So the stock market is essentially betting on the future of other cultivators. If they are right about their bet, they will earn money. But if they are wrong, they will lose the money that they used to bet.
Just hearing about this made Loki excited. He wanted to go and buy shares for Slav as soon as possible.
He is sure that Slav has the potential to be very successful in the future because he has insider knowledge of what Slav is capable of. So betting on Slav seems like a sure bet.
But then he realized what he was thinking about, which made him chuckle and say to himself, "To think the day will come when I want Slav to succeed."
Unfortunately for him, no matter how anxious he is or how certain he is of the potential of Slav, he doesn’t have access to the stock market and can’t trade yet. So he will have to hold off on the idea of earning from Slav.
Another thing that he has to hold off on is the betting arena and the public trading platform. The loss of the public trading platform is particularly impactful to him since he wants to acquire a rank 2 forger as soon as possible, and maybe find a way to increase his talent.
Jim told him that everything is sold on the public trading market by everyone in the inner sect all over the Central Plains. So it would have been very easy for him to acquire or sell whatever he wanted through it.
The betting arena was also a great loss to him. Jim said there are all sorts of bets there, such as betting on when someone will die, how they will die, or who will kill them.
When Jim said this, he also said, "You can imagine that with these kinds of bets going on, many people want to rig it. So someone can bet that you will die today through murder. Then they will send someone to kill you today, so that they can win the bet."
Loki felt a chill when he heard this. Then he thought to himself, saying, "I thought that the stock market trading on other cultivators was weird enough, but this betting arena is just plain chaotic. How is it that the sect hasn’t collapsed and can continue to exist despite the chaos?"
Then he remembered the unique mark that is said to have branded his soul, so he said, "Right. The members of the sect can only increase. Not even death can make the sect lose a member."
As bad as the betting arena was, though, he still thought that it would be a good thing for him to gain access to it. This is because if he had it, he would be able to monitor successful bets right from his sect token and not have to frequent gambling houses to gain future knowledge of successful bets.
While he felt that all of these were a loss to him, Jim didn’t care about them because he had no confidence in earning investment through offering public stocks on himself, no confidence in earning by buying stocks, had nothing to sell on the trading platform, had no money to buy what he wanted on the trading platform, or was confident in making profitable bets in the betting arena.
What Jim cared about the most among the benefits of becoming an inner sect disciple was the opportunity to earn and use merit points. This was because ranks in the sect could only be bought with merit points.
Jim said, "Merit points are not like contribution points, which anyone can earn with energy stones. Merit points can only be earned from the sect, and the sect will only give them to you when you do something particularly important for the sect or offer something highly valuable to the sect, such as information or special items."
"Only inner sect disciples will have access to the missions that can earn merit points, and only those who have joined a society will be able to pick the missions. I haven’t paid off my debt yet. This means that even though I’ve joined a society, I can’t earn merit points just yet."
He had a look of longing on his face as he spoke about merit points. This made Loki ask him, saying, "What’s so special about merit points?"
His question made Jim chuckle as he said, "Right. I forgot for a while there that you’re still a white lamb. Only someone so ignorant would ask such a question."
He gestured to Loki’s white sect uniform as he spoke, and from his expression, Loki was able to tell that he felt a faint sense of superiority for wearing a green uniform, while Loki was still wearing white.
After feeling superior for a while, he said, "Merit points can be used for many things. For one, they can be used to pay off your awakening debt and directly become an inner sect disciple. They can also be used to help your disciples awaken without going through the initiation program. That’s what rich people usually do."
When Loki heard the last statement, he said to Jim, "Hold on. Are you saying that Slav didn’t have to participate in the initiation program?"
Jim didn’t understand why this possibility mattered to him, but he still answered with a nod before saying, "With the wealth of his father, I’m certain that he didn’t need to participate in the initiation program in order to become a member of the Four Directions Sect. Then again, even if his father couldn’t afford the merit points, he was still too young to participate in the initiation program."
Then he shrugged and said, "Maybe they couldn’t wait for Slav to get older, or maybe they had something important that they wanted Slav to achieve in the initiation program. Who knows how those rich people think?"
Loki might not know how rich people think, but he was sure that he knew exactly why Slav was made to participate in the initiation program so young when his family was rich enough to make him skip it completely.