Chương 28: The Blood-Jade Offer (3/3)

"A remarkably pristine harvest." Deaconess Su Yin scrutinized the pulsating, dark-crimson mass resting upon her glowing spirit-jade table, the rhythmic thrum of residual demonic essence sending faint ripples through the translucent surface beneath it. The core itself seemed almost alive—veins of black lightning frozen mid-crawl beneath its slick, blood-slicked membrane, each pulse accompanied by a low, sub-audible hum that vibrated through the surrounding air like the dying heartbeat of something vast and terrible.

She leaned closer, the faint violet smoke from her pipe curling around the Demonic Beast King Core in lazy, serpentine spirals. The acrid sweetness of demon-bone ash mingled with the raw, primal stench emanating from the core—sulfur, charred meat, and something deeper, older, like the smell of lightning-scorched stone at the bottom of a forgotten chasm.

Her dark eyes narrowed, pupils contracting as she traced the unblemished surface with her gaze, searching for fractures, for the telltale spiderweb cracks that always accompanied a desperate kill.

There were none.

Standard rogue cultivators who survived encounters with Demonic Beast Kings invariably brought back severely degraded loot. In their desperate struggles for survival, they would shatter the core's internal meridian pathways with chaotic Qi strikes, pouring every scrap of spiritual energy into a single killing blow that left the treasure half-ruined and the essence leaking like wine from a cracked jug.

This core, however, was untouched by external Qi. The meridian channels within remained pristine, their intricate lattice of spiritual pathways still humming with dormant power. The beast had been executed with lethal precision—a single, surgical strike that had severed life without disturbing the treasure within.

"Extracting a core of this grade without spoiling the demonic essence requires a profound understanding of anatomy," Su Yin remarked, her sharp eyes lifting to meet Shi Yan's shadowed gaze beneath the dripping brim of his bamboo hat. Her voice carried the silk-soft cadence of someone accustomed to unraveling secrets, each word weighted with calculation.

"Or perhaps... an understanding of something else entirely."

She tapped her pipe against the table—a single, deliberate tap that sent a faint chime resonating through the spirit-jade. The demon-bone bowl clicked softly against the glowing surface, and a thin wisp of violet smoke coiled upward before dissipating into the ventilation formations above.

"However, the Silk and Ash Chamber deals in clean ledgers. I must ask—does this item carry any lingering karmic threads? If a Righteous Sect or a rival faction is currently tracking the beast's aura, the Vermilion Pavilion will not shield you." Her crimson-painted nails drummed once against the jade, the rhythmic tap-tap-tap punctuating her words like the ticking of a countdown.

"We do not shelter fools who invite calamity to our doors."

Shi Yan's expression beneath the bamboo hat remained completely immovable, his posture as still as carved stone. Water no longer dripped from the brim, but the faint dampness clinging to the straw fibers of his cloak released a slow, steady musk of rain-soaked earth and old blood into the enclosed air.

Karmic threads, huh? In this world too? Basically, she was confirming the loot wasn't hot.

"This Demonic Beast I found in the deepest area of the Abyss," Shi Yan said, his voice flat and colorless, devoid of pride or embellishment. Each word landed like a stone dropped into still water.

"It fell alone. There were no other eyes to witness the strike, and I left no living remnants. You are purchasing a severed thread. There is no karma to follow."

His hands remained loose on his thighs, fingers relaxed, but the muscles beneath the straw cloak were coiled tight, ready to move. His breathing never changed—slow, measured, controlled—but the faint shift in his weight, imperceptible to most, tilted his center of gravity fractionally toward the exit.

Su Yin studied his unblinking eyes for a long moment, her gaze boring into the shadowed hollows beneath his hat brim as if trying to peel back the layers of his skull and read the truth etched into bone. The silence stretched, broken only by the faint crackle of residual demonic energy flickering across the core's surface and the soft hiss of her pipe smoldering in her hand.

Finding not a trace of deceit or arrogance—no telltale flicker of evasion, no prideful tilt of the chin—her lips curved into a thin, cold smile. The kind of smile that never reached the eyes.

"We negotiate in the Dao of fair trade, then," she declared softly, her voice dropping into a register that carried the weight of finality. She did not insult him by offering an absurdly low price to a man who hunted peak entities—such disrespect would poison the well before the first cup was drawn.

With a subtle wave of her hand, pale fingers trailing through the violet smoke like a conductor guiding an invisible orchestra, her personal attendant stepped forward. The woman's boots made no sound against the dense snow-fox pelts, her movements economical and precise, placing a heavy, embroidered spatial pouch onto the table with a muted thud that sent a faint tremor through the glowing jade beneath.

"Three hundred medium-grade spirit stones, and five thousand untraceable silver taels," Su Yin offered, her tone even, businesslike.

"A small fortune, even for an inner sect elder."

The pouch itself was a work of art—deep indigo silk embroidered with gold thread depicting coiling serpents devouring their own tails, the fabric shimmering faintly with the telltale distortion of spatial compression formations woven into every stitch. The weight of the offering sat between them like a lodestone, its presence thick and tangible.

