Chapter 908: Medicine Pavilion (1/2)

Chapter 908: Medicine Pavilion

Immediately, conversations rippled through the crowd.

“He’s actually charging a fee!!”

“Doggone-it! How shameless! How fake!”

“Let’s go to some other peak. None of the other alchemists charge merit points!”

Almost immediately, tens of thousands of apprentice alchemists flicked their sleeves and left. Meng Hao watched them leave and sighed.

“These Fang Clan people are so stingy,” he thought. “There were so many people before, but as soon as I mentioned charging merit points, so many of them just got up and left….”

In the end, only about a thousand people remained behind. To them, one merit point wasn’t very much; considering it was Meng Hao who was lecturing, they felt it was worth it.

This time, Meng Hao lectured for six hours, after which, he collected several thousand merit points, then left the Dao of Alchemy Division and returned to his Immortal’s cave. A few hours later, Fang Xi returned, looking both excited and cautious at the same time. The parrot perched on one of his shoulders, the meat jelly on the other. He looked very proud of himself.

“Coz! We really made a profit this time!”

Meng Hao laughed, and his eyes glowed with bright light. In the Fang Clan, merit points were essentially the same thing as spirit stones, or even Immortal jades. Anything you wanted required an exchange of merit points.

Meng Hao waved his sleeve, producing a jade medallion. After scanning it with divine sense, he partitioned a hundred merit points and transferred them to Fang Xi.

“We need to make sure the apprentice alchemists you hired don’t get discouraged. Tell them that the better they do in promoting me, the more merit points they can earn.”

Fang Xi was actually quite excited. He had never before thought of using such a method to earn merit points. Normally speaking, the most he could ever get in a one-month period was about five hundred. But just now, it only took about six hours to make several thousand. To him, it made Meng Hao even more enigmatic than before.

It was at this point that Fang Xi said, “Coz, I promised them ten points apiece….”

“Don’t be stingy, Fang Xi,” Meng Hao replied, sounding very solemn. “Look, don’t take this the wrong way, but you’re simply too stingy. You need to think big! It’s just a bit of money, right?! If cultivators like us are constantly thinking about material things, then how can we ever increase our cultivation base?”

Fang Xi gaped for a moment in hesitation, but couldn’t hold back from carefully saying, “Coz, what I mean is… you didn’t give enough. I promised them ten per person, and I hired 173 people….”

Meng Hao’s face immediately flickered, and he said nothing for a moment.

His silence caused Fang Xi to immediately get nervous, and he quickly continued, “Coz, I know I messed up. Next time I hire them, I’ll tell them it’ll be fifty per person.”

Meng Hao’s cheek suddenly twitched. Taking a deep breath, he looked at Fang Xi and sincerely said, “Fang Xi, listen. You haven’t lived the hard life, so you don’t know how difficult things can be. Do you know what cultivators like us use up the most? Resources! Spirit Stones! Immortal jades!

“If you want to be stronger than everyone else, then you need more spirit stones! More resources! That’s the path to power!

“Now, don’t take this the wrong way, but you need to learn how to work hard and live a simple life! Be diligent, thrifty! Learn how to take only one merit point, and split it ten ways! That’s how cultivators like us can reach the top and stay there!” Meng Hao patted Fang Xi’s shoulder. Suppressing the inward pain he felt, he took out his command medallion and once again sent his divine sense out, causing a thousand merit points to transfer over.

“Remember what I just told you,” Meng Hao urged. “One merit point, split ten ways…. You can’t just throw your money away!”

Fang Xi gaped at Meng Hao in utter shock. The words he had spoken just now were the complete opposite of what he had said before. And yet, both made sense.

In the end, Meng Hao couldn’t hold back from adding, “Next time you hire people, it’s one merit point per person. That should be enough.”

Sighing, he turned and headed into his residence.

Of the more than three thousand merit points he had started out with, he now had less than half left. It was quite a blow.

Add to that the fact that later that night, Meng Hao had to duplicate more Spirit Elixir to use on the Nirvana Fruit, and the result was that by the following day, his bag of holding once again seemed sadly shrunken. By that time, Meng Hao truly felt as if he were about to go crazy.

He loved spirit stones, and loved being wealthy. Furthermore, what he loved least was spending his spirit stones….

To him, it felt like draining out his own blood.

At dawn, Meng Hao emerged. When Fang Xi saw him, he stared in shock.

“Coz, what’s wrong?” he asked, concerned.

Meng Hao’s eyes were completely red, and his expression had become somewhat vicious. He took a deep breath and cleared his head. Deep within his eyes, a brilliant light flickered.

“I HAVE to get rich! I HAVE to get merit points!!”

Meng Hao returned to the Dao of Alchemy Division, and to Peak #7191. Yet again, he lectured about plants and vegetation. However, this time, there were actually fewer people than last time, only about nine hundred.

There wasn’t much he could do. In order to get as many merit points as possible, he lectured for an entire day before leaving in exhaustion.

Each time he came after that, there were fewer people. After about a month, there were just over four hundred people who came, causing Meng Hao to sigh. The ones that stayed behind were the original group of apprentice alchemists, the ones whose fervor toward Meng Hao was the most intense.

Among their number was also tier 1 alchemist Fang Qun, who fairly worshipped Meng Hao.