The guest pavilion stood on a polished cedar platform jutting over a crystal-clear mountain pond. It was surrounded by blooming lotus blossoms whose petals shone with faint opalescent light. Cool mountain breezes rustled through the carved lattice screens. He carried the delicate fragrance of crushed mint, wild mountain honey, and pine sap.
Patriarch Lu Feng sat cross-legged upon a thick woven rush mat. He felt utterly unmoored from reality.
Through the open pavilion arches, he watched his twenty cargo wagons resting in a tidy gravel yard. His mortal wagon drivers and sword-guards—men who usually drank coarse sorghum wine in grimy road taverns with knives drawn across their knees—were sitting peacefully on split-log benches. Young fox-maidens in modest vermilion aprons were setting down steaming wooden tubs of salted river-carp stew, platters of golden roasted flatbreads, and racks of dried mountain persimmons. Nearby, two adolescent earth-bear lads were cheerfully hoisting a fractured hardwood wagon axle. It replaced the snapped bronze cotter pin with easy ease while chatting with a scared wagon driver about wheel grease.
“Drink, Patriarch Lu,” a soft, sweet-sounding voice broke his reverie.
Lu Feng turned to find Su Ling’er kneeling across the low tea table. Her flowing silk scholar robes of cream and vermilion pooled around her with easy grace. Her three snow-white fox tails rested neatly behind her, their ruby tips swaying with gentle rhythm. She held a slender celadon flagon, tilting it to pour a thin, crystal-clear stream into a white jade cup.
The liquid was pale green, clear as liquid emerald. Then he emitted a crisp, intoxicating scent of wild peaches and high-sky mountain dew.
“This is the inaugural vintage of our Jade-Dew Spirit Wine,” Su Ling’er explained with a calm smile. “Fermented beneath the roots of the ancient spirit willow from wild peaches, sky spring water. Our Master’s personal blessing. Please partake.”
Lu Feng paused for half a breath, then lifted the cup with two hands. As a lifelong merchant, he had sampled vintage liquors from the royal cellars in the capital and fiery elixirs brewed by outer elders of the grand sects.
He took a slow sip.
The flavor struck his palate with the clean freshness of melting snow flowing over mountain stones. It was followed by a radiant wave of honeyed peach essence that carried zero alcoholic burn. As the liquor slid down his throat, a vibrant warmth blossomed in his chest. It spread through his limbs like liquid sunlight.
Crack. Crack.
Faint, internal snapping sounds echoed within Lu Feng’s torso. His breath hitched as eighteen hardened acupoints—narrowed by decades of mortal stress, idle bookkeeping, and toxic dust from the royal mines—suddenly dilated. Stale blood flushed from his micro-vessels. His vision sharpened until he could count the delicate golden veins on the lotus petals thirty paces away in the pond. The persistent, dull ache in his lower spine vanished as if sliced away by a master surgeon.
Lu Feng gasped, nearly dropping the jade cup. He clutched his silk-clad ribs, his chest rising and falling in deep, clear breaths.
“This... This isn’t wine,” Lu Feng stammered, his merchant voice trembling with raw shock. “This is a grade-three longevity elixir in liquid form! In Qianyuan City, a single small gourd of liquor with this level of spirit vein-clearing purity would ignite a bidding war between noble houses! It could easily fetch five hundred mid-tier spirit stones!”
Beside the low table, resting upon a stitched silk cushion, Lin Xiao wobbled pleasantly. The two-foot-wide blue slime was happily dipping a thin reed straw into a bowl of chilled watermelon juice, slurping with quiet satisfaction.
“Five hundred spirit stones for a flagon?” Lin Xiao’s mental voice rang with bemused amusement. “Good grief, human cities are expensive. It’s just peaches, clean spring water, and a bit of yeast. We have forty barrels aging in the cold cellar right now.”
Lu Feng stared at the azure sphere, his heart hammering against his ribs like a war drum. Forty barrels! If the Hundred Treasures Guild gained exclusive spreading rights to such a treasure, they wouldn’t merely double their profits. They would become the preeminent commercial power across the entire southern continent!
Eager to prove his value, Lu Feng reached into his spatial pouch. He pulled out two heavy lacquered rosewood chests. He opened the brass clasps with trembling fingers, flipping the lids back to reveal neat, gleaming rows of cast silver metal bars, alongside three dozen glistening blue crystals.
“Lord Xiao, Chief Minister Su,” Lu Feng said with urgent sincerity, “the Hundred Treasures Guild is prepared to purchase your entire surplus of Jade-Dew Wine on the spot! Here are five thousand ounces of official royal silver, along with forty mid-grade spirit stones as an earnest deposit! Name your price for seasonal exclusivity. I shall have my capital banks draft promissory writs backed by the Royal Treasury!”
Su Ling’er lowered her amber eyes toward the chests. Her lips curved into a polite, diplomatic smile. But Lin Xiao merely tilted to the left, observing the gleaming metal and glowing stones with a mild sigh.
“Patriarch Lu,” Lin Xiao began, his voice calm and level, “put those chests away before someone trips over them. Royal silver and raw spirit stones are practically useless to us.”
Lu Feng’s merchant mind seized. “Useless? Lord Xiao... Silver is the foundational currency of all mortal realms! And spirit stones are the sovereign lifeblood of training sects! How can they be useless?”
Lin Xiao hopped off his silk cushion, landing on the low cedar table with a soft, rubbery plop. He extended a semi-clear blue slime arm, tapping one of the blue spirit stones.
“Let’s look at spirit stones first,” Lin Xiao explained patiently. “To begin with, their purity fluctuates wildly. This one has forty percent quartz dirt. That one has a fracture down the center where the spiritual qi leaked out three months ago. Plus, sect elders hoard them in private vaults to cultivate, meaning spirit stones rarely circulate among the common folk who actually produce food and goods. When the powerful hoard currency, the economy stagnates.”
