Chương 118: Before the Bridge Burns (3/3)

Shi Yan's eyes narrowed behind the slits of his iron mask, the cold metal pressing against his brow ridge as his pupils contracted into hard points of calculation.

By all reason, that being was part of the laws ruling this pocket realm. As the one who had brought about this sealing by stealing from the order of the market, if he stepped onto that bridge, he would likely be marked for death at once.

Still, he set the matter aside with the ease of a soldier compartmentalizing dangers beyond his immediate reach.

The Gatekeeper could be dealt with when he reached the bridge. Before that, he first had to break through this maze.

Clank... shhhk... clank...

The dragging of enormous chains was growing louder, each metallic scrape reverberating through the bone-paved streets like the grinding of iron teeth against stone.

It no longer came only from behind them.

Through the [Acoustic-Blood Tracker], Shi Yan heard the grating pull of iron echoing from every direction in the fog—north, south, east, west, all converging with methodical inevitability. The things closing in around them were immense, shapeless, and steadily tightening their encirclement like a noose drawn by invisible hands. Each dragging anchor carved deep furrows through frozen ground, the tremors traveling up through his iron-shod soles in rhythmic, doom-laden pulses.

By now, sight had become nearly useless.

The walls twisted without end, their surfaces rippling like water disturbed by unseen currents, while the fog birthed false roads and deceitful doorways—each one leading only to death. Phantom archways yawned open in the mist, their edges shimmering with sickly luminescence that promised escape but reeked of spiritual corruption. Yet Shi Yan's mind remained cold and still, like ice sealed through the deepest winter, untouched by the panic that drove other cultivators to their doom.

This maze had likely been prepared for cultivators.

That much made sense. No mortal should have been able to step into the Ghost Market at all.

And even if one somehow had, Shi Yan was not judging this place by sight, nor by ordinary spiritual perception.

He was listening to the world through weight, density, and the returning echoes of sound—the subtle differences in how footfalls resonated against solid foundation versus illusory space, the way air moved through genuine passages versus conjured dead ends.

Illusions had no weight.

Where others saw shifting walls and winding streets, he sensed only false appearances cast over the unmoving foundation below—thin spiritual projections draped like silk screens over the true geometry of the realm. He could not see the true road through the Ghost Market, but he could hear the bedrock beneath it, stretching onward where all appearances claimed there was only a wall of brick.

The genuine stone sang with a different frequency than the phantom barriers, its ancient density unmistakable to his heightened perception.

"There is some kind of illusion array. Don't trust your eyes," Shi Yan said in a low, steady voice, each word emerging through the mask's slits as white vapor that dissipated instantly into the frigid air. His Demonic Heavy Saber hung at his side as though the surrounding terrors were not worth mention, the massive blade's weight barely registering in his iron grip.

"Just step where I step. Do not deviate by even a hair's breadth."

The scarred woman asked no questions. Although, her brows drew together slightly as she followed close behind, the deep lines etched into her forehead deepening with wary concentration. Vigilance remained in her dark eyes—sharp and assessing beneath the frost that had begun to gather on her lashes—yet she did not hesitate. For now, leaving this cursed place was more important than anything else.

Besides, who knew how many treasures this masked young master carried?

Shi Yan led her forward in a harsh, crooked sprint, passing straight through walls of fog that seemed solid—their phantom surfaces parting around his shoulders like smoke—and weaving through the disorder of space with the confidence of one who could perceive what others could not. His boots struck bone pavers in a staccato rhythm, each placement precise, avoiding patches of ground where the acoustic feedback warned of destabilization.

Then—

"Follow that masked man! He sees the true path!" a desperate voice cried from the mist, raw and cracking with terror. If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

Three rogue cultivators, their eyes bloodshot and bleeding from spatial confusion—crimson tears tracking down their gaunt, frost-bitten faces—rushed out from a shifting courtyard illusion and chased after Shi Yan, hoping to use him to find their way. Their robes hung in tatters, burnt and oil-stained, and their movements carried the jerky, uncoordinated desperation of men who had been running blindly through endless loops for too long.

Through his [Acoustic-Blood Tracker], Shi Yan heard their frenzied heartbeats—erratic, galloping rhythms on the edge of qi deviation—and chaotic footsteps that skidded and stumbled over the frozen bone beneath them.

Three of them.

His gaze shifted slightly to the side, cold and indifferent, the pale gleam behind his mask's eye-slits as emotionless as winter starlight.

At such a moment, panicked stragglers were dangerous. Their fear would draw disaster like blood in water summoned sharks. Their confusion would breed chaos, disrupting the precise navigation required to escape the array's folded geometry. And once they reached the narrow bridge, desperation would drive them to shove, cling, or strike in order to live. At the most critical moment—when footing mattered and every second counted—they would become a fatal hindrance.

Such unstable factors could not be allowed to remain.

Without slowing, Shi Yan judged their distance—approximately twelve paces and closing fast—and silently measured the stroke needed to cut all three down in a single sweep. The angle, the pivot point, the exact moment when their clustering formation would align for maximum efficiency.

But then…

The woman did not tell them to stay back. She did not waste breath on threats or warnings that would only delay their escape.

Without even slowing her pace, she turned and swept out her massive broadsword in one unbroken motion, her shoulders rotating with the practiced ease of someone who had killed while running countless times before.

A frigid blue sword qi, mingled with mist and trailing wisps of pale frost, slashed through the fog in a crescent arc that hummed with lethal cold.

