Chương 72: The Pass Was Sealed (2/3)

But... he paused, frowning. His fingers drummed against his bicep in a slow, irregular rhythm—tap, tap-tap, pause—the kind of unconscious pattern that accompanied tactical evaluation. This is not my problem.

I could just force her to buy them. Demand the money and walk away.

After that, I can just run away. After all, he was quite strong enough now, wasn't he?

He didn't care about Su Yin's life. He wasn't her friend, and he certainly wasn't her protector. If she got caught and executed by her own Chamber a week from now, it wouldn't personally break his heart.

But...

As a soldier, it deeply violated his professional instincts.

And... this kind of trouble was troublesome.

Perhaps he would end up like the running dogs in those xianxia stories, kept chased from city to city, creating chains of enmity.

Who knew whether every disciple's family was linked to each other, or whether each friend or cousin belonged to some great family?

So, endless trouble.

But Shi Yan paused.

Isn't this also another source of income? I mean, when he was chased, there was a reason for him to kill the little one, and then the big one would come, giving him a steady flow of [Dao Embers].

Even though the cost was like those MCs in xianxia stories, he still had a reason to kill them, and they would keep growing stronger while the rewards kept getting richer, wasn't that right?

His jaw tightened slightly, pulling at the dried blood crusted along his cheek. The faint crack of the scab parting made him grimace.

But then he paused again and shook his head.

It was not worth it.

Now... he couldn't sell them to the black market, and he couldn't sell them to the Pavilion.

Therefore, until he found a way to safely recycle their materials or sell them in a completely different city hundreds of miles away, they were just physical items he had to deal with.

He looked down at his hip, where his newly hijacked, bio-locked black pouch rested securely against his belt. The scorched leather was still warm from contact with his body, the surface smooth beneath his bloodied knuckles as his fingers absently brushed the folded rim.

Right... why don't... I guess I'll just store them in my new inventory? He blinked.

It was the most obvious answer. Put the empty bags in the magic bag.

Shi Yan uncrossed his arms and stepped toward the desk. His boots scuffed against the warped floorboards, the wood groaning faintly under his weight. The oil lantern's flame guttered in the draft slipping through the thin walls, casting jittery shadows across the scarred desktop.

He picked up one of the Vermilion Pavilion pouches. The dark red silk was heavier than it should be, thrumming faintly with latent enchantment beneath his fingertips—a subtle vibration like holding a live wire wrapped in cloth. The Chamber's ashen crest, embroidered in tarnished silver thread, caught the amber light.

He tapped his thumb against his black, bio-locked pouch, the familiar pulse of connection flaring through his fingertip as the void opened. The perfect geometric darkness yawned beneath the rim, dimensionless and still. He attempted to push the red bag inside.

Thump.

Shi Yan's arm violently jerked backward, his shoulder socket popping slightly from the sudden, unexpected resistance. A sharp lance of pain shot through the joint, radiating down to his elbow.

He didn't hit a physical wall.

The sensation was entirely unnatural—it felt exactly like trying to force two highly powerful magnets together at their identical poles. The spatial void inside his black pouch aggressively, almost maliciously, repulsed the red pouch. The air itself seemed to recoil, a prickling pressure building against his knuckles like static electricity gathering before a lightning strike.

It can't? He frowned, leaning forward. His weight shifted onto his lead foot, knees bending slightly as he braced himself. The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

Applying more pressure, he activated a sliver of his [Black-Iron Body Art], forcing his arm forward with hundreds of pounds of kinetic torque. The familiar black veins erupted beneath his skin, threading up his forearm like roots of darkened iron. His muscles locked into rigid, unyielding columns as he physically overpowered the magnetic-like resistance of the dead space.

The air between the two pouches warped, bending ambient light like the suffocating heat haze over a summer asphalt road. Colors smeared and distorted—the red silk of the Vermilion pouch bled into sickly orange, then flickered back. The high-pitched, terrifying whine of stressed geometry began to scream in the tiny inn room, sounding like tearing metal dragged across glass. The noise drilled into his ears, sharp and invasive, making his teeth ache.

The lantern flame twisted violently, its light guttering as if an invisible hand were strangling it. The temperature around his hands plummeted—frost crystals began forming on his knuckles, feathering outward in delicate, rapidly spreading patterns.

"Okay, okay. Stop." Shi Yan immediately aborted the push.

He pulled his hand away and instantly cut off the physical art, letting his stamina settle. The black veins retreated beneath his skin like a tide pulling back from shore, leaving his forearm throbbing with residual heat. His breath misted heavily in the suddenly frigid air. He could not risk destroying another spatial pouch, or, more accurately, he was highly unnerved by the volatile reaction in the bending light.

The whine cut off abruptly, leaving a ringing silence in its wake. The warped air slowly unwound itself, colors bleeding back to normal. The frost on his knuckles sublimated into faint wisps of vapor that curled upward like smoke.

Now he stared at the two harmless-looking silk bags on the table, his heart rate elevating slightly. His pulse hammered against his throat, a dull, insistent thud that he forced himself to slow through controlled breathing.

Why had it reacted like a bomb? Shi Yan closed his eyes, digging through the inherited memories of his original host. Fragmented images flickered past—courtyard sweeping, rote sword drills under a disinterested overseer's gaze, cold meals eaten alone in the servant quarters. He tried to find some grand, orthodox Daoist explanation for what had just happened.

But he found absolutely nothing.

The original host of this body had been an Outer garbage-tier disciple.

The kid knew how to swing a standard sword and sweep a courtyard.

He didn't know the first thing about high-tier dimensional array theory or spatial physics. To the original host, spatial pouches were just expensive magic items that the rich elders flaunted—untouchable treasures glimpsed only from a distance as Inner Disciples strode past without a second glance.

So it was useless.

