Eternal Cultivation of Alchemy

"Greetings, Daoist. I am so sorry you had to wait so long." Cai Ping apologized as she walked it. She constantly bowed and kept saying how sorry she was. For some reason, she had started calling him Daoist as well.

"Oh, it's ok. I don't mind waiting," Alex got a little nervous seeing her bowing towards her so much.

Cai Ping smiled a little and sat down on the couch opposite to where Alex was currently sitting. She seemed a little tired and distraught for some reason.

"Are you okay, Miss Cai? You seem a little tired," he said.

Cai Ping immediately straightened her posture and looked a little more active as she said, "I'm so sorry for showing you such a terrible sight."

"Is working in an auction house that hard?" he asked.

"Oh no, it's usually really easy. But today was different. The auction was a bit hectic and to be honest, mentally exhausting," she laughed a bit and continued, " Your pills were actually the most problematic of all. Most alchemists don't auction their pills, so when so many pills showed up at once, people kept bidding for it one after another. Those took a lot of time."

"Does that mean all of my pills sold then?" he asked expectantly. He was really hoping to get the 80 spirit stones today.

"Ah, yes. All of them sold. I believe the after-auction transactions are being completed right now, and someone will bring your total here."

"Oh, okay," he said and waited for a bit longer.

About 5 minutes or so later, a knock sounded from the door to the room. "Come in," Cai Ping spoke from inside. A middle-aged man walked in and bowed to Cai Ping. He then turned to Alex and bowed once again.

Alex wasn't used to being bowed at so much, so he just nodded.

The man walked up to Cai Ping and handed her a bag. Cai Ping looked at the bag for a bit and nodded to the man, who then walked away.

"Your money after the reduction is here, Daoist," she spoke. "Your monster corpse sold for a bit more than expected and brought in 15 common spirit stones. After reduction, you get 13 common spirit stones and 50 gold coins."

Alex was surprised when he heard that. '13 common spirit stones are about 120 dollars right?' he thought.

Cai Ping then continued, " Your pills, however… I have never been so wrong on my estimate before."

Alex frowned. 'Wrong on her estimate? Does that mean I am not getting the full 80 spirit stones she said?' he started to get disheartened. He was hoping for quite a bit of money, but from her talk, it seemed like the pills didn't do as well.

Then, Cai Ping said, "I can't believe they sold for so much more."

"Huh? They didn't do badly?" he asked.

"Badly? Of course not. They did amazing in the auction. Far better than I had anticipated." She took out a talisman and started reading something.

"We sold all of your pills separately, which was why the auction took so much longer than usual. First off, we sold your Qi improving pill. We started from the ones with the lowest harmony to the highest."

"These were commonly found pills, so they didn't sell for a lot. Still, the 12 pills in total brought us about 42 common spirit stones."

"The next pills we sold were the swift feet pills. While uncommon, people didn't require them a lot so it didn't get a lot of bids, but still somehow managed to be sold for 32 spirit stones for the 5 pills."

"Next we sold the 2 face-changing pills. These pills sold quite a bit as they were very rare. These pills had quite a few bids compared to others. The 26% harmony face changing pill sold for 15 spirit stones, and the 35% harmony face changing pill sold for 28 spirit stones. I had no idea this was how receptive the audience would be to these pills."

"Lastly, the 4 Qi Enhancing pills. We sold them last because people really cared about pills that helped them break through their bottlenecks and helped them increase their cultivation. As expected, they did really well. Perhaps, too well."

"It seemed due to the rarity of one of the ingredients for this pill, people hadn't been able to get this pill made by the alchemists at all. So, when they heard we were auctioning Earth grade Qi Enhancing pills, they really bid in droves to get it."

"Similar to the other pills, we started with the one that had the lowest harmony and moved our way to the highest. In total, the 4 different pills actually ended up selling for 83 common spirit stones."

Alex had stopped converting the spirit stones to dollars long ago as he heard the number of spirit stones grow higher and higher. Cai Ping looked at his shocked eyes and found some mutual feelings in them. She too had been similarly shocked when she presented the pills to the audience.

"This was a really successful auction, Daoist. Here are your spirit stones. In total you have 194 common spirit stones," Alex took the storage bag with an empty expression and checked the content inside.

He really did get 194 common spirit stones. That was really a lot.

"When is your next auction?" he asked Cai Ping.

She didn't think much about the question and answered, "It the next Saturday. Though that will be a rather big auction since it's our bi-annual auction, where only items above 5 spirit stones are sold and the auction itself lasts longer than usual."

Alex stayed quiet and thought for a bit. 'I should be able to finish making the pills by the next Wednesday, maybe even Tuesday if I really tried.'

"Can I come back next Friday to put more items in auction?" he asked.

Cai Ping looked at him with a confused look and asked, "Do you have something else to sell, Daoist?"