Chương 92: The Market Eats Souls (1/3)

It was then—through the voices, through the shattered vision—that Shi Yan realized his exact mistake with the cold, clinical detachment of a soldier identifying the flaw in faulty equipment.

The [Acoustic-Blood Tracker] was a biological radar, mutated by the System to pick up physical vibrations and living heartbeats—designed for flesh and blood, for mortal prey with finite pulses and traceable circulatory rhythms.

But by stepping into the Yellow Spring—a domain woven entirely from pure, corrupted Yin-karma and the lingering echoes of dead immortals whose souls had long since dissolved into the fabric of the underworld—he had effectively walked into a radioactive zone with a hyper-sensitive satellite dish strapped directly to his unprotected brain.

His mortal hardware was trying to physically decrypt the frequency of the Netherworld itself.

In short, his brain was physically struggling to process the impossible geometry and multi-dimensional collapse happening around him—attempting to render sounds that had no origin point, tracking heartbeats from bodies that no longer existed in linear time, measuring distances through space that folded back on itself like a Möbius strip made of congealed malice and karmic residue.

Just then…

System Warning: Extreme Spatial Anomaly Detected.

Threat Level: Cognitive Rupture.

System Directive: Resolving Paradox. Anomaly: 10 -> Quarantine Protocol Engaged. Compensating for dimensional shear.

A cold, mechanical numbness washed down his spine—sterile, absolute—as the System isolated the supernatural dread flooding his neurons, purging the encroaching madness from his neural pathways before it could carve permanent grooves into his cortex and take root like psychic rot.

The suffocating pressure in his skull vanished as cleanly as a severed wire, the invisible vice that had been crushing his temples simply ceasing to exist. His lungs hitched sharply, pulling in a deep, ragged breath of damp air thick with the scent of wet stone and rotting wood as control of his motor functions instantly returned in a flood of pins-and-needles sensation.

"Haah… haaah." His chest heaved against the heavy, overlapping layers of his Stoneback Boar armor, the rough-cured leather plates creaking faintly with each labored inhale. I nearly bypassed the netherworld's toll, only to cook my own gray matter just by leaving the radar volume too high in a supernatural zone. Rookie mistake. Careless.

He reached up with his unarmored right hand, fingers still trembling faintly with residual nerve misfires, and wiped away the single warm drop of blood that had traced a slow path from his left nostril to his upper lip. The metallic taste lingered on his tongue as he manually dialed the intensity of the [Acoustic-Blood Tracker] down to a safer, more conservative radius of ten feet—just enough to catch immediate threats, not enough to fry his brainstem on ambient death-energy.

The screaming chorus of the netherworld muted into a dull, manageable roar, like standing outside a soundproofed engine room instead of being sealed inside it. The oppressive, tilting gravity stabilized beneath his boots. The swirling vortex of violet light that had been clawing at the edges of his peripheral vision ceased its maddening spiral, replaced instead by a dense, unmoving fog that clung to the air like suspended ash.

Now, the path was open.

Finally… tim— But as Shi Yan prepared to step fully across the threshold, every muscle coiled to propel him forward into whatever lay beyond, he paused.

Clack. Clack. Clack.

The sharp, hurried sound of hard-soled boots hitting the crumbling stone stairs echoed through the cavern with startling clarity, each impact reverberating off the damp walls like a countdown.

A figure burst out of the tunnel entrance and onto the Sump's stone quay in a spray of displaced water and loose pebbles.

It was a man, appearing to be in his late twenties, clad in the elegant, dark crimson robes of some high-ranking sect disciple—embroidered with intricate gold threadwork along the collar and cuffs that caught the sickly green lantern light in fleeting glimmers. Water and mud splattered his pristine silk hems, and his chest heaved with the heavy exertion of someone who had been running hard and fast for far too long.

But despite the mud, despite the obvious exhaustion pulling at the corners of his sharp features, the man radiated a terrifying, blistering aura of heat that rippled the air around him in visible waves. The mere act of him exhaling caused the frigid air of the cavern to distort and shimmer like summer mirages rising off sun-baked stone, and the frost clinging to nearby rock faces began to weep and steam.

Entity Recognized: Independent Cultivator (Rogue) Cultivation Resonance: Furnace-Core Realm / Roaring Hearth (Tier-2 Mid-Stage) Threat to Current Vessel: LETHAL (Caution Advised) Estimated Yield: 12, 500 Dao Embers My bad—it's actually an independent cultivator. Shi Yan's gaze tracked the newcomer with the cold assessment of a sniper calculating windage. To reach Tier 2, the Furnace-Core Realm, while being independent…

without sect resources, without access to their scripture vaults or pill furnaces or sheltered cultivation chambers… Impressive. Dangerously so.

The rogue cultivator's sharp eyes fixed upon the floating bridge with the intensity of a hawk spotting wounded prey, and a thin, contemptuous smile pulled at his lips—the kind of expression worn by men who had crushed too many weaker opponents to remember their faces. With a practiced sweep of his sleeve, he brushed the filth from his crimson robe as though even the mire of the Sump below dared not cling to his exalted fabric, as though the very laws of dirt and degradation bent away from his presence.

