Deacon Jia sat on the damp flagstones, clutching his bruised ribs while his heart raced.
He had just watched his eighty-thousand-stone treasure turn into a nest of deadly worms and get sliced to dust. Around the central pavilion, dozens of loose cultivators and merchants were whispering, pointing, and snickering behind their sleeves.
If word got back to the Guild Elders that Deacon Jia had been terrified by a blind old man and a mortal tycoon, his position as senior manager would be stripped before dawn.
Desperation clawed at his chest. He scrambled to his feet, glaring at Old Master Mo with bloodshot eyes.
“Lucky guess!” Deacon Jia shouted, his voice cracking with hysteria. “Mo Tianji, you only recognized that corpse-slag because you worked with low-tier scrap twenty years ago! You think you are still an appraisal grandmaster?! Do you dare prove your skills at the Guild’s Stone-Cutting Pavilion?!”
Old Master Mo looked at him with calm, spinning silver rings in his eyes. “The Stone-Cutting Pavilion? The Guild still gambles on raw boulder ore from the northern spirit veins?”
“We do!” Deacon Jia yelled, seizing on the opening. “Three hundred raw boulders were hauled in from the Kunlun fault yesterday! Uncut, unrefined stone! If you are really an immortal appraiser, pick a stone against me! I wager sixty thousand low-grade spirit stones from my personal operating ledger that the Guild’s selection beats yours!”
