55.

57.

61.

64.

Snail’s right tentacle twitched several times before settling down.

“Did you know this would happen?” Snail asked, completely baffled as to why those keystones had accrued so many credits in a mere day and a half.

Kenja took out his ninth keystone and began shifting credits amongst the stones again.

“I had expected something like this, but it was even more than I had imagined.”

Snail’s eyes widened further, doubt and disbelief clouding his eyes.

“But why...? How did you...? When had you...?” Snail fumbled around trying to decide on which question he wanted answered first.

Kenja finished dividing credits between the stones and turned to walk towards the marketplace, before deciding to talk to Snail.

“Have you decided on what to ask me?” Kenja was delighted to see the ‘All-knowing, All-powerful, Supreme Snail-sensei’ struggling to decide what to ask.

Snail was silent for a moment longer.

Kenja was enjoying the peaceful walk towards his destination, thrilled that no one had bothered to spare him a glance. When he was dressed as an inner-sect beauty, he had to accustom himself to stares of lust and envy. To walk in public without turning any heads was truly a fortune only Kenja would wish for.

Not only that, but now that he fully understood the way the keystones worked, he could officially begin his plan to advance his cultivation…at the expense of the sect.

“Why were there so many credits on those keystones?” Snail finally asked.

Kenja smiled happily. He enjoyed imparting useful and hidden knowledge to others, so when a chance finally arose to teach Snail, he couldn’t help but get excited.

“Do you know how these stones obtain ‘credits’?” Kenja asked.

“Of course, I know. I looked at the same scribbled notes that you did. The stones take the Yang from its surroundings and store it inside their core as electrical energy.”

“Okay. So what determines how quickly the Yang is gathered?” Kenja asked in a philosophical manner.

Snail was irritated that he was being treated like a fool, but he bore with the treatment because he wanted his questions answered. He pondered Kenja’s conundrum for some time.

Kenja arrived at the marketplace and headed to a nearby stall.

‘Step One - Gather Resources,’ Kenja mentally noted to himself.

The merchant didn’t pay Kenja any mind because outer-sect disciples at the Qi Flourishing stage did not have many credits to spend. He allowed Kenja to browse the wares with an unsuspecting look of boredom.

Kenja took out a blank sheet of paper and labeled the prices of several items in the shop. Then he picked out a dozen storage bags and a couple of storage rings as well as a majority of the lesser-priced pills and items. The man’s eyebrows furrowed in anger from Kenja’s actions, but before he could rebuke the mischievous lad, Kenja stepped up to the TD and shoved a keystone in, hiding the cave number from view.

“What do you think you’re doing—“ he said, pausing mid-sentence as his eyes boggled at the dial which was pointing past the maximum value of fifty thousand, “—young master? Please, don’t trouble yourself! Allow me to handle this menial task.” He approached the TD and adjusted the dial for the transaction himself, saving Kenja the trouble. “Please, take this as a gift for shopping at my humble store.”

Kenja took another bottle of pills that the merchant offered and nodded his head. Kenja half-expected the gift since the merchant had been rude earlier. In front of a businessman, wealth trumped status, so once he knew he had plenty of credits to spare, he would give it his all to get on Kenja’s good side.

Kenja left the store, relishing in the event that just happened. He had never imagined he would one day be treated like a rich master. It felt…incredibly refreshing.

“The amount of Yang in the stone’s immediate surrounding! That’s what determines the conversion rate,” Snail interrupted his trance. Snail spent a lot of time considering the matter. Most would think that the amount you received would be based on ‘luck’, but that’s obviously superstition, especially since the amount increases when the stone is submerged in the cave’s pool.

Kenja stifled a laugh. He had forgotten that they were in the midst of a conversation.

“Yes, but that’s only half the story. You saw my keystones’ amounts. They had been in the same environment, yet they varied by large amounts,” he countered Snail as he walked to the next store. “The second part is the drawing power of the stone itself. If the stone’s drawing power is increased, it will draw and convert more Yang energy.”

“Un,” Snail agreed with Kenja’s logic. He had known other objects from his lifetime that could draw in power automatically, so Kenja’s explanation made sense.

“The reason that the keystone being submerged under water would generate more credits is because the pool contained excess Yang energy, but the reason my stones had gained 8 or 9 times the amount that they should have was due to increasing their drawing rate.”

Snail’s tentacles crossed each other as he began to grasp what Kenja had said. Something was off though.

“You hadn’t done anything to the stones other than place four in the pool…” Snail was still missing the final clue. He was with Kenja the entire time, and he hadn’t seen him do anything to the keystones.

“Tsk. Tsk. Tsk. You still don’t see it?” Kenja asked with the tone of one burdened by an immense understanding no other could reach.

Snail was tired of the charade. “Spit it out, will you!”

To Snail’s dismay, Kenja had stopped speaking with him to finish handling the transaction with the second merchant. The merchant’s face was beaming at Kenja, who had just bought out half of his stock all at once.

On his way to the next shop, he continued in his haughty tone, “Fine, let your Kenja-sensei tell you the answer. I didn’t place one stone into the pool. I placed four! If you were to double the capture radius of a fishing net, how much more fish could you capture at once?”

“...” Snail didn’t respond, finally understanding the depth of Kenja’s lesson.

Doubling the size of a net means that it would encircle eight times the original volume of water, catching a significantly larger number of fish at once. That kind of increase was beyond being additive or multiplicative.

