Chapter 173: Crossing Two Realms to Play the Smuggler

Seeing the other party staring intently at the treasure, the Lizard King felt a pang of regret.

"Lord Dragon King, if you are interested, I am willing to offer you ten gold bricks—no, twenty..." it replied cautiously, a look of profound reluctance and pain crossing its face.

This guy... Lu Chen was once again rendered speechless.

Guarding thousands of tons of gold, yet it was only willing to part with a few bricks. It was stingy to the extreme.

However, Lu Chen truly had no interest in such trinkets, so he simply and directly refused.

The Lizard King breathed a sigh of relief inwardly and then led him into the second cavern.

Upon seeing the piles of spiritual stones covering the ground, Lu Chen fell into a daze once more, his reptilian eyes filled with surging excitement.

A rough estimate suggested that there were at least 100,000 spiritual stones in this cavern alone.

Perhaps due to the erosion and scorching heat of the magma, the spiritual stones before him were not as regular in shape as the ones Lu Chen had previously acquired, and their surfaces contained numerous cracks and impurities.

They looked pitted, rough, and far from smooth.

Yet, the steady waves of energy radiating from within left no doubt as to their true identity as spiritual stones.

First-grade, second-grade, third-grade... there were even entities suspected to be fifth-grade spiritual stones.

He had to admit, Lu Chen was thoroughly tempted.

For a split second, his previous thought resurfaced.

Should he slaughter all these creatures and monopolize the spiritual stone treasury?

A moment later, he regained his rationality.

He could not kill them!

It was not because Lu Chen had grown soft-hearted or unable to strike; these creatures were merely alien fierce beasts, not humans from Blue Star, so wiping out their race would carry no heavy consequences.

The crucial point was to take a long-term view. Rather than draining the pond to catch the fish, he preferred sustainable fishing.

Before entering the dragon's lair, Lu Chen had already figured out how to utilize the lizard tribe.

These creatures possessed a natural constitution resistant to high temperatures and high pressures, allowing them to venture deep into the internal mineral veins of volcanic magma to search for spiritual stones. Because of this, the alien dog-headed cultivators had kept them captive here.

As long as he maintained good relations with them, he would have a continuous, inexhaustible supply of spiritual stones.

Wiping out the entire lizard tribe would indeed yield a massive harvest in the short term, but it would be a one-time deal. Acquiring new spiritual stones in the future would become exceedingly difficult.

Up until now, Lu Chen still did not know whether he could venture as deep into the magma as the lizard tribe to search for spiritual stones.

If he could, exterminating the clan would certainly be worth considering.

"Great King, according to our previous agreement, you may take 50,000 spiritual stones from the stockpile as my ransom," the Lizard King spoke up again at this moment.

"Can I take any spiritual stones I want?"

Lu Chen suddenly recalled that during their earlier negotiation, the two sides had only agreed on a quantitative figure without specifying the grades of the spiritual stones.

His own side had tacitly assumed first-grade stones... yet judging by the Lizard King's unconcerned demeanor, apparently any grade would do.

That being the case, there was immense room for manipulation.

"Of course, as long as the Great King leaves my gold untouched, you may choose whichever spiritual stones you please," Seraph nodded once more.

With the other party's consent, Lu Chen naturally stood on no ceremony.

With a flash, he closed the distance, grabbing the fifth-grade spiritual stone first, before sweeping up a handful of third-grade and second-grade stones in one go.

Only after picking out all the high-quality spiritual stones did he begin to gather the first-grade ones.

Even so, Lu Chen felt dazzled by the sheer abundance of choice.

In his mind, he was already plotting how to make all these spiritual stones entirely his own.

Exchange them for gold?!

Judging by the Lizard King's attitude, it clearly valued gold far more.

He could use gold to trade with them, acting as a cross-dimensional smuggler.

According to the pricing standards of Blue Star humans, a single first-grade spiritual stone could sell for a sky-high price of over a million, equivalent to four or five catties of gold.

Thus, as long as he maintained a one-to-one exchange rate, the profit margin would be multiplied several times over.

However, traveling back and forth between two dimensions was too time-consuming, and doing business with humans was not entirely safe—one careless move and he could easily get scammed.

Lu Chen suddenly remembered that a crocodile tribe leader had once offered him dog-headed gold as a tribute, which meant that gold mines were likely distributed within the crocodile tribe's territory as well.

He could completely try mining and refining gold for trade.

Wait... there seemed to be an even cheaper alternative.

Aside from the glistening, brilliant gold, the Lizard King's treasury also stored a large number of high-purity gemstones in various colors, mostly polished into spherical shapes.

Upon seeing those gemstones, Lu Chen immediately thought of a great invention from the human world—artificial crystal.

After being polished and ground, these things were brilliantly dazzling, crystal-clear, and looked high-end, luxurious, and classy.

In truth... artificial crystal was simply glass containing lead oxide.

The higher the lead oxide content, the higher the refractive index and hardness, making the finished product appear purer and more crystalline.

Just now in the Lizard King's treasury, Lu Chen had not seen any glass products, indicating that these creatures had not acquired the glass-making craft from the alien dog-headed beings.

Judging by the current developmental stage of the lizard civilization, they certainly had not invented the related technology either.

The materials and methods for making glass were very simple—merely adding certain substances to sand and melting them at a certain temperature.

However, without understanding the production process, it might take a thousand years of research just to figure it out.

As far as Lu Chen knew, in his past life, long after the invention of glass, the manufacturing method had been kept a strict secret.

One country even deliberately set up its glass factories on an isolated island to prevent artisans from leaking the secrets.

Later on, he could try ordering some high-purity crystal glass from Dong Mingjun, along with colorful glass beads, preferably of larger sizes.

Then, he could present them to the lizard tribe to see if they were interested.

If this method worked, he would make an absolute fortune.

It would be a foolproof, exclusive business with zero competition.

Emerging from the Lizard King's palace, Lu Chen tentatively asked if he could take a look near the volcanic magma.

He had expected the Lizard King to stall or refuse, but to his surprise, the creature agreed readily without any guards up.

Led by the other party, Lu Chen passed through a tall, spacious, and dim cavern tunnel, eventually entering the deep belly of the mountain. After pressing forward for four or five miles, a sudden wave of rolling heat rushed toward him, mixed with a strong, pungent sulfur odor.

Feeling his nasal passages fill with volcanic ash, he quickly held his breath.

With Lu Chen's current cultivation realm, going without breath for a dozen hours was not a problem.

几十米外，一座巨大的火山熔岩湖出现在前方，面积足有十万平方大小。

Bright red magma flowed sluggishly, and under the immense subterranean pressure, columns of fire constantly erupted toward the sky, billowing thick black smoke like a giant dragon soaring upward.

Amidst it all, faint waves of spiritual energy pulsed continuously.

Standing beside the magma lake, Lu Chen felt his body temperature rise sharply.

Among the volcanic magmas on Blue Star, basic basaltic magma had the highest temperature, reaching 1000–1300℃. Acidic rhyolitic magma had a lower temperature, around 700–900℃.

However, these figures were temperatures measured by humans under normal atmospheric pressure at the surface, and due to volatilization and heat dissipation, they could not fully represent the true temperature of magma deep underground.

With Lu Chen's current physique, he could endure high temperatures for a short time, but a few hundred degrees Celsius was already his limit.

As for temperatures exceeding a thousand degrees, he had never tested them.