Chương 54: 53. Value Investing in the City of Stars

The moment we pass the gates, spiritual pressure hits us like a wave. The accumulated weight of thousands of cultivators and millions of mortals. Their auras blend into a background hum that's almost audible, a low-frequency drone that vibrates in my teeth. I've never felt anything like this. Ling'er's eyes go distant. The Sacred Cosmic Bone doing its work. She stands very still, her face blank, her breathing shallow. I wait.

"Can you estimate?" I ask quietly. She doesn't answer for a moment. Her lips move, counting something I cannot see.

"Foundation Establishment," she says.

"Fifteen hundred. Maybe more. My sense only reaches a part of the city." I absorb this. Fifteen hundred Foundation Establishment cultivators. There are two of us in the Coiling Dragon Sect. Maybe less than a dozen within our immediate region around Greenstone.

"Core Formation, a hundred. Some are brighter than others. Nascent Soul, like the one we saw in Greenstone." She pauses.

"Five. Maybe six. They're... hard to count. Their threads are thick. They blend together." Five Nascent Souls. In one city. In one quarter of one city.

"There's one above them all. Stronger than any of the Nascent Souls." Her voice is very quiet. My blood runs cold. Soul Transformation. The peak of the Lower Realm. One step from ascension. If they notice Ling'er—"Master." Her voice is calm. Steady.

"The big one. They're asleep. Or meditating. Their awareness is turned inward. They won't notice us unless we do something dramatic." I swallow.

"How can you tell?"

"The threads." She tilts her head, still distant, still counting.

"Theirs are all curled up, not reaching out. Like a hibernating bear. They're not paying attention to the city. They're paying attention to something else. Something inside themselves." A hibernating bear. I let myself breathe.

'Good. Very good.' We find a modest inn in the outer district. Cheap, anonymous, run by a Foundation Establishment couple who have seen every kind of traveler. They don't ask questions. They don't remember faces. They take our coins and give us keys and go back to their business. Two rooms. Small, clean, with windows that face the street. I lock the door, draw the curtains, set a basic alert array across the threshold. Ling'er settles by the window, watching the city.

"Master." Her voice is quiet.

"There's so much here. So many techniques, so many cultivators. I can feel them all—like stars in a sky. Some are bright, some are dim, some are..." She pauses.

"Wrong. Corrupted." I turn from the door.

"Demonic cultivators?"

"Maybe." Her brow furrows.

"A few have threads that look tangled. Twisted. Like they're fighting themselves. Their own energy turned against them." She looks at me.

"I don't know if that's demonic. It just feels... sick." I file this away. In a city of this size, knowledge is the only advantage someone like me can have.

"Stay away from anyone whose threads feel wrong," I say.

"Don't look at them. Don't acknowledge them. If one approaches, you leave. No heroics." She nods.

"I understand." We leave the inn and walk the cultivation districts. Streets stretch for several li in every direction, lined with shops selling everything the cultivation world produces and everything it consumes. Pills and weapons and formation flags and spirit beasts in cages and technique manuals in sealed jade cases. The crowds are thick, the noise constant, the smell of spiritual materials mixing with cooking oil and sweat and incense. I walk slowly, the Gaze active, scanning without appearing to scan.

Faces, auras, storefronts, prices. Information. Everything is information. Then I see the slave market. It occupies a full block near the district's center: a permanent structure, not a back-alley operation. Wooden platforms, iron cages, guards at the entrances. The building is well-maintained. The signs are painted in neat characters. Mortals in cages. Arranged by categories. Age, health, skills, something that looks like an assessment of appearance.

Each one has a price tag and a history that nobody is advertising. Most are mortals. Some are Qi Condensation. A few Foundation Establishment, their auras sealed, their faces blank with something beyond resignation. The crowds flow around it without pause. A merchant negotiates for a mortal woman with steady hands; she's marked as a seamstress, her skills listed like the features of a good blade. A Core Formation cultivator walks past without glancing at the cages, his face untroubled, his steps unhurried.