The foremost cultivator's head flew from his shoulders, the expression of desperate hope still frozen on his face. Frost sealed the wound the instant it appeared, trapping his blood within in a crystalline sheath of ice that crackled audibly as his body crumpled. The other two dropped in eerie silence, their hamstrings severed cleanly by the trailing sword wave—precise cuts that left them alive but utterly immobilized, their agonized gasps muffled as the freezing mist settled over their twitching forms.

Shi Yan's eyes narrowed, a flicker of reassessment passing through his cold analysis.

He had thought her merely practical—a survivor shaped by harsh necessity. Yet this was no simple decisiveness. This was ruthless judgment sharpened by life and death, honed to a razor's edge through countless similar moments where hesitation meant burial.

She treated all who tried to cling to their path as immediate threats, severing burdens before they could become calamity with the surgical efficiency of a butcher culling diseased stock. It was a cold, unsparing discipline that tolerated no weakness, no sentiment, no room for the luxury of mercy.

What a vicious woman.

No—a cold-blooded woman.

But in the cultivation world, such conduct was hardly strange. Where the Heavenly Dao had already fallen into disorder, desperation often gave birth to the most vicious schemes. Those who clung to morality in such places did not live long enough to develop scars like hers.

Less than fifty paces later, the mist thinned slightly, revealing clearer shapes ahead.

An elderly cultivator in ruined silk robes knelt directly in their true path—his position placed with too much precision to be accidental—while a younger, weeping disciple trembled beside him, face buried in shaking hands.

"Fellow Daoists, halt! Show mercy!" the old man wailed, his voice carrying a pitiable spiritual resonance that stirred sympathy in the listener's heart—a subtle technique that plucked at compassion like fingers on lute strings. He raised a glowing azure jade talisman that pulsed with protective formations and a heavy spatial pouch that clinked with spirit stones.

"Take my wealth! Take this Tier-2 defensive artifact! Only allow us to walk in your shadow—I beg you!"

The old man's face was a masterwork of desperation—tears streaming through the liver spots on his sunken cheeks, lips trembling, white beard matted with frost and grime.

Shi Yan ignored him and prepared to force his way through, intending to send the man flying without losing momentum, one shoulder already dropping to deliver a crushing blow.

Yet before he could close the distance, the scarred woman surged past him like a striking serpent, her boots hammering the bone pavers in three explosive steps.

"Wait—" Before the word had fully left his mouth, her broadsword had already pierced through the glowing talisman—shattering the azure jade with a sound like breaking glass—before burying itself to the hilt in the old man's chest. The blade punched through silk, flesh, and bone with barely any resistance, emerging from his back in a spray of dark spiritual essence rather than blood.

At once, the "terrified" disciple beside him let out a hiss—a sound no human throat should produce, all sibilant malice and inhuman rage. His face twisted into a demonic sneer, youthful features melting like wax to reveal something ancient and foul beneath, before his body crumbled into ash that scattered on a wind that hadn't been present a moment before. He had been nothing more than a paper illusion—a puppet of folded yellow talisman paper and malevolent will.

"Keep moving!" the woman barked as she kicked the body from her blade with a sharp, dismissive motion of her boot.

The old man's corpse spilled no blood. Instead, it dissolved into a foul-smelling swarm of black corpse-beetles—each one the size of a fingernail, their carapaces gleaming with unnatural oil—that scattered into the fog with a sound like rattling coins.

"That was no bribe," the scarred woman said coldly, her voice flat and devoid of satisfaction at her kill.

"It was a Death-Replacement Secret Art."

She did not slow as she spoke, already resuming her forward sprint with the blade held ready for the next threat.

"He was casting a Sorrow-Binding Mantra. Had you accepted that artifact, or even spoken a word in refusal, the karmic thread would have latched onto your breath—invisible as spider's silk but stronger than iron chains. The moment this realm collapsed, he would have reversed your fates and forced his death tribulation onto your body."

Her tone carried no judgment, only the weary certainty of someone who had seen such schemes before.

A wry smile touched Shi Yan's lips beneath the mask, the expression invisible but present in the slight shift of pressure against cold iron.

Who would have thought that harmless-looking old fellow hid such vicious methods?

Then again, when had he ever intended to accept that artifact?

As they pressed onward through the twisting maze, another panicked cultivator—lost in the looping illusions and deaf to the slaughter moments before—suddenly threw himself across their true path from a side alley, shrieking that he was trapped, that the walls were closing in, that he couldn't breathe. His hands clawed at the air as though grasping for salvation.

Shi Yan did not slow, nor did he draw his saber.

He merely lowered his stance, turned his shoulder, and slammed his heavy, spiked mountain-iron pauldron into the man with the full force of his momentum behind it.

"GAHckk!"

The cultivator was hurled far into the mist like a broken doll, his body spinning end over end. The sound of shattering ribs rang out at once—sharp cracks like green wood splitting—and the path ahead was cleared. Somewhere in the fog behind them came a wet thud as he landed, followed by a gurgling wheeze.

"The Hour of the Rabbit will arrive in but a few breaths," the woman said, her voice sharp amid the growing roar of the collapsing Ghost Market. Around them, the grinding of chains had become deafening, and the temperature had dropped so low that each exhalation froze into glittering crystals before falling.

"The pontoon bridge will sever the instant the hour changes. If we do not reach the shore before then, we will perish along with this realm."