"So the gutter-rumors were true after all," he said softly, each syllable dripping with pride steeped in arrogance and self-satisfaction.

"The Sump Ghost Gate truly opens on the night of the moon's concealment. A path to Yellow Spring hidden beneath this city's rot—a secret known only to the desperate and the enlightened." The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

He advanced without the least caution, without even a flicker of hesitation or proper reconnaissance.

One confident step fell upon the old, waterlogged planks, then another. His stride was steady, overbearing, the unhurried gait of one long accustomed to others yielding before him—to crowds parting like water, to junior disciples prostrating themselves, to weaker cultivators swallowing their pride and stepping aside with lowered heads.

At that instant, the Gatekeeper changed.

The tremor that had lingered in its bone-white fingers before Shi Yan—that uncertain, chaotic energy, that instinctive recoil from something fundamentally wrong—vanished like frost beneath harsh daylight. The uncertain stillness, the nameless dread that had caused it to stagger back half a step, the strange hesitation that had kept its ancient voice shaking—all of it dispersed in a single breath, blown away like cobwebs before a sudden gust.

This newcomer was different.

He bore a dantian—a living spiritual furnace burning with cultivated Yang-fire.

He carried a living soul, complete and accounted for, bound by the proper celestial ledgers.

The threads of Samsara still wound tightly about his being, visible to those with eyes to see the karmic web—red strings of fate and causality trailing from his shoulders and spine like a puppet's control lines stretching up into Heaven's registry.

Before such a one, the Gatekeeper remembered its ancient, immutable duties.

Its bent, stooped frame straightened at once, rising with the slow, terrible inevitability of a mountain unfolding, expanding to its full seven-foot height beneath the weathered straw cloak. From beneath the ragged edges of the raincoat, Yin-Qi surged forth in a vast, oppressive tide—thick and choking as floodwater, cold as midwinter graves—as though a hidden mouth of the netherworld had cracked open directly upon the bridge and begun to exhale its accumulated centuries of deathly essence.

The temperature plummeted instantly. The remaining moisture in the air crystallized into tiny, glittering ice particles that drifted downward like funeral snow.

The rogue cultivator halted mid-stride, his forward boot hovering for a heartbeat before coming down with less confidence.

The smug conceit upon his handsome face cracked visibly, his smile freezing and then collapsing into a tight, bloodless line.

The oppressive chill of that unnatural aura poured over him in a suffocating wave, and the blazing Yang-Qi within his dantian—that roaring internal furnace he had spent decades stoking and refining—was smothered at once, pressed low and guttering like a candle flame beneath a heavy palm, unable to circulate properly under the sheer metaphysical weight of deathly law pressing down on his meridians.

"Living flesh," the Gatekeeper rasped, its voice no longer uncertain or trembling. The words ground through the fog-thick air like millstone turning slowly over old, brittle bones, each syllable carrying the finality of absolute law.

"Those who would cross the Yellow Spring must pay the toll appointed by Heaven and acknowledged by the Ten Courts. Coin for the road's opening. Breath for the vessel's passage."

Plainly, judging by the sudden pallor draining the blood from his face and the way his pupils contracted in genuine shock, this was the man's first encounter with a true thing of the Netherworld—a real servant of the underworld bureaucracy, not some minor wandering ghost or lingering resentful spirit that could be dispersed with a few talismans and some assertive Qi projection.

Caught unprepared beneath that suppressive might—his internal fire smothered, his protective aura collapsing inward against his skin—he clenched his jaw hard enough that the muscle jumped visibly at the hinge, his face darkening with the red flush of humiliation and poorly-contained fury.

Yet arrogance had long ago seeped into his bones, calcified there through years of victory and dominance. As a mid-stage Tier-2 cultivator, he had cut his way through the Outer Wards' chaos with blade and flame to seize this once-in-a-lifetime chance at the Midnight Ghost Market's forbidden treasures.

In his heart, shaped by decades of receiving deference and fear from those weaker than himself, how could he willingly lower his proud head before a mere ferryman of ghosts—a servant, a toll-collector, something that existed only to facilitate the passage of others?

With a cold snort that misted in the frozen air, he thrust one hand into the inner folds of his embroidered sleeve with more force than necessary, produced a medium-grade spirit stone that glowed with soft amber luminescence, and flicked it toward the bronze bowl with the casual disdain of a nobleman tossing copper coins to a roadside beggar.

Clink.

The stone landed squarely in the bowl's center, the impact ringing out with an oddly hollow note that lingered longer than it should have.

"The road-toll is paid," the cultivator declared, his voice tight with barely-restrained indignation. Though his meridians groaned and his internal organs felt compressed beneath the invisible suppression bearing down on his entire body, he still forced his Qi to circulate sluggishly through sheer stubborn will, his dantian sputtering back to feeble life.

"Stand aside, ferryman. Your duty is fulfilled."

"The stone is no more than the weight that steadies the passage and announces the traveler's intent," the Gatekeeper said, its tone utterly emotionless, flat as still water over a drowned corpse.

