Path of the Sect Leader-Chapter 30: Shopping Spree in Qi South City

“Take your time in the city,” Wang Wan said with an easy wave. “I still have old friends to visit. Seven days, maybe ten. When I’m done, I’ll come fetch you.”
Then he was gone, leaving Qi Xiu standing alone in the bustling street with fifteen third-grade spirit stones burning a hole in his storage pouch.
Perfect.
First priority: proper housing. The disciples were still sleeping on the floor of a crumbling temple. Second-tier Construction Warrior talismans could raise real cottages in a single night.
Second priority: a real mountain-warding array. The Yellow Sand Illusion barely slowed a late-stage Qi Refining intruder. They needed something that could at least make an early Foundation Establishment cultivator regret knocking.
Black River was a highway for wandering cultivators. Without teeth, they were just meat waiting to be carved.
Qi Xiu did exactly what he had done in Soldier’s Rest: shop by shop, stall by stall, notebook in hand, questions on his tongue. When night fell the city only grew brighter. He slept two hours, studied the rest—prices, formations, southern geography, anything that might keep nine lives breathing a little longer.
Three days later, in a half-shuttered robe shop tucked in a forgotten alley:
A short, plainly dressed man in a faded crimson robe ducked through the door. The proprietor took one look and rolled his eyes.
“You again? I told you, two-array first-tier robes, ten second-grade stones each, take it or leave it. Stop wasting my time.”
Instead of retreating, the customer grinned like a fox who’d found the henhouse key.
“Boss Zou, hear me out. Twenty pieces. All at once. How about… five stones each?”
The shopkeeper’s face purpled. “Five? Get out before I throw you out!”
Qi Xiu leaned his entire weight against the counter, lazy and immovable. “These gray ones—slightly imperfect dye job, right? Funny thing… I read a travelogue yesterday. That hidden embroidery pattern all over them? Family crest of a certain great clan in the northwest. Ring any bells?”
The shopkeeper froze.
“Exactly.” Qi Xiu’s smile widened. “Big clans don’t wear mistakes. Small clans don’t dare wear another family’s crest. You’ve got a warehouse of poisoned goods no one will touch. Shop’s closing anyway. Five stones each, I clear the whole batch. You walk away without eating the full loss.”
Half an hour of whining, pleading, and shameless flattery later, Qi Xiu strolled out with twenty-two ash-gray robes—wind and cleansing arrays perfectly intact—for the price of eleven.
The disciples would finally have uniforms that didn’t look like beggars’ rags.
Two days after that, in the echoing hall of one of Qi South City’s regular auction houses:
“Lot 47! First-tier top-grade formation—Grand Moral Golden Light Array!
Covers an area rivaling a true second-tier mountain ward!
Golden and moral dual attributes!
Ten late-stage Qi Refining attackers hammering together can’t scratch it!
Early Foundation Establishment will still bleed to get through!
Offensive mode fires golden beams—each equivalent to a mid-grade first-tier metal artifact strike, with moral suppression that shreds demons, devils, undead, and anything unclean!”
The auctioneer’s voice cracked with desperation. The crowd remained colder than winter iron.
The problem was obvious: the array couldn’t anchor to a spirit vein. It guzzled spirit stones like a drunkard guzzled wine, and moral suppression was overkill in a righteous realm that had exterminated most evil cultivators centuries ago.
“Starting bid—four hundred second-grade stones! Increments of ten! Anyone…?”
A few bored paddles rose and fell like dying fish.
Four-ten… four-twenty… four-thirty…
Qi Xiu sat in the back row, crimson robe now respectably clean, paddle resting casually on his knee.
When the bidding crawled to four hundred fifty and the auctioneer looked ready to cry, Qi Xiu lifted his paddle once, lazy as a cat stretching.
“Four hundred fifty going once—twice—sold! To the daoist in crimson!”
The auctioneer nearly kissed the gavel in relief.
Qi Xiu paid without blinking. The formation flags and control hub were delivered in a lacquered box big enough to need two porters.
It wasn’t perfect. It would drink spirit stones like water when active. But the coverage was enormous—enough to blanket all of Black River Peak and then some. Against anything short of a determined Foundation Establishment assault, it would hold. And if demons ever did crawl out of the southern wastes… well, moral golden light would make them regret it.
He walked out of the auction house with the box floating behind him on a hired wind talisman, fifteen third-grade stones now converted into real power.
For the first time in months, Qi Xiu felt the faint, dangerous stirrings of confidence.
The disciples were going to have roofs, walls, and a sky that could bite back.
All he had to do now was lug it all home without getting robbed.