“That's not it,” Jack quickly clarified.
“I brought money when I fled.”
“But not much.”
“I had to eat, stay at inns, and avoid the Mist Veil Society along the way.”
“By the time I reached Hastings Port, it was almost all gone.”
Elias nodded thoughtfully.
That made sense.
Even if a runaway noble bastard master knew to bring money before leaving, he wouldn't necessarily understand the concept of budget travel.
Moreover, Jack had brought quite a few things with him.
Just a few items taken at random from his Secret Chest would probably be worth more than an ordinary person's entire net worth.
“Then why didn't you sell some materials?” Elias pointed to the Secret Chest by the bed. “It's not like there's a shortage of buyers in the Arcane Black Market.”
“Me?” Jack blanked for a moment, then pointed to himself, his voice rising.
“Hey! Me?”
“Before you helped me fully charge the Waning Moon Key, did I dare go to a place like that?!”
In the past, his spirituality had been drained by the Waning Moon Key every single day.
A Scale One transcendent didn't have much spirituality to begin with, and he was often drained until only a sliver remained.
Walking into the Arcane Black Market with a chest full of supernatural materials wouldn't be called selling things.
That would be called home delivery.
To make matters worse, he didn't even have a stable hiding place back then.
The Waning Moon Key drained his spirituality intermittently, but it didn't actually make him invisible to others.
If someone targeted him, he might not have been able to escape.
“Seems like it,” Elias stroked his chin, sizing him up.
“If you ran into a few thugs who didn't play by the rules, they'd strip you down to your undergarments.”
“Not only would you lose your materials, but you'd also have to find a way to save your own skin.”
Jack fell silent for two seconds.
“Sir.”
“I have reason to suspect your romantic preferences.”
“Get lost!” Elias rolled his eyes, decisively killing the dangerous topic.
“So, what are you planning to sell me?”
Jack was in no hurry to answer.
He pulled a half-bottle of liquor from his Secret Chest.
The bottle clattered onto the wooden table. The pale silver liquid sloshed gently inside, with a few faint glimmers of spiritual light floating within.
“Spirit-element wine,” Jack said, pushing the bottle forward.
“Aren't you still short of three ounces of spirit-element wine and a sea mirage membrane?”
Elias's eyes lit up instantly.
“You even have the membrane?”
He had been fussing over that sea mirage membrane for more than a day.
The sea mirage he had painstakingly captured had initially been kept in his Gluttonous Stomach.
After soaking in the spiritual gastric juices for several hours, its body had swelled up a bit, and its edges had become shinier, but there was no sign of it shedding its membrane.
Later, Elias had cleared some space in the wooden cabin, found a wooden tub, filled it with seawater, and placed the creature inside.
A day passed.
The sea mirage was doing great.
It was even more relaxed than he was as a lighthouse keeper.
It just wouldn't shed.
Instead, the wooden tub took up a huge portion of the cabin.
Elias had almost stepped into it when he got up in the middle of the night, so he had no choice but to put the thing back into his Gluttonous Stomach.
Now that Jack had suddenly brought up the membrane, Elias thought this runaway young master actually had the finished product in his collection.
“No,” Jack replied bluntly.
“Then why are you talking nonsense!”
Elias's look of anticipation crumbled instantly.
“But I know how to make it shed its membrane early.”
Jack pointed to the copy of 《Velen Supernatural Encyclopedia》 by the head of the bed.
“It's not recorded in the book.”
“This is considered common folk knowledge when handling marine supernatural materials, and I just happen to know it.”
Elias re-examined the bottle on the table.
“How much?”
“Twelve gold crowns for the wine.”
Jack paused, then added:
“Five gold crowns for the method.”
“You're a real swindler!” Elias slapped the table.
The East Bank warehouse token on the table bounced once, then clattered back down.
“You're charging me five gold crowns for a single method?”
“And spirit-element wine isn't that expensive on the outside, is it?”
“Worst case, I'll just buy it myself the next time I go to Hastings Port.”
Jack shook his head.
“That's different.”
“The spirit-element wine I have is much better than the common stuff outside.”
He picked up the bottle and swirled it gently.
The spiritual light inside didn't disperse immediately, remaining evenly suspended in the liquid.
“Spirit-element wine varies in price, and the taste is worlds apart.”
“Adding three ounces of spirit-element wine to your potion recipe isn't just to provide spirituality.”
“It's also to make it taste less terrible when you drink it.”
“Besides, with this half-bottle, after leaving three ounces for your recipe, you'll still have one ounce left to treat the sea mirage.”
“Twelve gold crowns is a fair price; I'm not taking advantage of you.”
Taste.
Elias's expression shifted immediately.
He recalled the experience of drinking his first potion.
The moment that stuff entered his mouth, he couldn't even tell if he was promoting or if someone had poured a pot of dishwater down his throat.
If spirit-element wine really could make the next potion taste slightly less horrible, twelve gold crowns didn't seem entirely unacceptable.
After all, promotion was already dangerous enough.
There was no need to inflict additional workplace injuries on his tongue.
“Fine!”
Elias waved his hand and counted out twelve gold crowns from his freshly earned money.
