Chương 73: The Pass Was Sealed (3/3)

His [Physique: 55] was a thermodynamic miracle, granting him the bone density of solid rock and the muscle tension of steel cables wound tight beneath pale, waxy skin. But relying purely on his raw biology to absorb kinetic impact was fundamentally flawed from a logistical standpoint.

It's just… well, flesh is durable, but flesh still bleeds. And blood costs money.

Every laceration, every bruised rib, and every fractured bone I take in combat requires an Emergency Vessel Triage to fix. It cost me four hundred and fifty Dao Embers just to reknit my radius bone in the swamp.

If he was going to plunge headfirst into a Shattered Realm—a heavily sealed Boss Zone crawling with ancient Yin entities, mutated beasts, and environmental hazards—he could not afford to tank damage with his bare skin.

Doing so would rapidly bankrupt his Dao Ember reserves through healing costs alone, draining the very funds he desperately needed to permanently upgrade his attributes.

Which means... Triage is an emergency fallback, not a primary shield. I need a buffer layer. I need armor.

Obviously not the flowing, elegant silk robes that most cultivators favored. He had looted plenty of those from the Cloud-Mirror disciples—fine garments embroidered with layered ward-glyphs and sect insignias that shimmered faintly even in death—but they relied entirely on the user's internal Qi to activate their woven warding arrays.

Without a Dantian to store Qi and no Qi power to feed the arrays imprinted on them, putting on a cultivator's elite robe was no more protective than wearing a thin layer of wet paper.

He needed raw, physical mitigation. Hardened demonic beast leather, overlapping steel lamellar plates, kinetic shock padding—something that obeyed the mundane laws of physics and dissipated the force of a blow before it could shear into his muscle tissue.

So basically, the kind mortals wear, or... do I need to search for all that in the Ghost Market?

He hoped not, but for today... securing armor was the goal.

He turned away from the mirror—his reflection fading into the oxidized bronze surface, pallid features swallowed by shadow—and began to dress. He strapped on his leather belt, worn supple, making sure his newly bio-locked, hijacked black spatial pouch hung discreetly at his right hip. The scorched leather still radiated faint warmth where it pressed against his side.

Over his drab, cheap linen tunic, he draped the familiar heavy, dark, waxed-canvas cloak, the oiled fabric stiff and cold against his shoulders, ensuring the collar sat high enough to obscure his neck and the unnatural bulge at the base of his skull. Finally, he picked up the wide-brimmed bamboo hat, its woven fibers still damp from yesterday's rain, casting a thick shadow over his eyes.

Ti—he paused, fingers tightening briefly on the hat's rim. Right. I almost forgot.

He began the deliberate process of breaking camp.

Yesterday, he had set up a standard military perimeter defense.

Shi Yan crossed the small, freezing room, his boots leaving faint impressions in the thin layer of frost that had settled on the warped floorboards overnight, and approached the single window.

Last night, he had deliberately unlatched the oxidized iron lock and wedged it open by exactly half an inch. It was a pre-cleared exfiltration route, designed to give him an immediate drop over the slick rooftops of the Outer Wards in the event his front door was compromised.

With a quiet click that echoed sharper in the morning silence, he pulled the wooden shutter fully shut, feeling the swollen wood resist briefly before settling into place. He dropped the heavy iron latch down, the cold metal biting into his fingertips as it locked with a dull thunk.

Next, he walked over to the main entrance, his shadow stretching long across the room in the pale gray dawn light bleeding through shutter cracks. He knelt quietly on the worn floorboards, his [Physique: 55] allowing him to lower his dense frame without making the ancient wood creak—muscle and bone descending in perfect, controlled balance.

Wedged tightly beneath the bottom gap of the wooden doorframe was a small, triangular piece of hardened ash wood, its grain dark and compressed.

It was simple, but effective.

If someone managed to pick the lock or bypass the latch from the outside, pushing the door inward would jam the wood tightly against the floor, instantly halting a silent entry and forcing the intruder to physically bash the door down—buying Shi Yan the two seconds he needed to either draw his sword or dive out the window.

He gripped the wedge between thumb and forefinger, wiggling it back and forth with short, precise movements until it popped free with a soft scrape of wood against stone, and slipped it into his pocket. The wedge still felt cold and slightly damp.

Finally, Shi Yan stood, knees rising smoothly, and looked down at the threshold. His last safeguard remained in place: a nearly invisible strand of razor-thin steel wire stretched an inch above the floor, glinting faintly like a spider's thread caught in the weak morning light.

One end was tied tightly to the iron hinge of the door, looped twice and knotted with military precision. The other end was pulled taut and tied around the base of a balanced ceramic teacup—chipped along its rim and covered in a fine glaze the color of old jade—which rested precariously on the very edge of a three-legged wooden stool.

Who knows, maybe some sneaky thief would enter.

A cultivator entering under the cover of an artifact or some stealth talisman would completely bypass a Qi alarm, but their physical shins would still clip the wire.

The tension would snap, the cup would shatter against the floorboards, and the noise would wake Shi Yan instantly.

