Money

Lei Kang needed a minute to confirm the few pieces in his head before he understood what had transpired after his lights went out for a minute.

And when everything became evident that he the brightest star in Hefei City had lost to some outsider, he was about to explode.

Yet before he got to utter his opinions to Xiao Fan, who had withdrawn to the other side of the arena, they had been fighting on, his father.

Lei Fan grasped what was befalling shut him up with his palm and left, dragging Lei Kang deeper into the Lei Family compound for a discussion.

It would appear that Lei Kang's ladies would need to wait for some time for his reentry into society after how he had presented himself during this gathering.

Meanwhile, as Lei Fan left with his son, so did most of the other people leave, but none of them would rumour about what had happened here.

The official story concerning the third match was that it never came to be as Lei Kang was never found for it.

This was arranged so because the Lei Family didn't want this to get out and reduce any chances of the people having an eye out for him to lose interest.

When Xiao Fan was noted not to talk about this, he didn't mind and let Du Lan communicate back to them, stating that they understood.

There was fame lost, but what they could do? They came to their gathering and gained from them, so why would they anger the Lei Family for this.

The gathering that was anyway meant to end after the final match did so, and everyone started leaving to their own houses.

However, this didn't including Xiao Fan, who had wanted to stay to eat some more of the delicious things they had been giving.

Yet was figuratively dragged by Du Lan saying that they were leaving.

Du Lan herself might have finished with the last place in the tournament, but she still found enough profit for one evening.

She had become an acquaintance to Lei Jun, who was not only the patriarch of Lei Family but also the most powerful man in Hefei.

Gazing at the note, he had given to her she didn't have the vaguest clue how much two hundred gold coins could mean to a cultivator.

Their only reference to it was so far was that Xiao Fan had carried a fifty or so gold coins from the town they had slain the snake as loot.

But as that money had gone to Lai Tao; so right now their only money was this two hundred gold coins note that she was carrying in her hands as not to lose it.

Coming back to their mansion, they in a lively mood discussed about everything after which they proceeded to sleep before doing anything else.

Their first full day in Hefei City would begin by tending to their money problems. And as they didn't know what money was worth here, the first thing they arranged was going to a bank to change Du Lan's check to coins.

Their visit to the bank went smoothly, and as they had been on their way, they had somewhat gained an understanding of how much money was valued here.

A meal here was one silver coin at a restaurant, and silver coins could be exchanged on a one to a thousand ratio from any bank or bigger store.

Gold coins were mostly cultivator money and for major deals while Silver coins were money meant for mortals.

With one gold coin could one person have a thousand meals.

With a few cold coins, one could get a decent sword, something Xiao Fan did with his portion of the money.

Other things Xiao Fan did with his money was buying a few sets of clothes and a much-needed hair trimming; he never had one.

Getting his hair done seemed even to bring profit, for Xiao Fan took the compliment from Du Lan as a highly valuable commodity.

Talking about Du Lan, she brought a fancy quiver, a few basic books, and of course, a lot of clothing. Xiao Fan didn't see her for half the day after she had left for shopping.

Xiao Fan also wanted to buy new books, yet with the two books he already had, and a few sets of clothes he really couldn't pack much loot into his back bag anymore.

He had to pass on those for now. Moreover, books here weren't anything cheap, either he noted when he had gone to look them. One book could cost dozens if not hundreds of gold coins.

At the least needed to make more money if he wanted to get more books that he didn't intend to finish.

However, obtaining money was the one thing they didn't need to worry about as what did Xiao Fan have with him?

Xiao Fan had two books from where even if one concept inside of them were to be released to the world could that idea reform any idea of warfare, medication, or cultivation.

He merely needed to find something not too groundbreaking and start selling, he needed something that could be sold swiftly, didn't need a lot of expertise, and that was it.

The organisation to make his product was right in front of them in the form Lei Family and a suitable manager was in the fatso of the family.

This in mind, Du Lan had invited Lei Tao for a meeting after talking with Xiao Fan about how to make money.

Inviting Lei Tao to talk wasn't hard. The man didn't seem to have much to do since when the invite had come to him; he sent a letter agreeing to it with the same carrier.

Maybe he had gotten enough confidence back yesterday that today he wasn't bullying mortals.

At least it looked like that, for Lei Tao, who was now on the other side of the table was in a good mod.

They had come to the same restaurant as before, and when they had sat down, Du Lan took a finger-sized vial from her robes and put it on the table they were sitting around.

Lei Tao didn't think much about it. He took the vial for an examination and then he proceeded to shook and sniffed the liquid inside but had no inkling what it was.