A series of crisp clinking sounds rang out across the table.
In the blink of an eye, six hundred and twenty-three gold crowns became six hundred and eleven.
Money, when it came, required chasing ships and catching people in dreams.
When it left, it only took Jack stretching out his hand.
Sigh, just treat it as giving the kid some New Year's pocket money.
Elias pushed the money over.
“I'll buy the wine.”
“The method is free.”
Jack was about to reach for it, but his hand paused.
“Why is the method free?”
“Because you're eating and living on my dime all day long,” Elias pointed around the room righteously.
“You burn my lamp oil, drink my fresh water, and eat my supplies.”
“Five gold crowns goes toward rent.”
“Wh—”
Jack opened his mouth.
He looked around the room, his lips twitching.
From his expression, he probably wanted to say that this island didn't belong to Elias either.
But his gaze fell on the twelve gold crowns, and in the end, he swallowed his words.
Some was better than none.
If he kept bargaining, even these twelve might get deducted for water, lamp oil, and dock usage fees.
“Alright,” Jack pocketed the gold crowns.
“Didn't you pick up a lot of silver-rimmed caps earlier?”
“If you have any leftovers from that research, you can take a look at the inside of their shells.”
Elias paused slightly.
“Which research are you talking about?”
“The research where you went beachcombing several days in a row, filling a bag with silver-rimmed caps every time,” Jack answered in all seriousness.
Elias stared at him for a moment.
“The details of the research are confidential.”
“Understood.”
Jack tactfully refrained from pressing further and continued:
“The shells of silver-rimmed caps contain a small amount of mirror salt.”
“If a sea mirage absorbs too much mirror salt in a short period, it will voluntarily shed its old membrane.”
“Oh?”
Elias stood up immediately and dragged the cloth bag filled with silver-rimmed caps from behind the cabinet.
As the mouth of the bag loosened, a dozen or so grayish-white shells rolled onto the floor.
Over the past few days, he had wanted to dump them back into the sea several times.
But between being busy filling the Waning Moon Key and running to Hastings Port overnight, he simply hadn't had the time to deal with them, which had actually saved these things' lives.
Even if he had picked up too many, at least it hadn't been in vain.
Besides, this served as a reminder to Elias.
The 《Velen Supernatural Encyclopedia》 could tell him what lay before his eyes, but it wouldn't necessarily teach him how to use these things once they fell into the hands of fishermen, material merchants, and alchemists.
He had to read books.
But he also had to milk the experts for their experience.
Ideally for free, of course.
Elias squatted down and searched for a while, selecting a silver-rimmed cap with an intact shell.
The two of them quickly cleared a space on the dining table.
The newly purchased measuring cup, pure silver stirring rod, and mortar and pestle were laid out in order, finally being put to use for the first time since their purchase.
Elias pried open the shell, scraped the inner layer according to Jack's instructions, then crushed the shell and placed it into the mortar to slowly grind it into a fine powder.
Amidst the grayish-white powder, a fine, dense silver light gradually emerged.
That was the mirror salt.
“One ounce,” Jack reminded him.
Elias used the measuring cup to measure out one ounce of spirit-element wine and poured it into the mortar.
The remaining liquid was still more than enough for the potion recipe.
The silver powder quickly dispersed upon contact with the wine, and the originally pale silver liquor gradually grew cloudy.
He slowly stirred it with the pure silver stirring rod.
Soon, a cool, alcoholic aroma mingled with the salty, fishy smell of the seawater.
Once prepared, Elias reached into his Gluttonous Stomach and pulled out the translucent blob of the sea mirage.
It was a size larger than when he had first caught it, resting limply in his palm. The faint light inside its body waxed and waned slowly with its breathing-like pulsations.
Elias placed it in a wooden basin filled with seawater, then slowly poured the mixed mirror salt wine along the edge of the basin.
At first, the sea mirage showed no reaction.
After a few breaths, its translucent edges suddenly tightened.
The fine silver light in the water seemed to be drawn in, rapidly gathering toward it.
Strands of mirror salt were swallowed into its body.
The seawater in the wooden basin also began to double in vision.
Even though there was clearly only one sea mirage at the bottom of the basin, three or four identical outlines briefly layered beneath the surface, quickly merging back into one as the mirror salt decreased.
The sea mirage's body, which had been so pale it was almost invisible, gradually took on a pearlescent luster.
“It's working!”
Elias's spirits lifted, and he reached out, wanting to add a bit more shell powder to the basin.
Jack grabbed his wrist to stop him.
“You can't add any more.”
“If there's too much mirror salt, it won't just shed its membrane.”
“It'll be pickled to the bone.”
Elias looked down at the wooden basin.
The sea mirage was slowly stretching in the water, and a few faint, milky-white patterns had already appeared on its surface membrane.
“As long as it sheds its membrane, I don't mind eating it tonight even if it is pickled to the bone.”
Jack stared at him in astonishment.
“You even want to try eating this thing?”
“Ugh...”
“You don't understand, child.”
Elias gazed at the wooden basin, his expression profound.
“This is a form of homesickness.”
“Where I come from, people eat anything.
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