Yang Qing’s breath halted when he saw those three pristine golden coins. His attention was pulled briefly from them by Tang Xiadan lightly snapping his fingers, which seemed to act as a trigger of sorts, because Yang Qing felt the familiar aura of the Star Shrouding Sky Crow’s feather envelope the room once more. Only this time, the invisible cloaking curtain surrounding the room seemed to have increased in strength by twelvefold.

Given what Tang Xiadan had just revealed, Yang Qing appreciated the prudence.

A vast ancient aura slowly pervaded the room, flowing from those three coins, and within seconds, the scene shifted. A golden yellow wave of light rolled through the space, mirroring a sea wave, only instead of cyan blue water it was heavy golden mist churning through the room, and within that mist came the faint roar of a dragon. In that roar carried the profound weight and vastness of an ocean that held within it countless Daos.

"This..." Yang Qing’s voice went dry and stalled, his gaze fixed once more on those coins. His palace world was stirring excitedly. The ocean waves were more energetic than he had ever felt them. The Green Flame Tree at the center of his world burned with an intensity that made it seem as though it wanted to leap to the skies. The sun above looked as though it had hit the peak of noon, and the moon as though it had hit the peak of night, given the overwhelming radiance they both exuded.

As for his soul, the roars he’d heard the instant Tang Xiadan opened that box only grew louder and more intense, stirring his qi, his essence, and his spiritual sea. He could hear vague whispers within the roar, growing clearer as the intensity of what echoed within his soul deepened. Within those whispers were truths, knowledge, secrets, guidance from an unfathomable power that carried the aura of the source of all things.

There was only one thing he’d ever come across that triggered a reaction in such a manner, and that was the grounds of an Ancestral Dragon Spiritual Vein.

And yet he was experiencing such a thing from just three coins. Three coins that wouldn’t take up much space in his palm, and yet they carried within them a power so profound and vast it shook him to his core.

A greater part of Yang Qing’s shock wasn’t even that those coins seemed to mimic the effects of an Ancestral Dragon Spiritual Vein in every sense. Yes, the mimicking did surprise him, but what shocked him even more was the intensity of it. He had cultivated in an Ancestral Dragon Spiritual Vein at the Order, and yet in terms of impact, those three coins had clearly outshone it. That was a proper vein. This was just three coins. And yet the latter had overshadowed the former in both the quality of the golden spiritual qi and the concentration and depth of the Grand Dao essence contained within it.

One felt like a lake. The other felt like an ocean.

So of course Yang Qing was shocked. How could he not be, when he had just watched an entire Ancestral Dragon Spiritual Vein get outshone by three coins.

"Are those coins made out of an entire spiritual vein?" Yang Qing wondered aloud, prompting a laugh from Tang Xiadan.

"In essence, it could be," said Tang Xiadan meaningfully, and that reply alone was enough to draw Yang Qing’s full attention. His gaze turned contemplative as he looked at Tang Xiadan before drifting to the coins, where his eyes lit up as realization dawned.

"Jade of the Ancestral Vein," he whispered.

"Precisely," said Tang Xiadan, nodding.

Yang Qing’s eyes remained fixed on the coins. Even after uncovering their source, it did little to alleviate his shock. If anything, it compounded it.

Jade crystals were the crystallized essence of dragon veins. Given their nature, their output was pitifully low. A lesser dragon vein could produce maybe three to seven lesser dragon jade crystals in a year, and under favorable conditions, that output could jump to ten or twelve, with some recordings even claiming an output of twenty. Though that was likely only seen in a lesser dragon vein already knocking on the doors of evolution into a mature one.

When a dragon spiritual vein becomes a mature dragon vein, it can still produce lesser dragon jade crystals, and at a much greater output than a lesser dragon spiritual vein. In the latter, those crystals are the refined essence of the vein itself. In a mature dragon vein, however, the lesser dragon jade crystals it produces are more like the "sweat" of something working hard at other tasks. And given the nature of that production, the output is high—high enough that it produces no less than a thousand in a year.