Shi Yan took the pouch without hesitation, his gloved hand—when had he slipped it back on? —closing around the drawstring with a faint rustle of fabric. He didn't bother counting the physical coins for now; the weight alone told him the offer was genuine. His fingers tested the heft once, twice, then secured it beneath his cloak with a practiced motion.

Then he reached into his cloak and tossed the crumpled Red-Stamp bounty he had ripped off the public board downstairs onto the glowing jade table. The parchment landed with a dry slap, its crimson seal catching the light and casting a faint red glow across the surface like a splash of fresh blood.

"I also came to collect the information for this bounty," Shi Yan said flatly, his tone brooking no room for deflection.

Su Yin glanced at the crumpled paper, her dark eyes flicking across the faded ink and torn edges. It was a standard assassination contract for a local gang leader—a two-bit thug operating in the lower wards, barely worth the ink used to print his name. Her gaze lifted slowly, tracing the line of Shi Yan's jaw, the rigid set of his shoulders, the absolute stillness of his hands.

And then—her flawless features shifted.

A sudden look of realization and amusement crossed her face, the corners of her dark red lips curling upward as understanding dawned like the first sliver of light breaking over a distant horizon.

"You tore my most lucrative public bounty off the board just to bypass the elder and guarantee an audience with me, didn't you?" Su Yin noted, tapping her pipe against the table with a soft tap-tap that rang like approving applause. She didn't look angry; she looked profoundly impressed, her eyes glittering with something dangerously close to delight. To use a high-tier bounty merely as a counterfeit entry pass was undeniably bold—the kind of audacity that either earned respect or invited swift retribution.

She picked up the crumpled public bounty between two crimson-painted nails, holding it aloft for a moment as if weighing its worth, then tossed it into a small bronze brazier on her desk. The parchment caught fire immediately, curling inward as flames licked across the crimson seal, reducing it to blackened ash that crumbled into the brazier's belly with a faint hiss.

"Forget the street trash," Su Yin murmured, her voice dropping as her demeanor shifted into something far more dangerous. The playful amusement drained from her face, replaced by the cold, calculating expression of a predator reassessing its prey. She reached into her wide crimson sleeve, the silk whispering softly as her hand disappeared into its folds.

"Since you have proven the sharpness of your methods," Su Yin said, her voice turning into a quiet murmur that seemed to curl through the air like smoke, "I have a proposition." Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

Her fingers emerged, pale and bloodless in the jade's glow, holding something small and heavy.

"The Chamber frequently encounters obstacles that... orthodox sword cultivators are too loud and too proud to remove. Your unique condition is quite intriguing. The profundity of your concealment—a physical vessel capable of masking its killing intent completely from Daoist arrays—is a rare advantage." Her gaze locked onto his, unblinking, and the temperature in the room seemed to drop by a fraction, the oppressive weight of her attention settling over him like a shroud.

She pushed a heavy, blood-red jade token across the glowing table, its surface slick and glossy as if freshly carved from congealed vitae. The token skidded across the jade with a faint scrape, coming to rest directly in front of Shi Yan. The formation anchors embedded in the walls seemed to hum in response, their dormant threads stirring like disturbed spiderwebs.

"I offer you a Blood-Jade Commission," Su Yin stated, her voice now flat, formal, carrying the weight of ritual.

"The target is a rogue Demonic Physician operating in the Black-Ash Marsh beyond the city's outer walls."

She leaned forward slightly, her slender fingers steepling together above the glowing jade, the demon-bone bowl of her pipe resting forgotten beside her.

"He has been preying upon our merchant caravans, stealing high-grade spirit herbs, and slaughtering our escorts to fuel his abominable blood-refinement arts. He conducts his trade beyond our influence, disrupting our business. Bring me his head." Her voice was a blade wrapped in silk—soft, sharp, and utterly uncompromising.

A naive, glory-seeking cultivator would have snatched the token immediately, eager to prove their worth to a powerful faction, to bask in the glow of recognition and bind themselves to a rising star.

But… Shi Yan did not.

He didn't even look at the blood-jade token. His gaze remained fixed on Su Yin's face, unflinching, unimpressed. He kept his hands resting casually near his waist, fingers loose, posture unchanged.

The Black-Ash Marsh.

A fragment of the original host's memories surfaced, unbidden—images flickering across his mind's eye like oil on water. The Black-Ash Marsh was a geographic red zone—a rotting wasteland permanently choked by natural poisonous miasma, where arrogant outer disciples went to die screaming, their lungs dissolving into bloody froth as the toxic fog ate them from the inside out. Bodies never recovered. Names carved into memorial stones that no one visited.

Shi Yan combined that native memory with the intelligence Su Yin had just handed him. She had explicitly stated the Physician was slaughtering merchant caravans—plural, not singular. Repeated, successful ambushes.

