Li Fei looked like she'd just been fished out of boiling water. Her short hair was soaked, and even the hollows of her pearly collarbones held little pools of hot water.
Steam rose off her flushed skin. Glistening beads of sweat dripped from the tip of her nose and, under eight times normal gravitational acceleration, slapped against the floor and shattered to pieces.
If you wanted to adapt quickly to a sudden jump in strength, no place was more efficient than a gravity room. As a Silver-rank student of the War Academy, Li Fei had given up one visit to the [Battle Altar] in exchange for twenty hours of gravity room time. The Academy had strict, systematic rules about student privileges, and by rights there was no haggling. But if the Vice Dean signed off, that was another matter.
Her battle qi was bone dry, yet Li Fei kept lurching forward on unsteady legs, straining to push the enormous millstone.
Heavy gravity didn't just test muscle and bone. Her organs bore the burden too, and her blood struggled to circulate, dragged downward.
Add the eighty-degree heat and the thin air, and Li Fei's stamina was thoroughly overdrawn. Her head swam, and red veins crept into her eyes.
Still, she had no intention of stopping.
Wasn't it far more meaningful to pour her fluids out in the gravity room than to leak them onto the bedsheets?
Finally, Li Fei collapsed with a thud, her calves twitching.
Chloe scooped the sticky Miss Top Courtesan up by the waist. Water dripped from her hair and toes in a steady patter, and the wet trail stretched all the way to the gravity room door.
Cooling, medicine, a bath. Under the Vice Dean's methodical care, the flush faded from Li Fei's face, her body temperature dropped quickly, and she was soon pale and fragrant again. Soft white angel wings took the place of a bath towel and wrapped her up.
From start to finish, Li Fei was like a rag doll. She sat quietly and let the Vice Dean handle her, letting threads of holy power from the wings seep into her body and ease her exhaustion.
Chloe's gaze rested on the female who, by angel standards, was positively tiny, and she couldn't help being puzzled.
It was just a body made of sinew, bone, skin and flesh. So why did it hold the magic to make her heart clench? Even a high-ranking necromancer's [Hand of Death] couldn't do that.
Divine sigils flickered in her pupils, but in the end even eyes that could peer into the very essence of the laws gave Chloe no answer.
—Could this be the power of friendship?
—Human female bodies really are marvelous.
All she could do was sigh inwardly with reverence. She kneaded Li Fei's limp limbs with her long fingertips and asked in earnest:
"Does it hurt?"
"No."
Li Fei shook her head, stepped down onto the floor and tested her limbs.
Her arms and legs were a little sore and weak, but threads of potential welled up from deep in her body and poured into the parched vortex of battle qi.
She forced out a wisp of battle qi. Controlling it was clearly much smoother than before, which pleased her.
You got what you paid for. The gravity room burned through a huge amount of resources every time it opened, but the results were excellent. At this rate, one or two more mornings would be enough to master her surging power.
With training results this outstanding, no wonder warriors flocked to it by the thousands.
—If only I could have one at home.
—This devout believer would give up ten years of snuggling for a gravity room. Fei-men.
Li Fei sighed with regret, walked barefoot to the wardrobe and took out the clothes she'd worn here today.
A gray skirt suit with no highlights, and low-sheerness flesh-toned stockings that aged it even more. All it lacked to pass as "a new office girl with no presence who ignores fashion" was a pair of round black glasses.
But as the saying goes, an outfit's finish depends on the face. Li Fei clearly had the looks to turn the drab into the magical, and the frumpy skirt actually had a minimalist elegance on her. The short hair only sharpened the effect, making her look like an intellectual, stoic office lady with taste.
Suddenly, something poked her arm.
She looked back. Miss Angel had silently changed into a silver one-shoulder gown.
Dazzling silver hair spilled over her shoulder like a waterfall. Her exquisite collarbones were white enough to hurt the eyes, glowing with a soft, holy light.
She had the same tall, slender supermodel figure as Li Fei, but the angel clan's diet was clearly better nourished than the vampires', so Chloe had a graceful, willowy femininity of her own.
She'd folded her wings away. The fitted waist of the gown circled her supple, taut waistline perfectly, and you could feel its elasticity from a glance alone. Beneath the hem, the outline of her legs was straight and even, their long, tapering lines enough to steal a person's breath.
Chloe, who normally wore skirt armor, plainly wasn't used to such a flimsy outfit. She wriggled uneasily, the hem swaying with her, and a fleeting glimpse of ankle showed, white as jade.
Her holy, lovely face was unmistakably bashful. The tear mole frozen beneath the corner of her eye shone like the most gorgeous shard of diamond in the world, dazzling enough to leave anyone dizzy.
