Sage stepped into the first beast shop he saw in the Golden Market. The nameplate over the door read ‘Coastal Critters’, which he found to be quite an unusually whimsical name for a business. Most of the businesses he’d seen in this world liked to have a high sounding and fortuitous tilt to their name. Gold, Jade, Lucky, Palace, Pleasant, and many other similar names that were meant to bring good luck were the usual. They’d even used a similar style of name for their own business. Of course, that also meant he was always curious to look into every business that broke that trend. He was sure they were either fools, or weirdos; and weirdos always seemed to stumble upon good stuff.

Stepping inside, Sage was surprised by what he saw. Contrary to the usual look of a pet store crowded with cages, it seemed he walked into a fish store. There were waist height pools that looked like the touch pools at an aquarium, filled with small creatures and set up in a u-shape around the room like they were the shop’s counters. That said, glass was not something the people in this world used and so the counters were more like giant stone troughs. Around the walls of the room were huge vats a full five feet tall and Sage saw some workers reaching into them with nets and scooping out fish. At that moment he realized that aquariums weren’t really a thing here and added a mental note to add it to his city upgrades. Imagine how jealous others would be if I set up a floor to ceiling aquarium in the City Lord’s Manor.

After looking around for a while, Sage found the place was essentially like an herb shop, but for sea creatures. They certainly didn’t have any Demonic Beast fish in the shop, rarely anyone would since it would cost a small fortune to create a pen for them that not only held water, but a powerful monster. Most of the fish business consisted of trade in their body parts and flesh, not live animals. Coastal Critters was a rarity in that they focused upon all the little snails, starfish, anemones, plankton, vegetation, and other similar tiny things that could be collected from the sea. Most of these beings weren’t all that useful on their own, but just like the many herbs and natural treasures they could be refined and combined into medicines, pills, magical tools, or even just eaten as delicacies. These little creatures were very small, but Sage found the prices in the place to be quite high. He thought about buying a bunch of them to populate his Inner World, but then he realized it might just be simpler to just hop into the ocean himself.

At that moment he realized he’d overlooked a great resource. Wasn’t the sea always a place full of life? Even for cultivators it was a dangerous place, since there were also Demonic Beasts and they weren’t weakened by the water around them. But, what about for him? Hadn’t he had some gills in the past? Couldn’t he merge with some sea creatures and put him on the same level as the native creatures? He was standing there motionlessly in the store and couldn’t help but to smile widely. One of the shop attendants had a strange look on her face as she watched his strange behavior.

Hahaha, what a great idea! On Earth, the oceans are a terrifying place so I was naturally averted. I wonder how many treasures might exist down there at the bottom of the sea?

His internal laughter was suddenly averted when he remembered some of the crazy monsters he’d seen in the water in the past. Back when he was on the run he’d barely avoided a river full of giant crocodiles, and once he was riding on a Flying Ship as Guan Zhenyan’s cargo, he’d seen an even more terrifying battle going on between massive water beasts. Thinking up to this point, he realized that the sea was likely many times more dangerous than the land in regards to the Demonic Beasts it contained. He immediately tempered his wild impulses and left the shop without even noticing how the shop attendant had already told her friends and a half dozen were now watching how odd he was.

Sage moved on to a few more shops, as he was looking for fireflies, not sea creatures. Additionally, since he was here he was also trying his luck to see if he ran into any other impressive creatures. Unlike in the past, he also went into the larger areas of the shops where Demonic Beasts were held. Before he’d mostly focused on Spirit Animals, as their intelligence was much lesser and it gave him a much better chance of Merging with them. Now that he had the Soul Resonance technique, it meant he wouldn’t be in nearly as much danger as the time when he’d Merged with the Twin Ringed Soul Serpent. That had been a move of desperation and could have easily killed him or driven him insane. Since the debacle of losing his mind he’d always merged with very weak willed creatures, created by breeding them with brainless insects and merging with them when they were newly born.

It was a good practice to prevent his mind from being muddled and ensuring no adverse reactions, but it also meant he couldn’t merge with anything truly powerful. He’d just been collecting little scraps of useful ancestral memories and natural abilities. Using Soul Resonance he could theoretically Merge with something as powerful as he was. If it was an intelligent Demonic Beast it was likely to understand some laws, and in the Merge he could obtain them! Even if it took many months for a full Merge, it was a small price to pay for a lifetime of experience. Of course, that was all predicated on a successful Soul Resonance, he was just as likely to create a mortal enemy for himself that also knew all his secrets. He definitely didn’t want to create an enemy just as strong as himself. The only safe route he imagined would be to purchase a caged beast at that level, and if the Soul Resonance failed it was already trapped and he could then immediately kill it. Even so, such a beast at the fifth or sixth tier would cost millions and a large portion of that would be lost if he slaughtered it and sold the parts. Spending hundreds of thousands to roll the dice didn’t seem like a good trade, but if the Demonic Beast was enticing enough, he still might do it!

It was with this gambling mood that Sage checked out all the shops in the Golden Market, purchasing a few types of firefly while also looking for the impressive or miraculous Demonic Beasts. His luck was not that good. There were a few pretty interesting creatures, but the only high ranking monsters on sale were mammals. So far he’d found that for the Insect Immortal Technique to work, he needed to have an egg to work with. The wolves, tigers, and large hooved beasts he ran into that day were not what he was looking for.

After a day of shopping, he regrouped with the others that looked like they had quite a fun day. They all ate dinner together and then paid a few thousand Spirit Stones to return back to the ‘hidden cave’. An Airship and Dragoons were waiting for them and they returned to Lionheart Town to resume their normal duties. Fortunately, the day wasn’t a bust as Sage found the Fireflies he was looking for, and he also had a burst of inspiration along the way.

In front of him there was a Dragoon egg sitting on a table. For this experiment he was sitting in the Lang Clan Mansion, so Wan Ling wouldn’t get mad at him. He opened his hand and an orb of orange flame appeared, it flickered enchantingly and anyone that stared at it for too long might find themselves dreaming of other lives they might have lived. He placed his other hand upon the egg and his Qi started to flow, following the path of the ‘Mature’ technique and hatching a little beetle into the world.

Let’s give this a go!