I sat in my usual vip booth and hooked up my appearance breaching crystal, turn it on and watch the four layers of power quickly drain as it powers up the breach and modify formations. They go down to about thirty percent in a breath of time and now I have the appearence of a Lightning Fiend, a greater demon spirit from the Elemental Lightning Plane. I basically look like a tree composed entirely of lightning.

My scrawny figure is kind of funny as I have lightning shooting out of my head for hair. I electrify the space above me a good two meters, as it dissipates it forms the canopy over my head is something I made for fun to change my appearance while I'm here. I got bored of being a lava dude, so I made a formation crystal with a new appearance profile to be able to hack into the privacy formation and take over it's basic appearance restriction.

I look down to see the inverted yin yang stage with two ramps going into the ground to the auction house basement floor, auctions items are brought up by hostess from the two ramps. There are two types of hostesses, the auction house in their unique dark green dresses and private hostess who wear colorful dresses and work on behalf of their sellers. They walks suductively along the outer edge displaying the auction items and give their best roleplay to attract bids. There are only two hostess walking at a time displaying their common auction goods for stage six and lower items, they each are allowed full a circuit before they head on down.

The common auctions use bidders token, they just need to select the item displayed above the token to bid. The token always asks to confirm a bid, if a guest wins an auction it is automaticly deducted from their deposited funds. This ensures that the bidder always has enough funds to pay since they can't bid more than they deposited. This type of bidding offers a means for privacy, as the the current winning offer is displayed on the bidders token. However, many choose to call out their bids as they enjoy yelling their bids for attention.

Items for the trash is the common mentality of stage seven and eight practitioners. Which I guess is true because truely nothing in the common auctions can interest us. So I called out "senior Mursharkham, why don't you join me" and I pull out a jug from a new batch cultivation wine that just finished ageing.

The grin I got from him kind of remind me of Sharky and I can see he is delighted by the invite and hurries on over. My divine sense tells me that the entire vip area is envious of my sudden invite. But I'm kind of picky when it comes to people near my personal space, so I don't bother inviting any others for a drink.

"My master called it Burning Murkavien, I hope you like spicy wines" and I pour each a mug of some translucent purple stuff. It's a bit thick, what did you expect when using an Infernal Root as a base. It's a turnup sized root has tiny roots that run extremely deep, as long as one root survives it can revive itself in a single day. This spiritual herb has master level earth affinity techniques with a heavy emphasis on gravity techniques. But they also a dual element of fire at the same mastery but a heavy emphasis on maintaining a fire domain.

It's purple sap is thick and heavy that's harvested from the central cavity of the base root. Master has a small medical garden just growing this spiritual herb. I pluck the ripe ones until finally had enough to make a batch of Burning Murkavien that I've been dying to try since gaining master's inheritance.

I learned a lot from the slavery formation he built around their medical garden. That's what peak my interest in improving my basic array knowledge since I usually only study enough to satisfy the requirements for my tier eight artificing arrays. Each array is basically becomes it's own branch, as practioners who want a particular array in their arsonal will join the branch who's basic tenet is to continue improving the array. Though most don't care since only a few are skilled enough to actually make improvements, so most support the array improvements by buying the offical updates.

Anyways, the reason I invited Mursharkham is because he is the official envoy of my big brother Umbarath and I wanted to form at better a business relationship with him. His hammerhead takes time getting used to, but I find him a honorable person and easy to get along. Perhaps he is putting up a facade to get on my good side, but it doesn't matter to me since we are getting along just fine.

I can tell he just loves the Burning Murkavien since he inquires on purchasing a jug for his sea king. I promptly hand over a large jug of the stuff and simply state it's a gift for my big brother. Then we chatted away until my auctions finally come up. I did hint that I would interested in trying out high quality demonfish meat cooked by master chefs of the seafolk. He immediately states he will look into hiring a master chef among his people and treat me to a feast in the near future and leaves to return to his own booth as a hostess brings out my first auction begins her appraisal of the weapon to peak the crowds interest.

After the auctions are over, I head back to my workshop after picking up a delightful young hostess on the way back. After sending her off the next morning with a tier six foundation pill I collect a pile of invites waiting in my mailbox outside the workshop. After going though them, I select one that peaked my interest and took out a message jade and filled in "Senior Walking Tall, I would be honored to accept your dinner invitation tonight. I look forward in meeting your two seafolk guests as well." Then I summoned a girl to have it delivered.

But I created a new market by using that custom breaching crystal at the auction house. It was the first question the seafolk asked "'how can a change my appearance at the auction house?"

When I told them I make it with a seven layer formation breaching crystal that I made for fun. They then asked if I could make one for them. Since I use a seven layer formations for my artifacts I go with a price equal to a late stage seven artifact, gave it a discount since it so specialized and has no combat functions. They can see the materials I used to refine the crystal isn't cheap, and the dazzling seven layer formation is not something any array master could maintain. I even told them any tier six array master can swap out the appearance profile if they want a new look.

The first dinner attended and I get to make toys instead of weapons. I never thought this would happen, so I laughed and enjoy the night and even brought out a jug of one of my favorites wines to celebrate the occasion. It took me half the night to complete the breaching crystals, I took my time so I can properly judge my three fellow cultivators. The human calls himself Walking Tall and a proud human. But not the rightous kind, more like proud of being a member of the human race.

The two seafolk called themselves Drisksnapper and the female Coralweaver. I wanted to meet the seafolk experts and establish ties with them is the reason for accepting this dinner invite. Being stage eight cultivators, they can almost past as human. For lack of better words have fishy attributes, Drisksnapper has tiny plates scattered about his skin and his thumb and forefinger favor a pincher look. While Coralweaver thick black cable looking hair and skin that randomly fluctuate a rainbow of luminencent colors.

