Chapter 166: Phoenix City
After meeting the mysterious person within the caravan, Jian Chen had some doubts. Judging from how that Captain Lan had so respectfully called out to the elder in the caravan and that Jian Chen couldn’t measure the elder’s strength at all, the elder was definitely not a Great Saint Master. Against Great Saint Masters, Jian Chen could easily discern their cultivation levels , but when it came to this elder in particular, Jian Chen had no idea.
“It would appear that his strength is at the very least an Earth Saint Master. But for what reason did he give me this badge?” Jian Chen looked back to the purple coin casted medal in his hand. This medal didn’t have any words on it, but there were various patterns running through it.
“Forget it, there isn’t any use to trying to figure this out. I’d best be on the road. Until I have enough strength, it would be best for me to wait until I go to the Holy City.” Jian Chen decided before storing the medal into his Space Ring and continuing on his way.
The road was unusually peaceful; there were many times where he wouldn’t see anyone. Yet sometimes during the day, many caravans and mercenaries would ride by on their magical beasts.
Now that he had a map, Jian Chen was no longer worried about getting lost. In accordance to the map, Jian Chen had walked for 3 days and in the end, he finally reached Phoenix City.
Phoenix City was a Class 2 City encompassing an area of several hundred kilometers. By the time he reached the outskirts, there was already a steady flow of people bustling around. A group of leather wearing mercenaries rode on magical beasts of many sizes while other caravans slowly carried their goods on the road. All sorts of topics were being made as voices blended together.
Jian Chen followed the road for the final stretch of land and slowly made his way past the city walls. Walking besides Jian Chen were other mercenaries that also traveled by themselves. So Jian Chen hadn’t attracted any attention to himself.
By the city gates of Phoenix City, there were many guards standing perfectly straight as they watched with a cold gaze, those who entered the city.
“Stand still, what are you doing?!” At that moment, a cold voice cried out. Turning their heads to look, everyone could see a caravan group being stopped by a single city guard.
Simultaneously, a short but plump man with embroidered clothing walked forward pretending to pull the guard’s hand in a friendly manner as if he was a friend. Pleasantly stuffing a few gold coins into the cold hand of the guard, the man began to smile as he spoke a few words into his ear.
The guard pinched the gold coins given to him by the man before rubbing them together with a serious face before it slowly melted away. Waving his hand with a happier expression, he cried out, “You may enter!”
Practically every merchant that was blocked by the guards would end up having to pay a small fee to enter. This was an extremely common practice on the Tian Yuan Continent, but there were a few merchants that had refused to pay this toll. Of course, the guards would use the pretense of feigning that there were dangerous goods within their caravans and would not allow them to enter before forcing a search on them.
This rudeness had made many people unsatisfied, but because these guards were still the garrisoned soldiers of the city, many people were unable to do anything about them. In the face of these guards, even some of the more violent mercenaries would only be able to suck up their anger.
Jian Chen had however been able to enter Phoenix City without paying the tax. To the guards, Jian Chen was a lone traveler that wasn’t escorting any sort of goods, so they didn’t care about him. It was only for the merchants that they would obstruct a person’s way.
As a Class 2 City, Phoenix City was relatively huge, being bigger than Wake City by a large degree. As soon as Jian Chen had entered the city he walked to the closest stable and bought himself a nice looking horse to ride to the center of the city.
Because of the wideness of the city, if one didn’t have a horse to travel on, it would take over half the day to walk from the east to west gate of Phoenix City.
After traveling on his horse for some time, he finally stopped at a bank. Tying up his horse, he entered the bank.
Inside the bank, Jian Chen converted all of the copper, silver and gold coins on him into purple coins. Only a few of the coins were left unconverted for him to use for daily expenses. Most of the money he had converted came from his time in the Magical Beast Mountain Range where Jian Chen had taken all of the money from the dead mercenaries bodies and Space Belts.
Just before Jian Chen was about to put all of the coins back into his Space Belt, he had counted how many purple coins he had. Unexpectedly, there were around 30,000 purple coins, and added with the purple coins he already had on him, then he had a total of over 40,000 purple coins.
Before he had left the bank, he had collected a purple card from the bank. This card was called the Purple Card by everyone on the Tian Yuan Continent.
Purple Cards were used by the entirety of the Tian Yuan Continent for those who wanted to save space from carrying so many purple coins. A Purple Card was like a Space Belt in that it had its own interdimensional space to hold coins, but it was used to measure the amount of purple coins. With a Purple Card, one would be able to freely visit any bank to access their money. Many higher institutes would even take the Purple Card as payment, so it was a lot more convenient than carrying around individual stacks of purple coins.
The Purple Card was only half the size of Jian Chen’s hand and was created through a special means of refinement. Although the card itself looked rather weak, it was actually very strong; even Earth Saint Masters wouldn’t be able to inflict damage to this card.
Obtaining a Purple Card wasn’t all that hard, but still not so easy that ordinary people could receive one. To obtain one, a person must have at least 10,000 purple coins.
With a Purple Card, not only was it a symbol of one’s identity, but also of one’s wealth.
For purple coins to be added into the Purple Card, it required the bank’s special instrument, so ordinary men would have absolutely no way of tricking the system. However, the banks would only recognize the card and not the owner. Even if one were not the original owner, the Purple Card would still be usable by any bank in the Tian Yuan Continent.
Walking out of the bank, Jian Chen held the Purple Card in his hand. It contained all 40,000 of his purple coins with barely any other coins left for him to use for his own personal interests.
When the people in the bank had seen the Purple Card in Jian Chen’s hands, they all looked at him with an envious expression with many people already looking at him with other ideas.
Jian Chen looked around himself at the people looking back at him and smiled. Placing the Purple Card in his Space Belt, Jian Chen mounted his horse and rode off.