"This artifact is what the Mountain Crushing sect used to cultivate their students to have bodies that were very strong," the auctioneer spoke. "All you have to do is sit inside this artifact, surrounded by a bunch of strong material and let them grind onto you, slowly making your body stronger and stronger."
"The objects you put in there, you will have to find on your own," the woman said. "But, we have been told that for someone with barely anybody's cultivation, even normal stones would be enough as long as you get rid of your Qi before using it.
"For energy, you will have to put your spirit stones right here," she said, pointing at the center of the artifact where the bulge was. She pushed onto something, opening a compartment to show everyone.
"You just have to put your spirit stones here, which will power a formation at the bottom of the artifact. Then, the entire content of the barrel will spin around you, grinding against you, making you spin to its whim as well."
"When you are done, you will have come back a stronger man than you went it," she said. She gave the people time to talk among themselves.
Yao Ning looked around to ask Alex his opinion about the artifact when she noticed that he was deep in thought.
"What are you thinking, your majesty?" she asked.
Alex stayed quiet for a few moments, taking his time before finally speaking. "There's something wrong with that artifact," he said.
"Something… wrong?" Yao Ning asked in surprise, turning to look at the artifact on the screen. "I'm afraid I don't see anything wrong with it. If you mean that it's old and broken, then I'm sure that's not the case."
"I'm sure the auction house won't sell an artifact without checking that it works prior to selling it," she said, turning to look at the woman. "Would it?"
"Heavens! No," the woman said quickly. "We test anything that is not a one-time use item like pills and talismans. We also don't test skill books just because it is not very possible to do so. Everything else, we test to the best of our capability."
"See?" the old woman told Alex.
Alex shook his head. "When I said that there's something wrong with the artifact, I didn't mean to imply that it didn't work, or that it was a fraudulent artifact. What I meant is that there is fundamentally a flaw in how it works which caused the slow decline in Body Cultivators in the Mountain Crushing sect."
"There's also the thing of how a sect with such strength and popularity could fall from grace so hard without going through something severely wrong that no one knew about."
"Do we know the actual reason why the sect is no longer as good as it used to be?" Alex asked the woman.
"No inside information has come out that is public yet. All we know is that the downfall was gradual," she said.
Alex thought for a moment. "Any chance of outside intervention? Like trade blockade or anything else," he asked.
"I doubt it," the woman said. "King Wan is from the Mountain Crushing sect, so he would have definitely acted if there was anything from the outside that was acting against the sect's will."
"King Wan?" Alex thought with a bit of surprise and remembered the black-robed King he met all those years ago. "Oh! Is the Mountain Crushing sect in the Ebony Kingdom?"
"It is, your Majesty," the woman said.
Alex thought for a moment and got rid of the idea of something from outside hurting the sect. This meant something much have happened on the inside that cost them to lose all the resources.
"Body cultivation does cost a lot," Alex said softly. "The cultivation part itself doesn't cost even that much, but… the healing part costs a lot."
"Or it could be that they gave up because it hurts a lot. But I would doubt it if they could just jump into an artifact and not have to beat each other to near death for it."
"The people in the Northern Continent don't like becoming Body Cultivators because they don't have an easy method of healing due to their relative lack of healing treasures. The people in the Southern Continent don't like becoming Body Cultivators because they don't have an easy method of getting hurt."
"But in the Eastern Continent, healing pills should be easy to come by, and with this artifact, the Mountain Crushing sect should easily get the Body Cultivators coming out one after another."
"What could cause them to stop?" he wondered.
"Could it be that they couldn't keep the artifact running at all times? Like there is a limit on how many times you can use it in a day," Yao Ning proposed.
"Maybe," Alex said. "But I don't see how that could result in their downfall."
"We don't know that it is what led to their collapse though," Liang Shufen. "I don't see why we are treating this as the cause of their collapse."
"It was the cause of their rise," Alex said. "So it should have some hand in their collapse as well. Maybe not to the effect that we are thinking it does, but I guarantee you it definitely does."
"The question now is why," he asked.
The auctioneer spoke a moment later as she brought out something for everyone to see. A red book.
She waved the red book around before placing it on top of the artifact itself so that everyone could see what it was.
Alex saw the book appear in the image in front of him and looked at the book. "Mountain Crushing Artifact Manual?" he couldn't help but say in surprise.
He was shocked to see that it was in fact a manual.
"This here as you can see is a manual," the woman said. "This is something that will come with the purchase of the artifact as well."
"However, that is not why I showed you this," she said. "This manual contains all knowledge about the machine that the Mountain Crushing sect has gathered in its entirety."
"And right here, I am going to tell you all the flaws of this machine. The con that could make you all reconsider buying this."
"I understand that it is a weird thing for an auction house to do, to avert a buyer's wish to buy something," she said. "However, we believe that you deserve to know something about the machine that is its inherent flaw."
Alex perked up. He had realized that was the case, and so had quite a few others. Now he just wanted to see what the flaw was.
"As we have mentioned before, this artifact is originally an Immortal artifact. As such, it was designed for the immortals."
"That is not to say that it doesn't work with us mortals, but the energy it requires to use is not normal," she said.
"To run the artifact alone, you need at least a thousand Saint Spirit stones each time. And each time, it can only run for so long depending on how much weight the inside of the artifact holds."
Alex couldn't help but believe what he was hearing. "The Mountain Crushing sect fell from grace… just because this was a money-draining artifact?"
