Am I the old man who's always by my apprentices' side?

Chapter 342 "Universal Currency" Immortal Spirit Coins
The White Stone Immortal brought a demon cultivator as a visitor.

The news spread like wildfire throughout the entire Immortal Alliance.

The Immortal Alliance is now quite well-rounded. Compared to the initial dozen or so people, the Immortal Alliance has now recruited several times, and with the addition of servants, cooks, laborers, and other staff, it now has over a hundred people. As a result, the Immortal Alliance's headquarters on Xunmu Mountain has become much more lively.

It's worth mentioning that, at Chang Ping'an's suggestion, most of the new errand-runners recruited by the Immortal Alliance were selected from several well-known sects. To this end, he specifically learned his master Zhang Chengdao's method, making public all the low-level cultivation techniques that the Immortal Alliance was qualified to handle—

Completely public.

In the White Stone Immortal Sect, these low-level cultivation techniques were originally planned to be made public. However, considering that White Stone Mountain is, after all, a sect dedicated to cultivating immortality, it would be too noisy and disruptive to the disciples of the White Stone Immortal Sect if they were to be made public to everyone. This would even affect the cultivation of the disciples themselves. Therefore, those low-level cultivation techniques were instead distributed in the form of three sets of the "White Stone Immortal Dao Book".

However, books were still relatively precious in this era, and their dissemination was very limited. Even powerful sects in the martial arts world had to pull strings and spend a lot of money to get a set, let alone ordinary people. This "threshold" created by the limitation of social productivity was something that Zhang Chengdao had always been concerned about. However, he couldn't possibly create a steam engine or internal combustion engine to speed up human production in the short term, so he could only take it one step at a time.

Although Chang Ping'an didn't know what his master was thinking, as Zhang Chengdao's first disciple and the one who had followed him the longest, he didn't misunderstand his master as long as there was no misunderstanding (Chang Ping'an scratches his head).

Therefore, he firmly chose to make all the low-level cultivation techniques and magical secrets compiled from the three books, "Bai Shi Xian Dao Shu", "Bai Shi Gan Qi Shu", and "Basic Qi Guiding Body Theory", public, and all of them were available for sale, at only a little more than the cost price.

Having another channel to purchase cultivation techniques, even if one doesn't need them oneself, one should still encourage one's children so that their offspring can benefit from them. This caused a stir throughout the martial arts world. Book dealers frequently placed large orders through major escort agencies and immortal alliances. The pirated versions from various regions far surpassed other versions by hundreds of times, with all sorts of typos and inconsistent quality.

Furthermore, due to their scarcity and irreplaceability, the rampant piracy does not affect the "sales" of the genuine copies; these books in the Immortal Alliance have always been in short supply...

"You mean I can buy all of these?"

Hu Yun's paws pressed down on the few thin manuals, staging a very standard fox-eyed earthquake.

"Pre-orders are required, and there are purchase limits because there are just too many people buying books. We have to consider the demand from all regions. Prioritizing a particular faction or bookseller is impossible, so we have to limit purchases. If we consider the demand of a faction like yours that has officially become a cultivator, the first batch of pre-orders can only be fifty copies. Different copies can be mixed and matched, but we really can't spare any more. This is the limit."

Wearing a pomegranate-red skirt, Fang Tang finished speaking with a grin, accepting the "talking fox cultivator" title quite well. She even introduced herself enthusiastically: "My surname is Fang, my name is Fang Tang, and my maternal grandmother is Hu San Tai. I heard you are over a hundred years old! Older than my own grandmother! You can just call me Xiao Tang!"

Before leaving, Zhang Chengdao gave everyone a special introduction to Hu Yun's background and highly praised her Taoist practices.

“It’s not easy for demon cultivators to refine their transverse bones. For example, my White Stone Immortal Sect has a fellow Daoist named Squirrel whose cultivation is not much worse than Ping An’s. With such cultivation, he is still far from refining his transverse bones and speaking human language! Fellow Daoist Hu has been able to cultivate to such a level, which is probably equivalent to our Core Formation stage cultivation!”

These words left the members of the Immortal Alliance feeling both confused and impressed.

They didn't know much about cultivation to begin with, and their knowledge mainly came from three books: "The Book of Immortal Cultivation by White Stone," "The Book of Qi Sensing by White Stone," and "The Basic Theory of Qi Induction into the Body." These books contained very little explanation of common knowledge about demon cultivators, so naturally, everyone was unsure about Hu Yun's cultivation level and thought she was incredibly powerful, so they treated her with great respect.

No matter what, she is a hundred-year-old fox spirit after all!
While enjoying the flattery, Hu Yun felt rather guilty.

Although it was unaware of the different realms of human cultivators, such as Foundation Establishment and Core Formation, it was truly ignorant of its own cultivation level.

Putting aside the distant past, demon cultivators are particularly sensitive to the strength of cultivators. Therefore, although the crowd had no concept of Hu Yun, Hu Yun still had some sense of the cultivators led by Chang Ping'an.

He knew he could never defeat that young man who looked so young and was called the leader of the Immortal Alliance.