Children run between the legs of the guards, laughing, playing, already learning that this is normal. The Gaze activates reflexively before I can stop it. Nangong Yue - Mortal Name: Nangong Yue Spirit Root: Wood (E-grade) Cultivation: Mortal Verdict— I close the Gaze. I keep walking. My hands are still. My face is still. The practice is not illegal here. I know this. The legal protections that do exist are thin; extreme mistreatment is frowned upon, which is doing a great deal of work as a moral framework.

The girl in the cage has an E-grade spirit root and probably came from a family that couldn't pay a debt. In this world, that is a story with a known ending. She reminds me of Mei Lin. How I found her at the foot of Coiling Dragon Mountain, hungry and scared and twelve years old. How her family had been planning to sell her to a merchant. How she ran before they could. I remember her face. The relief when I didn't turn away.

The way she cried, later, alone in the corner of the kitchen where she thought no one could see. That was me. Not the old Lu Chen. Not some previous version of this body that I'm carrying around like a passenger. Me. I found her. I fed her. I gave her a home. Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road. And that girl, the one in the cage, she is someone else's Mei Lin. Someone else's chance to do what I did. But I keep walking. I cannot save everyone.

I cannot buy every cage. I cannot fix a system that has existed for millennia, that is woven into the fabric of this world, that powerful people profit from and weaker people enforce because it is better to be the guard than the caged. Ling'er keeps up beside me. Her face is still. Her concealment is perfect. I do not know if she saw. I do not know if the Bone showed her the slave's threads, the fear, the resignation, the small dying ember of hope that maybe someone would look at her and see a person.

The slave market recedes behind us, a block of iron cages and painted signs and people in neat categories with price tags on their collars. The dissonance is sickening. In my past life, this would be a atrocity. A crime. Something that brought armies and sanctions and the collective horror of a civilization that had decided, after centuries of bloodshed, that owning people was no longer acceptable. Here, it is a regular day. This is not a secret vice.

This is a district of the city, open to the public, operating under the same laws as the tea house and the weapon smith. I clench my teeth and remind myself: my duty is to the sect. To Ling'er. To the disciples who trusted me. To the servants who depend on me. To the mountain that is slowly, finally, becoming something worth defending. Maybe someday I will have the power to do something about the cages. When Ling'er is strong enough to protect herself. When the sect is strong enough to withstand the retaliation.

When I am more than a mediocre cultivator with a cheat skill and a lot of borrowed wisdom. But first, I must lift up those in my care. First, I must build something that cannot be broken. First, I must make sure that no one I love ends up in a cage. Until then, I keep walking. The technique shops occupy a different block. Here the atmosphere shifts. Merchants in clean robes stand behind polished counters.

Cultivators browse with the careful disinterest of people who want to appear sophisticated while their spiritual sense reaches for every jade case on the shelves. The chatter is quieter. The prices are higher. The desperation is better concealed. The heaviness from the slave market still sits on my shoulders; like a weight across my shoulder blades, a tightness in my chest that breathing does not ease. I shake myself off and focus on the task at hand. High-end shops price too accurately.

Low-end shops sell junk too consistently. The middle is where ignorance still has margins. The ones run by Foundation Establishment and Core Formation proprietors. Cultivators who are skilled enough to stay in business, knowledgeable enough to identify basic value, but not experts. They have gaps in their knowledge. They buy from estates and travelers without always understanding what they've purchased.

A technique from a dead cultivator's collection, priced as common because the merchant doesn't recognize the hand. A jade slip mislabeled because the original inscription is worn and the current owner guessed wrong. These are the shops where treasures hide. I find one on a side street—no name above the door, just a carved scroll above the lintel. The building is narrow, the paint faded, the windows dusty. The proprietor is a woman who looks sixty and is probably twice that, Foundation Establishment peak.

She sits behind a cluttered counter, glancing up to acknowledge us. I browse. The Gaze sweeps across shelves. Most of it is correctly priced mediocrity. Standard Qi Condensation combat techniques in the fifty to one hundred low-grade range. Basic Foundation Establishment forms for one hundred fifty to three hundred. Nothing remarkable. Nothing hidden.

