Chương 62: The Market of No Return (1/3)

A ruined domain steeped in Yin miasma, where the laws of Heaven and Earth were broken.

The words settled in Shi Yan's mind like stones dropping into dark water. He could feel the weight of them—not metaphorical, but visceral, the way a soldier felt the difference between a training exercise and a live combat zone. His jaw tightened fractionally, the muscle jumping beneath rain-slicked skin.

A place too hostile, too lethal, and too corrupted for even the Patriarch of the Cloud-Mirror Sect to casually stroll into.

The amber lamplight flickered across the invisible interface hovering before his pale eyes, casting ghost-shadows through the woven veil. Outside, rain continued its relentless percussion against the paper-paned windows—a rhythm that matched the dull throb building behind his temples.

According to the myths she had just translated, it was a graveyard of ancient deities, mutated beasts, and horrors that had survived since the heavenly collapse.

Shi Yan's calloused fingers ceased their rhythmic tapping against his dark cloak. The fabric was cold beneath his touch, sodden and heavy with rainwater that had already seeped through to his skin. The chill had worked its way deep into his bones, but he barely registered it now—his attention had sharpened to a knife's edge.

Even cultivators had adapted to the ideology: high risk, high reward. Who knew which inheritance, abandoned legacy, or useful artifact had been left there by seniors from the previous era?

The cassia incense coiled through the air between them, its cloying sweetness mixing with the mineral scent of wet stone and the faint metallic tang that always seemed to cling to his clothing these days. Su Yin's obsidian eyes remained fixed on him with that predatory patience, reflecting the amber light in pinprick constellations.

And for him?

Who knew how many monsters resided in that realm?

His fingers flexed against his knee—once, twice—a unconscious gesture that betrayed the calculation running beneath his outward stillness. The sodden carpet squelched faintly as he shifted his weight, redistributing the burden of his rain-soaked clothing.

Ancient beasts that had festered in isolation for a millennium. Horrors that likely bypassed the meager yield of human cultivators entirely, offering tens—if not hundreds—of thousands of [Dao Embers] per kill.

The numbers materialized in his mind with crystalline clarity, overlaying the grim reality of his current reserves. 35, 275 Dao Embers. Against a requirement of 304, 500. The mathematics were brutal, unforgiving—the kind of deficit that ended missions before they began.

But... his thoughts halted. He was greedy, but not foolish.

The nausea that had churned through his gut earlier had settled into something colder, harder. His teeth ground together—a brief spasm of pressure that sent a dull ache radiating through his jaw. The veins at his temples continued their steady throb, keeping time with the rain.

A Shattered Realm was a literal goldmine of [Dao Embers], or at least that was what he hoped. But going into a cursed warzone armed with a looted, hollow stick of metal was strategic suicide.

"If this is the kind of storm we are speaking of," he said flatly, his voice cutting through the amber-lit space between them with the same emotional inflection as a weather report, "then what I have now is far from enough."

He neither agreed nor refused, but his intent should have been clear. The words hung in the incense-thick air, carrying the weight of tactical assessment rather than negotiation.

Then he reached down to the blood-stained canvas sack resting by his feet. The movement was deliberate, economical—muscle memory from a thousand equipment checks translated into this alien world's context. His fingers closed around coarse, wet fabric that reeked of iron and something darker, more corrupt.

With a heavy, wet thud, he hoisted it up and dumped its remaining contents onto the floor beside the desk.

The sound was visceral—meat and bone striking wood through canvas, the kind of noise that carried its own violence. Water droplets scattered across the already-sodden carpet, darkening it further. The mineral scent of rain intensified, mixing now with something far more unsettling.

"I need a forge," he said, his voice flat, cutting through the remnants of their political discussion with the precision of a blade through silk.

"And a craftsman who knows how to refine demonic flesh and bone."

The statement landed between them like an artillery round—not explosive, but definitive. Final.

Ruo'er, the quiet attendant who had been standing respectfully in the corner like a piece of elegant furniture, immediately stepped forward. The amber light caught the subtle widening of her eyes at the heavy, metallic thud the sack had made—a micro-expression of shock quickly smoothed away beneath trained composure.

But she still moved with the fluid grace of her station, refusing to let surprise compromise her dignity. Her hands did not hastily sweep the Cloud-Mirror Sect's looted wealth into a messy pile. Instead, her movements blurred with practiced efficiency, fingers dancing across the scattered treasures with the precision of a jeweler sorting gemstones.

She stacked the glowing mid-grade spirit stones into neat, geometric towers that hummed with pure ambient energy—each stone singing a soft, crystalline note that resonated just below the threshold of hearing. The pale luminescence they cast added another layer to the amber lamplight, creating shifting patterns across the mahogany surface.