Most of the others didn't seem particularly powerful, but considering that they must know more magic and supernatural abilities than I did, I figured we could probably have a 50/50 chance in a real fight.

It seems that the so-called Immortal Alliance is not as powerful as I thought.

After assessing the strength of the entire Immortal Alliance, Hu Yun felt somewhat relieved.

But its composure was soon hard to maintain—because it learned that the Immortal Alliance was actually selling many cultivation techniques and secret manuals of magic and supernatural powers!

I've personally checked some of them, and they're all genuine!

If it weren't for that little girl named Fang Tang saying that what she was looking at were all samples for display and borrowing, she probably would have used all her savings to "buy" these things!
"Fifty copies... fifty copies will do, but how do we buy them? With gold?"

Hu Yun asked.

Fang Tang, who was in charge of receiving Hu Yun on her tour of the Immortal Alliance, shook her head and replied, "You can use gold and silver, but I don't really recommend that you do so. After all, you are a cultivator, and even a few spiritual materials you cultivate are worth a lot of immortal spirit money. It would be much more economical to buy them with immortal spirit money."

After saying that, before Hu Yun could ask any more questions, she continued to explain: "As for this 'Immortal Spirit Coin,' it is a currency used by all member sects and forces of the Immortal Alliance. It is a copper coin made from composite metal ingots refined from Xuanling Lapis Lazuli ore, cold iron ore, black iron ore, etc. They come in different sizes and have denominations of 1, 10, and 50. Apart from the White Stone Immortal Sect, no other force can imitate it. Moreover, Xuanling Lapis Lazuli ore is a special spiritual ore produced only by the White Stone Immortal Sect. It is an extremely rare spiritual material used for refining weapons and has a very high value. So there is no need to worry about the Immortal Spirit Coin being worthless!"

Hu Yun was getting dizzy listening to all the talk about spiritual materials, immortal coins, and even mysterious spirits and lapis lazuli mines!

It couldn't help but scratch the ground twice with its paws in frustration, but it managed to resist the urge to continue scratching and asked, "Of all the things you're talking about, I know about cold iron ore and black iron ore, and I've seen lapis lazuli ore before, but what does this Xuanling lapis lazuli ore look like?"

Although Fang Tang rambled on and on, making it... cough, making Hu Yun a little confused, usually when you can't understand something, it means you're about to get tricked. Hu Yun immediately perked up and decided to carefully figure out why the Immortal Alliance needed to use some kind of "Immortal Spirit Money".

"If you ask someone else, it's hard to say, but if you ask me, you've come to the right person!"

Fang Tang happily pulled out a fist-sized ore from the Qiankun bag at his waist and boasted, "I spent five yuan on this, which is five immortal spirit coins! I was planning to save it up to temper my natal spirit sword. If it had been a few days later, I would have used it up!"

The ore was mostly an uneven sky blue, with some darker areas that were a deep blue. It also shimmered with tiny specks of dark gold. As Fang Tang turned it over and over in his hand, it shone with a dreamlike blue halo under the light, which was quite beautiful.

"It is said that this ore was originally called 'lapis lazuli ore,' but this lapis lazuli ore is completely different from the ordinary deep blue lapis lazuli ore! This is a spiritual ore with a spirit! So, in order to distinguish it, the Immortal Alliance specially named it 'Mysterious Spirit Lapis Lazuli Ore' or 'Immortal Spirit Lapis Lazuli Ore'!"

Fang Tang's buzzing sound made Hu Yun's ears twitch several times, but its eyes were already captivated by the beautiful mineral.

Even though she knew nothing about this mineral, the spiritual energy it contained made Hu Yun understand its value.

This is truly a treasure!
"Oh my god, using this little gadget to mint coins? That's way too extravagant!"

Hu Yun was deeply moved.

Fang Tang emphasized, "It's refining, not casting! Refining involves using a different kind of fire to temper and temper the coin. Every immortal spirit coin refined in this way can be considered a low-grade magic weapon!"

As she spoke, she produced a 1-yuan celestial coin from seemingly nowhere and handed it to Hu Yun. "Look," she said, "this celestial coin contains spiritual energy. It can be used as a medium for many spells and formations, and also for casting supernatural powers. On the reverse side, there are runes engraved with spirit-gathering effects. It can be activated with spiritual power for a short period of spirit gathering to aid cultivation. Therefore, it is quite valuable, which is why it serves as the common currency within the Celestial Alliance, used to measure the value of spiritual materials and magical treasures traded between us cultivators!"

Hu Yun touched the Immortal Spirit Coin, feeling quite envious.

As Fang Tang said, this thing is indeed a magic weapon with extremely high value. Hu Yun even thought of more than a dozen uses the moment she touched it, such as using it as a hidden weapon with demonic power, or using it to make mortals understand the spiritual senses of the Five Immortals. Not to mention its built-in small "spirit gathering" function. Even though she had never encountered this concept before, she could guess its general use and effect from the literal meaning!

It's just...

"Universal...currency? What's that?"

(End of this chapter)