The second item was a piece of beast hide.
At a glance, Ye Zhongming recognized it as the hide of a lifeform on the verge of evolving to level nine, carrying a strong spatial aura.
While not as valuable as the hide of a true level-nine lifeform, in Ye Zhongming’s eyes, it was still a precious material.
Using this as a base, he could craft an exceptional piece of armor—at least blue-grade. With his skills and the addition of other rare materials, a gold-grade piece was almost guaranteed.
He already had some ideas in mind. Once refined, he could begin crafting.
Gold-grade equipment was still considered premium even for a wealthy faction like Cloud Peak.
The third item was a Frostheart—an elementary one.
Unlike Frost Souls, Frosthearts were akin to Artisan’s Hearts in nature. When consumed by evolved, they enhanced ice-based abilities, typically increasing power by 30% to 40%. In other words, their potency could rise by a third or even two-fifths at once.
To achieve such an improvement through normal leveling would require advancing to the next level.
Frosthearts were best suited for evolved with ice-based jobs. None of Cloud Peak’s core members fit the criteria, but one in Chameleon did. The Frostheart would be perfect for that person.
The last item was a small stone, about half the size of a fist, crystal-clear and smooth, cold to the touch.
While everyone knew what a Frostheart was for, no one knew the purpose of this stone. Because Ye Zhongming had spent generously, this item was practically given to him at a low price.
Even Ye Zhongming couldn’t pinpoint what it was, but he sensed a familiar energy from it—one that didn’t belong to the wheel.
The Essence Pavilion didn’t know the stone’s origins either. They had only recognized its uniqueness and consulted many people, but no answers were found. Eventually, it was placed on the third floor for sale, usually at a high price, hoping someone knowledgeable or willing to gamble would buy it. In the end, it went to Ye Zhongming.
He decided to take his time recalling where he had encountered this type of energy before.
There were other items as well, decent in quality, but none struck Ye Zhongming as particularly rare, so he briefly inspected them before storing them away.
As Ye Zhongming reviewed his gains, Xiao Peng, Xia Bai, and even Red Hair had nothing else to do, so they observed the Snow Pattern Ants moving about in their specially crafted ice nest.
Perhaps the worker ants seemed anxious due to the lack of food, displaying signs of agitation.
Xia Bai tossed an intermediate ice-element gemstone into the nest, and the worker ants immediately swarmed toward it like sharks drawn to blood.
Because of their low evolution level, their bodies were still small, making it difficult for them to move the gemstone.
Soon, however, the queen was carried out. She directly climbed onto the gemstone and began eating.
The gemstone visibly shrank and disappeared within minutes.
Since Ye Zhongming had bought these ants to raise them, he wasn’t bothered by this. He even took out all the basic ice-element gemstones he no longer used and let Xia Bai feed them to the ants.
Afterward, he contemplated crafting armor from the beast’s hide.
However, he was called back to the nest a few hours later.
“After feeding them those ice-element gemstones, we went to rest. But I’m certain that when we left, the queen showed no signs of evolution. Yet just now, when I passed by, I noticed its level had increased—it evolved quickly!”
Xiao Peng stared wide-eyed at the now level-three Snow Pattern Ant Queen, utterly astonished.
Wasn’t it supposed to be extremely difficult for these things to evolve? Didn’t they require massive amounts of rare resources? How had just one intermediate and a dozen basic ice-element gemstones triggered an evolution?
Ye Zhongming observed carefully and noticed that the queen seemed lethargic after evolving, surrounded by general ants, likely preparing for another breeding cycle.
The next brood of Snow Pattern Ants would be of a higher level than before.
After some thought, Ye Zhongming began to understand.
He guessed it was something like this: During the time between when the ants were discovered and sold to him, someone—whether the original discoverer or the Essence Pavilion—had likely fed the queen many evolution-boosting resources but saw no results. Assuming the quantities were insufficient, they gave up and sold them to Ye Zhongming.
In reality, the queen had been on the verge of evolution, and those ice-element gemstones provided the final push.
Ye Zhongming had unwittingly scored an enormous bargain.
Had the Snow Pattern Ants been sold at this level, especially after breeding, the price would certainly not have been just a few level-seven monster crystals.
Early the following day, Black Brother arrived. In truth, he had been around the night before, witnessing how many faction leaders wanted to meet the visiting tycoon but were turned away. Black Brother didn’t presume upon their prior connection to knock on the door either.
But this morning was different. Ye Zhongming had sent word that he would meet everyone today.
Behind Black Brother was the leader of his faction, Moonfall Frostplain.
Others with similar intentions had also gathered—all prominent figures in Black Dragon City, much like Black Brother himself. Even if the top leaders hadn’t come personally, these individuals represented half of the city’s elite forces.
However, before they could enter, one of Black Brother’s subordinates panicked, clutching a thick stack of papers.
Black Brother and the others knew what it was—they just didn’t understand why the messenger seemed so flustered.
When Black Brother took the papers and looked, he froze, speechless momentarily.
A faction leader beside him grumbled, “Old Black, this must be the latest national rankings, right? What, did the list grow knives? Scared you stiff?”
Black Brother glanced at him, swallowed hard, and handed over one of the sheets. “See for yourself.”
The man took it, looked down, and nearly dropped the paper in shock.
