Filthy Cultivation: I Pierced the Heavens with the Merit System

Upon hearing this, Li Fuyao smiled and glanced at him. She then lowered her eyes, gently scratching behind Bai Suifeng's ear, and stood up, carrying the whimpering baby in her arms, and walked to the side.

"In case you get too excited and dizzy, and then hit your head and hurt it. If you become stupid, I don't want to cause trouble for others."

As expected, Zhang Ze coughed, spitting out saliva and tea, making him look like a setting spray that had been pressed.

After he caught his breath and his face flushed, repeatedly apologizing for his rudeness, Li Fuyao calmly looked at him and solemnly instructed him:

"Senior Brother Zhang, the setup is complete. I'm afraid someone will come to buy my information soon. You must be fully prepared and be extremely careful in your actions, so as not to expose your identity!"

Hearing Li Fuyao bring up serious matters, Zhang Ze also straightened his expression and carefully inquired:

"So, shall we proceed as previously agreed?"

Upon hearing this, Li Fuyao pondered for a long while before pursing her lips and shaking her head, saying:

"No, change it. You need to raise the price of the intelligence to one thousand spirit stones per piece."

"What?! Young Master Duo?!"

Zhang Ze took another sip of tea and coughed so hard it felt like setting spray. This time, however, he didn't bother to apologize. Instead, he stood up in shock, coughing and asking incredulously:

"One thousand spirit stones per share?!"

"Correct."

Li Fuyao nodded succinctly, then casually stroked Bai Suifeng's slightly twitching ear, adding:

"It's one thousand mid-grade spirit stones."

Zhang Ze stood there feeling a little dizzy. The excitement from before was gone. He leaned on the back of the chair for a long time before hesitatingly said to Li Fuyao with a bitter face:

“But five hundred low-grade spirit stones is already the highest price for intelligence in the city. You’ve increased it by more than two hundred times. This is just too much…”

"Too expensive? You think it's too pricey?"

Li Fuyao took out another cup of spiritual juice from her spatial storage, squinted like a cat, took a small sip, and then looked up at Zhang Ze with a half-smile:

"Only this price is worthy of my status."

She watched as Zhang Ze wiped his sweat with a sudden realization and sighed, then nodded in satisfaction, swallowed the sweet and refreshing juice in her mouth, and reassured him once again:

"Besides, don't worry, our target customers aren't short of this little bit of money."

Although Zhang Ze still had doubts after hearing Li Fuyao's words, he felt a little more at ease seeing her confident appearance.

He obediently nodded, deciding to do as Li Fuyao instructed. After finalizing some details with the young girl in front of him, Zhang Ze left the courtyard with mixed feelings.

In the following days, Zhang Ze began to spread information about Li Fuyao according to the original plan, and the price of the information was indeed as Li Fuyao said, as high as a thousand mid-grade spirit stones per piece.

The price immediately caused a sensation in Yanjian City.

"Just who is Li Fuyao, and why is her information price so high?"

"Who knows? But I've heard that she's unpredictable and has a high level of cultivation. Maybe she really does have some amazing background."

"Hmph, even if she really has some skills, she's not worth that much, is she? I bet there's something fishy going on here!"

To the ordinary cultivators who just wanted to watch the spectacle, these information brokers were simply asking for an exorbitant amount, driven mad by greed. They either hurled insults and slander at them or dismissed them with disdain.

However, when the scions of powerful families who had the resources to compete for the twenty inner disciple spots learned of the price, they were genuinely intrigued.

A thousand mid-grade spirit stones, though not a small sum, were considered a respectable price for this formidable enemy they had never met before. Moreover, after learning that most people couldn't afford it, whether or not they had acquired information about Li Fuyao became a standard for comparison and boasting among the disciples of various aristocratic families.

Upon learning the price of the information, Yu Zhenzhen was so enraged that she smashed many valuable and rare items.

She felt as if she had been severely humiliated by Li Fuyao, her self-esteem burning with pain, and she secretly vowed to make these intelligence brokers pay the price.

So she used the power of the Yu family to start a large-scale search for information about Li Fuyao, hoping to find it herself and sell it at a low price to dampen the spirits of Li Fuyao and these information brokers.

No matter how hard she investigated, she couldn't find out who the information came from, let alone any information about Li Fuyao other than that of the orphan girl from the mountain village.

This feeling of helplessness and frustration made her even more annoyed. The rare items in the room broke one after another, and in the end, she had no choice but to grit her teeth and buy a set in a fit of resentment.

Amid such polarized opinions, Zhang Ze, who was in charge of operations, found that although he had lost many small clients, quite a few people still gritted their teeth and bought the information out of curiosity or for other purposes.

Upon closer examination, it turned out that, just as Li Fuyao had said, they had indeed made a fortune.

Zhang Ze admired Li Fuyao immensely and, following her instructions, became even more careful to conceal his identity, ensuring that he would not be discovered.

Having earned so much spirit stone that his hands were sore, Li Fuyao was in a good mood and gave Zhang Ze half a ton of spirit stones as a bonus.

Zhang Ze accepted the share of the profits with tears in his eyes, finally having enough spirit stones to save his grandmother's life.

He cried bitterly in his arms with his grandmother, whom he depended on for survival, at home. This even caused Li Fuyao to receive two small amounts of merit points, which left her puzzled for a long time.

Apart from that, she spent her days either cultivating or going out to do good deeds, completely ignoring the gossip and searches.

Time flies amidst all the hustle and bustle, and the day of the Ascension Competition has arrived in the blink of an eye.