Chương 74: The First Bite (1/3)

"Disappear?" The first man gave a mirthless snort, the sound sharp and bitter as medicinal dregs scraped from a rusted cauldron.

"Better if they had. I heard from a friend in the Silk & Ash Chamber that pieces of the senior disciple were found pressed into the mire. The sect says a Calamity-Rank Demonic Beast came out of the deep swamp. Others say an enemy sect struck in secret."

A third cultivator sneered, though unease showed in his eyes—his fingers unconsciously drifted toward the talisman pouch at his waist, touching it as if to reassure himself of its presence.

"Nonsense. If such a beast had really neared the city, the beast-tide bells would already be sounding.

"No—someone struck the Cloud-Mirror Sect across the face under cover of darkness. Now they are turning over the Outer Wards stone by stone, hunting for unregistered experts."

Shi Yan walked on, expression unchanged, but…

It's getting noisy, meaning they found what I left for them. Beast or rival sect—either answer keeps their eyes turned the wrong way. None of them are thinking of one lone anomaly killing with raw force.

Still, fragments of rumor were not enough. If the Cloud-Mirror Sect had already set hidden eyes and ears among the Outer Wards, then he needed to know where those pieces were placed.

He stepped aside from the street and paused beneath the awning of a shuttered butcher's stall. The wooden beams above were warped and water-stained, groaning faintly under the weight of accumulated mist. Old blood had seeped so deeply into the scarred cutting block beside him that even rain could no longer wash it clean—the wood exhaled a permanent reek of iron and spoiled fat.

He closed his eyes.

Beneath the raised collar of his cloak, he triggered the change.

[Acoustic-Blood Tracker: Active] At once, heat surged up his spine with savage force, as though molten metal had been poured along the channel of his vertebrae. The altered knot of nerves at the base of his skull swelled as blood rushed into it, the bulge pressing hot and distended against his skin; his heart hammered once against his chest, heavy enough to shake his whole frame—a single drum-strike that reverberated through bone and sinew alike.

Then the world changed.

Sound no longer came to him as mere hearing. It spread in every direction, rising within his mind as a living map—each noise a brushstroke of ink against blank parchment, painting terrain and presence and intent.

Ten zhang. Twenty. Fifty.

Rain striking roof tiles, dripping from eaves, splashing into mud—each impact carved itself into his awareness with crystalline clarity. The beating hearts of all within range rose around him, dense and layered: the thin, hurried flutter of hungry mortals, rapid and brittle as moth wings against lantern glass; the slower, deeper throbbing of Tier-1 cultivators circulating Qi, their pulses resonant and deliberate, like war drums struck in measured rhythm.

The whole street unfurled before him.

To his left, beyond a brick wall slick with moss and crumbling mortar, came the faint metallic rasp of a hidden mechanism being drawn into place—oiled steel sliding against iron housing, tension springs coiling tight. Someone preparing a concealed crossbow.

To his right, in a side alley choked with rotting vegetable crates and broken pottery, a pill furnace hissed fitfully as a low-tier alchemist lost control of the fire beneath it. The acrid stench of scorched herbs billowed outward—burnt ginseng and ruined spirit moss, a waste of silver that would cost the fool dearly.

But… nothing. There was nothing useful, no whispers of cultivators talking about anything important.

Seems like I need to upgrade the skill if I want to reach farther. Shi Yan opened his eyes, the heat along his spine ebbing like a retreating tide. Then he returned to the street and resumed walking, boots squelching through the thickening mire. Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

His purpose remained the same: he needed armor, and not the kind favored by Qi cultivators.

Leaving the main road, he went toward the soot-dark quarter where forge smoke gathered thickly and the clang of hammer on iron carried through the mist—a rhythmic symphony of labor and heat that promised metal worked by mortal hands, not spiritual arrays.

After turning into a narrower market lane crowded with canvas stalls and coarse goods, his gaze fell upon a familiar sight. The lane itself stank of wet hemp, mildewed fabric, and the sour sweat of too many bodies pressed into too small a space. Wooden planks had been laid haphazardly across the worst of the mud, but they'd sunk unevenly, creating treacherous gaps that swallowed the unwary ankle-deep.

Oh? That shop…

A crooked stall stood there, selling reed-woven wares, cheap rain capes, and bamboo hats. Its frame leaned precariously to one side, propped up by a makeshift brace of lashed-together bamboo poles. The canvas roof sagged in the middle where rainwater pooled, dripping steadily onto the muddy ground in a monotonous rhythm.

Couple days has passed since Shi Yan had stopped there after first emerging from the Charnel Abyss.

At the time, two extortionists from the Black Lotus Sect had been threatening the stall owner, saying they would drag off his young daughter if the so-called protection silver was not paid.

Shi Yan had not killed them.

He had merely tossed them a single silver tael while buying a bamboo hat, cutting the matter off before it could flare.

The same hunched, trembling old man, missing half his teeth, stood behind the stall now. His remaining teeth were yellowed and crooked, visible when his lips parted in concentration. Age spots mottled his hands like spilled ink, and his knuckles were swollen and gnarled from decades of weaving coarse reeds in cold weather.

