For the slightly domineering actions of the woman in red, Eric Carter was already starting to feel impatient. Seemingly brushing dust off the lid of the box, he actually, without much thought, lightly swept past the wrist of the woman in red. The latter immediately felt a numbness in her arm, and in the instant she let go, Eric Carter had already closed the box and picked it up.

  “Excuse me, coming through.” With the box in hand, Eric Carter said no more, quickly walked out of the shop, and in the blink of an eye disappeared into the crowd.

  “This young man is quite interesting.” The woman in red shook her jade-like wrist, but wasn’t annoyed. A hint of doubt flashed in her eyes as she thought to herself.

  “Mr. Harris, do you know that young man? By the way, what did he say after he came in?”

  “Miss Sullivan, that young fellow came to my shop for the first time. As soon as he arrived, he said he only wanted to buy raw jade. You saw the rest—he picked out a box of raw jade, paid, and left…”

  “Oh…” The woman in red responded casually. Her slender jade fingers touched the remaining raw jade, and with each piece she examined, the look in her eyes grew more and more serious. “All the ones left are waste jade. That boy’s ability to distinguish jade is truly impressive. His sensitivity might even surpass Grandpa’s by a bit.”

  The woman in red’s surname was Sullivan, her name Grace Sullivan. She was the only daughter of the chairman of Changfeng Group—a classic family business with a stellar reputation in Shanghai’s business world, and the group’s financial strength ranked among the top hundred in the country. Of course, these were just the things on the surface.

  The The Sullivan Family was actually one of the many unofficial cultivation families hidden in the secular world. So-called cultivation families were mostly vassals of major sects in the cultivation world of the Central Plains, and their own cultivation was only at the entry level. They exchanged financial support for the sects they served in return for cultivation methods. In fact, among the many hidden cultivation families, the The Sullivan Family was only middle-tier.

  “Such a person can’t be let go. I’ll have to investigate his background first…” After making up her mind, Grace Sullivan greeted Mr. Harris and left Zhenyu Zhai. In Shanghai, it was no difficult task for the The Sullivan Family to look into someone’s background.

Chapter 7: Setting Up the Array in the Suburbs

  In the guise of Brian Cooper, Eric Carter’s school life had already passed three days in the blink of an eye. In those three days, the total time he spent at school didn’t even add up to two hours. All three days of placement exams went the same way: he handed in his paper exactly half an hour in, then left with a simple “I’m not feeling well.”

  Such a bold and reckless student was extremely rare in a prestigious city key high school with a long history, because anyone with eyes—even his classmates—could tell that Brian Cooper wasn’t actually sick.

  But the strange thing was, all three days of leave were approved by the homeroom teacher. Not only that, but the teacher was extremely concerned, urging Brian Cooper to rest well at home and not to force himself to come to school. He was only allowed back in class after a full recovery, and any lessons missed during his illness would be made up for him individually. He was told to rest assured.

  In front of all forty-six students of Class 1, Grade 9, Brian Cooper simply nodded calmly, accepting the kindness, and left the classroom in style under the envious and admiring gazes of his peers.

  At that moment, Mr. Bolton watched Brian Cooper’s receding figure with a surge of pride in his heart. “This is a student I’ve taught myself. Even when sick, he can easily score first in the entire grade. And this is a historic first, because in all the placement exams over the three days, Brian Cooper scored full marks on every subject—including the Chinese test, which is almost impossible to get a perfect score on…”

  After leaving the school gate, Eric Carter immediately hailed a taxi and headed straight for the outskirts of Shanghai—Nanhui.

  Three days earlier, Eric Carter had bought fifty-one pieces of jade that met the lower-grade spirit stone standard at Zhenyu Zhai. After asking around for a remote area in Shanghai, he spent money to rent a three-story house built by locals at the northernmost edge of Nanhui District.

  Because it was a private house and Eric Carter paid readily, the local people in the suburbs, being simple and honest, didn’t ask many questions. On the basis of mutual “trust,” they reached a rental agreement: three thousand yuan per month, with Eric Carter paying three months’ rent upfront.

  After renting the three-story house at twice the market price, Eric Carter made only one small request: that he not be disturbed by anyone for the next three months. In fact, this was the key reason he chose this house—there were no neighbors within five hundred meters, the surroundings were all farmland, and there was a small river behind the house. It was very quiet.

  Eric Carter cleared out the top floor of the house and even had workers break open a skylight about three meters in diameter in the roof, installing high-transparency tempered glass imported from Germany. At night, silver moonlight would pour into the room, making it dazzlingly beautiful.

  Of course, Eric Carter didn’t do this for the atmosphere or the view. Over these three days, using the time left after each exam, Eric Carter finally used forty-nine lower-grade spirit stones to set up the “Heaven and Earth Treasure Refining Spirit Array.”

  The Heaven and Earth Treasure Refining Spirit Array was a type of spirit-gathering array. Although it was an entry-level formation, for someone who had only just begun to gather inner breath and had not yet built a foundation, setting up this array consumed an enormous amount of energy.