"But the true toll has not yet been rendered."

Its left arm rose with slow, deliberate purpose.

Within the rusted lantern clutched in its bone-white fingers, the sickly green fire swelled dramatically, its light turning sharp and ghastly, casting the Gatekeeper's empty face into stark, nightmarish relief. Without further warning or preamble, the ancient sentinel drove the lantern forward in a smooth, practiced motion.

This time, it did not halt politely before the face to request permission.

The rusted iron frame passed through embroidered crimson robe and living flesh alike as though neither substance offered any more resistance than morning mist, sinking straight into the center of the cultivator's chest, positioning itself directly above the Middle Dantian where his spiritual sea churned and his Dao Foundation sat enthroned.

The man's eyes flew wide, whites showing all around the dark irises in pure animal shock.

"Impudent ghost!" he roared, all remaining color fleeing his face in an instant, leaving his skin waxy and pale as corpse-flesh. His voice cracked with outrage and the first creeping edges of genuine terror.

"You dare lay profane hands upon this master's Dao Foundation? Do you not know—this elder belongs to the—" His furious words broke off abruptly, choking in his throat.

He hastily channeled every scrap of available Qi in a panicked flood, trying desperately to rouse the furnace-fire sleeping in his meridians and force the invasive, alien presence out through brute spiritual pressure alone—the way one might expel poison or purge a possession.

Yet obviously, painfully, his cultivation could not contend against the fundamental law of that cursed place, against regulations written into the fabric of the Yellow Spring itself long before his sect's founding ancestors drew their first breath.

"Arghhh!" A strangled, inhuman cry tore from his throat, raw and ragged.

From within the depths of the lantern burst hooked tendrils of green flame—barbed and spectral, writhing like living things—plunging deep into his spiritual root with the precision of a butcher's knife finding the choicest cut. No blood was shed, no physical wound opened upon his chest, yet the injury struck infinitely deeper than any blade or poison ever could, carving directly into the metaphysical substrate of his existence.

His body jerked violently, spine arching backward at an unnatural angle as if Heaven's thunder had passed through his bones and set every nerve alight simultaneously. The blazing heat radiating from his body faltered at once, the shimmering distortion around him dwindling like forge-fire suddenly starved of wind and fuel.

Then the taking began in earnest.

The ghostly hooks, barbed and merciless, drew back slowly—savoring the extraction—and with them came a great, ragged fragment of pale silvery radiance, torn piece by piece from somewhere deep within the cultivator's chest. The light pulsed weakly, flickering like a dying star. His scream rang out across the cavern—raw, shrill, utterly helpless, the cry of a man feeling his very existence being diminished—only to be swallowed at once by the surrounding fog that drank sound as readily as it drank light.

The green flame within the lantern devoured that stolen silvery light with visible satisfaction, the luminescence being drawn into the fire like water into parched earth.

For a single, eternal breath, the lantern blazed twice as bright, casting harsh shadows that danced and twisted across the rotting bridge planks. Then, its hunger momentarily sated, the fire dimmed gradually, returning to a steady, contented glow.

The Gatekeeper withdrew the lantern with the same deliberate care as before, pulling it free of the cultivator's chest without leaving so much as a mark on the silk. It lowered its arm to its side and moved aside with a scrape of straw against wood, yielding the bridge's center.

But how could the cultivator not feel the absence?

My lifespan! My foundation! Years of cultivation—decades of painstaking refinement— The soul-deep pain of losing a substantial portion of both soul-essence and lifespan was far too savage, too visceral, to bear with reason or dignity intact.

Malice twisted the rogue cultivator's previously handsome face into something ugly and animal. Fresh blood seeped from the corner of his mouth, trailing down his chin to stain his expensive collar as he struck his own chest with a violent, desperate palm strike, forcibly reigniting the guttering remnant fire of his damaged dantian through sheer self-destructive will.

Spiritual energy flared around him in a wild, uncontrolled corona. In his trembling right hand, a crimson longsword took shape from condensed Yang-fire, burning with fierce and searing heat that caused the surrounding mist to recoil. Without thought—driven purely by wounded pride and howling rage—he lunged toward the Gatekeeper's straw-clad back, blade raised high for a decapitating strike.

The Gatekeeper did not turn, did not even shift its stance.

"If you strike," it said, its rasp low and final, carrying across the bridge without need for volume, "the bridge will break beneath you. The Yellow Spring will claim what the lantern did not take."

The words drifted through the mist without anger, without threat, without any inflection whatsoever—yet they carried the unyielding certainty of karmic law itself, of rules older than empires and more fundamental than the Dao of any living sect.

"To offend the crossing is to cast aside the guest's path and sever your own thread of safe passage. Do so, and you shall not enter the Midnight Market this night or any night hereafter. For a hundred cycles of reincarnation, you will burn as wick-oil within my lantern, your soul rendered down to feed the light that guides others."

The crimson sword halted mid-swing, freezing in place.

Its razor-sharp tip stopped a hair's breadth from the worn, weather-stained straw of the raincloak, close enough that the heat radiating from the blade caused a few dried fibers to curl and blacken—but no closer.