Glossary / Market and Currency
Market and Currency in Chinese: 79 Terms and Their English Renderings
How cultivators buy, sell and get robbed: stone currency, auctions, appraisal, credit.
79 terms
| Chinese | English | Note |
|---|---|---|
| 坊市 | Market | A town where cultivators trade. Neutral ground, with rules enforced by whoever is strongest. |
| 拍卖会 | Auction | Where rare things surface. Prices are set by whoever wants it most and can afford to say so. |
| 竞价 | Bid | Raising the price in public. Also a way to make an enemy without a word of insult. |
| 压价 | Haggle | Talking the price down. Expected behaviour, and a test of nerve. |
| 灵石 | Spirit Stone | The currency, and also a power source. Which is why nobody enjoys spending it. |
| 下品灵石 | Low-Grade Spirit Stone | The copper coin of cultivation. What disciples are paid in. |
| 中品灵石 | Mid-Grade Spirit Stone | Worth a hundred low-grade. What real treasures are priced in. |
| 上品灵石 | High-Grade Spirit Stone | Worth a hundred mid-grade. Rarely spent, mostly hoarded. |
| 赊账 | Buy on Credit | Taking goods now and paying later. Only works if the seller is afraid of you. |
| 典当 | Pawn | Trading an item for cash and the right to buy it back. Always at a loss. |
| 黑市 | Black Market | Where stolen and forbidden things are sold. No rules, no refunds. |
| 悬赏 | Bounty | A posted reward for a person or a beast. The usual way a broke cultivator eats. |
| 佣金 | Commission | A middleman's cut. Somebody always takes one. |
| 定金 | Deposit | Money paid up front to hold a deal. Losing it is cheaper than losing face. |
| 财大气粗 | Filthy Rich | Rich enough that money itself becomes an argument. Usually said with contempt. |
| 漫天要价 | Open With an Absurd Price | The first move of any market negotiation. Haggling is the expected reply. |
| 灵矿 | Spirit Ore | Stone that yields spirit stones. The actual reason sects fight over a mountain. |
| 灵玉 | Spirit Jade | Jade that holds qi. The standard material for talismans and the standard bribe. |
| 灵石矿 | Spirit Stone Mine | Ground that produces spirit stones. The honest reason behind most sect wars. |
| 极品灵石 | Peak Spirit Stone | Rare enough to buy a small sect. Usually the prize of an entire arc. |
| 碎灵石 | Broken Spirit Stone | Spent fragments of a used stone. What the poor pay with. |
| 灵晶 | Spirit Crystal | A purer, denser form of spirit stone. Where high-level arrays get their power. |
| 折算 | Exchange Rate | Converting one currency into another. Every merchant rounds it in his own favor. |
| 标价 | Asking Price | The first number named. Nobody expects to pay it. |
| 抬价 | Bid Up | Raising a price by pretending to want it. Old trick, still works. |
| 讨债 | Collect a Debt | Demanding payment. Usually done with backup. |
| 赖账 | Welsh | Refusing to pay what you owe. A fast way to lose more than money. |
| 抵债 | Settle in Kind | Paying a debt with goods or service. What desperate people do with heirlooms. |
| 尾款 | Balance | The remaining payment on delivery. Withheld when the goods disappoint. |
| 坊市规矩 | Market Rules | No fighting inside the boundary. Enforced by whoever owns the market, which is usually a sect that does not care about anything else. |
| 摆摊 | Set Up a Stall | Selling from a cloth on the ground. Where protagonists dispose of loot and meet the people who will matter later. |
| 摊主 | Stall Keeper | The vendor. In this genre either a retired expert or an informant, sometimes both. |
| 估价 | Appraise | Work out what a thing is worth. Done by a professional, always interrupted by a better offer. |
| 鉴宝 | Identify a Treasure | Same skill at a higher level. The scene exists to reveal that the object in hand is absurdly valuable. |
| 捡漏 | Bargain Find | Buying something underpriced because the seller did not know. The genre's favourite small victory. |
| 灵石矿脉 | Spirit Stone Vein | The source of currency. Owning one is the reason sects go to war. |
| 灵石充值 | Top Up Spirit Stones | Settling an account by weight. Merchants use scales, which tells you what kind of market it is. |
| 以物易物 | Barter | Trading goods for goods. Common between cultivators because some things cannot be priced. |
| 拍卖行 | Auction House | The venue. Always has a private room on the second floor for whoever is really buying. |
| 拍品 | Lot | The item being sold. The description is written by the house, which means it is accurate and incomplete. |