Then: Stable Ground Technique - Grade: Medium-High Type: Cultivation Method (Qi Condensation to Foundation Establishment — Earth) Content: Earth affinity movement and defensive forms. Unusually complete for its price tier. The seal is intact. Verdict: Listed at 80 low-grade. Actual worth is 200-250. The previous owner labeled it wrong. The proprietor didn't check. Buy it. I pick it up and examine the cover with the expression of a man considering whether it's worth eighty low-grade. It is.

Considerably more worth than that. Wei Chen uses both fire and earth, and his earth has always been the weaker of the two. This is exactly the kind of foundational technique that compounds over years. The kind that turns a mediocre disciple into a reliable fighter. Iron Body Breathing - Grade: Medium Type: Cultivation Method (Qi Condensation — Body Refinement) Content: Standard body refinement method. Adapted for five-element mixed roots. Verdict: Listed at 40 low-grade. Actual worth is 150.

Someone adapted this from an older text and forgot to update the label. Useful for anyone who isn't a single-element cultivator. For the disciples who aren't specialists. For the ones who need to be stronger, faster, tougher, but don't have the talent to progress through pure cultivation alone. This is for them. Formation Theory: Intermediate Arrays - Grade: High (Reference) Type: Educational Text Content: Comprehensive intermediate formation theory. Not a technique manual—a textbook.

Teaches principles rather than specific arrays. Rare outside of imperial academic institutions. Verdict: Listed at 30 low-grade. Actual worth is 500. The proprietor thought this was basic. It is not. I set it on the counter with the same casual energy as the other two. The proprietor looks at my selection. Her eyes skim the covers without lingering. A standardized combat technique. A body refinement manual. A formation theory reference. Nothing unusual. Nothing worth a second look.

"One hundred fifty low-grade." I place the stones on the counter. She pockets them without counting. I leave with three manuals and keep my face neutral until we're half a block away. The next shop is larger, better organized, run by a young Core Formation man with the particular energy of someone who inherited a business and has been improving it aggressively. His shelves are clean. His jade cases are labeled. His staff wear matching uniforms. This is a professional operation. I browse.

The Gaze confirms: nothing undervalued here. His rare section is a genuine rare section, fairly valued with techniques that cost more than my entire sect's annual income. I do not buy them. But he has what I actually came for.

"We carry standard Qi Condensation and Foundation Establishment sect supplement manuals," he says when I ask.

"Cultivation management texts. Resource allocation guides. Formation flag maintenance manuals. The things that keep a sect running when its most powerful members aren't present." I buy: Sect Resource Management - A Practical Guide: 30 low-grade. Not just for me, but for Jun too. He'd benefit from learning this instead of from scratch. He will see where his guesses were wrong and where they were right. He will grow faster. Formation Maintenance for Non-Specialists: 20 low-grade. For Lian.

For the disciples who will need to keep the perimeter strong when the experts are away. For the day when I am not there to fix things myself. The proprietor seems pleased to have moved administrative texts. Most cultivators don't think about these things. They want techniques that make them powerful, or artifacts that make them feared. I am thinking about nothing else. Nothing legendary or suspicious. Just boring infrastructure bought at prices a minor sect leader could plausibly afford.

Ling'er walks beside me, just another quiet servant girl in the crowd.

"Rest," I say at the door.

"Cultivate. Process what you've seen. I have more work to do." She nods.

"Contact you through the stones if needed."

"Yes." She slips inside. I turn back to the street. The sun is past its peak. The afternoon shadows are long. I have hours yet before dark. The artisan district is quieter. A twenty minute walk from the inn. The shops here deal in objects rather than knowledge, and objects require a different kind of evaluation. A technique manual either works or it doesn't. A weapon or a tool or a formation flag has gradations. The salesmanship is less aggressive because the customers already know they need what is being sold.

I walk past forges and workshops and display rooms. The heat from a smithy spills into the street. The smell of oil and metal and polished wood hangs in the air. A craftsman argues with a customer over the price of a sword. Another shows a potential buyer how a formation flag deploys. And I began my search for a craftsman. Wei Song. The weapon-shaper from Elder Frostheart's journal. Nine hundred years of maybe.