Chapter 681: Secret Exchanges at the Star Hall

This chunk of Micro-Mass Sentient Alloy, weighing over a hundred kilos, was priced at 50,000 Star Hall points. Not exactly a fortune, but far from cheap.

Song Chi still wasn’t in a hurry to make any trades. He didn’t know how many points he’d end up with from all the parts he’d stockpiled, so it made sense to check out everything before making a decision.

Scrolling further down the seventh product list, Song Chi spotted quite a few interesting things, including a black, top-grade energy shield—just the component the Heavenly Ruin needed most right now.

But after seeing that colored Chaos Energy Generator on the Divine Dynasty’s list earlier, he couldn’t muster much excitement for run-of-the-mill black energy shields anymore.

His gaze drifted and soon landed on the final section—the eighth product screen.

“Wait, what’s this…”

Compared to the seven lists before, this last product screen held barely ten items, but every single one could drive anyone wild.

Chaos Crystal

Black Upgraded Fire Source

8th-Tier Star Beast: Floating-Land Devourer Slave Certificate

A single 10th-Tier Golden Apple

Colored Lower-Grade Oddity: Moon-Swallowing Viper’s Remains

…

When Song Chi saw the colored lower-grade oddity, the Moon-Swallowing Viper’s Remains, his eyes locked onto it.

The shock only lasted a moment. Then it felt almost inevitable. The Beidou Sevenstar Hall had stood for over two hundred thousand years, and its Star River-class Captains were far from rare. In all that time, it was no wonder someone there would stumble onto a legendary oddity like this.

Besides, this Moon-Swallowing Viper’s Remains was only an oddity. It couldn’t be refined into a corresponding-grade battleship component. That alone slashed its value sharply.

Just as the name suggested, the Moon-Swallowing Viper’s Remains was made from the corpse of a high-level star beast by that name. For Captains of the Torch Kingdom, these kinds of oddities were practically useless.

‘That must be why this oddity ended up for sale at the Star Hall store…’

As soon as that thought crossed his mind, Song Chi was sure he was right.

No doubt about it, colored legendary oddities were incredibly rare. After so many years of market trade, the only colored component currently aboard the Heavenly Ruin still came from the Torch Kingdom. That said enough.

With the terrifying foundation of the Beidou Sevenstar Hall, Song Chi was certain some of the hall’s top battleships had colored components. But even so, there couldn’t be that many. Unless something major happened, no one would ever put an oddity that could become a colored component up for sale.

Lost in thought, Song Chi soon spotted a special note below the Moon-Swallowing Viper’s Remains.

Oddity: Moon-Swallowing Viper’s Remains

Quality: Colored/Lower Grade

Convertible: None

Notes: After a Ninth-Tier Moon-Swallowing Viper died, its corpse was caught in the aftermath of a mythic battlefield, tossed about in a chaos of legendary energy storms. For hundreds of thousands of years it was washed by this energy, eventually turning into a unique, colored legendary oddity.

Message from Haoyue: This item is only available for trade for special resources needed to promote a Star-Annihilator-class Ship to Star River-class.

“Haoyue?”

Seeing that name, Song Chi froze a moment, then tried tapping the Star Order of Beidou Sevenstar Main Hall in his hand.

To be more exact, he opened the Beidou Star Hall Group Chat on the token.

Just like the Yaoguang Star Order group chat, the Beidou Star Hall chat let all subordinate members communicate freely online.

Of course, the Beidou group chat’s functions were even stronger. The Yaoguang Star Order only connected Yaoguang Star Tower members as long as they were within the Torch Human Galaxy Cluster. Leave that area and it would disconnect. The Beidou Star Hall chat, though, had no such limits.

How did Song Chi know this?

Because right now, several top figures, including Greedwolf Hall Master, were chatting live there—and they’d already returned to the Demon Serpent Floating-Land by then.

Browsing the Beidou Star Hall group, Song Chi soon found the member using the nickname Haoyue among the hundreds online.

Through their group notes, Song Chi got a basic idea of who Haoyue was.