It hadn’t occurred to him that the very number of keystones themselves would cause such a change in their accrual rate. By simply gathering the stones together, their collection and conversion rate worked in resonance to amplify each other tremendously. Their rate of absorption was primarily limited by how much Yang the stones could attract, and using this method, the Yang would gather from farther distances onto the stones.

Snail was astonished and sank back into contemplation.

Kenja continued to go from shop to shop buying half of their merchandise. He would leave only the expensive items and skip every other merchant in order to avoid drawing too much attention to himself. Snail was unusually quiet, but Kenja figured he was still considering the fish net analogy.

“Why did you place only four stones in the pool? Couldn’t you have done the same experiment with all nine keystones?” Snail interrupted Kenja’s shopping spree once again. Truthfully, he had a dozen questions to ask, but he was trying to decipher the situation on his own as much as he could.

“Oh, that?” Kenja paused to formulate his response. In truth, if the drawing power could be raised tremendously with each additional keystone, then throwing five more keystones into the pool would have given Kenja a significantly greater yield of credits.

“I wanted to know whether the sect knew of this trick…” Kenja vaguely trailed off.

“Disciple, if you continue to drag out your explanations, I cannot be held responsible for what will happen!“ Snail threatened.

Kenja stopped walking and threw the threat back at him, “What will happen…? Will you sulk inside your shell?”

Snail harrumphed. “Disciple, don’t be so glib. I have always been quick to impart my teachings to you; now that you can teach me something, it is only right that you deliver your lesson speedily as well,” he reasoned with Kenja.

Kenja’s eyes narrowed, and his head trembled in anger.

‘So shameless…’

It was just recently that Snail refused to teach him any useful techniques, even though he had promised Kenja two techniques.

“Think about it. The Second Elder had obtained all these stones, and the entire sect’s economy is based on their usage. I cannot be the only one with multiple stones; the Treasury alone must have dozens, or even hundreds of them.”

“Un.” Snail agreed with Kenja once again.

“If they had known what we know right now, why give out the stones to everyone? It would be more beneficial to keep them together.”

“Un.”

“The only feasible explanation I could come up with was that they don’t know, so I left the stones in my bag to confirm my suspicions. And behold, the stones’ accrued their points as normal even though I had placed them together in the bag.”

Snail began laughing. He secretly turned to Sakura and bragged, “Look at my disciple, here! How brilliant he is!” Snail felt immense pride in this ‘disciple’ of his.

Sakura gave a quiet hum to show her agreement with Snail’s evaluation.

Kenja’s conclusion for why the sect was clueless to the matter was more extensive than he had explained.

He had been very observant as he wandered around the sect and its facilities. People would rarely take out their keystone and would keep them in their storage bags. Both the stones and their credits were treasured by everyone in the sect. Even the Treasury had transported their stones into and out of storage rings and bags.

Cultivators may be on the path to enlightenment, but they were greedy by nature. Anything valuable would always be kept on their person. Kenja had verified this after examining all the others’ caves before he had gone to Hizumi’s personal cave. All the rooms were equally spartan, lacking any spare amenities or memorabilia.

Because storage rings and bags were artifically-created spaces for storing items, they did not contain the same amount of Yin and Yang flowing through the world. Even if the tribulation stone’s drawing power was increased, the amount they could collect inside the storage was quite limited.

Taking all of this into consideration along with the rarity of tribulation stones out in the world, it was not impossible that this special behavior would go unnoticed all this time.

Kenja continued touring the marketplace, emptying various shops of their wares before proceeding to the next one. Kenja could feel the tug on his left ear as Snail seemed to be having fun looking around the marketplace.

He had finished going through more than half of the marketplace when Snail spoke up once more.

“When did you come up with this idea? Was it when that four-eyes told you about the pool water?” Snail had realized that Kenja’s ability to plan ahead may rival even his own, so he was genuinely curious to know how far back had Kenja decided to perform this experiment.

“No, although that did give me more confidence in my idea.”

“Hmmmm…then was it after you had taught that Makupita troublemaker a valuable lesson?” Snail guessed again.

‘You mean Matsushita…’

“No. It was when the junior sister who had served us tea told me how a tribulation stone was made.”

Snail’s eyes bulged again.

“What? Why?”

‘All the way back then?’ Snail was repeatedly stricken with amazement, time and time again. How the hell would you come up with this idea after hearing a simple explanation on the tribulation stone’s origin?

Kenja laughed grandly, causing several people to look at him funny. “That’s my secret!”

Snail gave Kenja a sour look when he wasn't looking.

Kenja had arrived at the final shop. He took out a piece of paper with a huge list of items and their prices scribbled down, and he began adding items to that list. Once he was finished with this store, he could move on to the next part of his plan.

He was a little slower than before because ‘his secret’ caused him to recall a frustrating memory. Kenja didn’t want to hold back on his explanation to Snail, but he was secretly ashamed of the real reason he had contrived the idea in the first place. Even thinking about it made him crease his forehead.

“—hey you! If you are going to stand there daydreaming, then get out of our way! Your uncles here don’t have all day!” a snooty man’s voice broke Kenja out of his daydream.

Kenja turned around to see a group of inner-sect disciples. A tall and imposing man with baby-smooth skin and shiny black hair that extended to his elbows was surrounded by an entourage. The man was at the early stage of Core Crystallization while everyone else were in varying lower cultivations realms . The one who had spoken to him was a lanky, sharp-nosed escort with the lowest cultivation amongst them.