¨You invited me here for this? To glance at some green liquid in a vial?¨ He asked confusedly. He had a notion this might be something good yet not recognising what it was he inquired about it from them.

¨There is nothing similar to this that you have seen anywhere before?¨ Du Lan questioned him while Xiao Fan sat on the sidelines silently letting her do the talking again.

Xiao Fan didn't mind this as he was to be named the inventor of this liquid they would be selling through Lei Tao and Lei Family if there was nothing similar to this on the market yet.

Before choosing to show this to Lei Tao, they had gone to a shop specialising in medicine to ask about it.

The people working the shop stated that they had never seen nor heard anything like this, but they also asked this from Lei Tao because he travelled for his job.

The liquid that the vial holds was the Green Heart healing mix that was made from Greenflake flowers and water mixed.

However, this was in such a liquid form for they decided to dilute it over and over again with water.

The reason for diluting was simple. First, even this diluted version of Green Heart mix was potent enough already to make everyone required to switch into using this as their primary way of healing.

Second, this way, they could still make much more money they would ever need and retain the best for themselves.

Third if one released the original undiluted one would it also become a shelter for their enemies. And they didn't want to be fighting every competitor they had ever met the next week and week after next week.

For them, it was about securing money while maintaining the advantage to themselves.

Lei Tao hearing them ask this took another look to see if he had seen anything like this before but hadn't and so he shook his head.

Seeing that there was no Green Heart mix already on the market made both of them smiling.

Meanwhile, at the homefront of Xiao Fan, Du Lan had become rather suspicious about Xiao Fan already.

Yesterday evening when she for the first time, saw the process and realised how easy it is to make the Green Heart mix she was dumbfounded, to say the least.

Adding more into her confusion and now suspicion, Xiao Fan then had started to list her other methods and recipes.

Because of this, she had become tempted to try catching a peek from those two books of his. There couldn't be any other explanation for this knowledge to be on him.

But, for now, she simply grasped what he said and started doing what she knew best with said information. She had started thinking about marketing it.

That was also when the idea of diluting the medicine had come from, which Xiao Fan agreed after listening to her reasoning.

So now that Du Lan knew there was nothing like this at least on the open market around the Ohin Continent where Lei Tao had spent his life leading caravans could she now with an ease start marketing this new invention.

She took out a knife and then poked a tiny wound on her finger just enough that blood drops were flowing out of it.

¨The liquid in the bottle is a healing mix that Xiao Fan had made while trying to invent something else, but by mistake had made this during our travels¨

Du Lan spoke, caring nothing about the injury.

¨However, don't let that fool you as I'm about to show you how potent this thing is¨ She then put her finger into the vial.

Hering that this was about big money Lei Tao immediately leaned forward and for once used his cultivation to see close as possible at the wound she was now soaking in the medicine.

The potency was indeed diluted a few times as it took a minute for the wound that was a size of a needles poke to close down. However, that didn't mean that Lei Tao didn't think about this as something revolutionary.

Lei Tao was looking this happen with wide eyes.

When Lei Tao had begun to perceive that the wound commenced reconstruction by itself at a pace he could see with his eyes could he already at this moment say that this discovery of theirs was nothing short of a revolution for the medical field.

He knew that when a person was cut by a sword that the wound would essentially always be there forever working against the cultivator's efforts at every moment.

Yet this proved to him technically that a cut from a sword could be plugged in hours, and he wanted to test this.

So Lei Tao took the knife that Du Lan had poked herself with and made a deep cut to his fat hand from which blood sprang to flow out immediately out of.

The pain was considerable, or at least Lei Tao didn't spare any curse words.

But Du Lan knowing what he was doing poured rest of the liquid onto the wound he had just made, he could start feeling how the pain started going away.

¨It will take a moment to close so while we wait we can talk about numbers¨ She retrieved her hand and made a smile towards Lei Tao, who also took the focus off his hand when hearing her wanting to talk about ¨numbers¨

He nodded to her proposal. This must be his once in a lifetime opportunity, he assured himself. He couldn't even guess how far his status would go selling this liquid.

After this, Xiao Fan saw every margin of profit being fought over like a life and death struggle as the two started talking how to split profits from doing this.

However, Lei Tao was the one who had to fight for every per cent of earnings while Du Lan just smiled brightly at him while stating no after no.

Yet for self-evident reasons, Lei Tao didn't bring up trading favours for getting a bigger part of this cake.

That was sad for the two of them as if possible they would have wanted to by themselves free of him, yet Lei Tao didn't let them go.

An hour later, Du Lan made a pretty good deal as the only thing they were obliged to do was present the recipe while Lei Tao would arrange everything else.

Otherwise, the deal was 60/40 for them.