Chương 27: The Blood-Jade Offer (2/3)

He carries the stench of a lower-district corpse-handler.

Su Yin's gaze narrowed in cold displeasure, her half-lowered lashes casting delicate shadows across her flawless cheekbones. The acrid odor of mud, stale blood, and something fouler—the unmistakable reek of battlefields left to rot—clung to the man's straw cloak like a funeral shroud. It was the signature stench of scavengers who picked through demon-scorched wastelands, stripping cores from beasts whose carcasses had already bloated under three suns.

Yet Elder Mo's transmission explicitly verified a pristine Peak Tier-1 Demonic Beast Core.

Her crimson-painted fingernails tapped silently against the cool jade surface of her pipe's mouthpiece as she turned the contradiction over in her mind. The delicate formations carved into the spirit-ash bamboo hummed faintly with residual heat.

A lone Cinder-Blood cultivator surviving a direct encounter with an Abyssal Beast King is impossible by his realm.

She studied him with the detached precision of a butcher appraising livestock. His visible aura flickered weakly—pathetically weak, in fact—barely registering above the baseline spiritual pressure of an outer district beggar. The faint crimson haze clinging to his meridians was threadbare, unstable, the hallmark of a freshwater ant struggling to survive in an ocean of predators.

Either he scavenged the core from the corpses of true experts, or his pathetic aura is an exquisite, high-tier illusion meant to deceive.

In the underground economy of Skycloud City, misplaced trust often invited calamity. The cobblestones of the Outer Wards were stained with the blood of merchants who had accepted glittering bait without first testing the hook. Polite titles like "Esteemed Guest" were merely pleasantries for the unproven—silk veils draped over iron cages.

If this man was merely a lucky, arrogant scavenger who stumbled upon a dead demonic beast or demonic beast king, his will would collapse under superior pressure, allowing her to acquire the Demonic Beast Core for a fraction of its true value.

A faint smile ghosted across her dark red lips, cold and predatory as winter frost creeping across a blade.

However, if he was a disguised assassin sent by a rival faction, his instinct for survival would force his true Qi to flare in self-defense, instantly exposing his real cultivation realm to the room's spirit-sensing formation.

The dormant formation anchors embedded in the mahogany walls pulsed faintly, their invisible threads woven through the air like a spider's web, ready to catch even the slightest fluctuation of hostile intent.

It was a ruthless, highly effective test.

One she had performed dozens of times. The weak crumbled. The deceivers revealed themselves. And the Pavilion profited from both outcomes.

Then shall we test it?

Without breaking eye contact, Su Yin tapped her slender, pale finger against the translucent spirit-jade table. The sound was barely audible—a single crystalline tink—yet it resonated through the formations woven into the room's foundation like a gong struck in a silent temple.

Instantly, a localized, suffocating wave of pure Peak Tier-2 spiritual pressure erupted from her body.

The air itself seemed to solidify. The calming glow of the spirit-jade table flickered, its light momentarily swallowed by the crushing weight of her unleashed aura. The violet smoke coiling lazily from her pipe twisted violently, as if seized by an invisible fist. It bypassed the rest of the room entirely, condensing into a focused, invisible pillar of crushing gravity that crashed down directly onto Shi Yan's position.

The temperature plummeted. The snow-fox pelts beneath his boots rippled outward from the epicenter of the压迫 压 (oppressive force), their luxurious white fur flattening as though a massive boulder had been dropped from the heavens.

But unfortunately, unknown to Su Yin, because Shi Yan possessed no spiritual root, no dantian, and no connection to the Heavens, he felt absolutely nothing.

To his Daoless vessel, the terrifying spiritual pressure was as harmless as a gentle breeze.

However, out of the corner of his eye, he noticed the violet smoke from Su Yin's pipe suddenly flatten, driven forcefully downward against the glowing jade table as if crushed by a massive, invisible weight. The delicate tendrils, which had been drifting upward in lazy spirals only a heartbeat before, now clung to the surface like oil poured across stone.

Simultaneously, the loose threads on the personal attendant's martial robes pulled taut—snap-straight as bowstrings—and the woman subtly shifted her back foot, bracing her frame against a residual shockwave. Her jaw tightened. Her knuckles whitened where her hand hovered near her sword hilt.

Shi Yan's eyes narrowed fractionally beneath his hat. His muscles hardened, coiling like compressed springs beneath the drape of his straw cloak.

I didn't feel anything hit me.

His mind was clear, sharp as a blade honed on whetstone. The air pressure around him hadn't changed—not against his skin, not in his lungs. But the room itself had reacted violently.

Based on the original host's memories, combined with his limited experience reading cultivation novels, a possibility surfaced.

