Wang Yun smashes the helmet into the ground with the arm piece. Piece of garbage, too small for literally anyone to wear. Trash like this, powerful armaments made to fit tiny people, was worthless to him. No one was buying.

What kind of moron was going to buy a suit of armor for a child that was just going to outgrow it in a scant few years? Even if they were a genius that started cultivating before they could walk, no human was going to be able to raise enough ranks to make this kind of investment worthwhile before their brains even developed. The only buyers for this kind of thing were nobles with more money than sense, and unrealistic expectations about their child’s capabilities.

That didn’t narrow the pool at all from just ‘nobles’ on their own, but the point stood.

At the very least, he should have been able to sell the junk for scrap. That was good metal, smashes straight through walls no problem. If he could wear it, he’d do so in a heartbeat. The stuff was strong enough that it took a commoner level child all the way to the point where its fist actually did damage to his Essence Core Realm level body. But no, apparently the local shopkeepers didn’t even know what type of metal it was, much less how to reprocess it into something worth using.

If he went back to the Primordial Grandmist Sect, they could probably do something. It looked like there was a bit of ancient technology inside of the helmet, and the arm was almost certainly a connected set with the thing.

Just because he could, Wang Yun generates a putrifying ball of sludge and presses it against the helmet. Raw corruption sizzles against the air, but finds no purchase against the black metal. He stops the flow of Heavenly Energy to the sticking mass, and frowns at the unmarred surface. The armor hurt to look at, mentally. Not in the way that significant artifacts did, revealing the fundamental truths of the universe to a mind that was nowhere near equipped to deal with raw dao, but in an opposite way. It wasn’t really in line with the universe, tilted off skew from truth by a few degrees. Not physically askew, but more… conceptually. Whatever it was, he didn’t like it, and didn’t like that people wouldn’t pay him to give it to them.

There was no way he was just going to get rid of the ominous artifact for free.

It didn’t seem that this town was going to be useful in the slightest, and there were rumors of a Chaotic Demon Sect disciple poking around. He didn’t exactly want to be caught ‘performing espionage’ before the tournament, so it was probably about time to make his way out of the area anyway. Gesturing at one of the hanger ons he made sure to keep around at all times, Wang Yun shoved the arm piece into his chest.

“Go and slap Yang Ming in the face with that, and tell him Wang Yun is calling for a tactical retreat. I’ll be telling Lin Laotian that you’re taking care of that.”

The minion nodded hurriedly, and nearly tripped over his own feet in his haste to get out of his boss’s line of fire. Wang Yun could be a bit violent when his greed was denied. Yang Ming was usually much harder to rile up, so his job was probably a bit safer than going for a friendly chat with Lin Laotian.

An explosion rocked the city from the direction of the local inn, and Wang Yun was not getting involved in that. It was probably the Demon Sect disciple, and face to face confrontation was one of the more undeniable examples of Primordial Grandmist Sect presence in the area. From what they’d found, there wasn’t even anything particularly valuable in this place. That was to be expected, since it was a border town between the Primordial Grandmist and the Demons, and if there was anything valuable they would have looted it by now.

Speaking of looting, he orders the other hanger on to pull the helmet out of the ground. No point in leaving behind perfectly good evil artifacts. It was at least fourth realm for defensive purposes, and at least second realm for raw offensive purposes, without even using it properly. He would much rather that some person gave him actual currency for it, but at the very least it could be turned in to the sect for contribution points.

Those were like money, but far less useful.

Lin Laotian was a wood attuned cultivator, which made his style complementary to Wang Yun’s. While everything else was corrupted to nothing by the poisonous sludge he threw, Lin Laotian had sparred with him long enough to develop a method by which plants used the gunk to grow themselves and attack independently. It made him a real pain to fight against, since Wang Yun usually tried to control the battlefield through area denial, and those plants made that area inaccessible to himself as well. They would work together well against a common foe though, and that was why all three competitors had come on this scouting expedition.

If Lin Laotian wasn’t a stick in the mud in more than one way, Wang Yun might even like him.

Wang Yun found Lin Laotian writing down the entire stock of an apothecary. The poor assistant looked like she was fighting back tears of boredom, as the man took down measurements of every ingredient on display by the gram.

“Hey, it’s about time to get out of here,” Wang Yun interrupts, ignoring the look of hope that flashes across the assistant’s face. “I’ve sent someone to go slap the other guy in the face and tell him to get to work.”

Lin Laotian stops scratching as his tablet, and looks toward Wang Yun. Not seeing any kind of joke in his face, Lin Laotian sighs, and asks “What did you do?”

“Nothing, the Demon that showed up and started blowing things up has nothing to do with anything I’ve done.”

“I somehow doubt that you have managed to go a full thirty minutes without committing some sort of crime.”

“Yeah well it’s been way longer than that since you started boring this girl to death with your constant badgering. You’d think you’d be better at telling when someone didn’t want to talk to you anymore since you’re a wood cultivator.”

“Attunements have nothing to do with the aptitudes of the cultivator. You know this, otherwise the fact you are a water cultivator would imply you have any amount of clear flow.”

“Hey, I’m a poison cultivator, get it right.”

“Poison is just water with some earth added into it. If you paid attention in class, you’d learn these things.”

“Whatever, pack up your things and meet me at the dock. We only have so much time before the end.”