Lin Xiao turned his slime arm toward the heavy silver metal bars.
“As for silver? It’s heavy, dirty, and prone to clipping,” Lin Xiao continued. “Mortal officials shave the edges off coins, recast them with lead, and debase the weight until an honest farmer needs a wheelbarrow of metal just to buy a bag of flour. More importantly, if a harsh winter strikes and crops freeze in the fields, can a mother feed silver metal bars to her starving child? Can an artisan eat a spirit stone?”
Lu Feng’s jaw went slack. The arguments struck him like physical hammer blows. In fifty years of commercial trade, he had witnessed three total currency collapses in the southern commanderies, where royal dynasties debased copper coins until merchants refused to open their gates, leading to bloody peasant revolts.
“Money isn’t real wealth, Patriarch Lu,” Lin Xiao said, his tone turning shiny. “Real wealth is food in the granaries, sturdy roofs overhead, warm clothes on your back, and iron in the forge. Currency is merely a mutual agreement—a shared measurement of trust used to facilitate the exchange of real labor and tangible goods.”
Lu Feng leaned forward, his knuckles whitening against the cedar rim of the table. “Then... How does the Safe hall propose we conduct trade? If not by silver or spirit stones, does Your Eminence wish to rely on direct barter? Hauling thirty tons of iron in exchange for thirty wagonloads of grain is logistically exhausting!”
“Of course we won’t use primitive barter,” Lin Xiao chuckled. “We’re civilized beings, Patriarch Lu. We’re going to establish a proper commodity-backed currency standard.”
Lin Xiao produced a small lacquered tray from his spatial storage. On the tray rested five smooth, polished box-shaped slips.
Lu Feng blinked, leaning closer to examine them.
The slips were crafted from iron-bamboo, seasoned and heat-treated until the surface possessed the deep, lustrous patina of antique bronze. Each token was three inches long, an inch wide, and remarkably thin, yet when Lu Feng picked one up, he discovered the bamboo was as hard and rigid as hardened steel. It possessed virtually no weight, feeling silky and cool against the skin.
Engraved upon the center of the token was the character for ‘One Dan’—a traditional bushel of grain—encircled by a stylized motif of the ancient spirit willow.
More astonishingly, pulsing at the core of the bamboo slip was a faint, swirling sapphire vortex. When Lu Feng touched it with his spiritual senses, a deep, ringing hum shook through his mind. A sensation of boundless, ancient balance that made his soul tremble in awe.
“This is...” Lu Feng breathed.
“The Spirit Bamboo Token,” Lin Xiao announcedcheerfully. “Crafted from our local iron-bamboo by Tie Shan’s apprentices, then sealed with my personal Primordial Chaos deep ring.”
“Let me explain how it works,” Lin Xiao continued, watching Lu Feng’s fascinated expression. “First, security. The seal inside this bamboo is tied directly to my Primordial Chaos Dao. It operates on a sub-core spiritual wavelength. Even if a Nascent Soul array grandmaster labored for three hundred years with a heavenly forge, he couldn’t replicate the deep ring. The forgery rate is exactly zero.”
Lu Feng rubbed the slick surface of the bamboo slip. As an experienced merchant who spent hours every week testing coins with acid, files, and weighing balances to spot shaved silver and counterfeit brass, the idea of an unforgeable token was nothing short of miraculous.
“Second, value backing,” Lin Xiao said firmly. “This token isn’t an arbitrary piece of wood. Every single Spirit Bamboo Token issued by the Safe hall is backed one-to-one by tangible reserves. One token is permanently redeemable for exactly one dan of polished spirit rice stored in our granite silos. If a holder ever loses faith in the currency, he can walk into our granary at any hour of the day or night and exchange his tokens for sacks of golden, edible grain.”
Lu Feng’s merchant breath seized. His mind raced through the implications with dizzying speed.
“A currency pegged to grain reserves...” Lu Feng murmured, his fingers trembling against the bamboo slip. “It can’t be debased by corrupt mint masters. It can’t be hoarded by sects without losing its purchasing power. And because everyone needs grain to survive, its baseline purchasing value can never fall below the cost of food!”
“Exactly,” Su Ling’er chimed in, unrolling a fine sheet of white mulberry paper. “We’ll establish fixed exchange parities at the border. You bring us refined iron, coal, tea seeds, and paper. We evaluate the goods and pay you in Spirit Bamboo Tokens. You can right away redeem those tokens for barrels of Jade-Dew Wine and healing salves, or hold them to purchase spirit rice during the autumn harvest.”
Lu Feng looked up from the table. He stared at the little blue slime with an expression bordering on spiritual worship.
In the mortal empires, kings waged wars, carried out coin-clippers, and issued desperate paper notes that collapsed into worthless trash within a generation. Yet here, in a hidden mountain valley governed by spirit beasts, an azure slime had effortlessly formulated the most elegant, fraud-proof, and humanitarian financial stonework under heaven.
“Lord Xiao...” Lu Feng stood, smoothing his silk robes, and bowed from the waist with total formality. “The Hundred Treasures Guild accepts the Spirit Bamboo Token standard without reservation! I shall personally guarantee the exchange of these tokens across our thirty-two branch houses in the southern commanderies!”
“Wonderful!” Lin Xiao bounced happily, his blue body wobbling. “Let’s have Su Ling’er draft the agreement. And Patriarch Lu? Have another cup of wine. Good business should always be celebrated with good drinks.”
Lu Feng smiled from ear to ear, raising his freshly refilled jade cup. The old merchant knew, with total certainty, that history had just turned a page beneath the boughs of the spirit willow.