The forge area was lit with several spirit torches, making the mostly windowless area somewhat bright even though there was barely any sunlight shining inside.

The black wood of the pillars and walls, with the red accents of the various fabrics and metal parts inside of the forge area, seemed mystical and otherworldly, even more than looking at the pavilion from the outside.

The craftsmen who were tasked with creating a lot of jewelry out of the mined spirit copper were doing their best to provide everyone with the promised accessory that will give them some protection. Working in this forge was a lot easier than working in a regular workshop, as many of the tasks could be improved by the features of the Earthly Treasures Pavilion.

As the quality of the materials was also a lot higher, as well as Tora's expectations and requirements being quite stringent, it was still not an easy task overall. There would at some point be items for sale in the pavilion, but it was not really their primary concern.

Most of the things they created would always be used by their own people, giving them an edge in whatever tasks they would undertake for the pavilion.

The various metals and pieces of wood stacked up, as did the fabric woven from the harvested spirit plants and crops.

It was quite the collection of materials and all the craftsmen and artisans were doing their best to make full use of them.

Some of the people were standing around a table with some blueprints curiously inspecting what Tora wanted them to make.

"What are these parts going to be used for?"

"I'm not sure, but they look rather intricate and part of something bigger."

"It looks like a gateway." one of the younger ones mentioned after looking at it for a while.

"Could it be some kind of reinforcement for the door?"

"I heard the boss lady say something about an auction realm." one of the enchanters mentioned, making everyone grow even more curious.

"Maybe it is a gateway, just not the regular type."

"You think they would create a portal?" While many of the craftsmen never heard about more intricate formations and items powerful cultivators would use, there were still a few, who had heard various stories about those lofty treasures.

Spirit formations and mystic towers, portals leading to faraway places and cages able to catch the strongest spirit beasts.

"It's not that strange is it? The skill of the lady with creating transportation talismans is exceptional, would a portal really be hard to believe?"

"Why would they need a spirit ship then?" one of them who was working on such a ship asked.

"How are they going to get the gates to their destination otherwise?"

"Oh, yes that makes sense."

-

While the craftsmen had a good time working on and discussing the various projects, most of the customers could be seen inside of the main shop room, listening to the stories of the various challengers of Yui's Dungeon of Many Things.

"Miss Tai, will there be more items being sold soon? Those metal ingots were of really good quality, I wonder if we will see more of them. None of our own refining methods seem to be able to come even close to the purity you seem to achieve here."

After interacting with so many different customers for many days, Yui got used to their questions and banter.

"We are selling various tools that are required to gather resources now, to make it easier on everyone who cannot make their own tools, but we will no longer sell any raw or purified materials in the foreseeable future."

Yui pointed at the new range of tools on one side of the wall, all with various descriptions. A set of tools for a certain area would be exactly 10% of the cost of accessing this area. The higher the tier of the area, the better the tools would be in order to still be able to gather the resources.

"There will also be a few special items being sold from time to time in an auction, but we will provide more information on the exact details later."

There were many plans for the future, but most of them had yet to be even started. Scalability, proper logistics and a certain amount of fame were Yui's current targets. Achieving them would be her primary concern, as would be increasing the amount and quality of the locations they could give customers access to.

Yui was already quite happy with the variety, but the quality was still somewhat lacking. She quickly found out, that the price and the interest in the better-quality metals, was a lot higher.

While first tier ore and plants were pretty much always required as the basis of many alchemical formulae and items, it would mostly be apprentices and less skilled alchemists and craftsmen who would use them.

Even the people in a weak kingdom like Yura would reserve second and third tier materials for their stronger foundation stage or even core stage cultivators, increasing the value of such higher tier materials by a lot.

Using such premium quality materials would attract the attention of strong cultivators, rich people who would provide them with more funds in a short amount of time, a lot faster than having to rely on a very large amount of low tier cultivators.

Investing in a few craftsmen and have them improve a lot, would still be possible, but if they started selling large quantities of items, they would not be able to focus on their core business enough.

Even the auction was just Yui's way of increasing their fame and spreading their name further.

Not many people would come to their place for some raw resources if they did not know about the details or quality of what the Earthly Treasures Pavilion provided. They were not a trading company though, they did not have the people or the infrastructure for any of it.

If there was an auction to showcase some items, that were made with the materials they could give people access to however, this might be a chance for them to accrue both credibility and make people more interested in acquiring some materials themselves.

"Maybe it is time, to look into better logistics as well. We pretty much cornered the market here, at least with the resources that we currently provide. If we want to expand further with the materials we have right now, we will have to reach out into other areas and perhaps even different kingdoms."

"What about better resources?" Ryoma asked, still not totally sure, how Yui and Tora would scout for locations and then make them available.

"We will obviously improve on the quality of our resources. I think we will soon be able to open another area for spirit herbs, but in order to improve even beyond that, we need to be able to support these places. It won't help if we open up such an area too early, only to lack the necessary spirit stones to replenish the land with enough spirit energy."

"I see, you think there will be a lot of people coming to the planned auction?"

Yui nodded. "We have some things prepared that should grab their attention. Once we have a few important people from other places interested in the Earthly Treasures Pavilion, I am confident that I can open up branch shops in other areas to lure even more people here."

-

A fist crashed onto the surface of the exquisite stone table, shattering some of the material. The person who had just ruined such a piece of furniture, however, did not even care and took the crystal that had been offered to him by a subordinate.

"What do you mean they failed?! Four Core cultivators, two of them in the middle stage and they were defeated in a lowly third-rate kingdom in the south? That's nearly a tenth of our whole force!"

