Chương 79: An Iron Gate (3/3) [Bonus 5/6]

Shi Yan turned into a broad avenue darkened by smoke and old ash, the acrid scent of charcoal and scorched metal clinging to the back of his throat like a bitter residue. The cold drizzle that had followed him from the Outer Wards seemed to retreat here, driven back by waves of industrial heat that rolled from open furnace doors in shimmering curtains.

On both sides of the street, furnace shops stood in rows, their fires breathing red light into the chill of the day—angry orange blooms that pulsed and flickered behind soot-blackened doorways—while the ringing of hammer on iron rolled without cease like temple bells struck in wrath. The rhythmic clangor echoed between the buildings, overlapping in discordant layers until the air itself seemed to vibrate.

His boots pressed into mud mixed with ash and iron filings, each step leaving shallow impressions quickly filled with oily runoff from the forge district's perpetual haze.

His gaze lifted and settled upon a great iron plaque suspended from black chains, each link as thick as a man's forearm. The chains creaked faintly in the hot updraft rising from the forges below, metal groaning against rusted brackets.

Upon that plaque was wrought the image of an anvil cleft in twain, as though struck apart by heavenly lightning. The jagged split ran down the center of the anvil's face, edges rendered in such sharp detail that even from this distance, Shi Yan could see where the metalsmith had hammered in radiating cracks to suggest the moment of catastrophic fracture.

That should be the Iron-Ash Furnaces, right?

He walked toward it at an unhurried pace, shoulders relaxed, his bamboo hat tilting slightly as he took in the structure ahead. Sweat began to bead along his collar despite the lingering chill in the air—the forge district's heat was relentless, pressing against skin and fabric alike.

The forge was vast, half-built against an ancient stone aqueduct blackened by soot and age, its arches filled with centuries of grime until the original gray stone showed only in thin veins where rainwater had carved through the filth.

Beneath the eaves, six enormous bellows of stitched beast-hide rose and fell like the lungs of breathing demonic beasts, worked by bare-backed apprentices whose bodies glistened with sweat that ran in rivulets down their spines and soaked into the waistbands of their tattered trousers.

The leather of the bellows was mottled and scarred, patched in a dozen places with mismatched hides—ox, boar, something scaled—and the rhythmic whoosh of forced air fed the flames within with a sound like wind rushing through a mountain pass.

At the center, a smelting trough blazed with a violent orange radiance, like a strip of molten sunset imprisoned in iron. The heat radiating from it distorted the air in rippling waves, and flecks of ember drifted upward like malevolent fireflies, winking out against the smoke-stained rafters overhead.

Those gathered before the Iron-Ash Furnaces were not gaunt townsfolk scrambling after a mouthful of grain. Their faces were weather-cut, etched with lines earned from squinting against sun and snow, their eyes sharp and wary beneath brows heavy with scar tissue and old burns. Each carried the hard air of one who had long made a livelihood between life and death—a tautness in their shoulders, a calculated economy in how they held their weight, ready to shift at the first sign of threat.

Yet they were still mortals.

From their dress alone, Shi Yan could distinguish them—wandering guards, marsh-hunters, hired blades, and trackers of vicious beasts. His gaze swept over them with clinical assessment: leather armor stained dark with blood and swamp water, worn mail shirts where rust bloomed at the rivets, boots crusted with swamp filth that had dried into cracked layers, blades patched and rewrapped a dozen times over with fraying cord and salvaged leather.

People who walked the edge of the knife each day, their survival measured in scars and missing fingers.

And... a Body Refinement cultivator?

One of Shi Yan's brows lifted faintly beneath the shade of his bamboo hat, a subtle shift that cast his eyes deeper into shadow. He had no need to guess. Before his eyes, a transparent screen flashed, its text overlaying his vision like frost forming on glass: [Entity Recognized: Independent Body Cultivator] [Cultivation Resonance: Blood-Crucible Realm / Iron-Vein Stage (Tier-1 Mid)] [Threat to Current Vessel: MINOR (Monitor for hostile intent)] [Estimated Yield: ~85 Dao Embers] Blood-Crucible Realm? Interesting...

While pondering, Shi Yan stepped beneath the broad awning of coarse canvas, the fabric stained with old smoke until its original color was impossible to discern. The air within was thick with the rough curses and blunt laughter of men who had returned alive from peril, their voices textured with the relief of those who had expected not to. The smell here was different—less industrial, more human: old leather, weapon oil, sweat dried into fabric, the faint metallic tang of blood that never quite washed out.