She folded the captured white-silk sect robes with reverent care, smoothing away each crease with fingertips that barely whispered against the fabric. The silk caught the light like moonlight on still water, pristine despite its violent acquisition. She placed the untraceable silver taels atop them as paperweights—each tael stamped with imperial seals that gleamed dully, their weight keeping the silk from shifting in the subtle air currents stirred by her movement.

She lined up the orthodox jade slips and porcelain pill bottles into precise rows, their arrangement geometric and aesthetically pleasing. The jade slips were cool white and green, their surfaces carved with microscopic cultivation formulas that would take hours to decipher. The porcelain bottles were sealed with red wax, their contents unknown but valuable—pills that likely cost more than a mortal family's yearly income.

Some books that looked like cultivation manuals joined the arrangement—their leather bindings cracked with age, their pages yellowed but intact, covered in dense columns of archaic script that promised power to those who could comprehend their secrets.

In less than a minute, she had quarantined the pristine, high-society wealth to the far edges of the desk, creating a sterile, empty wooden arena in the center—a stage awaiting its grim performer.

Shi Yan didn't wait for permission or speak. Both Su Yin and he watched this patiently, the silence between them filled only by the soft rustle of silk, the faint clink of silver, and the ever-present drumming of rain. His breathing remained steady, controlled—the autonomic rhythm of a man accustomed to waiting.

The moment Ruo'er's elegant curation was complete, she turned her attention to the blood-stained canvas sack. Her fingers, which had handled priceless spirit stones with such care, now gripped the coarse, wet fabric without hesitation.

She reached into the sack and pulled out the prize.

It hit the mahogany with a sickening, wet crunch—the sound of dead meat striking solid wood, of something that had once been alive meeting its final indignity.

It was the grafted demonic arm Shi Yan had severed from Physician Li's corpse, and even in death it radiated wrongness. The limb was nearly as thick as Shi Yan's own waist, a grotesque monument to cultivation gone horribly astray. Its surface was covered in jagged, obsidian-like scales that overlapped like armor plating, each one catching the amber light and swallowing it into lightless depths. The scales had an oily sheen, as if perpetually wet with something that wasn't water. Enjoying the story?

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The arm terminated in four razor-sharp talons—each one curved like a sickle, tapering to points fine enough to pierce steel. The talons were black as midnight, their surfaces unnaturally smooth, and beneath them the flesh was a mottled purple-grey, veined with thick black channels where corrupted blood had once flowed.

A terrifying, absolute cold radiated from the dead flesh—not the clean chill of winter ice, but something deeper and more fundamental. It was the cold of the grave, of spaces between stars, of extinction itself. The temperature drop was immediate and visceral, as if the arm was actively draining heat from the surrounding air.

The foul, sulfurous stench hit a moment later—a choking miasma that spoke of abyssal Yin Qi concentrated to toxic levels. It was the smell of rotting eggs and burning hair, of things that should never have existed crawling up from lightless depths. The cassia incense recoiled from it, unable to mask or sweeten the fundamental wrongness.

Dark, acidic blood sizzled faintly against the polished wood of the table, eating shallow divots into the mahogany's surface. Each droplet hissed like water on hot metal, releasing tiny plumes of acrid smoke that added another layer to the room's already complex olfactory assault.

Su Yin stared at the severed limb, her porcelain features momentarily unguarded. Her delicate nose wrinkled slightly—an involuntary reaction to the foul scent of rotting blood and abyssal Qi that even her cultivator's constitution couldn't fully ignore. The expression was minute, barely perceptible, but it was there: genuine revulsion flickering across features trained to reveal nothing.

Then her gaze drifted from the beast's arm, tracking upward with calculated deliberation. Her obsidian eyes moved to the seven pristine, blue astral-silk spatial pouches still resting on her desk like captured butterflies—each one worth more than most mortals would see in ten lifetimes. The silk caught the lamplight, shimmering with woven formations that whispered of the Cloud-Mirror Sect's wealth and power.

Her attention shifted again to the four beautifully forged orthodox swords lying beside the spirit stones. The blades were masterworks—slender, elegant jian with perfectly balanced tangs, their edges sharp enough to split falling silk. Spiritual formations crawled along their lengths in microscopic script, promising to channel Qi with devastating efficiency. Each sword represented years of a master craftsman's life.

Why? Is he...?

Confusion briefly broke through her composure like a crack appearing in porcelain. Her perfectly maintained mask of patient curiosity fractured for just an instant—eyebrows drawing together by a hairsbreadth, lips parting slightly as if to voice a question that died unspoken.

But Su Yin was not a sheltered young miss from the Inner Wards, pampered and protected from harsh realities. She was the deaconess of an underworld mercantile empire, a woman who had clawed her way to power through seas of blood and mountains of silver. Her mind was a steel trap, and right now, the gears were turning with terrifying speed—each observation clicking into place like pieces of a puzzle assembled by invisible hands.

