Chương 95: The Perfect Vessel (1/3)

Those gathered in this place were no less dreadful than the place itself.

Behind many of the counters carved from white bone stood Paper-Dolls, their figures as tall as grown men, folded from yellowed funerary paper and painted with ghastly white faces and blood-red smiles. The paper itself bore the texture of age—creased at the joints where elbows and knees bent, edges frayed and curling like dried skin peeling from a corpse. Each painted smile stretched too wide across flat faces, the red pigment cracked and flaking, as though the lips themselves were splitting open.

Their eyes were nothing but black hollows cut into the paper, yet they turned toward each passerby with eerie precision. The movement was fluid, deliberate, tracking motion with an intelligence that should not exist within folded funeral goods. No wind stirred their paper forms, yet their heads swiveled smoothly, the empty voids of their eyes fixing upon living flesh with unmistakable hunger.

Whenever they moved, their paper bodies gave off a dry, grating rustle, like old burial garments dragged across rough stone. The sound scraped against the ears—sharp, brittle, the whisper of something that should remain still in a tomb. Their limbs creaked as they reached for goods, folded joints bending at unnatural angles, the yellowed paper threatening to tear with each deliberate gesture.

From the shadows beneath their respective counters, low and guttural groans echoed without cease. The sounds writhed through the stagnant air, layered and dissonant, rising and falling in waves of anguish. At one moment, the sound resembled the frightened sobbing of an infant—high-pitched, hiccupping, desperately pleading; at the next, it became the rasping cry of a dying elder, rattling and wet, choking on final breaths that would never come.

These were the muffled torments seeping from the tightly sealed jars of stolen lifespans and imprisoned Huns they used as vile currency. The ceramic vessels trembled slightly, condensation beading on their cold surfaces as the trapped souls within clawed uselessly against their prisons. Around their stalls, the air was thick with the smell of burning funeral incense, rotting white lilies, and clotted blood.

The incense smoke hung in oily ribbons, never quite dissipating, mingling with the sickly-sweet stench of decaying flowers and the iron-copper reek of old slaughter.

Before them were trays bearing bleeding spirit-herbs, their severed stems still weeping luminous sap that pooled in shallow depressions; shattered jade slips leaking dark miasma that coiled like living smoke, hissing faintly where it touched bare stone; and nameless organs that pulsed faintly within a sinister Yin aura, their surfaces glistening wetly under the corpse-lamp light, veins still visibly contracting in grotesque mimicry of life.

Within the dim thoroughfare lit by ghostly lamps, Shi Yan watched this gathering of the living.

Well, it looks like I'm not the only one.

Clearly, he was far from the only cultivator who had bribed his way past the Gatekeeper.

Dozens of living humans moved through the crowd, their Yang-Qi concealed beneath strange artifacts, amulets, and veiling methods. They walked with varying degrees of confidence—some striding boldly as though they belonged, others shuffling nervously, shoulders hunched, eyes darting beneath their masks. The living carried a different weight than the true denizens of this place; their movements held the tension of prey walking among predators, every step measured, every gesture controlled.

Most wore masks, abiding by the market's unspoken rule of absolute anonymity. Shi Yan saw a burly man wearing a bronze boar-face mask, its tusks curved and polished, eyes rimmed with verdigris; a graceful woman draped in frost-silk, her porcelain mask painted as a weeping deity, crystalline tears forever frozen on pale cheeks; and even scavenger-types hiding behind crude wooden boards smeared with mud, the rough grain still visible beneath the filth, eye-holes gouged hastily with blades.

And… it looks like they entered through different places.

As Shi Yan pondered beneath his own Iron-Yaksha mask, his biological tracking easily saw through their disguises.

A mask could twist the light and hide a face, but it could not hide the mechanical reality of human anatomy.

He could hear the frantic, uneven pounding within the bronze boar-mask—the man's heart spasming at over a hundred and twenty beats per minute as he struggled to suppress his naked fear of the surrounding demons. Each contraction was irregular, stuttering, the muscle clenching too hard, rhythm fracturing under the chemical flood of terror coursing through his veins. The man's breathing came shallow and quick through the mask's narrow airways, barely controlled, on the edge of hyperventilation.