"I tell you, that place has long since turned inauspicious," growled a scar-faced man missing a thumb, leaning upon a split-shaft spear that had been crudely repaired with iron wire wrapped tight around the break. His remaining fingers tapped against the shaft in agitated rhythm.

"The northern ridge was sealed by the Cloud-Mirror dogs, and whatever they unearthed there has fouled the waters beneath. Three from my company drank from an upstream branch, and before two hours had passed, their bowels and viscera had dissolved into black blood." He spat to the side, the glob of saliva hissing faintly where it struck hot stone near the forge's edge. This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

"That is what comes of begrudging spirit-money," his companion snorted, wiping soot from his brow with a calloused palm that only succeeded in smearing it further.

"An immortal talisman would have saved them. If you enter cursed ground and still try to spare a few taels, you may as well kneel early before Yama, the King of Hell."

"What use is silver when the Enforcers are slaughtering all who draw near the boundary?" the first man spat, his scarred face twisting with old anger.

"I saw with my own eyes a rogue cultivator cleaved in two for passing near the old shrine—his upper half still trying to crawl away while his legs stood there twitching—" Then the mood changed.

Not suddenly, not with panic, but like a pond darkening beneath the shadow of a passing cloud.

The speaker's voice faltered mid-word, his jaw still half-open as his eyes tracked movement at the edge of his vision. He nudged the man beside him with his elbow—a sharp, urgent jab that needed no explanation.

In the space of a few breaths, the nearer voices lowered and then vanished altogether, until only the roar of the flames and the ceaseless striking of iron remained—a backdrop that suddenly felt too loud, too exposed. Men shifted their stances incrementally, weight settling onto the balls of their feet.

These men did not drop to their knees like trembling shopkeepers.

They had trodden too long among mountain beasts and death lands not to possess an instinct for danger honed sharper than any blade they carried.

Though none among them could clearly discern the truth, they could all feel the pressure exuded by the aura Shi Yan cast through his [Phantom-Ash Veil]—a weight in the air that settled against their chests like the promise of an oncoming storm, making each breath require slightly more effort. To them, it was as if a hidden storm had entered the forge, bringing with it the scent of something ancient and hungry.

The lone Body Cultivator standing among them felt it most clearly.

He was a broad-chested man, bare to the waist, his skin marked by dark tattoos of mountain tigers rendered in bold, primitive strokes—their snarling faces stretching across his pectorals, claws extending down his ribs. His neck was thick as an old tree root, corded with muscle that bunched visibly when he turned his head, and his frame seemed cast from raw stone—angular, dense, immovable.

Sweat gleamed on his shoulders but did not run; it simply sat there, as if even moisture hesitated to slide across such hardened flesh.

Slowly, he turned his head and looked toward Shi Yan, the movement deliberate and measured—no sudden jerks, no wasted motion.

For a long moment, their eyes met.

The man's gaze held no fear. It was only a cold and weighty scrutiny, like that of a beast judging whether another beast might invade its ground. His pupils were dark as wet stone, reflecting nothing, revealing nothing. The muscles along his jaw flexed once, twice—a subconscious grinding of teeth.

Seeing that Shi Yan's projected Qi aura stood above his own mid-stage body realm, he merely tightened his jaw until the tendons stood out like bowstrings, turned his head away with the slow inevitability of a fortress gate closing, and spoke no more.

Hmm? Of course Shi Yan noticed too.

The long stare was not because he was looking for trouble, but because he simply wanted to see what this "body cultivator" was like.

Everyone always told him, or used as an excuse, that he was just a body cultivator. Now that a real body cultivator had appeared, how could Shi Yan not be curious?

Now, as Shi Yan passed, speech died down in scattered patches like embers smothered beneath ash.

Hands that had been loose at men's sides drifted, without haste, toward saber hilts worn smooth by years of handling, axe-hafts wrapped in stained leather, and hidden knives tucked into boot-tops and belt seams. Not to provoke, but to guard. Fingers curled around grips in familiar patterns, thumbs resting against pommels.

"Stand aside. Let Senior pass," an older mercenary murmured, tugging a younger man back by the sleeve with a grip that brooked no argument. The younger man stumbled slightly, his heel scraping against stone as he repositioned himself.

