Chapter 027: Bookstore

As for whether buying such an expensive house would draw unwanted attention, Yun Xi had no need to worry.

Every purchase contract included strict confidentiality clauses, and the official real estate center was forbidden from disclosing any of her personal information.

The cost of breaching the contract? No one could afford to pay it.

Before long, the staff returned, followed by a well-dressed middle-aged man.

Upon seeing Yun Xi, he first gave a courteous bow, then said sincerely,
“Honored guest, for the house you’re interested in, we can offer you a maximum discount of 95%. Would that be acceptable?”

“To be honest, the construction cost alone of that house was as high as 5,000 gold coins, and the land itself was quite valuable as well.”

“When we bought the property from the previous owner last year, the purchase price was no less than 8,000 gold coins, and with property prices having increased by 10% this year compared to last…”

Yun Xi immediately caught the underlying message.

If the official repurchase price from the previous owner was 90% of the market price, then the original value of the house last year must have been around 9,000 gold coins.

Now, with a 10% price increase, the current market value of the property truly was 10,000 gold coins.

The only reason they were willing to give her a 95% discount now was because it hadn’t sold for so long. Otherwise, with such excellent conditions, this house would’ve been snapped up long ago.

Thinking this through, Yun Xi nodded and agreed. After all, she’d still be saving 500 gold coins—not a small amount.

Seeing that Yun Xi was willing, both staff members looked delighted. They promptly invited her to a lounge area to go over all the property contract details.

After reviewing and confirming the terms several times, Yun Xi signed her name.

The value of gold coins was equivalent to white crystal stones. So, 9,500 gold coins equaled 95 green crystal stones. But Yun Xi had no intention of using green crystal stones for the payment.

Compared to gold coins, green crystal stones were extremely rare currency. Due to their ability to rapidly restore spiritual energy, they were essentially rare and powerful items themselves.

For anything that could be bought with gold coins, no one would foolishly use crystal stones—especially not green crystal stones, which were a tier higher than white ones.

If Yun Xi were to use green crystal stones now, she’d only come across as a naive, spoiled rich girl—an easy target.

So, she exchanged her currency within the system, withdrew 9,500 gold coins, and handed them to the staff member handling payments.

Once the contract was officially sealed, the staff handed her the key to No. 26 on Feilan Street, and the contract scroll served as her property deed.

With that, Yun Xi finally had her first home on the Divinefall Continent.

Afterward, she made a trip to a tailor shop and a general store, where she bought some clothes, bedding, toiletries, and other daily essentials. Then she settled into her new house.

After four exhausting days out in the wilderness—even with her high physical stats—her constantly tense mind was growing weary.

Once her bed was made, she collapsed into it and fell asleep immediately.

…

The next morning, Yun Xi woke up.

After a good night’s rest, she felt more than refreshed. Once she had washed up, she logged out of the game.

Spending wisely mattered. Food in Divinefall was tasty and pollutant-free, but not cheap. So Yun Xi chose to return to Blue Star for her meals.

Even simply boiling noodles back home—with the addition of spiritual energy—would elevate the flavor immensely, and might even neutralize harmful substances.

However, there was a restriction for chef-class players crafting spiritual meals: they had to have personally prepared the food in order to convert it into spiritual food.

Ready-made items like coarse wheat biscuits wouldn’t work—infusing spiritual energy into them would just cause it to disperse and vanish.

For more complex dishes, one had to input the correct type and amount of power during the cooking process—otherwise, failure was possible.

…

After eating, Yun Xi, as usual, checked her phone to see if anything new had happened in the past few days.

The official player group chat was still buzzing, and the family group chat wasn’t far behind.

Her friends Yu Jinxiang, Tu Jiaojiao, and Gu Shi’an had all sent their routine check-in and well-being messages, just as they’d previously agreed.

Since Yun Xi hadn’t logged out recently, she’d missed their private messages. They had resent them via the system’s private chat, and she responded to each of them.

Unexpectedly, Yun Linlin had also sent her a message:

“Xixi, I’ve logged into the game now. About our earlier agreement… I’ve already bought the contract scroll. Once you’re back, we can sign it.

By the way, here’s my ID: ld******345222. Add me as a friend when you see this.”

Several others in the family group had also posted their game IDs. Yun Xi added them all.

Though she didn’t care much about her family emotionally, she knew she had to maintain appearances. Otherwise, they’d just keep pestering her—and that would be incredibly annoying.

Since there was a time delay between logging in and out of the game, she didn’t wait for replies, but simply put her phone down and logged back into Divinefall Continent.

It was morning in the game world.

Yun Xi didn’t go wandering around town. She continued with her original plan of studying spells, this time focusing on Appraisal Magic.

She pushed Fireball further down the list.

For now, she wasn’t planning on monster hunting. Water Arrow and Waterball would suffice for self-defense.

In contrast, Appraisal was an extremely useful and essential survival spell.

With it, she wouldn’t have to worry about getting scammed when shopping, stepping into traps while exploring, or dealing with hidden threats like “skinwalkers” when interacting with others.

Following the rune patterns from her inherited spell crystal, Yun Xi began slowly tracing them.

Given her current mental attribute, memorizing beginner-level rune sequences was no longer as difficult as when she first started. And Appraisal Magic was much easier to learn than Lightguard.

In just one day, Yun Xi had already mastered a tenth of the Appraisal spell—three times faster than when she’d studied Lightguard.

With five days left in the second closed beta, she was confident she could raise her progress bar on Appraisal Magic to at least half.

What she didn’t know was that as soon as she moved in, she had already attracted the attention of the neighbors.

The exorbitant price of the No. 26 townhouse was something the nearby residents were well aware of.

While 10,000 gold coins wasn’t much for them, the house was just too small—most wealthy buyers wouldn’t even consider it.

Could she be the daughter of a noble from a big city, seeking refuge here? Or perhaps she accidentally ended up in Qinglan Town?

In any case, the neighbors didn’t plan to approach her hastily. But they couldn’t help being curious.

Yun Xi, meanwhile, kept to a routine—eating, sleeping, studying—until the last day of the second beta test, when she finally stopped learning spells.

Tomorrow would mark the end of the second closed beta. The next server opening would be the public launch.

On the final day of beta, Yun Xi planned to explore what kind of goods were being sold in Qinglan Town.

Since she wasn’t familiar with the culture and history of the Jade Plains, her first stop would be the bookstore.

There were only three bookstores in Qinglan Town:

• [Useful Bookstore]
• [Qinglan Town Official Bookstore]
• [Scholar’s Exclusive Bookstore]