SSS Ranked Awakening: All My Skills Are at Level 100

Chapter 601: The Price of Knowing

Leon spent his first two days in Moonfall walking, asking questions, and buying almost nothing.

He started in the outer markets, where ordinary citizens shopped. A bowl of noodles cost eight copper. A clean room above a teahouse cost twenty copper a night, while a better inn inside the third ward asked nearly twice that. Clothes, cart fare, common medicine, and meals all remained affordable if a person knew the proper price.

Cultivator goods used a different scale.

The exchange houses bought low-grade spirit stones and sold them back at a clear profit. Leon visited three before he understood what the pouch Shen Baoyuan had given him was worth. Combined with the ordinary silver, it could support him modestly for about a year if he avoided expensive pills and artifacts.

One clerk tried to explain the exchange rate as though Leon had never handled money. Leon let him. The explanation included service fees, purity deductions, and the fact that chipped stones were weighed rather than counted. None of those details appeared on the rate board outside.

At the next exchange house, Appraisal showed that its testing tray consistently judged purity slightly lower than it should. Leon left without using it. The third house displayed its inspection formation openly and charged a fixed fee. He wrote down the address.

The family had provided that security the morning after losing twelve people.

Leon did not insult them by trying to return it. He simply revised his understanding of the gift and remembered what they had done.

He bought a copper meridian chart, a basic breathing manual, and small samples of spirit stone from several sources. Appraisal identified differences in purity, but it could not explain why one merchant’s stones worked better with a particular formation ink. That required knowledge of local crafting methods.

The limitation pleased him. It meant there was something real to learn.

He also bought three thumb-sized beast-core fragments from different stalls. All carried denser energy than comparable materials from Velaria, yet each had been processed differently. One still held a trace of hostile instinct that could contaminate a careless formation. Another had been washed so thoroughly that much of its useful energy was gone. Appraisal revealed the results, but the merchants’ answers taught him which methods caused them.

On the third morning, the pill market opened before sunrise.

Leon priced Qi Restoration Pills at eleven stalls. The common version was cheap and came loose in ceramic jars. Appraisal described a small, rapid replenishment followed by impurities that would build up with repeated use.

At the twelfth stall, he asked for a better grade.

The alchemist behind the counter had burn scars along both forearms. She looked at his temporary registration jade and then at his clothes.

”Which sect or clan account should I place the order under?”

”Neither.”

”An introduction from an established alchemist?”

”No.”

She tapped one of the common jars. ”Then this is what I can sell you.”

”The better medicine isn’t sold publicly?”

”It is sold. It simply has buyers before it reaches the shelf.” She gestured toward the market. ”A sect receives pills through its medicine hall. A clan maintains contracts. A known cultivator gets introduced by someone whose reputation can pay for his mistakes. Everyone else attends an auction and spends several times the proper price.”

Leon bought three common pills and a written guide to their ingredients.

He asked about pills used to strengthen meridians. The alchemist named two, then refused to sell either without first examining his circulation.

”A pill that widens healthy channels can tear damaged ones,” she said. ”I will not sell medicine to a stranger who cannot tell me what is inside his own body.”

Leon thanked her and did not argue. Her caution told him the legitimate alchemists understood that stronger medicine carried stronger risks.

The conversation explained more than the medicine. Moonfall’s best resources moved through relationships. Money mattered, but identity decided which doors opened.

Yanning joined him on the fourth day.

Her family still had losses to settle, so Leon had not asked for her time. She appeared outside the guest wing after breakfast with a ledger under one arm.

”You asked three servants where the formation district was,” she said. ”They each gave you different directions.”

”One route may eventually reach it.”

”Come with me before you end up in the tannery ward.”

The formation district followed the western canal. Leon spent the morning studying devices that would have transformed life in Velaria and barely drew attention here. Formation lamps fed on ambient qi. Heat stones kept pots simmering without flame. Purification arrays cleaned public cisterns. Paired communication jades carried voices across the city.

Their basic functions were easy to understand. The construction was not.

At a stall selling formation flags, a broad man in a leather apron offered Leon a set of six for nine silver each.

”Four each,” Yanning said.

The merchant frowned. ”These are ash-wood.”

”They are pine stained to resemble ash-wood. The veins were painted after carving, and the third flag will fail first in wet weather.”

The man looked at Leon, then back at Yanning. ”Five.”

”Four, or we leave.”

Leon bought the six flags for twenty-four silver.

Once they were outside, he said, ”You cut the price by more than half.”

”He saw your temporary jade and decided you were an easy sale.”

”I would have discovered the problem eventually.”

”After paying him fifty-four silver.”

Leon could not argue with that.

Yanning stayed with him through three more shops. She showed him which seals indicated a licensed craftsman, warned him away from ores treated to imitate a higher grade, and arranged for a scripture seller to reserve several beginner texts until Leon could inspect them.

Her questions appeared naturally throughout the errands.

”Did your inheritance use formation flags?”

”Some rooms had fixed arrays.”

”And nobody taught you to maintain them?”

”Most of what I learned came from surviving mistakes.”

She accepted the answer even though it explained very little.

Leon appreciated her skill. She gathered information without repeating herself and never pushed hard enough to make refusal awkward. He assumed she was building a connection with a potentially valuable cultivator. That explanation was sensible and incomplete.

Before returning to the compound, they stopped at a herb seller. Leon chose seeds, two living roots wrapped in damp moss, and a hardy potted herb whose energy density exceeded anything common in Velaria.

”Planning a garden?” Yanning asked.

”I want to know whether plants from this region will grow in unfamiliar soil.”

”The roots might. The seeds are safer.” She checked the wrapping around the pot. ”Keep the samples separate. Some spirit herbs poison weaker plants simply by sharing water.”

That was exactly the kind of local knowledge Appraisal had not provided.

Back in his room, Leon placed the purchases beside the cultivation texts. The pile looked unimpressive, yet each piece answered a question or helped him ask a better one.

He still had no intention of taking a spiritual-root test. Three shops offered them, and two had lines of parents waiting with their children. Until Leon knew what the artifacts measured and recorded, he would not let anyone point one at his foreign foundation.

For the moment, observation was safer.

He sorted the day’s purchases into three groups. The first could be studied inside his room. The second needed isolation before entering his dimensional world. The last group, including the pills, would remain sealed until he understood how local qi interacted with his body.

Yanning had saved him money, but more importantly, she had shown him which questions he had failed to ask. Leon added those questions to the front page of his notes.

Tomorrow, the public archive would teach him what these people believed a cultivator’s body was supposed to contain.