She looked at the severed arm, its corrupted flesh still hissing against her desk. Then at Shi Yan, his features hidden behind the woven veil but his stillness more eloquent than any expression.

He couldn't open the spatial pouches earlier.

The thought crystallized with sudden, absolute clarity. Su Yin's dark eyes narrowed imperceptibly—a minute contraction of muscles around her orbital sockets, invisible to anyone not trained to read micro-expressions. It was a simple observation, yet the conclusion she drew from it was terrifying in its implications.

When he had first placed the seven Cloud-Mirror pouches on her desk, she had assumed his request for the Pavilion's help was merely a matter of caution—the prudent paranoia of a rogue cultivator who knew the orthodox sects' reputation.

The orthodox sects were famous for laying vicious karmic traps and blood seals on their spatial arrays, after all. Formations that would backfire catastrophically if forced open by the wrong person, searing meridians and shattering dantians with the fury of a trapped lightning bolt. It made perfect sense for a rogue cultivator to ask an appraiser to clear the locks, to avoid a backlash that could cripple or kill.

But looking at him now—at the severed demonic arm lying between priceless swords and spirit stones—a cold, startling realization began to bloom in her chest like frost spreading across glass.

He broke Iron-Cleaver Zhao's arm using pure physical leverage, with absolutely no trace of Qi fluctuation.

She had felt it herself—or rather, felt the absence of it. When bone had splintered and Zhao had screamed, there had been no telltale surge of spiritual energy, no ripple in the ambient Qi that should have accompanied such violence. Just raw, mechanical force applied with brutal precision.

He stood perfectly unaffected when I crushed the room with my Peak Tier-2 spiritual pressure.

That memory was particularly damning. She had unleashed her full aura in this very room, her cultivation base pressing down like the weight of mountains, forcing the air itself to thicken until breathing became labor. Ruo'er had trembled. The lamplight had flickered. Even the incense smoke had flattened against invisible weight.

And he had stood there like a stone in a river, utterly unmoved, as if her power was nothing more than a gentle breeze.

He asked me to open bags that any cultivator with a functioning dantian could forcefully crack with enough time...

Spatial pouches were designed to resist casual theft, yes, but their seals were ultimately powered by Qi formations. Any cultivator at Marrow-Rot stage or above could force them open given privacy and patience—the spiritual equivalent of picking a lock. It would trigger alarms, waste time, possibly damage contents, but it was possible.

Unless you couldn't channel Qi at all.

... and now, he wants a weapon made of crude bone rather than wielding a master-crafted spiritual sword.

Her gaze fell again to the four elegant jian, each one a treasure that Inner Sect disciples would kill to possess. Then to the grotesque demonic arm, its corrupted flesh still radiating that bone-deep cold.

Isn't he cultivating some kind of body-refining art that makes him unable to use his Qi?

The hypothesis formed with the inevitability of water finding its level. Her pulse quickened—just slightly, a tempo increase imperceptible except to her own heightened awareness.

Her gaze pierced through the dim light, studying the dark figure beneath the bamboo hat with renewed intensity. Water still dripped from the hat's brim in slow, measured intervals—drip, drip, drip—each droplet catching amber light before disappearing into shadow.

He was currently projecting the aura of a Late Tier-1, Marrow-Rot stage cultivator. The spiritual pressure emanating from him was perfectly calibrated—steady, unremarkable, the kind of cultivation base that marked someone competent but not threatening. An hour ago, it had seemed perfectly adequate, the natural signature of a rogue cultivator who had scraped his way to modest power.

But now, it felt like a poorly painted mask—brushstrokes visible upon close inspection, the illusion obvious once you knew to look for it.

A fake one.

There was a glint of curiosity in her eyes, sharp and bright as a blade catching light. It only deepened as she studied him, her analytical mind picking apart every detail with the precision of a physician dissecting a corpse.

But, if not because of his cultivation technique or inner art, then is his cultivation crippled?

The question formed and was immediately tested against available evidence. Su Yin's mind raced through possibilities like fingers flipping through book pages, each theory examined and either retained or discarded in heartbeat intervals.

No. The answer came immediately, definitively. A crippled man could not butcher an Inner Elder.

A truly crippled cultivator—one whose dantian was shattered or meridians severed—would be weaker than a mortal. They would lack even basic physical enhancement, their body reverting to mundane limitations. Such a person might kill through poison or ambush, but they could not engage in direct combat with someone like Physician Li and emerge victorious.

The evidence before her told a different story: precision violence, overwhelming physical force, tactical brilliance that spoke of combat experience measured in years or decades.

So the conclusion, perhaps, was that he practiced an ancient, pure body-refining path that entirely abandoned the meridians—one of those legendary techniques whispered about in dusty archives, methods so extreme they required practitioners to cripple their own spiritual potential in exchange for transcendent physical power.