He could smell the lingering trace of cheap Outer Ward wine sweating from the pores of the weeping deity, a stark contrast to the absurdly expensive frost-silk illusion she wore to project a false air of noble superiority. The alcohol seeped through her skin in thin, sour vapor—rice wine poorly distilled, the kind sold in clay jugs near the aqueducts. It clung to her like a confession, utterly at odds with the immaculate elegance of her robes and the delicate way she held her silk-gloved hands.

It could not be helped. His technique activated automatically, and as for why his focus was on them—he was still a human being, driven by a baseline level of curiosity.

But before long, Shi Yan ignored them all.

Once again, he calibrated the parameters of his passive tracker, filtering out the wet squelching of flesh-trades and the erratic heartbeats of the disguised human cultivators. The sounds fell away in layers—first the organic slurping and tearing from the mutilation booths, then the rapid-fire percussion of panicked hearts, until only the deeper, structural sounds of the market itself remained. Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

So where is it…

If he wanted to find a blacksmith capable of working high-density, Tier-2 demonic biology, he could not search for an ordinary stall, nor could he rely on asking the Paper-Dolls, who would probably demand a piece of his soul merely to point the way. Their hollow eyes tracked him even now, heads tilting slightly as he passed, empty smiles never wavering, fingers twitching as though already anticipating the harvest.

Then where would it be…

As he considered this, he recalled that mortal blacksmiths required coal and bellows, while sect blacksmiths relied upon special spiritual arrays to produce Qi-flames or Heavenly Flames. He'd watched them work in the Outer Ward—the rhythmic pumping of leather bellows, the carefully drawn formation circles glowing beneath crucibles, the controlled release of spiritual energy channeled through meridian-linked tools.

But a netherworld blacksmith—one capable of forging a Tier-1 Late Demonic Beast Arm without damaging its internal structural integrity—would require two extremely specific local conditions: absolute, overwhelming heat, and a concussive force great enough to reshape tempered bone.

Shi Yan lowered the range of his hearing, searching for the cadence of forging.

He filtered the noise. He listened for the heavy, rhythmic displacement of air. He sensed the faint tremors traveling upward through the thick soles of his iron-shod boots from the petrified earth below. The vibrations were subtle, almost imperceptible beneath the general chaos of the market, but present—a steady, distant percussion that resonated through stone and bone alike.

Clang... Clang... Clang...

Found you…

It was faint, buried beneath the uproar of the upper tiers, yet unmistakable.

It was not the clear, high metallic ring of the mortal forges he had visited near the Outer Ward aqueducts. It was a dull, earth-shaking thud that bruised the very air—a sound of pure, unadorned weight smashing against something utterly unyielding. Each impact carried a physical pressure that rolled outward in concentric waves, felt more than heard, shivering through bedrock and bone structure with brutal, inexorable rhythm.

Without breaking his steady pace, Shi Yan altered his course. He followed those traces deeper into the crater, moving farther from the glow of the floating green corpse-lanterns and entering a side passage choked with sulfur. The change was immediate—the air grew hotter, drier, the stagnant cold of the upper market giving way to a pressing, oppressive heat that radiated from the passage walls themselves.

As he descended a steep flight of dangerous stairs carved straight into the sheer rock wall, the surrounding air changed abruptly.

The murky Netherworld Yin-chill clashed violently against an intense and concentrated heat, producing thick swirls of scalding vapor that clung to the damp stone walls. The collision of opposing forces created a turbulent microclimate—steam condensed and flash-boiled in rapid cycles, droplets forming on frigid stone only to hiss away into superheated mist seconds later. Visibility dropped to less than fifteen feet, the vapor thick enough to obscure the steps ahead.

At the bottom of the long descent, he followed the tremors to a massive recessed alcove blackened by layer upon layer of soot and cooled slag. The walls were crusted with decades—perhaps centuries—of accumulated residue, glossy and volcanic in texture, the fossilized record of countless forgings compressed into smooth, obsidian-like sheets.

The shift from the crowded thoroughfare to this solitary forge was like stepping from one domain into another.

The air here was so heavy it pressed against the boar-hide and iron plates layered over Shi Yan's body. Each breath felt weighted, the atmosphere dense with particulates and heat, pushing down on his shoulders and chest with tangible force. The vapor carried the sharp, acrid tang of boiled marrow and the heavy metallic stink of dried blood.

