CHAPTER 40: SHOPPING

Ray returned to the hotel with Lily after collecting the money from Jessica. He said goodbye to Jay and asked him to come and play with Lily later.

He walked back to the hotel, returned to his room, shut the door, and sat on the bed. 

He then took out the money purse from his pockets and put the two bags containing the broken spirit stones and the low-grade spirit stone on the bed.

Ray then emptied the bags on the bed and put them away.

He then took a broken spirit stone from the small pile and observed it. He detected that the small marble contained a small amount of spiritual energy, which seemed chaotic and could not be observed without purifying the spiritual power. It appeared to have formed naturally and was then mined, cut, and polished into spiritual stones.

Ray then took a low-grade spirit stone, which was twice as large as the broken spirit stones. He keenly detected that it contained a hundred times more spirit power than the broken ones, and the spiritual energy was no longer chaotic. The spiritual energy in the stone could be absorbed by cultivators and used for practice.

After examining both stones, Ray realized that the force that mined the spirit stones initially extracted larger stones. These stones were then cut into uniform pieces, and the broken, useless fragments were polished with intact pieces and sent into the market, where cultivators used them as currency and for other purposes.

Unlike the gold and other metals that martial artists use as currency which can be used repeatedly after melting and reshaping them, the spirit stones are non-renewable resources that cannot be produced again by just gathering some spiritual energy. He got to know it was non-renewable after absorbing them and a pile of sand was left in his arms when the energy was completely absorbed.

It was only then that Ray realized why the value of the metal currency had depreciated in the inner city.

Now that he thinks about it, if he had gone into the shops with mortal currency without inquiring about the customs, it would have been a huge embarrassment for him.

At least he got to know about them before he got embarrassed by his act.

After grasping the details, Ray took a spirit stone of each type in each hand, closed his eyes, and sat in a meditative position. Using his ability, he soon felt his hands grow lighter. When he opened his eyes, the spirit stones had vanished, and he sighed with relief.

This was a test of his ability to replicate spirit stones. Since they were energy stones, they couldn't be classified as currency but as batteries. However, his worries were for nothing, as he just confirmed that his ability could generate them.

Ray grabbed the bags he had set aside, opened them, and reached inside. Using his ability to generate spirit stones, he produced a hundred of each type of spirit stone and hid the bags in his upper coat.

He had just completed his work and was thinking of resting when he heard a knock on his door. He went to open it and saw that it was Lily knocking.

He invited her into the room and asked if she was bored, then suggested they go shopping, have lunch together, return by evening, and discuss tomorrow's plans.

She cheerfully agreed to the plan, exited the room, and glanced back at him as if to ask what was causing the delay.

Ray laughed at her, thinking it would be better if Ruby could also see this place through Lily's soul connection, as she spent most of her time resting to heal the wound caused by splitting her soul in half.

Ray took Lily's hand after closing his room door, and they headed downstairs. They began strolling along the main street, observing the shops and eventually chose to enter a clothing store owned by the Blue Shield family.

As soon as Ray and Lily entered the clothes shop, a shop assistant came near him and asked what type of clothes they needed.

"Show us the best clothes in the shop that are available for her, while showing Lily" Ray commanded

The shopkeeper who saw us talking to the assistant invited us inside to a private booth and started showing us various clothes for both of us even though I had only asked them to show clothes just for Lily.

He began showing different types of dresses with different spells recorded on them.

Some have only low-grade cleaning functions while others have medium-grade defense functions achieved through cloth hardness.

Ray who was observing saw two dresses placed on the display in the innermost area of the shop and inquired about them.

The shopkeeper hesitated for a second and politely reminded them that these were first-class, top-grade defense clothes, equipped with a defense array, cleaning array, size adjustment, and automatic repair array spells, all crafted by the family's top masters.

But they are a little bit expensive, they cost about a thousand low-grade spirit stones each.

Ray thought for a second and took out the low-grade spirit stone bag and began taking out money which was exactly about two thousand of them and asked the shopkeeper to count them and to bring the clothes so he could try them on.

The shopkeeper understood that Ray was serious about buying them after showing the money and immediately took them down from the display cabin and handed them to Ray to try on.

They were coat-type clothing that could be worn normally on casual dresses.

The female unit was white colored and a bit cold to the touch, and Ray learned that these dresses were made from top-grade silk, extracted from the pupae of ice spirit beast silkworms after they died trying to metamorphose into ice silk butterflies.

These ice silk butterflies are foundation realm monsters. If the silkworms can't emerge from their pupae, they die as top spirit beasts in the qi training stage and they are collected to make into defense clothes and other things.

The male dress was also made from threads but from spider webs split by a Black Spider Spirit Beast. They were top-grade spiritual Qi beast threads, dyed black using special resin, with a few spells ingrained just like the female unit.

Ray confirmed the purchase after seeing that Lily liked her dress, and then they wore them in the store.