Old Ma looked up from binding a bundle of straw. The instant he recognized the broad figure in the waxed-canvas cloak and bamboo hat, relief lit his worn features—his eyes, rheumy and bloodshot, suddenly brightened as though a candle had been lit behind clouded glass.

"Brother! Benefactor!" Old Ma called, waving eagerly with one trembling hand.

"You have come back—please, come, come!"

Shi Yan halted for half a breath. His instincts swept the surroundings and found no immediate threat, so he altered course and approached through the mud, his boots leaving deep impressions in the black mire.

Old Ma stepped out from behind the stall, holding a cup of steaming herbal tea in both hands—cheap stuff, the kind made from dried chrysanthemum petals and reused three times over until the color was barely yellow. His smile was broad and sincere, creasing his weathered face into a thousand tiny wrinkles.

"Back then I had no chance to thank you properly. You saved my Xiao Lin. If not for that silver, those Black Lotus beasts would have—" He stopped.

He had come too close.

At that time, Shi Yan had not yet acquired the [Phantom-Ash Veil], so he seemed no more than a weary and harmless corpse-bearer.

But today the Veil shrouded him in the heavy oppression of a peak Late Tier-1 cultivator. Heat rolled from him unnaturally, shimmering faintly in the cold air like the breath of a forge; his dense physique made his nearness feel like standing before a crouched tiger—immense weight held in perfect stillness, violence coiled beneath skin and ready to spring.

All color drained from Old Ma's face, his weathered bronze complexion turning the pale gray of old ashes.

The teacup slipped from his fingers and shattered upon the stones, hot liquid splashing over his straw sandals and soaking into the frayed hemp bindings around his ankles.

His eyes widened with naked horror, the whites showing all around his dilated pupils.

The man before him was no longer a helpful passerby. He was a cultivator—one of those beings before whom mortal lives were as cheap as grass, who could snuff out existence with less thought than one gave to crushing an ant.

Thud.

Old Ma dropped straight to his knees in the freezing mire, knocking his forehead against the filthy stones with a sickening wet crack. His whole body shook violently, tremors running through his thin frame like a wind-battered reed. Muddy water soaked instantly through his worn trousers.

"I-Immortal Venerable!" he cried, voice breaking into a thin, ragged wail.

"This blind one deserves death! I failed to recognize a true master—Immortal Venerable, spare me! Spare this worthless life!"

Behind the stall, Xiao Lin peeked out. She was perhaps fourteen or fifteen winters old, her face still round with the softness of youth despite the sunken hollows beneath her eyes that spoke of too many hungry nights. Her threadbare cotton jacket hung loose on her thin shoulders.

The moment she felt the pressure of Shi Yan's faint spiritual aura—that cold, corpse-like oppression that made the air itself seem heavier—and saw her father kneeling in terror, she rushed into the rain as well and fell to her knees beside him, pressing her forehead into the mud with such force that it smeared across her brow and cheek.

"Immortal Lord, have mercy!" she sobbed, tears cutting clean tracks through the grime on her face.

"If offense has been given, punish me alone—do not blame my father!"

Shi Yan stood over them in silence as rain slid from the brim of his hat, tracing cold rivulets down the oiled canvas of his cloak.

He felt no triumph.

Aiaaa, what is this… Even he was speechless. At first, he had thought he would politely decline the offer and skip the small talk, since he needed to search for armor, but now…

His lips twitched. After a moment, he let out a slow breath, the vapor mingling with the mist.

"Get up," Shi Yan said.

His voice was low and rough, carrying unquestioned authority—the voice of someone accustomed to giving orders and having them obeyed—but none of the sharp contempt commonly heard from cultivators speaking to mortals.

Old Ma only trembled harder, his shoulders jerking with each ragged breath.

"Venerable… this lowly one dares not…"

"I said, get up."

The tone admitted no refusal.

Shaking, Old Ma and Xiao Lin scrambled to their feet, heads still lowered, not daring to meet his eyes. Mud clung to their knees and palms, dripping in thick clumps. The girl's hands were shaking so badly she had to clasp them together to still them.

Shi Yan raised one scarred hand—knuckles thick with old calluses, skin marked by the pale lines of healed cuts—and tipped up the brim of his bamboo hat slightly, revealing calm dark eyes beneath. No spiritual light gleamed in their depths, no flicker of supernatural power. Just the steady, measuring gaze of a man who had seen too much death.

He forced his face to loosen. The motion was stiff, unnatural—muscles unaccustomed to the expression pulling awkwardly, as though he were donning an unfamiliar mask—but after a moment the corner of his mouth lifted in the faintest shadow of a smile.

"You owe me nothing, elder," he said.

"I paid for the hat. That matter ended there. No debt remains between us."

Old Ma stared, then risked a tiny glance upward, disbelief mingling with fear in his watery eyes.

This was the first time a cultivator had not hit him for staring at his face, and the first time a cultivator had explained himself to a mortal like him—an old man with no potential to cultivate at all, his bones long past the proper age, his meridians closed and withered like drought-killed roots.

"Great Immortal… you are too merciful," he stammered, the words tumbling over each other. His throat worked convulsively as he swallowed.

"If… if this lowly one may serve, what does Venerable require?"