020 A Sizzling Transaction

Karen had barely left Ogorun’s side when a system notification chimed in her ear.

“Ding! The Undead Mine in your territory has been completed!”

Hearing the alert, Karen was momentarily stunned. Honestly, so many things had happened over the past few days that she had almost forgotten about the Undead Mine.

Snapping back to reality, she quickly opened her territory’s status panel and brought up the attributes for the Undead Mine.

…

Undead Mine
Building Level: 1
Description: A special undead territory structure built within a mine, with a chance to extract rare items.
Effect:
Undead Mining Lv1 (Undead mining in the mine gain an additional 5 experience points each!)
P.S. There is a one in a hundred thousand chance of obtaining special items during mining.
Capacity: 1,000 undead
Maintenance Energy: 500 per day
Upgrade Condition: Extract 50 special items
…

Staring at the attributes, Karen fell into thought. The Undead Mine’s function was roughly similar to the Small Tomb, providing the undead a place to settle and slowly enhancing their power.

The only difference was that the Undead Mine could hold more undead and had the potential to yield special items, though it demanded more territory energy to maintain.

Five hundred energy a day meant fifteen thousand per month—a much steeper cost than the Small Tomb.

This made Karen somewhat reluctant. Though she had plenty of territory energy now, spending fifteen thousand monthly was still a heavy burden.

Unfortunately, this kind of building was non-refundable.

So Karen could only hope that the Undead Mine would soon bring her some pleasant surprises.

Sighing softly, after closing the Undead Mine panel, Karen casually opened Tiegu’s status page.

Seeing that Tiegu’s power had risen to the third-tier exceptional level in just three days, she nodded with satisfaction.

Though she didn’t know where Tiegu had gone, the current situation suggested it wasn’t a bad thing; Tiegu’s experiences could even be called serendipitous.

Karen now eagerly awaited how powerful Tiegu would become once its adventure was over.

……

Meanwhile, at the Undead Market.

After Karen left, Ogorun spent most of the day collecting his thoughts.

Having finally converted what he obtained from Karen into his own resources and preparing to make a big move, he stepped outside only to find he couldn’t accomplish anything.

Both Karen and Ogorun had underestimated the explosive demand in the “Corpses” and “Whispers of the Dead” markets.

After Baili was the first to take the plunge, a flood of merchants followed swiftly.

So many traders came to sell “Whispers of the Dead” and “Corpses” that a single U-iron couldn’t handle the volume. Reluctantly, Ogorun had to focus on managing this issue.

Thus, he witnessed the cruel scene of his hard-earned, glittering gold slipping through his fingers bit by bit.

What was even crueler was that Ogorun soon realized the money in his pockets was nowhere near enough.

Although later merchants brought large quantities of high-quality corpses similar to Baili’s, many were low-tier bodies. Such corpses were abundant in the Silver Hand’s mass graveyard, so they could easily dig up piles of them. Since Karen didn’t fuss over quality—even just the bones were acceptable—these low-tier corpses flowed endlessly into the Undead Market.

Under these circumstances, Ogorun’s stash of coins lasted only two days before being completely depleted.

With no other choice, Ogorun had to seek out Karen.

Before Ogorun found Karen, however, Cliff’s men had already arrived at her location.

The reason Cliff’s men came so quickly was mainly due to Baili’s recent dealings.

Though Baili’s trade was good news for Karen, bringing her a large number of fourth-tier corpses and opening up the market, it had enormous repercussions in the Bourbon Kingdom, especially in Odor City.

The incident couldn’t be concealed. Soon after Baili received his payment, word spread quickly throughout Odor City.

The news sparked great turmoil. On one hand, Baili’s huge profits stirred covetousness in Odor City and even Bayue City.

This forced the kingdom to deploy guards to watch over the graveyards. Still, some with malicious intent secretly prepared to steal corpses.

Within just two days, over a dozen corpse theft incidents were caught.

Such events had a very negative impact on the Bourbon Kingdom.

Cliff, known to be somewhat timid, saw the bad influence in Odor City and immediately sent men to find Karen, urging her to cool things down.

They feared that pushing too hard might provoke an extreme reaction from the Bourbon Kingdom.

Truthfully, matters in the Bourbon Kingdom were not hard to manage. Karen only needed to issue a declaration: “We do not accept or purchase corpses through illegal channels.”

Though the statement sounded laughable, it was quite effective.

At least by making this declaration, if the Bourbon Kingdom later investigated, Karen could respond with a clear stance.

However, the issue of funds was much tougher.

While Karen could get money from Flor and Cliff, buying corpses and “Whispers of the Dead” was a bottomless pit.

Relying on them might not be enough to cover the expenses.

In the end, in utter desperation, Karen turned to the trio she had imprisoned in the “Tower of Bones”—Dorn and his two companions.

Their ransom totaled 6,000 gold coins, but Karen needed supplies delivered within half a month.

Five days had passed, and though their merchant guild struggled to find some fourth-tier and even higher-tier corpses, the gathered resources were far from sufficient.

With Karen short on money, she simply told them to provide funds instead.

Upon hearing this opportunity, Dorn and his associates’ merchant guild sprang into action.

By the seventh day of their captivity, they delivered the collected supplies and the equivalent of 4,500 gold coins to Karen.

With this money in hand, trading of “Corpses” and “Whispers of the Dead” at the Undead Market, which had stalled for two days, resumed.

However, this time Karen exercised some restraint, not spending all 4,500 gold coins. Instead, she set aside 2,000 gold for Ogorun as operational capital for the market.

Even with that reserve, Karen managed to acquire a large quantity of “Whispers of the Dead” and corpses.

:.:.