"Is this one all right?"
She asked softly, waiting for Miss Top Courtesan's verdict.
—Why are you changing outfits out of nowhere?
Li Fei froze for a moment, then it came back to her.
To help Miss Chloe grasp the true meaning of friendship and finish the tasks in the Friendship Cultivation Manual sooner, the teacherly Miss Top Courtesan had given her an assignment at their last meeting: pick out a dress on her own.
A good outfit helped bestie bonding, so they could bring forth the fruit of friendship sooner. Chloe's taste really was decent. The dress was beautiful, even stunning. Its similarity score against the one Li Fei had once picked for her was just a little high.
And faced with the angel's hopeful look, Li Fei gave her honest opinion:
"Meh."
"I'll keep working hard."
The simple-hearted Miss Angel didn't seem discouraged in the least. "Are you free this afternoon? I was thinking..."
"Sorry, I have plans this afternoon."
Li Fei answered without a second thought. "Actually, I think the skirt armor you usually wear is great. It comes with a permanent cleaning spell, very convenient."
"But before, you..."
Chloe was confused.
"The old me was too naive. I wasted far too much time on unnecessary things."
Li Fei said it with a perfectly straight face. "Luckily, I've woken up. Only cultivation matters. Oh, right, do you know where I can buy good gunpowder?"
Miss Angel was at a loss, but still answered by reflex: "The Goblin Laboratory."
…
After leaving the War Academy, Li Fei didn't linger. She walked straight out of the city, hopped on her Flying Broom and flew toward the address Chloe had given her.
Before long, she spotted a crooked, twisted building.
It was fairly tall, several stories with every floor a different height. The walls were piled together from metal and wood and looked crude, nothing like the grand, majestic imperial mausoleum of the Great Song, with no beauty to speak of. Countless chimneys stuck out of the walls, belching multicolored gases.
What's more, the ground around the building sat visibly lower, as if it had been built in a pit. It was bare and utterly lifeless.
"Goblin tech..."
Li Fei muttered to herself. She didn't rush in. Instead, she took out her Guardian Mage Robe and put it on first.
You couldn't call her a coward for it. Green-skin technology was famous for being expensive, excellent and insane, and a lab like this blew up several times a year on average, so it could never have been built inside the city. Loxibrook was a renowned nature-aligned fortress, and its outskirts should have been a land of fair weather, birdsong and flowers, with lush plants staying green all year round. Yet only here did not a blade of grass grow. Clearly the ecosystem had been wrecked by repeated explosions and the constant discharge of pollutants.
To be safe, Li Fei cast [Protective Stoneskin] and Dragon's Strength on herself, and only then walked toward the Goblin Laboratory.
"Greetings, honored customer."
Li Fei had barely approached when a scrawny, short fellow with green skin all over stepped across the filthy doormat to receive the guest.
He had long pointed ears and a big nose. His black hair was styled into a rather trendy Mohawk a full thirty centimeters tall, and his dull yellow eyes darted around in their deep sockets, glinting with cunning.
Unlike most people, who fell for Li Fei's beauty at first sight, this goblin's gaze clearly swept over the spatial ring on her hand. He spread his arms and feigned surprise in an exaggerated tone:
"Heavens above, I never imagined I'd get to serve the famous Miss Philanthropist! Even if I give a ten percent discount on today's labor, it's worth it."
"You flatter me."
Li Fei replied politely.
"Miss Philanthropist, you can call me Marnie."
The goblin invited her warmly. "Please come in and take a look around. Our merchandise will surely satisfy you."
"No, no."
Li Fei's feet might as well have taken root. She had no intention whatsoever of entering a building that looked ready to collapse or poison someone at any moment. "I just want to buy some gunpowder."
"As you wish, honored customer."
Marnie quickly handed over a crumpled list. It was crammed with all manner of goods and their functions.
Li Fei scanned it in one pass and found the gunpowder at once.
There were nine types of gunpowder. Two were made from ordinary chemical compounds, and the other seven from Transcendent materials.
"Customer, I strongly recommend the Godslayer Powder!"
Marnie began pitching the most expensive one, waxing eloquent, his words flowery enough to make heaven weep. "Used properly, this powder can blow a black dragon sky-high!"
Li Fei didn't even lift an eyelid. She pointed straight at the cheapest one.
"Tell me about this one."
Godslayer Powder sounded wonderful and could pose a lethal threat to high-Sequence powerhouses, but it cost more than gold by volume. How could Li Fei afford that?
"Type I Black Powder, generally used for blasting obstacles..."