| 起拍价 | Opening Bid | Less than anyone expects to pay. Exists to start the room. |
| 一口价 | Buyout Price | The number that ends the bidding. Reveals how badly the owner wants something gone. |
| 加价 | Raise the Bid | The mechanic of the auction scene. Escalation is the whole point. |
| 暗标 | Sealed Bid | Written bids, opened at once. Used when the seller wants to hide who is buying. |
| 托 | Shill | A fake bidder working for the house. Every auction scene has one, and someone always notices. |
| 流拍 | Unsold | No one bid enough. The item is quietly withdrawn, which means someone was watching. |
| 赎当 | Redeem a Pawned Item | Coming back to recover it. The threshold has passed and the price has gone up. |
| 借据 | I Owe You | A written debt. In this genre, an IOU from the right person is a weapon. |
| 灵石不足 | Short of Stones | The phrase that opens the second half of many chapters. |
| 天价 | Sky-High Price | The number that makes a room go quiet. Usually attached to something the protagonist needs. |
| 宝物认主 | Treasure Recognition | An item choosing its owner. Convenient, and the reason a weaker character can win an auction by accident. |
| 背包 | Packing Up | Loading purchases into a storage ring. The genre's equivalent of a satisfying click. |
| 商会 | Merchant Guild | An organisation that trades across regions. Sometimes a source of allies, always a source of pressure. |
| 进货 | Restocking | Buying goods to resell. The supply chain that explains why a market is or is not full. |
| 灵厨 | Spirit Chef | Someone who cooks with ingredients too strong for ordinary people. A niche profession and a reliable comedy device. |
| 灵食 | Spirit Food | Food that carries energy. Eaten by rich disciples; complained about by everyone else. |
| 订金 | Down Payment | Money to hold an item. Refunding it is named a specific crime in most markets. |
| 灵石袋 | Purse | Where stones are carried. Weight matters, and so does who can see it. |
| 验灵石 | Assay Stone | Tests whether a spirit stone is genuine. Counterfeit stones are a recurring scam. |
| 假灵石 | Fake Stone | Filled with ordinary stone and glazed. Discovered shortly before payment. |
| 水头 | Water Clarity | A jade-quality term borrowed for artifact grading. High clarity means high price. |
| 还价 | Counter-Offer | The first reply. Always half of the asking price. |
| 成交 | Done | The handshake. The point where the market scene ends. |
| 残次品 | Seconds | Flawed goods. Sold cheap to people who cannot afford anything else. |
| 验货 | Inspect the Goods | Checking before paying. The moment when the deception is usually revealed. |
| 退货 | Return | Refusing the goods. In a market without consumer law, a form of violence. |
| 包场 | Book the House | Renting an entire venue for a private sale. Reserved for the very rich or the very secretive. |
| 内定 | Pre-Arranged | The outcome decided before the sale. Common in any auction run by a sect. |
| 分账 | Split the Take | Dividing proceeds. The percentages are the plot. |
| 灵票 | Spirit Note | A paper promise for stones. Works until somebody needs actual stones. |
| 当铺老板 | Pawnbroker | The one profession that survives every war. Always knows what you brought. |
| 压箱底 | Bottom of the Chest | Goods saved for later. The item that saves an arc. |
| 走货 | Ship Goods | Moving merchandise. Requires guards, which is where escorts enter the plot. |
| 灵兽市场 | Beast Market | Where animals are bought and sold. Smelly, noisy, and full of information. |
| 丹市 | Pill Market | Where alchemy products change hands. Prices swing with the latest news of a war. |
| 价高者得 | Highest Bidder Wins | The auction's premise. Overridden in practice by whatever the strongest person in the room says. |
| 以物抵债 | Settle with Goods | Paying a debt in items. The valuation argument is the scene. |
| 抵押 | Collateral | Something left against a debt. The genre's most reliable way to create urgency. |
| 债主 | Creditor | The person owed. Powerful, patient, and occasionally a sect. |
Spirit stones are the one currency nearly every novel shares, which makes them useful. The rest of the market vocabulary varies by sect and region. Terms drawn from the free cultivation novels at cultivationnovel.com.
Where these words turn up
Stories on this site that use them the way the notes describe.
Now That Master Has Ascended, I’m Doing Whatever I WantThe one person who could stop him has left the world. He takes the opportunity.灵石Source: cultivationnovel.com · Cultivation Glossary