Or did he simply possess a constitution so flawed that he could not channel Qi into an external vessel?

A birth defect, perhaps. Some fundamental incompatibility between his spirit and the world's energy, forcing him to develop alternative methods of survival. Such afflictions were rare but not unheard of—tragic cases documented in medical texts, usually ending in early death or obscurity.

But regardless, she only smiled, interested. The expression was small, subtle—just the faintest upward curve at the corners of her lips, like a cat watching a particularly fascinating mouse.

She didn't know the exact truth, couldn't pin down the precise nature of his anomaly. But the illusion of his normalcy was shattered, broken like glass beneath a hammer. The comfortable assumptions she had made were dust.

He was an anomaly—something outside the normal categories, a variable that didn't fit into the world's established equations.

Su Yin looked at him in silence, the rain continuing its percussion against the windows. The amber lamplight flickered, causing shadows to dance across her porcelain features.

Let's test the waters.

"Daoist Shi," she said slowly, her voice carrying the measured cadence of someone selecting each word with care, weighing it before release.

"Why would you ask for a smith to refine a weapon from such tainted flesh?"

Her eyes flicked toward the demonic arm on the floor, lingering on its grotesque contours—the obsidian scales, the vicious talons, the black blood still eating into her mahogany table. Then back to him, searching for micro-expressions hidden behind that woven veil, looking for tells in the set of his shoulders and the angle of his head.

"You have already taken seven storage pouches from those inner sect disciples." She gestured toward the neat arrangements Ruo'er had created, the organized wealth gleaming in amber light.

"Among their contents, there should be no lack of fine weapons. At the very least, there ought to be several spirit swords of good quality."

She paused slightly, letting the observation settle. The rain filled the silence—a thousand tiny impacts against paper and wood, the sound of the heavens weeping.

"They were forged by orthodox craftsmen, nourished by pure qi, and far sharper than ordinary mortal steel."

Each descriptor was chosen deliberately, emphasizing the value and quality of what he was rejecting. Her tone carried genuine puzzlement now, curiosity bleeding through the mask of professional courtesy.

Her gaze rested on him, searching for his intent with the focus of a hunter tracking prey through dense forest.

"If such weapons are already in hand, why use a demonic thing instead?"

The question hung in the incense-thick air, weighted with implications. Around them, the room seemed to hold its breath—the lamplight steadied, the rain softened to a whisper, even the cassia smoke paused in its lazy coiling.

Shi Yan looked at the delicate, silver-tasseled jian he had looted earlier, currently resting peacefully atop the pile of silver taels like a sleeping serpent. The blade was exquisite—its edge sharp enough to split falling rain, its balance perfect, its spiritual formations glowing faintly with residual Qi that promised devastating power to a cultivator who knew how to wield it.

To any cultivator, such a weapon was a masterpiece—the kind of treasure that marked the difference between life and death, that could turn the tide of combat through sheer quality alone.

To him, it was a liability—a fragile, overspecialized tool designed for capabilities he didn't possess.

How do I explain basic kinetic physics to a wizard? he wondered dryly, the thought carrying that particular flavor of exhausted irony that only came from trying to translate between fundamentally incompatible worldviews.

It was the same problem he'd faced a dozen times since arriving in this world: how do you explain gunpowder to someone who thinks fireballs are normal? How do you discuss force multipliers with people who fly on swords? How do you make them understand that their "elegant" weapons are engineering disasters from a purely mechanical perspective?

It was a very obvious fact that, once again, he couldn't tell her the truth: I am Daoless. I do not have a Spiritual Root. I cannot channel Qi through these elegant Daoist artifacts, which means they are just very sharp, very fragile pieces of glass in my hands.

The words formed in his mind with crystalline clarity but remained unspoken—classified information that would shatter whatever fragile assumptions allowed this negotiation to proceed.

Instead, he needed an alibi that fit the rules of her world, a lie constructed from truth's bones that would satisfy her curiosity without revealing the fundamental impossibility of his existence.

Shi Yan reached over and picked up one of the looted flying swords from the table. His calloused fingers closed around the hilt—silk-wrapped grip designed for cultivator hands, perfectly balanced, worth more than most mortals would see in ten lifetimes. He gripped the hilt with his right hand and placed his left thumb flat against the blade, feeling the cold kiss of spiritually-enhanced steel against his skin.

"Let's just say..." he began slowly, carefully holding the jian with the practiced ease of someone who had handled a thousand weapons before, "orthodox swords are built to be vessels for Qi."

The statement was delivered in that same flat, matter-of-fact tone he used for tactical assessments—no inflection, no emotion, just information presented for analysis.

"They are forged to be light, flexible, and resonant with spiritual energy."