Transaction Complete

*Finally, someone with Origin Stones!*

After more than ten minutes of walking and waiting — just as Lu Yuan had started to wonder whether the other party had gotten cold feet — PalaceMoonlight's message finally came through.

A grin broke across his face. He switched from one-handed typing to two.

He pulled up PalaceMoonlight's profile and opened a private chat.

"I run a shop where trades can be handled," PalaceMoonlight wrote. "It's called the Youyuanren Store — you can place your order there. Every transaction is backed by the Gene Warrior Association, so neither party has to worry about the other backing out. What do you think?"

"Works for me. I'll go place the order now."

A short while later, a new order notification appeared in his own shop. He opened it: the staff. He confirmed the order at once, mood notably lighter, and made his way back toward his quarters.

*The sooner the Origin Stone was in hand, the better.*

Now all that remained was for PalaceMoonlight to ship the stone. Once it arrived and he confirmed receipt, he'd send the staff out in return. Getting the third Origin Stone through a trade rather than hunting it down himself — that was the best possible outcome.

The Gene Warrior Association had its own established process for barter exchanges. The standard procedure was for one party to ship their item first; upon receipt, the receiving party would ship their own item back, and once both sides confirmed, the trade was considered complete. Throughout the process, the Association would authenticate every item. Once both parties had confirmed, the Association stepped out of the picture entirely.

It took him another two-plus days of travel to make it back from Ancient Sea Oasis to Sandy Rock City. The stretch between the Ancient Sea Lake and the oasis edge alone was over a hundred kilometers of terrain thick with Feral Beasts — even at his level, just reaching the oasis perimeter had taken more than three days. He'd spent every moment of it with his nerves drawn taut.

When he passed through the two Construct guards at the city gate and stepped back onto Sandy Rock City's streets, the sight of Gene Warriors going about their business drew a quiet smile out of him. In the wilderness he was always wound tight; here, he could actually breathe.

He headed to the Residential Zone and rented a Class C single suite.

He'd barely finished unpacking when his phone rang. He glanced at the screen and answered.

"Hello — is this Mr. Lu Yuan?"

"Yes, that's me."

"Hello, we're pickup personnel from the Gene Warrior Association. Are you home at the moment?"

"I am."

"Good. We'll be there in about half an hour."

Time passed. At four o'clock, a knock came at the door.

Lu Yuan stepped out of his room and pulled it open. Two middle-aged men in black uniforms stood in the hallway.

"Hello, Mr. Lu Yuan. We're here for the collection," said the one with close-cropped brown hair.

"Of course. Give me a moment." Lu Yuan nodded and went back to retrieve the sold items.

The brown-haired man accepted the bundle and inspected each piece carefully. When he finished, he smiled.

"Everything checks out. We'll handle the packaging on our end. Will you be covering the shipping fees?"

"Yes."

"Let me check the delivery address — just a moment... That comes to fifty thousand Red Maple Coins in total."

Lu Yuan paused. It was his first time shipping anything, and the figure gave him a momentary jolt. *That's a bit steep.*

He couldn't really argue with it, though. The Association's couriers were Gene Warriors — sending a Gene Warrior to deliver your parcel was never going to come cheap. When he thought about it that way, a few tens of thousands was about what you'd expect.

He paid.

"We'll head out then," the brown-haired man said, still smiling. "Your packages should arrive tomorrow."

"Thanks for making the trip." Lu Yuan closed the door.

Out in the hallway, the two men exchanged a glance.

"Who knows what he's thinking, pricing things that cheap," the brown-haired one said, a quiet laugh in his voice. "Either way — Lu Yuan's this young and he's got that many Elite-grade items. You think he got them himself?"

His dark-haired partner turned thoughtful. "If he did, that's no ordinary feat. I had a look — that leather armor dropped from an Ancient Sea Giant Wolf out of Sandy Rock City. To have a tempering degree above eighty percent, it must've been an Elite-rank specimen. That's the only type that drops gear at that level." He shook his head slowly. "Someone this young, solo-hunting a beast like that... he's going places."

An Elite-ranked warrior hunting Boss Grade Feral Beasts on their own — that was a genuinely remarkable thing.

The dark-haired man's expression shifted slightly.

"None of our business anyway," the brown-haired one said. "Come on — several more stops to make."

They left.

Back in his room, Lu Yuan checked his shop.

The last Combat Technique he'd listed — Battle Roar — was gone. Every single item he'd put up for sale had sold out.

*Makes sense.* He'd priced everything a touch below the going market rate. Good value moved fast — it always did.

With the Origin Stone trade wrapped up, there was nothing worth relisting. He'd just leave the shop sitting idle.

He thought for a moment, then sent a message to Li Qinghe.

He waited. No reply.

He raised an eyebrow, crossed the hallway, and knocked on her door.

"Li Qinghe? You home?"

Nothing.

"Qinghe?"

Silence.

*Maybe she isn't back yet.* He'd wait for her to reply when she got around to it. These past couple of days she hadn't brought him breakfast, but that was his own doing — he'd told her he didn't surface from the Land of Origin until noon anyway, so there was no point. He just had no idea whether she was actually home right now.

He settled back in his room and opened the Battle Net forum, scrolling through a few threads.

*The slum district does seem to be getting a bit unsettled lately.*

He thought back to something Xue Wang had mentioned to him before.

He entered the Land of Origin.

His body materialized near the Ancient Sea Lake. He took stock of his surroundings, made a quick assessment, and began moving toward the Ancient Sea Oasis.

These past weeks of relentless combat against powerful Elite-ranked Feral Beasts had steadily deepened his mastery of Black Steel Force. By now he'd fully worked out how to engage his core Force Groups and his larger Force Groups in tandem, and he was starting to feel his way toward activating all his body's Force Groups at once.

At present he could stably double his raw power output. If he pushed Black Steel Force to the third level, the multiplier would reach triple — the equivalent of having an additional Boss Grade Combat Technique amplifying every exchange. With that, combined with the right gene medicines, he was fairly confident he could take down most Boss Grade Feral Beasts.

The trouble was that finding Boss Grade targets solo was still genuinely difficult. And Black Steel Force had grown noticeably harder to advance at this stage — pushing past its current plateau would take real effort.

Still, breaking through to the third level wasn't a matter of weeks. He just needed to keep grinding at it.

Absorbing Origin Stones was far more manageable here, safe within Sandy Rock City, than it had been out in the field.

Before his origin force ran fully dry, the second black chain of his Gene Lock buckled under the sustained pressure — and snapped, dissolving into coils of dark smoke that faded into nothing.

The white mist blanketing the upper reaches of his Gene Chain thinned a fraction further. The structure above grew a little clearer.

He looked at the last black chain still holding and let out a quiet smile.

*Almost there.*

One more push and the breakthrough was his. Absorbing the last Origin Stone would be all it took.

But the hour was getting late. Finishing the stone now would push his cultivation well into the night, and he'd rather not do that — not after that Shadow had appeared out of nowhere before. The thought of it showing up again while he was deep in focus wasn't something he wanted to risk.

He returned to his suite and left the remaining Origin Stone untouched. Settling onto the bed, he turned his focus inward and returned to working through the subtleties of Black Steel Force. Time slipped away from him without notice, and by the time he surfaced, the room had grown dark.

Two Transcendent Genes. Three Elite-grade armaments.

He was nearly at First-rank. It was time to start thinking about what came next.