Once a member of Yuheng Star Tower, they’d advanced to Star-Annihilator Captain thirty thousand years ago, then joined the Beidou Sevenstar Hall main hall. A few thousand years back, they managed to push their own warship to the top Star-Annihilator class, and ever since they’d been working hard to break through to Star River-class.

With that information in hand, a flood of thoughts raced through Song Chi’s mind.

After weighing his own situation, he seemed to come to a decision.

‘Might as well give it a try…’

That Moon-Swallowing Viper’s Remains was obviously on sale by Star Hall member Haoyue, who specified that only special resources for advancing from Star-Annihilator to Star River-class were of interest.

Song Chi wasn’t exactly poor, and after thinking it over for a while, he figured he could try trading for it.

Once he decided, he didn’t hesitate. With a spatial ripple, he exited the Beidou Sevenstar Hall.

As the parent hall over Yaoguang Star Tower, Beidou Sevenstar Hall truly outclassed it in every way.

At the very least, Song Chi could go straight from the main hall without needing to return to Yaoguang Star Tower first. After logging out from Beidou, he immediately materialized atop Dragon‑Spine Continent, the same place where he’d logged into Yaoguang Tower before.

Clearly, Beidou Sevenstar Hall’s permissions included everything under Yaoguang Star Tower and the other Beidou Seven Towers—it all fell under Beidou’s control.

No time to marvel at that. Back on Dragon‑Spine, Song Chi quickly logged in to the Omniverse Market.

This time there were no surprises—he entered the market with ease.

Hurrying toward the sealed storage chamber, Song Chi finally let out a long breath.

Everything that had happened in that bloody space kept him on edge. Now, finally back in the Omniverse Market, he could truly relax.

At the very least, that meant nothing had gone wrong with the Market Pocket Realm. His greatest trump card was still in hand.

‘So that means…the problem really did lie with that blood-red space—the so-called Chaos Nest. What exactly is it?’

…

Half an hour later, on the ever-moving Dragon‑Spine Continent in the endless black starry sky, inside the Song Family’s Dragon Whale Ancestral Hall—

With a shimmer of spatial energy, Song Chi appeared out of thin air.

Once he’d found his footing in the ancestral hall, a faint blue glow flickered between his brows. In miniaturized form, the Heavenly Ruin warship appeared at his side.

Inside the ship’s main control room, Song Chi pressed the hunk of silvery alloy straight into the battleship beneath his feet.

Half an hour was all it took to finish trading at the Star Hall store.

All the component parts he’d stockpiled over centuries—the whole lot was traded in, earning him more than two hundred thousand Star Hall points.

With those hundreds of thousands of points, he ended up trading for four items.

Micro-Mass Sentient Alloy

Enough Soulstones

A single Nurturing Fruit

The Micro-Mass Sentient Alloy and Soulstones were self-explanatory. The Nurturing Fruit was a rare floating-land spirit fruit that did just one thing: boost the chances of its user conceiving a child.

There was no other way. He’d spent centuries with Shen Youran, and still they’d never had a child. It was something that weighed heavily on them both.

With the Heavenly Ruin about to advance, once the upgrade succeeded Song Chi himself wouldn’t be far from reaching seventh tier. By then, their chances of conceiving would be even slimmer.

Everyone knew the greater and more perfected a lifeform, the harder it was to have children. Song Chi wanted to give it another earnest try before that happened.

Of course, those three things didn’t use up over two hundred thousand points. Song Chi still had more than a hundred thousand left in his Star Hall account.

He’d originally planned to grab a drop of eighth-tier Dominion Origin Blood from the store. The Heavenly Ruin only had seventh-tier Origin Blood right now, but if he could replace it with eighth-tier, it would definitely improve the chances of a successful upgrade.

The only reason he hadn’t gone through with it yet was he wanted to see what they’d get from the coming trip to the Red Star Superdimensional Continent. If they managed to hunt at least one eighth-tier alien, he could easily extract the blood himself using Market abilities—so neither Origin Blood nor Dominion Soul would be short then.