"Watch your feet," said another under his breath, shifting his stance to open the way, boots scuffing audibly as he moved. A small avalanche of ash and iron filings cascaded from where his boot had been planted.

There was no servile dread in them, only the wary courtesy of those who knew their own limits—the pragmatism of survival. They yielded him a broad path toward the front, like a pack of scarred wolves parting before a solitary tiger whose hunger they could not measure. Their eyes tracked his movement peripherally, never quite looking directly at him, but never losing sight of where he was.

Oh? Seeing their reaction, Shi Yan blinked behind the shadow of his hat brim, his eyelids lowering and rising in a slow, thoughtful cadence. It was not visible beneath the bamboo's shade, but his eyes showed a trace of surprise—a faint flicker of reassessment. Not like usual Venerable, but... Senior, huh? Interesting.

Accepting their cautious welcome, Shi Yan strode toward the counter, his boots making soft impacts against packed earth mixed with coal dust. The silver-hilted sword at his side shifted slightly with each step, the wrapped grip brushing against his ribs beneath the dark cloak.

He had not gone far when a great arm, corded with muscle and callus, thrust across his path like an iron gate—a living barrier that appeared in his line of movement with surprising speed.

"Wait your turn, Daoist."

Shi Yan halted mid-stride, his forward momentum arrested smoothly, and slowly turned his head. The movement was controlled, unhurried, the brim of his bamboo hat tilting to reveal only the lower half of his face—the faint scar at the corner of his mouth, the neutral line of his lips.

It was the Body Cultivator or Body Refinement Cultivator.

The man stood as firmly as a rooted boulder, his bare feet—callused thick as ox-hide—planted wide against the forge floor. His arms crossed over a chest broad as a gate, the mountain tiger tattoos flexing and distorting as muscles shifted beneath skin. Veins pulsed beneath his bronzed skin like knotted cords, visible networks of blood vessels standing out in sharp relief. His breath came slow and steady, each inhalation lifting his chest in measured rhythm.

"The furnace fire burns all the same for every man," he said in a deep voice that rumbled from somewhere low in his chest, resonant as distant thunder.

"Whether one tempers flesh or nurtures Qi, silver is still silver. If you seek iron, then stand in line. Within this forge, no one leaps ahead." His jaw was set, his gaze direct and unwavering—not challenging, but absolute.

At once, the nearby mortals stiffened.

Fingers tightened around their weapons, knuckles going white. Shoulders hunched fractionally as men braced for violence they could not hope to survive but might still be caught within. Someone's breathing became audible—shallow, controlled gasps held behind clenched teeth.

For an unaffiliated low-tier cultivator to bar the way of one emitting the aura of a Late Tier-1 expert was no small matter. In most places, such boldness would already have stained the ground with blood, the offender's remains still cooling while onlookers averted their eyes.

Shi Yan looked at him in silence.

His expression remained neutral, revealing nothing. His thumb drifted, almost lazily, to rest near the spatial pouch at his waist, fingertips brushing against the black fabric with the barest whisper of contact. He could activate [Flash Step], draw the Grave-Rot dagger concealed within, and cut through the man's spine before those crossed arms had even begun to move.

The calculation played out in his mind with cold precision—angles, trajectories, the exact point between the fourth and fifth vertebrae where resistance would be minimal.

0. 4 seconds.

But why?

There was no objective here. No assignment. No necessity. The tactical assessment completed itself and was dismissed just as quickly.

Killing a man in broad daylight would summon the Iron-Blood Prefecture, invite attention he did not need, and waste strength better kept in reserve. Resources were finite. Exposure was cumulative.

A waste, not to mention he had no interest after seeing the mere pitiful yield of 85 [Dao Embers]. The number mocked him from the corner of his vision, barely worth the spiritual residue it would take to absorb. No, in the first place, he had never intended to fight, only to assess the whole situation—gather data, map the social landscape, understand the power dynamics at play.

Thus, "Hmm?" Shi Yan said at last, his tone mild and flat as still water.

A faint, unreadable smile touched his lips beneath the bamboo brim—not quite amusement, not quite condescension, something in between. He stepped back half a pace, his boot scraping softly against stone as he yielded the way with an economical shift of weight.

"Then this one was discourteous. Fellow Daoist, please."

The tautness in the air dispersed at once, tension bleeding away like pressure released from a sealed vessel.