And he believed the Chamber was not foolish enough to assign escorts below Tier 2 to guard those merchants. Not when the cargo was high-grade spirit herbs valuable enough to warrant Blood-Jade intervention.

Which meant if a single hostile was wiping out heavily guarded convoys from inside a natural death zone, he wasn't just hiding in the marsh.

His brows furrowed fractionally beneath the brim of his hat, the only outward sign of internal calculation.

He was entrenched. The target had geographical advantage, intimate knowledge of terrain, and the poisonous miasma acting as both shield and weapon. Every breath in that place was a roll of the dice.

Unknown enemy numbers. Unknown cultivation base. Unknown support network. My current stats are capped at 39. Without spending thousands of Embers to force a Tier-2 breakthrough, charging into an enemy camp is just blind suicide.

The math was simple. The risk was unacceptable.

I can just take another commission instead of this one.

Thus...

"I must decline," Shi Yan said flatly, his voice carrying the finality of a closed door. He pushed the Blood-Jade token back across the table with a single finger, the red jade scraping softly against the glowing surface before coming to rest in front of Su Yin once more.

Su Yin blinked. The violet smoke from her pipe faltered, curling erratically as if the air itself had momentarily forgotten how to move. Her long eyes fluttered, lashes brushing against her flawless cheekbones as she tilted her head slightly, the gesture so minute it was almost imperceptible—a bird of prey cocking its head at an unexpected sound.

"Decline?" she repeated, a hint of genuine surprise breaking through her aristocratic mask like a crack in porcelain. The word hung in the air, absurd, impossible.

"People look for the chance to accept a Blood-Jade from my Chamber. It is a stepping stone to boundless cultivation resources and a network with me."

Beside the hint of bewilderment, there was also a hint of pride, almost mockery, in her tone—the faint indignation of someone whose generosity had been spurned—but most of all there was genuine confusion, as if this was the first time she had been rejected. Her fingers twitched against the jade table, nails tapping once, twice, in rapid succession.

But Shi Yan wasn't even flattered. His expression remained as immovable as iron, his posture unchanged.

"I came here looking for a trade, Deaconess, not to become a blade for hire," Shi Yan replied, then leaned slightly forward, the bamboo hat's brim casting his eyes into deeper shadow. His voice dropped, each word deliberate, measured.

"Entering a cursed area to hunt a cornered demonic cultivator without a verified foundation of intelligence is not bravery. It is suicide for me."

"Oh? Suicide, you say?" Instead of looking annoyed, Su Yin's gaze sharpened, her pupils dilating slightly as she studied him with renewed intensity. The more she looked, the more he became an interesting fellow—not a fool drunk on his own success, but a calculating predator who understood the value of survival over glory.

But outside that, the room was dead silent. The personal attendant's hand tightened subtly on her sword hilt, knuckles whitening against the wrapped leather as her jaw clenched. The loose threads of her martial robes pulled taut across her shoulders, her entire frame coiled like a spring ready to release.

But Su Yin did not invoke her spiritual pressure. Instead, a flash of profound respect lit up her eyes, warming the cold calculation with something almost human.

"You are cautious. Good. Dead men do not finish their contracts," Su Yin said, leaning back into her chair with a faint creak of wood. Her spine straightened, shoulders relaxing fractionally as she reassessed the board before her.

She decided to sweeten the bait. Her crimson-painted nails drummed once against the jade, a slow, deliberate rhythm that matched the pulsing of the demonic core beside her.

"What if the Chamber eliminates the obscurity of your path? If you return successful, I will personally elevate you to the status of an Inner Retainer." Her voice took on a honeyed edge, each word carefully chosen, weighted with promise.

"You will be granted unrestricted access to our Pavilion's information networks, the use of our concealed safe houses across the continent, and priority selection on all high-yield marks before they reach the public boards."

This... it was Shi Yan's turn to be stunned, but that was only a brief reaction—a fractional widening of his eyes, a nearly imperceptible shift in his breathing—before he began to ponder, his mind already dissecting the offer into its component parts.

An established intel network. Secure operational bases. A curated feed of targets. Isn't this what he lacked? Another identity to mask his original host's identity? The gears turned silently behind his eyes, weighing risk against reward, survival against opportunity.

"Also, be careful with the term of 'demonic cultivator'; we are 'demonic' too, no?" On the other hand, Su Yin laughed—a light, airy sound that carried no warmth, as if treating those words like passing wind. Her lips curved into a bemused smile, and she lifted her pipe to her mouth, drawing in a slow breath that sent the demon-bone bowl glowing faintly red.

But for Shi Yan, it caused a spark of reaction. His fingers twitched once against his thigh, the only outward sign of internal recalibration.

Right... this is where demonic cultivators rule the world... The thing was, unlike when the righteous ones ruled the world, where they needed a reasonable excuse—heavenly mandate, karmic justice, sect honor—the demonic ones didn't.

If they didn't like it, they killed. No trials. No justifications. Just power and will.

Thus, his choice was...