With that huge piece of Micro-Mass Sentient Alloy absorbed, Song Chi could feel the Heavenly Ruin’s structure becoming decidedly more lively. That meant when he activated Mythical Mech Form in the future, both its power and duration would see a clear bump.

After integrating the alloy, Song Chi took out the traded Soulstones and the Eternal Dominion Soul Nest component.

After a round of enhancements, that part reached level 80.

Eternal Dominion Soul Nest Lv80

Quality: Black

Unique Attribute: Dominion Soul Nest

Consumption: 4600/s (Eon Energy Points)

Effect: Burning one million Eon Points, instantly releases all Dominion Souls stored in the nest. For the next 50 minutes, the Captain can command those souls to attack any chosen target. The strength of the souls depends on the original rank of each. After 50 minutes, the souls will disperse on their own.

…

{Dominion Soul Nest: The component contains a space to store Dominion Souls. Any enemy killed directly by the equipped battleship has its soul drawn into the nest, where the unique energy restores it to full power. (Note: Currently supports up to 8th-tier souls.)}

Past the eighth tier, this part’s attributes improved dramatically—it surpassed all of Song Chi’s previous hopes.

With this component, once the Red Star Superdimensional Continent journey paid off, he’d have another major source of profit: Dominion Souls.

…

Omniverse Market, Free Stall Area.

The latest market rush had been going for hours, and by now there were well over a hundred thousand foreign traders crowded into the stalls.

Song Chi, disguised as a Blueblood, blended right in.

He stopped in front of a stall run by a gnoll radiating fifth-tier power.

Eyeing a very familiar rhombus crystal on display, Song Chi asked,

“Hey, this ore…”

He didn’t finish the question—suddenly stopping midsentence. The abruptness made the gnoll vendor glare in suspicion, its savage air intensifying.

Song Chi had no time to deal with it, though, setting the crystal back on the stand and quickly slipping away into the crowd.

That rhombus crystal was just a kind of ore valued in the Torch Human Civilization’s territory, but compared to something as big as a seventh-tier Dominion being officially stepping into the market, it was nothing.

That’s right: just now, Song Chi sensed a seventh-tier being enter the Omniverse Market.

The market had been able to host seventh-tiers for a while, but this was the first time a Dominion had actually shown up.

But the surprise was, the new seventh-tier didn’t come through the usual market vortex gate—they’d arrived from the market’s inn.

Traveler’s Inn—wasn’t that the very room tied to the Market-Walking Token held by Levann, the fifth-tier witcher from the Witcher Civilization?

Could it be…

Something clicked. Mobilizing his ninth-tier Dominion Power from the market, Song Chi sent a quiet probe that way.

A glint crossed his eyes. The newcomer was indeed a witcher—a Dominion-class true spirit witcher from a powerful Witcher Civilization.

At Song Chi’s level, ordinary seventh-tier Dominions did little to faze him. He’d already ended more than a few with the Heavenly Ruin’s cannons.

Why was he so elated? This wasn’t your average event.

This true spirit witcher’s decision meant everything. From now on, high-level guests behind the market regulars would finally feel reassured.

With the true spirit witcher’s presence, Song Chi could already see the future: more and more Dominion beings would arrive at the Omniverse Market. And that was fantastic news for him.

For starters, trade quality was about to rise sharply.

Even more, after centuries of dealing, Song Chi knew that this Levann’s patron—the true spirit witcher—was on friendly terms with another heavyweight in the Witcher Civilization: the Bloodline Sorcerers’ Family.

And why was that important?

Because in the Witcher Civilization, the Bloodline Sorcerers’ true strength came from their own bloodline power.

Based on information Song Chi had gathered from various sources, several dominant bloodline families within the Witcher Civilization were serpent bloodline clans.

Which pretty much answered his question.

The whole reason Song Chi wanted to trade for the Moon-Swallowing Viper’s Remains was this.

The fact that he already knew a potential client who could make use of this colored oddity was what pushed him to target it. Otherwise, why go to all that trouble?