Marnie's voice lost a good deal of its pep.
"What's the density?"
Li Fei pressed.
"Density?"
Marnie looked puzzled.
"Mass divided by volume."
Li Fei kept it short.
"I love that word! It sounds so... professional. It seems you have a real Innate Talent for technology."
Marnie tossed out a few rounds of flattery, then quickly worked out the black powder's density. "A crate one meter long, wide and high holds 1.8 tons of Type I."
"And this one?"
Li Fei pointed to another ordinary powder.
"That's Type II White Powder. It's already usable in military applications, and it's far more powerful than Type I..."
Marnie launched into another endless rundown of the powder's performance. "The same crate holds 1.7 tons of Type II White Powder."
—Why does that sound a bit like TNT?
Li Fei made up her mind.
"This is the one. Let me see the goods."
"Are you really sure you won't consider anything else?"
Marnie refused to give up and started pushing the Transcendent explosives. "How about the classic Roaring Powder? A single canister can blow up a mid-Sequence powerhouse! We also offer goblin sapper hire services..."
Goblin sappers, more commonly called "bombers," were a notorious kind of combat unit, about as welcome as witches.
Their tactics were simple. They jabbed themselves with a Frenzy potion, strapped on Transcendent explosives and charged the target in a suicide run.
It just wasn't cost-effective.
After all, the canisters on their backs were cylinders one meter tall and half a meter across, with about 0.15 cubic meters of capacity once the walls were subtracted. They were stuffed full of Transcendent explosives, which weren't cheap to begin with, and then you had to add the cost of the Frenzy potion and the blood money.
As for the actual results... the killing power really was strong enough to blow up a mid-Sequence Transcendent. But their fragile bodies and limited blast radius were fatal flaws. A mid-Sequence Transcendent wasn't going to stand there waiting to die, so the sappers rarely got close. They tended to get killed halfway there, and more than once they'd even caused tragedies by hitting their own side...
Li Fei wasn't about to play the sucker and hire such a lousy bunch of underlings. She cut off Marnie's pitch firmly:
"Type II White Powder. Show me the goods."
"Very well."
Marnie spread his hands in disappointment, turned and went into the lab, and soon came back with a small sample packet.
Li Fei warily touched it with a fingertip.
[Type II White Powder · Goblin Laboratory Product]
Description: Although it looks like TNT, has the density of TNT, and packs the power of TNT, it really isn't TNT. A single fireball or a single match can set it off.
"Customer, that's top-grade stuff, isn't it?"
Marnie grinned.
"Meh."
Li Fei pulled her hand back.
The corner of Marnie's mouth twitched, and he rubbed his hands together.
"Then... how much would you like?"
"What's the price?"
Li Fei shot back.
In her first year of high school, on a date with a younger girl, she hadn't understood the principle of "ask the price before you buy," and had paid the astronomical sum of twenty yuan for a cotton candy. That was the kind you spun in circles on a stick by the roadside, all fluffy and sweet.
Even though she'd known she was being ripped off, her younger schoolmate was standing right there, and the thin-skinned, simple schoolgirl could only swallow her tears and pay. From then on, she'd kept the life lesson firmly in mind: always ask the price first.
And this goblin gentleman's goods list had no unit prices marked anywhere. His intentions were obvious.
"The original price is fifty silver coins per kilogram."
Marnie wore a kindly smile. "But, lucky customer, we're running a promotion lately, and it's only forty-five silver coins per kilogram! On top of that, I've always admired your contributions to public welfare. Out of respect for you, I'm willing to forgo my commission, so I can knock another two silver coins off each kilogram."
"That expensive?"
Li Fei frowned.
"You don't understand, customer."
Marnie explained patiently, his tone sincere. "Generation after generation of brilliant minds spent countless funds and effort on research and refinement to bring us today's gunpowder technology! And gunpowder production carries enormous risk to begin with. I've lost countless kinsmen on the production lines..."
As he spoke, he even wiped the corner of his eye, as if mourning his dead kin.
"So this powder really isn't easy to make."
Li Fei nodded in agreement, then tried haggling. "Would you sell it at ten coppers a kilogram?"
Marnie's jaw dropped. He didn't even bother wiping the tears he'd squeezed out, his face frozen in dumbstruck disbelief.
How did this kind and gracious Miss Philanthropist haggle even more ruthlessly than a black-hearted noble?
In all his years in the trade, he'd never seen anyone chop a price down to under one percent in a single breath!
Marnie struggled to tug the corners of his mouth into a smile.
"Customer, please, no joking. This is already the lowest price. If anyone else came, they absolutely could never buy white powder at this price..."
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