warm smile that made the child beam with pride. As the days wound down, Xuan Ji spent her evenings in her chambers, meticulously preparing for the journey ahead. Drelion had provided her with incredibly detailed maps of the Zareth Kingdom, showing the winding trade routes, the dense buffer zones of the Neutral Territories, and the sprawling, heavily fortified borders of the neighboring Nakterngard Empire.

Alongside the maps, the Marquess had procured a small fortune in travel essentials. He gifted her a heavy, enchanted iron cooking pot that passively maintained heat, dozens of small glass vials filled with exotic spices and rare cooking herbs, a compass enchanted to point toward leylines, and several heavily sealed, wax-stamped letters of introduction addressed to powerful nobles in the capital.

Late on the afternoon of the fourth day, as she sat cross-legged on her bed studying the map of Elyndria, her mind drifted toward the practical mechanics of wealth in this new world. The amount of pure gold she was going to receive from the local guild tomorrow for just her "trash" tier loot was going to be an absolutely staggering sum by normal standards. But for her, it felt almost insignificant.

'If I sell the boss-tier materials properly in the capital… the amount of liquid wealth I'll possess is going to be completely ridiculous,' she thought, tracing the trade route to Elyndria with her finger.

'But gold is just a number. It's like hitting the gold cap in an MMO. What I actually need is what that gold can buy: access to restricted auctions, highly classified information, and high-level Dungeons.' Then, an annoying, fundamentally human thought crossed her mind. Taxes. In her old life, she had paid a brutal percentage of her streaming revenue to corporate platforms and the government. In UBAO, the in-game Auction House took a mandatory ten percent cut of every transaction.

She scowled, her Heavenly Demon aura flaring slightly, causing the temperature in the room to drop a few degrees. She loathed the idea of the royal kingdom taking a massive cut of the wealth she had personally bled, fought, and nearly died for in the monster-infested wilderness.

'A flat kingdom tax on millions of gold is going to be highway robbery,' she grumbled internally. At the same time, the pragmatic adult in her understood the basic mechanics of civilization. That tax money paid for the massive Aegis Arrays that protected cities, it paid the wages of the guards who manned the walls, and it maintained the smooth, paved roads she was about to travel on. Without taxes, frontier cities like Theloca would have been swallowed by the Zel'Mora forest centuries ago.

'Full tax exemption would be greedy and politically aggressive,' she reasoned, calming her aura.

'But I am not a standard adventurer bringing back a sack of goblin ears. I operate on a scale of a small country. Perhaps… a special privilege or a heavily reduced VIP rate would be reasonable. If I am going to single-handedly inject legendary materials into their economy, I refuse to be taxed at the same rate as a novice.' She decided she would leverage Drelion's letters of introduction and her newly minted status as a "Savior" to violently negotiate those terms once she reached the capital's central Guild.

On the evening of the fifth day, her business in Theloca finally concluded. Rowen, the silver-haired butler, knocked on her door, followed by a procession of guild workers carrying four massive, iron-bound wooden chests. Inside the chests were thousands of heavy, perfectly minted gold coins, alongside a velvet pouch containing flawlessly cut, highly refined magical gemstones used for large-scale transactions. Thare had also included a detailed, itemized ledger of the sales.

It was more than enough wealth to fund her journey in luxury for the next decade. With a simple wave of her hand, the chests vanished into the void of her spatial storage. That night, Ming Xuan Ji stood on the grand balcony of her guest room, the cool autumn breeze tugging at the crimson sash of her hanfu. She looked out over the flickering, warm lights of Theloca. The city was entirely alive.

The distant sounds of music from the taverns drifted through the air, mingling with the rhythmic clinking of the night watchmen making their rounds. She felt a profound, quiet sense of satisfaction. She had rested her body. She had been treated with genuine, heartfelt hospitality by people she had grown to respect. She had turned a small fraction of her massive hoard into usable, liquid wealth, and she had acquired a powerful artifact that pushed her build to new heights.

She turned her gaze away from the city below, looking out toward the dark, sprawling horizon. Somewhere out there, miles beyond the safety of these walls, the imperial capital of Elyndria was waiting. The road was finally calling. And this time, Ming Xuan Ji wouldn't just be surviving the world. She would be conquering it.