An invisible suppression array? A suppression field? Or a formless Qi blade waiting to drop?

His weight shifted imperceptibly backward, redistributing his center of gravity toward the vault door. His hands, still hanging loose beneath the cloak, flexed once—testing his reaction speed.

She had just initiated an unprovoked qi-based attack.

So she was trying to crush him?

If so, then...

Then there is no deal.

Rather than reacting with panic or flaring an aura he didn't possess, Shi Yan coldly adjusted the dripping brim of his bamboo hat. Water droplets slid down the woven edge and pattered softly onto the snow-fox pelts below. The motion was slow, deliberate, utterly unconcerned—the kind of movement a man made when brushing dust from his sleeve, not when facing imminent death.

He deliberately turned his back on the Tier-2 Deaconess—casually exposing a fatal blind spot to show exactly how little her hidden technique intimidated him—and placed his bare hand directly onto the heavy brass handle of the sealed vault door.

The cold metal bit into his palm. The bronze reinforcement strips glowed faintly with sullen red light, and the layered defensive formations embedded in the iron hummed against his skin like the purr of a sleeping tiger.

"I brought a highly volatile, peak-tier treasure to this pavilion under the assumption of fair trade," Shi Yan said.

His voice was a low, perfectly steady baritone cutting through the silence like a knife drawn across silk. The acoustics of the enclosed sanctum carried his words with unnerving clarity, amplified subtly by the reflective properties of the jade table and the dense pelts underfoot.

He didn't yell. He didn't sound strained. He sounded deeply disappointed—the tone of a man who had expected better and found only filth.

"If the Silk & Ash Chamber conducts its business by quietly pressing an invisible blade to a guest's neck before a price is even named, then your hospitality is severely lacking."

He paused. His grip tightened on the brass handle, and the faint creak of metal shifting under pressure echoed through the room.

"Keep your gold. I will take my goods elsewhere."

Behind the desk, Su Yin's eyes widened a fraction of an inch—barely perceptible, but unmistakable to anyone trained to read microexpressions. The bamboo pipe hovered motionless near her lips, forgotten. A thin wisp of violet smoke curled upward, no longer suppressed, drifting lazily toward the ventilation formations in the ceiling.

He is speaking perfectly clearly?

Her pulse quickened. The faint throb of her heartbeat pulsed against the hollow of her throat.

How?

Even a Peak Tier-1 cultivator would be gasping for breath under this spiritual weight—blood vessels bursting in their eyes, internal meridians hemorrhaging from the strain. She had seen Foundation-Building disciples vomit blood from lesser pressure. Yet his aura remained pathetically weak, and his voice lacked even a tremor of strain. This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

No shortness of breath. No tremor in his hand. No defensive Qi flare.

Nothing.

Then the memory of the event downstairs flashed through her mind—the way he had effortlessly shattered Iron-Cleaver Zhao's arm. The sickening crack had echoed through the hall, followed by the man's agonized scream. And yet this stranger's face had remained utterly blank, as though he had done nothing more than swat a fly.

The personal attendant stepped forward, her footfalls muffled by the dense pelts. She leaned close to Su Yin's ear and lowered her voice to a hushed murmur barely louder than the rustle of silk.

"Deaconess... the observing mirrors witnessed the entire exchange. The appraisers have already reviewed the scene."

A trace of disbelief flickered across her normally impassive face—her brows drawing together, her lips pressing into a thin line.

"There were no Qi fluctuations whatsoever when he broke Zhao's arm."

The room fell silent. Even the faint hum of the ventilation formations seemed to recede, as though the chamber itself were holding its breath.

"He did not use a martial technique, a secret art, or any form of Qi manipulation. He relied solely on the strength of his fleshly body."

Her throat bobbed as she swallowed, her voice dropping even lower—tinged now with something that might have been fear.

"What's even more frightening is that the strike wasn't random. He accurately discerned the weakest point in Zhao's protective Qi and attacked it with flawless precision."

She paused, glancing briefly toward the man still standing with his hand on the vault door.

"The Qi shield remained intact, yet the joint was shattered in a single move."

The attendant's fingers twitched near her sword hilt, as though her body were instinctively preparing for a threat she could not yet see.

"For a mortal body to unleash such force without suffering backlash... this person's body refinement is terrifying."

A chill crept into her voice, quiet and insidious as poison spreading through veins.

"Deaconess, this man is far more dangerous than we initially believed."

Su Yin lowered her pipe slowly, resting the demon-bone bowl against the jade surface with a faint clink. Her mind raced, rapidly sifting through the martial archives of the continent's major factions like a scholar flipping through ancient scrolls.

Which sect teaches such silent dismantling of the human body?

