Still Learning To Live As A Cultivator

Chapter Seventy Nine - Our emotions are stirred

As Pike mentioned, following the competition came the auctions.  Once those were settled, there would be the individual competitions and the closing feasts, in which the competitors, Teachers and guests gathered, but others were forced to imagine about from afar,

There were two auctions; the first was where usually the least valuable things were exchanged hands and was only open to students.  Students bid using points and as the realm treasures were not always enough to whet the appetite's of bidders, Pills, talismans, simple crystals and apprentice weapons often were placed up for auction as well.  The atmosphere was usually lively and the treasures usually not so rare to want to cause mischief following.

The second auction was a closed auction where the rarest treasures could be sold.  Again Pills, talismans and the like might find new ownership, but usually these were made by top students or Teachers.  The closed bidding system allowed for the privacy of the purchaser and the price agreed upon.  The dark emotions of envy and greed could only be restrained not solved, this system having been used the past one hundred or so years was found to do so reasonably well.

Teams decided for themselves what would be sold, what would not.  For instance, Roman was very reluctant to part with the small, colour and pattern changing stone and the team were reluctant to take it from him.  Indeed, it was just a small treasure and the taking of the pulse of a willing person could give the same results to an expert, no need to rely on the interpretation of a rock. 

Leon harvested many herbs, but for a few stalks and seeds, he was happy to exchange the rest for points.  They would also add the ametrines and other gemstones into the general auction.  The blue mushrooms had value, but only as an exotic food thus suitable for the student auction as were many of the animal parts, be it that they could become armour or adornments.  Though there were certain exceptions, such as the peng-kun teeth, far more suitable for the closed auction, giving outsiders the chance to bid on this treasure.

The three cockateal eggs would find themselves as part of the closed auction; Velana, their only beast-tamer was not interested in raising one, she chose a few leathers to take back with her over them or anything else. 

Roman took the changing rock and a few interesting pieces of stones that were worth nothing by themselves.  Troy's interest lie in the knife blade; he wanted to have a new handle cast for it and use it as one of his weapons.  Caelus thought he liked both the magic ring and the broken jade scrolls, but also felt that it would be better to have the first evaluated and the latter fixed to see what actual value they had.  It was not good to be too greedy.

Everyone eyed the interspatial ring, but no one stepped forward at this point.

Usually in such situations, the team would have everything valued in terms of points as part of their scores by the judges.  Everyone picked a few things of lower value and the highest value things need be paid to the team in points or of things with equal value.  For example, if Leon wanted an ounce of raw void stone, he would likely need to exchange with several Jade bottles worth of peak quality Cloudy Spiritual Pills or a bottle of high quality White Spiritual Pills.  Such reached value of many gold coins in the merchant world as a mere ounce of raw void stone could alter a small pocket of space into something nearing a mu, once tempered and then the waste material was not thrown away but used in the making of cheap interspatial pouches.

All of their loot was valued this way; on known values.  Even if it were say, the unusual skin of a hybrid or a stalk of mutated herb or a magic ring with an unknown array.  Basically, it was to simplify things, otherwise wouldn't teams continuously argue over the value of every small thing?  So what if none of the peng-kun teeth had chips or imperfections or the horn of an tri-corn twisted left instead of right?  If they made exceptions for one team, wouldn't they have to make exceptions for others?  A piece of broken silver was a piece of broken silver at the end of the day, no matter what shape it took.