Coralweaver is still a young looking creature that possess enough natural presense that can charm stage six cultivators with her alien beauty. It's obvious Drisksnapper invited her to distract me, but I don't mind, she is a lovely creature and I find her humor veers towards my own. So I play along with Drisksnapper's game and play hard to get like Mara taught me. I secretly call it Mara's Bluff and Distract game since I never did ask what she calls it.

So I ended up drinking a favorite cultivation wine with handfuls of resources to help recover my spiritual force and qi, as I asked each stage eight diner what the would like to look like at the auction house and set the profile to a breaching crystal and earn myself enough to buy the raw materials for three sets of tier seven nirvana breakthough pills. I ignore the strange looks they give me when I started crunching on resources, I guess I gotten used to people glaring at me when I down a handful at a time. By the end of the night they started calling me young sage, since I am a master crafter of everything they ever want in their current life.

The one thing I notice about Drisksnapper is that his eyebrows would twitch when he is laughing, and a quick look I realise they are actually feathery antennae. The tiny stalk vibrates as he laughs causing the hairy ends to twitch up and down.

After crafting their appearance breaching crystal we went to the reason for the dinner invite and I take notes on their dream weapons. I take the gentleman approach and ask Coralweaver first, then Walking Tall because he is the host and then Drisksnapper. I recieve a void pouch from each containing the raw materials each has gather, which I notice also include my fee in extra materials.

After memorizing their weapons I tell them I should send for them when I complete their weapons. I had taken my time to interrogate them about their ideal weapon down the smallest detail. I ended the night by "thanks for your help in designing the appearances of your new weapons, I look forward to seeing what I can do to fulfill your dreams."

A chorus of "young sage! Rest well tonight" and rest well I did because Mara was waiting in the workshop for me. I had left a sliver of a crack in the barrier to allow Mara's portal to pass though and materialize inside the workshop. She gets up and slam me a big old flying hug and went straight the the point by giving a who's on top kiss. I watch her grin victorious at me and then pounce on me for a second round. I battle her tongue foerociously for the win and give her my I miss you more grin.

Then we engage our third battle of our tongues and never made it to the end results as she pushed me down and begin duo cultivating as we continue to kiss. I give her the win since she so happy right now. So I use my body manipulation technique to give her the length and thickness that makes her go wow. Then we use the Flying into the Heavens technique that stimulate skin contact that causes our skin to feel like a mild electric shock that feels quite pleasurable.

From our spiritual link, I can tell that Flying into the Heaven does a real number on her. Her body is constant convulsing in pleasure. When her back arches and her body goes taunt, it's so damn hot, I can't get enough of her as we spend a long night together as I find how many arches she makes before passing out.

This past month of crafting has allowed me to advance to mid eighth tier artificing and can now use new mid tier arrays, so I decide to replace the arrays inside Burning Rage. I decide to add a Quickening array to increase my ability to handle another exchange in battle. Then I add in a Exceptional Spirit array that boost my spiritual force to the next level of purity. Then a Fortification array that will boost my Dragon Physique to a whole new level of threat.

Just having Burning Rage in my hand boost all my combat abilities. I can't wait to master armoring techniques so I can get three permanent defense buffs. I guess I can start adding a second buff for my sellables, I decided to keep the new three buffs artifacts a secret and equip them for only me and Mara.

After reaching tier six in artificing I was able to put the first permanent buff instead of formations with an extra power layers for each charge I wanted to give the weapon. But these permanent effects really change things up, I'm looking at an late tier eight array that can boost my culvation, but it's so complicated with thirty two layers. I'll have to raise my basic array knowledge to tier eight to get the fifty percent discount in order to even have a chance of putting one of those in an artifact. It would take it down to sixteen layers then, and I only manage to master the eighth recently, which means I really need to make some Mental Awakening pills.

To that end I make a new list of spiritual herbs to give the auctions house, but as usual I mix in a ton of other materials to obscure the recipe ingredients. I always take precautions when giving a list of materials I wanted, and made sure they not listed were not in any order. I also add in artificing materials, cultivation wine ingrediants and even add in the corpse of a cookable stage seven demonbeast called a Shanglowfen Quillstalker.

After soaking the meat overnight is a specialize anti venom marinade who's main ingrediants come from three tier seven spiritual herbs known for anti venom effects. To cook it I have to seal it in my cooking cauldron with a tray of spiritual water, it gets baked and steamed at the same time. The spiritual water expands twice as much as normal water, so the steam becomes a thick fog that fills the cauldron. This pressured steaming causes the remaining poisonous residue to leak out of the meat and drip off along with the excess fat. Once the remaining poison has been removed, I would then soaked in a thick brew of herbs and a sweet and sour mixture with a good dash of any sweet cultivation wine to thin the gooey mixture a little. Then a quick roasting to get the new coating to bubble for the finishing touch.

This particular Quillstalker meat is good for boosting your speed and toughness. A Shanglowfen has a innate battle skill that allows it to phase a few steps ahead of it's after image. While it's tough scaly body is also covered with sharp steel hard quills that serve as it's first line of defense. There is even a variant that able to shoot it's quills for a poisonous range attack. The only other important part of a Shanglowfen is it's pancrea, which is a medical ingrediant for repairing moderately damaged meridans up to tier six and lightly cracked dantians up to tier five.

I choose the Shanglowfen Quillstalker for Mara, because I think she is just too slow in battle. Granted she is only at mid stage seven, but still, speed is what makes you dangerous. So I been feeding her demonbeast meat and cultivation wines to boost her speed and agility, I went as far as providing a stock of both to her void ring.