But when it comes to mature dragon jade crystals, that is where production experiences a steep decline. According to notable records, a mature dragon vein produces one mature dragon jade crystal every hundred years or so, with some going five hundred years before producing even one. And that timeline applies only to the very first time it does so. After the first, the next could take a thousand years at the earliest, or extend well beyond that, and that number only keeps growing with every crystal produced.

It is only when the mature dragon vein itself improves in quality that production will see any increase in frequency. But until such a time, the gap between one crystal and the next widens with every one produced.

Not that many would complain, given the worth of a mature dragon jade crystal.

In terms of value, it was closer to a middle-tier ascendant-grade treasure, but in terms of worth in certain areas, it could be ranked higher than some ascendant-grade treasures, given the advantages it offered—for example, in brewing potions.

It was unknown who made the discovery (with Yang Qing assuming it was yet another feat of the Eternal Blossom Sanctuary Sect),the discovery showed that if you introduced a mature dragon jade crystal into your cauldron when brewing any potion, provided you had the skills, the crystal increased the chances of producing a gold-grade potion. And the best part was, the crystal could be introduced into any potion, and it would work with almost all of them. You did not even need to specially process the crystal. Just drop it into the brew, stir, and go about your recipe’s process. And at the end, there was a chance of a gold-grade potion being brewed. As for the crystal, you could even reuse it a few more times before exhausting the energy within it.

And it was not just in alchemy that it had such advantages. Domain experts could quickly stabilize their realm or refine their understanding through a mature dragon jade crystal. Yang Qing had even heard Ren Shu say that, if used well, provided you had enough comprehensive talent and ability, a single crystal was more than enough to support a Domain expert from the first stage all the way to the seventh stage.

And if you did not want to use it for cultivation and instead wanted to use it as an energy source, that single crystal could power any blue-grade formation for at least fifty thousand years. If you were using it for a low-tier to mid-tier gold-grade formation, it could power it for five thousand years, and a thousand for a top-tier gold-grade formation.

Though if one were so inclined to use it as an energy source and wanted to get maximum one-time value from it, then the best thing to do would be to use it on a high-grade spiritual vein.

There were countless ways to evolve a high-grade spiritual vein into a lesser dragon vein, and almost all of them, without fail, were complicated. However, there was one method that did not require skill, timing, or chance. A simple method that just needed you to drop a mature dragon jade crystal into the core of a high-grade spiritual vein, and in a few years, you would have yourself a perfectly formed lesser dragon vein.

If a mature dragon jade crystal could do all of that, what could the jade crystal of an Ancestral Dragon Spiritual Vein do? What properties and abilities might the crystallized essence of such a vein possess?

Yang Qing would not know, as he had never seen or interacted with one... Until today, that is.

The Ancestral Dragon Vein of the Order had never produced a single Ancestral Dragon Jade Crystal since the Order was founded. And from the records Yang Qing had read on the matter, there was no given timeline for it, given that there had been records of Ancestral Dragon Veins going fifty thousand years without a single crystal being produced. But when it came to producing mature dragon jade crystals, the vein produced one every single month. And as for lesser dragon jade crystals, nobody even bothered to count, given that a year’s production could easily form an entire mountain.

But as for an Ancestral Dragon Jade Crystal, one could go an entire lifetime without seeing one produced.

And yet, right in front of Yang Qing were three coins which, given the presence they exuded and the effect they showed just from passively existing, were likely processed entirely from Ancestral Dragon Jade Crystals.

He did not know what an Ancestral Dragon Jade Crystal could do, but from common sense born from inference and from experiencing the grandeur of an Ancestral Dragon Spiritual Vein, Yang Qing believed it would not be excessive to treat such a crystal as a saint-grade item—probably even at the peak of it, or some rare natural jade treasure.

And yet there were those who had seen fit to fashion coins from it. Coins. Who could do such a thing? Probably only the richest organization on the continent dared to.