Longevity, starting from being a chicken raising servant - Chapter 24
Chapter 24: Chapter 24 Changeli
Translator: 549690339
After patiently waiting for a few days, Wang Ba finally brought the four male Spirit Chickens, from which he had drained their Lifespans, to the West Garden Market, to Lu’s Grain Shop.
Despite appearing as his normal self, Wang Ba still tried to minimize his presence as much as possible, only going in once the shop was less crowded.
“Oh! Wang, why are you only here now? The seeds of the Meridian Grass were all sold out early this morning, did you still want the Tendon-Cutting Silkworms?”
Shopkeeper Lu was especially enthusiastic when he saw Wang Ba.
He had to be enthusiastic. After all, even though Wang Ba was a menial worker, he had patronized the shop multiple times and bought a substantial number of Tendon-Cutting Silkworms.
He was the only one who had been fooled into buying once and was still willing to repurchase — a loyal customer.
Among the men of his status, he might not be a big spender, but he was certainly wealthy.
However, Wang Ba kept waving his hands, saying, “Never mind that, do you still accept Spirit Chickens?”
“Spirit Chickens? We welcome them with open arms, the more, the better! Do you have any?”
At the mention of Spirit Chickens, Shopkeeper Lu hurriedly came around from behind the counter with a beaming smile, took the bamboo basket that Wang Ba was carrying.
Upon opening the lid of the basket and looking inside, his face instantly lit up with joy.
“Four lower-grade Spirit Chickens! Brilliant! Wang, did you rob ‘Ding 10 Villa’ or something?”
“I’m just a menial worker, how dare I rob an immortal’s villa. Rest assured, they’re absolutely safe!”
Wang Ba deftly sidestepped Shopkeeper Lu’s probing with a laugh.
With the passage of time and the many conversations with Old Hou, he had learned a lot of common knowledge.
For example, Ding Villa is a place specifically for raising chickens under the ‘Beasts Room,’ with hundreds of villas in total.
The first ten villas were used for raising Spirit Chickens, guarded by outer disciples.
The rest were looked after by menial workers.
Generally, the villas with smaller numbers had a more profound foundation and housed more Precious Chickens.
For instance, the previous ‘Ding 16 Villa’ housed four to five hundred Precious Chickens, whereas Wang Ba’s manor, ‘Ding 87 Villa,’ only housed a little over a hundred when Old Sun left.
Of course, the villas with smaller numbers usually had to supply more each month, so their pressure was not necessarily less than those of the villas with larger numbers.
This was why Song Lun from Ding 16 Villa was so eager to buy Precious Chickens as soon as he received compensation.
Shopkeeper Lu was merely joking earlier, and seeing Wang Ba’s assurance that there were no issues, he took out a yellow paper and measured each chicken.
“Wang, don’t think I don’t trust you, it’s just procedure!”
Shopkeeper Lu explained.
Wang Ba nodded, offering no objections, but suddenly remembered ‘Jia 5’.
“I wonder if that guy still counts as a lower-grade Spirit Chicken…”
“Four lower-grade male Spirit Chickens, tsk, it’s a pity they’re not hens,” Shopkeeper Lu shook his head, showing regret, but he understood that most people were reluctant to part with hens, so he looked up and said:
“Wang, we’re all familiar people here, so I won’t beat around the bush with you. For these four Spirit Chickens, my opening price is three taels and three points each!”
“I don’t want Spirit Stones, give me Precious Chickens instead!”
Wang Ba decisively said.
“All exchanged for Precious Chickens?”
Shopkeeper Lu looked surprised, but his hands quickly worked on the abacus: “Fine! I’ll give them to you based on the cost price. However, the price of Precious Chickens has gone up a bit recently. Now, a hen costs 5 points and 7 cents, and a rooster costs 2 points and 1 cent… you can exchange exactly 34. If we split it evenly between males and females, I’ll give you an extra male!”
“I don’t want hens, I only want roosters.”
Wang Ba waved his hand again.
If he was planning to trade goods for goods and wanted a quick turnaround, then it was more cost-effective to exchange for roosters.
“Only roosters?”
Shopkeeper Lu was momentarily stunned, but he quickly recovered.
“That would make it 62!
11
“Give me two more!” Wang Ba fully demonstrated the spirit of trying to get a better deal no matter what.
“Two would cost four points of Spirit Stone… Okay, considering you’re a loyal customer, 1’11 make a loss and give them to you!”
However, for some reason, Shopkeeper Lu felt an uncanny sense of deja vu, as if he had experienced a similar scenario before.
Once the transaction was completed, Wang Ba wasn’t in a rush to leave. Instead, he asked with great interest, “Shopkeeper, can you sell me the technique for breeding and raising Tendon-Cutting Silkworms?”
“You want to breed them yourself?”
