"What wonderful tea…" Yuan mumbled after sipping the tea, feeling a little bit stronger after just a single sip.

"I'm glad you like this tea, Esteemed Guest. It's called the Phoenix Blossom Tea, a spiritual tea made by the Azure Phoenix Sect. Usually, only Elders within the Sect are allowed to enjoy this tea, but Madam Chang specifically wanted you to try it." Na Ying said to him with a smile.

A few minutes later, Madam Chang entered the room and bowed to them.

"Thank you for being patient with this one, Esteemed Guests. I have just finished organizing your sales."

She then placed a ring made of jade and a small red pouch on the table before them and continued, "I have already deducted the auction house's 10% share and your purchase worth 550,000 gold from the income, so there are 35 million gold and your purchase in the Spatial Ring from the Heaven-grade treasure and 540 gold in the Storage Pouch from the monster cores."

"And you can keep the Spatial Ring and the Storage Pouch as well. Although it's nothing significant when compared to the Heaven-grade treasure, please consider it as a small gift from the Azure Phoenix Sect."

«Spatial Ring»

«Grade: Earth»

«Mental Strength Required: 5,000»

«Description: A mythical ring that contains its own space, allowing you to store things inside and retrieve them with a thought.»

«Storage Pouch»

«Grade: Spirit»

«Mental Strength Required: 500»

«Description: A pouch that contains its own space. Although there's not much room inside, you can fit a few watermelons inside.»

Yuan picked up the jade ring and the red pouch, and a notification appeared before him.

«35,450,560 gold has been received»

«You have unlocked the Wealth Leaderboards»

«Congratulations! You have reached first place in 'Wealth Leaderboards', becoming the wealthiest player in Cultivation Online»

«Congratulations! You have obtained the unique title 'Rich Young Master'!»

«Fame +100»

When Yuan saw that he'd become the richest player in Cultivation Online, he didn't express any surprise. In fact, it would be more surprising if he wasn't in the first place!

"Xiao Hua, here, take this."

After receiving the Spatial Ring, he handed it to Xiao Hua, who looked at him with a puzzled face.

"Why are you giving it to me, Brother Yuan? It's your money."

However, Yuan shook his head and said, "To begin with, it was your treasure that was sold, and I will feel bad for accepting this much money when it doesn't even belong to me."

"Xiao Hua belongs to Brother Yuan. Everything in Xiao Hua's possession is also Brother Yuan's possession, so it's not weird."

"I know, but it still doesn't feel right with me, getting so much wealth when I didn't do anything to deserve it. Keep it. But when we really need that money, we can use it." Yuan was adamant about not accepting the 35 million gold.

He felt that it was too much money for him at his current level and that it would take away all of the fun in the game if he could buy whatever he wanted with such ease.

In fact, he even feels slightly guilty for having an overpowered companion such as Xiao Hua by his side.

However, obtaining a massive amount of resources without working for it and earning these resources by himself are two entirely different matters. Furthermore, as someone who could only rely on others to help him survive for almost his entire life, he did not want to rely too much on Xiao Hua, who resembled his real younger sister, hence why he refused the gold.

Seeing the stubbornness in Yuan's eyes, Xiao Hua ultimately nodded her head and accepted the Spatial Ring and all of the money inside.

However, after taking the Spatial Ring, she transferred the money inside the Spatial Ring to her own Storage Pouch, before handing the Spatial Ring back to Yuan.

"Brother Yuan, I will take the money, but you should keep the Spatial Ring. It'll be very convenient for you since you can carry many things with you without the burden of carrying its weight that way."

Yuan nodded and accepted the Spatial Ring without much thought, completely oblivious to the fact that the Spatial Ring itself was valued at a few hundred thousand golds.

Meanwhile, outside of the Azure Phoenix Action House, a large notification was hanging above the clouds with countless eyes staring at it.

«Player Yuan has become to first Player to unlock the Wealth Leaderboards by accumulating over 1,000,000 gold»

"Somebody has already earned over one million gold?! How is that even possible?!"

"Look! It's that alleged cheater, Yuan!"

"Holy shit! If you convert that amount of gold into real-life money, that's over ten million dollars at the market's current rates!"

Since Cultivation Online is a video game — a very popular one at that — there would obviously be people using the game to make profits in real life by trading in-game currencies for real-life currencies, and at the current state of the game, a single gold coin was worth around ten dollars in real life.

This type of business is usually called Real World Trading, RWT for short, and is against the terms of service for most online games out there. However, despite being against the terms of services, there are many people who would rather go out of their way to use such services to strengthen themselves in-game than to waste time and effort to earn them fairly.

Furthermore, this type of business is not limited to only in-game gold, as people buy in-game treasures and resources with real money, too.

With all that being said, RWT is not against Cultivation Online's terms of services, as such terms never existed in the first place, so there are already many players using their real-life money to buy Cultivation Online gold and vice-versa.

If Yuan were to convert all of his in-game gold to real-life currency, he'd have over 350 million dollars right now. But of course, Yuan is oblivious to such a business market, thus such thoughts never crossed his mind.

"If you ever need to sell anything to our Azure Phoenix Auction House, please come by again."

Madam Chang handed them a badge with the auction house's name on it.

«You have obtained Azure Phoenix Auction House Diamond Pass»

"As long as you have that pass, you can enter any auction house in this world that is owned by the Azure Phoenix Sect."

"Thank you."

After accepting the pass, Yuan and Xiao Hua left the auction house.