The Iron-Blood Prefecture relied on brute physical force, yes—but their arts were explosive and loud, accompanied by earth-shaking roars and visible shockwaves that cracked stone. The orthodox sects of the Four Pillars considered hand-to-hand combat beneath their sword arts, dismissing physical cultivation as the crude path of beasts and barbarians.

I cannot read his true aura, nor can I trace his lineage.

Her gaze sharpened, studying the way he stood—perfectly balanced, weight distributed like a predator poised to strike or flee. His posture was flawless. Too flawless. Not the arrogance of a rogue cultivator, but the lethal economy of motion drilled into soldiers and assassins.

Then what if... he doesn't belong to the Four Pillars?

The thought sent a cold thrill down her spine.

That would mean the man before her might be the inherited blade of a wandering rogue master—some ancient, retired monster hiding in the deep mountains who trained killers entirely outside the Heavenly Mandate's standard paths. A ghost lineage. A shadow transmission. The kind of disciple who left no records, no witnesses, and no survivors.

In this broken age, where sects crumbled and bloodlines withered, such figures were worth more than gold.

The Silk & Ash Chamber didn't care about a man's hidden secrets as long as they didn't negatively impact the ledger.

In their line of work, a man with no sect ties, no recognizable technique, and a bizarre immunity to spiritual pressure wasn't a troublesome variable.

He was the perfect, shadow retainer. A priceless ghost.

With a subtle flick of her wrist, she instantly withdrew the heavy spiritual pressure.

The oppressive weight vanished like mist burned away by sunrise. The violet smoke from her pipe drifted upward normally once more, curling in lazy spirals toward the ceiling. The attendant's shoulders sagged almost imperceptibly, and the glow of the spirit-jade table steadied, its calming light returning in full.

"I apologize, esteemed guest," Su Yin said.

Her voice lost its cold edge and became restrained, sincere, yet undeniably respectful—the tone of a merchant addressing not prey, but an equal. She rose gracefully from her chair, the crimson silk of her hanfu whispering softly as it settled around her frame. She offered a deliberate, shallow bow—precisely calculated, the depth of which conveyed acknowledgment without submission.

"In our line of work within the Outer Wards, weeds often try to sell us painted pebbles, claiming they are pearls. A small test is customary. The weak and the false have no standing here."

She straightened, her dark eyes meeting his shadowed gaze beneath the brim of his hat.

"You have my word as Deaconess of the Vermilion Pavilion: there will be no further disrespect."

She gestured gracefully to the woven cushion, her pointed nails glinting faintly in the jade-light.

"Please. Sit. Let us discuss the price of a Demonic Beast King Core, and the vast fortunes we might build together over a long-term partnership."

A Demonic Beast King, huh?

Shi Yan lingered near the massive door for exactly three seconds, his hand still resting lightly on the brass handle. The metal was warming now beneath his palm, absorbing heat from his skin.

The System logged it as an 'Abyssal Overseer', but the natives classify it as a Beast King.

Interesting. The terminology gap confirmed what he'd suspected—this world's cultivation hierarchy didn't perfectly align with the System's classifications. Which meant information asymmetry was a weapon he could exploit.

Only when he was satisfied that the advantage now rested firmly in his hands did he release the brass handle.

The faint hum of the defensive formations faded as his contact broke. He turned around slowly, his dead eyes locking onto hers from beneath the rim of his rain-soaked hat. Water still dripped from the woven bamboo, leaving dark spots on the pristine white pelts as he walked forward with measured, even strides.

He reached the jade table, pulled back his heavy straw cloak with a deliberate rustle of coarse fiber, and sat down with perfectly balanced posture. His spine remained straight, his weight centered, his hands resting loosely on his thighs where they could move in an instant.

"Your apology is accepted," Shi Yan said coldly.

He didn't waste time on pleasantries or false courtesy. His gloved hand disappeared briefly beneath the folds of his cloak, then emerged holding a heavy, blood-stained sack. The fabric was dark with dried gore, stiff in places where ichor had crusted and hardened. The scent of raw meat and something acrid—sulfur, char, demon-taint—wafted across the table as he dropped it onto the pristine spirit-jade surface with a dull, wet thud.

The impact sent faint ripples through the jade's calming glow, and a thin smear of blackened blood transferred onto the translucent stone.

"Now. Let's talk numbers."

Su Yin's expression remained perfectly composed, but her gaze sharpened with predatory focus. She gestured to her personal attendant with a subtle tilt of her chin—an unspoken command.

The woman stepped forward, her movements precise and efficient. She carefully undid the silk bindings with nimble fingers, peeling back the layers of stained fabric with the practiced care of someone accustomed to handling volatile treasures.

When the heavy, pulsating mass of the Demonic Beast King's Core was revealed, Su Yin's eyes narrowed.