He had no knowledge, so the assumption was basically... a spatial paradox?

He rubbed the back of his neck, fingers kneading the tight knot of muscle at the base of his skull. The lingering ache from his shoulder socket pulsed faintly with each movement. Let's just assume you don't put a Bag of Holding inside another Bag of Holding. It creates a nested singularity.

He didn't know the details, but he knew one thing: forcing this thing would destroy the item. Well... glad I didn't push that.

Thus, with the final option, he grabbed a cheap piece of hemp rope from his pack.

He bundled the seven extremely valuable, highly volatile spatial pouches together, wrapping the coarse fibers around the silk bags with methodical precision. The rope rasped softly against the fabric, the sound dry and scratchy in the cold air. He tied the knot securely—a double-loop hitch, muscle memory from a hundred field operations—and tested the tension with a sharp tug. The bundle held firm, compact and unassuming.

He simply shoved the bundle into the deepest pocket of his clothes, feeling the unnatural weight settle against his ribs.

Until he found a way to safely recycle their materials or sell them in a completely different city, they were just physical dead weight.

He walked over to the wooden window shutter, his boots thudding softly against the warped floorboards. The draft intensified as he approached, cold air leaking through the gaps in the frame and biting at his exposed skin. He pushed it open an inch. The freezing rain blew against his face, needle-sharp droplets stinging his cheeks and lips. The scent hit him immediately—wet earth, rot, and the acrid tang of poorly refined talisman ash drifting from somewhere in the district below.

The sun had completely fallen. The Outer Wards were descending into total, suffocating darkness, the muddy streets illuminated only by the faint, eerie glow of cheap talisman lanterns hanging from the eaves. The lights swayed in the wind, their sickly yellow-green luminescence casting trembling shadows that stretched and contracted like living things. Somewhere distant, a dog barked—sharp, panicked—and then fell abruptly silent.

Now, time to sleep.

He pulled the shutter closed with a dull thunk, the latch clicking into place. The cold remained, seeping through the thin walls, but the wind's bite was muted. He turned back toward the bed, the frame creaking ominously as he approached.

There were no dreams. For a soldier operating deep in hostile territory, sleep wasn't a luxury or an escape; it was simply a biological maintenance cycle.

When his eyes snapped open again, there was no grogginess, no slow acclimation to the waking world. He was instantly, perfectly alert. His pupils contracted sharply, adjusting to the pale gray dawn light filtering through the cracks in the shutters.

Shi Yan lay perfectly still for three seconds, listening.

His [Acoustic-Blood Tracker] was dialed down to its absolute minimum, functioning no longer as an overwhelming radar, but as a dull, passive hum of localized awareness. Heartbeats registered as faint, rhythmic pulses in the back of his mind—distant, indistinct, unthreatening.

Through the floorboards, he could hear the rhythmic, scraping bristles of a broom—the innkeeper's elderly wife sweeping the downstairs common room. The swish-swish-swish of straw against wood was steady, unbroken. Normal.

He sat up, the woven reeds of the thin mattress crunching beneath his heavy frame. The freezing ambient temperature of the room bit at his skin, raising goosebumps along his forearms, but his [Physique: 55] body barely registered it as discomfort.

He swung his legs over the side of the bed, the frame groaning in relief as his weight shifted. His bare feet touched the icy floorboards, the cold radiating up through his soles as he stood. He walked over to the chipped porcelain basin sitting on a wobbly wooden stand near the far wall.

Breaking the thin layer of ice that had formed over the water overnight—the surface cracked with a soft, crystalline snap—he splashed the freezing liquid over his face and neck. The shock of cold was immediate and total, driving the last vestiges of sleep from his mind. He scrubbed away the dried sweat and faint traces of blood from yesterday's spatial array experiments, his fingers rough against his skin. The water dripping from his jaw was murky gray by the time he finished, tinted with grime and old blood.

He grabbed a rough linen towel from the edge of the stand and looked up at his reflection in the cracked, oxidized bronze mirror mounted on the wall.

He stared at the stranger looking back at him.

The original host of this body had been a scrawny, underfed Outer Disciple. But after funneling tens of thousands of Dao Embers into his physical attributes, that boy was entirely gone.

Shi Yan's jawline had broadened, thick and corded with dense muscle. The angular fragility of youth had been replaced by something harder, heavier—a face built to absorb punishment. His neck was noticeably wider, built to withstand concussive impact, the tendons standing out like steel cables beneath pale skin.

His skin was pale, but not the delicate, jade-like pallor of a noble cultivator nurtured on spiritual herbs and purified qi. It was the bloodless, heavy paleness of a corpse, a side effect of his Daoless vessel and the [Phantom-Ash Veil] restricting his surface capillaries. Veins were barely visible beneath the surface, giving his flesh an unsettling, waxen quality in the dim morning light.

When he turned his head slightly, he could see the faint, unnatural bulge at the base of his skull—the physical, mutated nerve cluster the System had forcefully grown to process his acoustic tracking. It pressed outward against the skin like a tumor, a hard lump that shifted faintly when he clenched his jaw.

Running his hand over his left forearm, his fingers traced the thick, jagged patches of white scar tissue. The texture was rough, uneven—raised ridges that felt like melted wax cooled too quickly. That was where the System's [Emergency Vessel Triage] had violently reknit his shattered radius bone during the fight in the swamp. The surrounding skin was still faintly discolored, bruised yellow-green at the edges.

I am becoming a weapon, he thought, one eyebrow raising slightly in the dim light. His reflection stared back, expressionless, eyes flat and measuring. He dropped the rough linen towel onto the washstand with a damp thud.

Literally.

When he thought about this, he looked down at his broad, heavily corded chest and the fresh, raised scabs forming on his forearms from yesterday's spatial shrapnel.