"Yes, Division Leader. We don't know a lot of the details yet, but it seems like they were hunting for a traitor and were lured into some trap. All communication with them ended suddenly."

Having taken the short straw, the subordinate felt really unlucky to be the one to bring back this type of bad news today. The Grey Order was powerful but losing so many strong cultivators was not something they could simply ignore.

Even worse however was what the crystal contained. How would Division Leader Shin react once he watched the message contained within? What was even on it?

"Then what's this thing here? The latest report from the group before they ended up missing?"

"Not exactly division leader, erm, you see this …"

"Don't spout nonsense and just tell me what's going on!"

"Leader Shin, this was sent to us by the people who captured your subordinates."

"They sent us a message!" Division Leader Shin was quite a bit more than 'slightly' surprised this time.

What did it mean if someone did not try to hide and outright sent a message after capturing four of their Core stage cultivators?

They were pretty much telling them that they were not afraid. If it were just some foolish kingdom provoking them, he could still ignore it and destroy the kingdom whenever he had the time, but this was different.

Not only did they send a message, but whoever these people were had already shown that they had enough power to back it up.

"Interesting. You may leave, I will give further instructions once I have heard the contents of this message crystal."

The subordinate quickly bowed and left the room, giving a sigh of relief as soon as he was outside.

Leader Shin sent some of his spirit energy into the crystal activating the message contained within it.

He could see a young, black haired woman standing in the image, projected right into his mind. Leader Shin would have expected someone older. He would also have expected someone with an angry or upset expression.

The woman however had a happy and friendly smile on her face though, which was unexpected to say the least. Did she want to curry favor? She seemed to look around, before focusing in right on his face. It gave him a creepy feeling, as if being watched by the projection of this young woman.

Before he could however properly think about it, he noticed something strange. This message crystal was not a simple message crystal. There seemed to be a lot more to it, as it did not look like a pre-recorded message at all.

He had heard about communication crystals before, ancient crystal enchantment technology that had been lost for thousands of years already. Two-way communication without the need to record a message, but he would have never expected someone to actually waste such a treasure for anything else but a dire situation in an important war.

"Ah, it seems like it already arrived, wonderful. I am Tai Yui, Empress of the Earthly Treasures Pavilion, may I know who I have the pleasure to talk with?"

Curious with a gentle voice, the young woman did not look like anyone of power, but the circumstances made him really wonder who this person would be and why there would be an empire he had never heard about down in the southern regions.

"I am Division Leader Shin of the Grey Order." he replied, still not used to talking to a crystal image.

"I was informed you have captured some of our subordinates. Why would you interfere with our people and disrupt our operations?"

Yui smiled at the image happily.

"Oh, you're wondering about those fools. Yes, I thought you would be interested. You see, they were barging into our pavilion in the middle of the night, with weapons drawn and ready to try killing all of us."

"Initially, I thought you wanted to declare war, but my sister convinced me that a small force such as your own would not want to do that, and it was probably some misunderstanding. I'm not disinclined to just forget about this little offence, especially as we decided to keep miss Rinomi as our own follower from now on."

Division Leader Shen was rather upset, but he just kept listening, the girl obviously tried to rile him up. Acting on such a simple provocation seemed like a bad idea. He didn't know why she tried to anger him, but he would stay calm and friendly, not falling for such petty little tricks.

The more she tried to anger him, the more she would be disappointed if he didn't seem to be affected and just ignored such provocations, right?

"We will be holding an auction in about a month's time, with various goods you might be interested in. Usually we don't send out information to small forces, but as we plan to expand and set up some portals near your Central Island Union, it might be beneficial for both sides to get to know each other some more."

Division Leader Shen's calm and collected smiling expression now changed slightly to astonishment. Did they really plan to set up a portal? Was she bluffing? He could not say for sure, the communication crystal was already a strange thing to see, did they have some lost technology?

Yui's smile became even brighter seeing his expression.

"Why don't you attend our auction. I'm sure you will find many things you might be interested in. We can also have a little chat about other matters."

Leader Shen did his best faked smile, already planning to go to this strange auction and make sure to take revenge for this affront. Calling them a small force? Who did they think they are? Capturing their people and then talking about 'not taking offence', wasn't this outrageous?

He would definitely go there, but he would not shout in anger at this naïve girl, no he would be smiling and laughing and then watch the girls face twist in despair, when she becomes aware of the horror she invited. They would steal their lives, their resources and all their technology and benefit immensely from it.

"Your majesty we will be delighted to attend such an auction. We will make sure to arrive at the Earthly Treasures Pavilion in Sume city in time for it."

"Wonderful, Division Leader Shin, I look forward to seeing your Grey Order in about a month then."

The communication crystal turned dim, obviously having been deactivated and used up. Finally, Leader Shin could express his anger and the table soon had yet another set of cracks.

Unknown to this Division Leader, there soon circulated a message crystal among the Central Island Union's five empires upper ranks. It was a recording of their conversation. Well part of their conversation to be precise.

It seemed to start with Division Leader Shin doing his best smiling at the image of a young woman who offered him an invitation to an auction they would be holding.

To Leader Shin it was obvious that he was acting because he did not want to give in to the woman angering him.

To everyone else however, his fake smile seemed as if he wanted to curry favor with this young woman, totally changing the way they looked at this strange 'Earthly Treasures Pavilion'.

What kind of empire might it be, that even a Division Leader of the Grey Order would do his best to smile at a young woman when they were being called a small force to their face?