Chapter 54: Chapter 54: The Last Ruins Market Trade of the 0th Tier Stage

After receiving Song Mingsong’s definite response, Song Chao and Shen Wenjie naturally had no more worries, and Jiangyuan City returned to calm once more.

As someone who hadn’t participated, Song Chi didn’t have strong feelings about all the changes during this period; he continued with his cultivation plan as before.

The two batches of advanced body tempering potions laced with deep water clam pearls had almost affected his foundation, but after stabilizing his foundation again, there could be no slack in the cultivation of the guidance technique.

His father, Song Chao, and his former class advisor, Yang Minghui, had both emphasized repeatedly that perseverance is crucial in cultivating the guidance technique.

Even if the cultivation speed becomes extremely slow after reaching the Second Rank, and a slight mishap could mean running out of lifespan without advancing to the next rank, the less time spent in early cultivation leaves more time for cultivating at the Second and Third Ranks, thereby increasing the hopes of advancing to even higher ranks in the future.

In the blink of an eye, more than twenty days flew by.

In front of the ultra long-distance space gate random deployment platform at the Zhu Tian Ruins Market, Song Chi’s face was filled with excitement.

Today was the start of a new cycle of trading at the ruins market, and the buffer time on the deployment platform was down to the last ten minutes, soon to open the third ruins market trade.

And after today’s trade, the Zhu Tian Ruins Market would be able to satisfy the condition of “opening the ruins market trades 3 times,” afterward, it would be able to advance from Zero Rank to First Rank. Just thinking about it, he felt overwhelmingly excited.

It wasn’t that Song Chi lacked composure, but the benefits that came with advancing the Zhu Tian Ruins Market were simply too significant. It would not only increase the number of portals deployed each time but also increase the restrictions on the space gate from Zero Rank to First Rank.

Simply put, before the advancement, only Zero Rank alien species could enter the market to trade, but once advanced, First Rank alien species could also pass freely through the spatial gate.

The significance of this was immense—it was like comparing children to adults. Children might have some pocket money, but it was insignificant compared to adults who could earn their own living.

And the more wealth the alien species brought into the Zhu Tian Ruins Market, the more Song Chi, the Ruins Market Master, would earn.

Besides these two points, there might be other new features after the market advanced, though this was not yet certain. But just these two points alone were enough to excite and anticipate Song Chi.

This thought quickly diluted his somewhat poor mood from returning empty-handed from the Alien Star Domain exploration the day before yesterday.

Speaking of the third exploration of the Alien Star Domain the day before yesterday, Song Chi felt helpless.

Although he hadn’t encountered any danger, he was indeed thrown into a Starry Sea Hollow Zone, where he piloted the Cangqiong at lightspeed cruise for a full twenty-four hours, without finding a single resource point—not even a whisper of life from beginning to end.

True, hollow zones in the Shattered Starry Sea are not rare, and many Second and Third Rank Torch Captains have experiences of being thrown into hollow zones.

But that was after at least ten years of awakening and dozens or hundreds of star domain deployments. For Song Chi to encounter a Starry Sea Hollow Zone on his third deployment was rather unlucky.

The only thing he felt fortunate about was that it was a hollow zone and not some black hole’s devouring layer, otherwise he might have had to gamble on whether the Torch Warship could still be pulled back to the Zhu Tian Ruins Market.

Dismissing these messy thoughts, Song Chi soon refocused. He was just complaining about his luck; returning empty-handed wasn’t a big deal.

The nearly two thousand strands of Zero Rank Floating Land Origin capital he had reserved from before were still there; at most, he would just have to open the ruins market trades a couple more times to earn it back.

As he mused, the buffer time for the ultra long-distance space gate random deployment platform finally reached zero.

[Do you confirm the activation of the ultra long-distance space gate random deployment platform?]

“Confirmed!”

Whirring!

In the midst of intense vibrations, nineteen arcs of light almost simultaneously lit up above the deployment platform, and nineteen arc-shaped, illusory spatial gates quietly emerged at the entrance of the ruins market.

As time passed, various types of alien species began to come and go through these phantom portals, and the Zhu Tian Ruins Market quickly buzzed to life.

The goods inside the market, as usual, differed little from the last two times—tungsten gold combat shields, tungsten gold lances, primary gene optimization potions, intermediate gene optimization potions, basic gene civilian exoskeletons, etc.—almost the same kind of highly universal, relatively “affordable” items.

The only difference from last time was that Song Chi had specially made space for one shop. The shop had no goods displayed; in the center was a crystal counter, and on the counter lay a blazing white, pyramidal crystal.

Yes, that crystal was titanium crystal, but Song Chi wasn’t displaying it for sale. On the contrary, he intended to purchase it.

This titanium crystal was just a sample, so that the alien species entering the shop could clearly see what titanium crystal looks like and avoid missing out.

Titanium crystal might be heavily regulated and in great demand within the entire Torch Human Civilization, but that didn’t mean that every Starry Sea Civilization valued this special resource. This created preconditions for Song Chi’s initiative to buy.

Although only a few hundred alien species entered the market each time and the chances of purchasing titanium crystal were very small, and although Song Chi currently had no use for it, he still agreed with the idea of being prepared.

As long as he actively sought to buy in every ruins market trade, even if the chances were low, if he tried enough times, there would eventually come a day when he would acquire some. But if he didn’t even want to try, then the chance would always be zero.

Beyond that, Song Chi had also considered including “special Fire Seed-type strange objects” in the purchase list.

Although most Fire Seed-type strange objects couldn’t be used as fuel for advancing the Seed of Torch, the Starry Sea is vast, and the alien species that enter the market come from all over. What if he encountered a suitable Fire Seed strange object?

However, after some thought, Song Chi gave up on the idea.

The reason was simple: even if he did find one, he couldn’t afford to pay the asking price. Each Starry Sea Oddity had its value, and unless he traded it for an object of equivalent strangeness, the cost of purchase with other items would be unimaginable.

Of course, he was only temporarily giving up. Once the Starry Sea market developed fully and he had enough capital and various other strange objects on hand, he would eventually bring the purchase of special Fire Seed-type strange objects back to his agenda.

ps: Seeking follow-up reads!