Next, he pinched the steel wire between his thumb and forefinger to hold the tension, feeling the thin metal bite into his callused skin. With his other hand, he gently lifted the ceramic cup off the edge of the stool, the cool porcelain smooth against his palm, placing it safely onto the center of the wooden desk where it settled with a faint clink. This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

With the tension relieved, he quickly untied the knot from the door hinge, his fingers working efficiently despite the cold that had stiffened the metal overnight. He looped the razor-thin wire around his fingers in a tight, efficient coil, each turn precise and uniform, slipping the homemade tripwire into his spatial pouch where it vanished into dimensionless darkness.

Only when the room was entirely scrubbed of his mundane defenses did he finally exhale, a thin plume of vapor escaping his lips in the freezing air.

He pulled open the heavy wooden door, its hinges groaning softly in protest, and stepped out of the room.

....

The night's bitter rain had at last slackened, turning to a chill mist that clung to roof tiles and sleeves alike, leaving everything slick and cold to the touch.

Dawn had already come, yet the sun could not break through the heavy pall of ash-gray haze hanging over Skycloud City like a burial shroud, so heaven and earth remained dim, as though the day itself feared to show its face.

When Shi Yan stepped onto the main street, the stench of rot and stagnant water rose immediately to greet him—acrid, organic, mingling with the faint metallic tang of poorly refined talisman ash—and he was at once swallowed by that turbid current.

The long avenue was paved in old stone slabs, cracked and sunken, their surfaces worn smooth by centuries of footfall, most already drowned beneath layers of black mire that sucked at boots and made each step treacherous.

On either side stood rows of tottering wooden buildings, rising two or three stories high, their beams warped by years of damp rot, paint peeling in long curls to reveal gray wood beneath. Laundry lines hung between upper windows, limp garments dripping steadily into the mud below. Shutters hung askew on broken hinges, and the air was thick with the smell of cooking grease, unwashed bodies, and something sharper—fear, perhaps, or desperation.

Among the morning crowd, mortals trudged close to the road's edges, stepping through the deepest muck with heads bowed and shoulders hunched. Their clothing was patched and threadbare, layers upon layers worn against the cold, faces gaunt and hollow-eyed beneath hoods and ragged scarves. Children clung to their mothers' skirts, too quiet, too still for their age.

Shi Yan moved among them without drawing undue notice, his boots squelching through the mud with steady rhythm.

Unlike his first day in the city, he no longer concealed himself as a dead thing without presence. Today, he had raised the [Phantom-Ash Veil], letting it cast outward the heat, pulse, and false Qi signature of a Late Tier-1 cultivator—a faint pressure that rippled invisibly through the air around him like heat distortion over hot stone.

He did not swagger, nor did he bare his teeth like the local bullies who prowled these streets extracting tribute and blood in equal measure. He simply walked forward with a steady, deliberate gait, his center of gravity firm and low, each step measured and without waste, the movements of a man who knew exactly how much force his body could deliver at any given instant.

The mortals sensed the oppressive weight of his feigned Marrow-Rot aura—that suffocating, corpse-cold pressure unique to those who had begun treading the cultivation path—and instinctively parted before him, opening a path through the mud as neatly as reeds bending before a boat. Eyes slid away from his shadowed face. Conversations died mid-word. A hawker selling steamed buns from a rickety cart froze mid-motion, wooden tongs trembling in his grip.

While at the same time…

"Have you heard?" a gaunt woman whispered, clutching her patched shawl close around her daughter—a small thing with wide, frightened eyes. Her voice was thin, brittle as old paper.

"The grain seller in East Alley raised his prices again."

"Hush," an older man beside her muttered sharply, his weathered face creasing with worry as he glanced toward the street where a pair of yamen runners stood beneath the eaves of a wine shop, watching the crowd with predatory attention.

"The Iron-Blood Prefecture increased the gate levy this morning. If the merchants bleed, they will first bleed us. Speak carelessly and the yamen runners may seize you for furnace labor before sunset."

His gnarled hand clamped down on her wrist, hard enough to leave marks.

Shi Yan gave no outward sign of listening, his expression flat and unreadable beneath the shadow of his wide-brimmed hat, but he stored the words away—cataloging them alongside every other fragment of intelligence gathered in this wretched place.

Deeper within the teahouse they passed—its entrance marked by a faded red lantern swaying in the mist, the character for "tea" barely legible—where the roof did not leak and the tables were polished wood instead of splintered planks, sat rogue cultivators and wandering blades. The air inside was warmer, thick with the smell of cheap wine and tobacco smoke curling lazily toward the ceiling.

"The pass is sealed," said a disheveled man with a broad saber strapped to his back, the leather bindings worn and stained dark. He spoke into his cup, voice low but carrying through the morning quiet. His robes were travel-stained and torn at the hem, mud caked to his knees.

"At dawn I meant to escort a caravan along the northern ridge road, but the Cloud-Mirror Sect has already closed the mountain way. Their formation arrays are spread across the road like spider silk, and their inner disciples kill any who draw near."

He spat into the straw scattered across the floor, the gesture sharp with frustration.

"Is it true, then?" his companion asked, leaning closer across the scarred wooden table, voice dropping to barely a whisper. His hand tightened around his own cup, knuckles whitening.

"Did a whole retrieval party disappear in the Black-Ash Marsh?"