Shopkeeper Lu shook his head: “The method isn’t difficult, but my advice to you is that breeding Tendon-Cutting Silkworms is time-consuming and costly. Seeing that you’ve bought quite a few Tendon-Cutting Silkworms, I know that you definitely want to cultivate your Spiritual Root and embark on the path to immortality. There’s no need to waste your time on this.”
“Thank you for your concern, Shopkeeper. 1 was just asking, if it really takes too much time, then forget it.”
Wang Ba laughed.
Shopkeeper Lu didn’t hide anything and quickly taught him how to breed and raise Tendon-Cutting Silkworms without charging him any silver.
“These Tendon-Cutting Silkworms actually nest in high-grade Spirit Beast bones, only laying eggs after they’ve eaten their fill, and they also need to change their Spirit Beast bones regularly…indeed, a hassle.”
But even so, he kept this in mind. If he had the chance, he planned to store some lifespan in these Tendon-Cutting Silkworms to see what happened.
After leaving the West Garden market, he made sure no one was following him before finally returning to the villa.
Next, following the same procedure, he took four Spirit Chickens to the East Mountain and Beisong Markets respectively, in exchange for over one hundred and twenty male Precious Chickens.
He didn’t go to South Lake—the prices there were exorbitantly inflated.
It took a great deal of effort and several trips to transport all these Precious Chickens back.
With this, the number of Precious Chickens in the villa surged to around 260.
Among them, there were six Spirit Chickens, 202 male Precious Chickens, and 53 female Precious Chickens.
The number of female Precious Chickens was less than when he had first arrived, mainly because every month he had to offer some to the Sect and the new-borns couldn’t keep up with the demand.
The abundance of male chickens was only temporary.
Taking the potential impact into consideration, he stored lifespan in only sixty of them.
Having eaten about ten Spirit Chickens in the previous months, along with the extracted lifespan, his current lifespan had reached 190.2 years.
Ten days passed.
Once the metamorphosis of the Precious Chickens was complete, he harvested them directly. The lifespan successfully broke through to 550 years.
This was a quantity that Wang Ba had never possessed before.
Although he was somewhat reluctant, he still chose to consume this lifespan.
[Current lifespan -72 years]
Strong Body Sutra Stage IV, complete!
[Current lifespan -14.4 years]
Stage V!
[Current lifespan -288 years]
Stage VI!
In one breath, he reached Stage Vl!
Feeling the abundant strength in his body, Wang Ba became more eager to start his Cultivation.
But his pace of breakthrough also had to be slowed down.
On the one hand, his body was bloated with pain even while filled with strength. He came to understand that although Cultivation could be quickly achieved through lifespan, his body might not be able to handle it all at once.
He had to slow down a bit, let his body adjust before continuing the breakthrough.
On the other hand, he found that the supply of Precious Chickens in the market was not keeping up with his demands recently.
He came to know about this when he went to the West Garden market the other day and chatted with Shopkeeper Lu casually.
Because of the frequent outbreaks of unknown chicken plague in the Ding Villas recently, those villas had started buying up Precious Chickens, causing a scarcity and rapid price increase in the market.
H
Not just that, a lot of outer disciples are also buying up a large amount of Precious Chickens. 1 don’t even have a single hen left in my shop! 1 have to go to other markets, or even to the Rogue Cultivators outside the Sect to buy them, and the Rogue Cultivators don’t give us mortals any respect…”
Shopkeeper Lu complained bitterly to Wang Ba.
After hearing this, Wang Ba wanted to buy a batch of Precious Chickens. However, after asking for the price, he instantly abandoned the idea.
Even the male Precious Chickens had risen to six and a half Spirit Stones each!
To put it in perspective, when Wang Ba first sold Spirit Chickens, the purchase price of a male Precious Chicken was only one and a half Spirit Stones.
Even when he was exchanging Spirit Chickens for Precious Chickens not long ago, the price was only two and a half Spirit Stones.
The difference in price was simply too great; Wang Ba refused to be the scapegoat.
After all, if he wanted to smoothly reach Stage X, he would need at least 5100 more years of lifespan, which would be nearly 900 Precious Chickens.
He still had over a hundred male Precious Chickens in the villa that didn’t have lifespan stored in them, which meant he still needed eight hundred Precious Chickens.
If he bought them at the inflated prices now, his costs would be terrifyingly high.
“Moreover, swapping too many Spirit Chickens all at once isn’t safe. I’ll wait until the prices drop a bit before acting, there’s no hurry.”
Afterward, he visited a few local stores including the herb shop and the talisman store.
However, to his surprise, both the herb shop and the talisman shop had almost sold out of their goods.
Only the less popular low-grade items like Spirit Light Talismans were left.
The talisman didn’t require mana to activate. Wang Ba thought of Jia 5 and purchased a stack right away.
Upon returning to the villa, he couldn’t wait to bring the yellow paper close to
Jia 5-
The yellow paper spontaneously ignited without any wind, and at the same time, a faint white light began to rise from it….