Beneath those primary scents lurked something older, more primal—the deep, mineral reek of ancient bone reduced to ash, mixed with the sulfurous bite of gases vented from deep within the earth.

To an ordinary mortal, or even an Early-Stage Ash-Marrow cultivator, merely standing within this pocket of extreme heat and cold would have scorched the lungs and burst the blood vessels in the eyes. The temperature differential alone would induce immediate shock; the toxic gases would corrode delicate tissue within seconds.

But with his [Physique: 55], which strictly regulated his cellular integrity, the oppressive surroundings felt like no more than a harsh, uncomfortable headwind.

Shi Yan stepped fully off the stone stairs. His boots landed with a heavy, muffled crunch upon a floor entirely carpeted in crushed bone dust and shattered, discarded weapons. The debris shifted beneath his weight—fragments of broken blades, splintered hafts, pieces of armor beaten flat and discarded like scrap metal. Bone powder puffed up in small clouds around his footfalls, pale gray and fine as silt.

He halted at the very edge of the alcove, choosing a place that gave him a clear line of sight to the forge while keeping his back angled securely toward a solid wall of rock. His posture remained neutral, weight distributed evenly, one hand resting casually near his side—relaxed, but ready to move. The iron Yaksha mask tilted slightly as he surveyed the space, taking in angles, exits, potential threats.

Then he let his eyes adjust to the fierce glare before him, taking in the surroundings one by one.

This forging alcove had not been built; it had been gouged straight from the bedrock.

It was roughly the size of a grand sect pavilion, yet wholly devoid of ornament or grace. The ceiling arched thirty feet overhead, rough-hewn and uneven, dotted with stalactite-like protrusions of cooled mineral deposits.

Tools of terrifying scale hung from huge rusted hooks driven deep into stone—tongs as long as spears, their grips wrapped in cracked leather blackened by years of use; bone-saws lined with jagged obsidian teeth, each blade as long as a man's arm; and heavy iron chains permanently stained black, links thick as wrists, dangling in loose coils that swayed slightly in the heated convection currents.

At the center of the cavern lay the anvil.

It was not a block of iron, but the complete hollowed shell of some enormous reptilian beast, resembling the spiked carapace of a primordial snapping turtle. The dome rose four feet from the ground, its surface studded with naturally formed spikes the length of daggers, each one worn smooth and blunted by countless hammer strikes. It spanned easily ten feet across, its fossilized surface savagely pitted and scarred, blackened forever by the molten residue of countless prior forgings.

Deep gouges marred its surface where tools had slipped or materials had exploded under stress, yet the structure remained intact—a testament to the unnatural durability of its original owner.

If a biological shell can take that kind of sustained thermal shock without fracturing, Shi Yan narrowed his eyes behind the mask, whatever used to live inside it was a walking tank.

Beneath this crude anvil, instead of glowing coal, the source of heat defied ordinary reason.

A pale gray-blue plume of luminous gas gushed steadily upward from a jagged fissure in the bedrock, striking the underside of the shell and heating it with terrifying force. The flame—if it could even be called that—possessed no solid core, no dancing tongues of fire. It was pure pressurized discharge, roaring silently from the earth's depths in a sustained column of superheated vapor.

The edges shimmered with spectral light, casting wavering shadows across the alcove walls that seemed to move independently of their sources.

Shi Yan could not identify the chemical makeup of the flame, but its smell—a nauseating blend of ozone, sulfur, and rotting marrow—suggested a pressurized subterranean vent formed from decaying organic matter. The odor was distinctive, almost biological, as though the earth itself was exhaling the decomposed remains of something vast and ancient buried in layers far below.

It gave off neither ash nor smoke, only a silent and terrifying distortion of the air. The space directly above the vent rippled constantly, reality itself warping under the intense thermal output. Looking through it was like staring through water, shapes bending and stretching unnaturally. Stranger still, the surrounding environment seemed to war against itself, exuding a biting cold that seeped through his armor together with the blistering heat.

The Netherworld's intrinsic Yin energy fought viciously against the Yang-aligned thermal vent, creating zones of violently conflicting temperatures separated by mere inches—scalding on one side, frost-forming on the other, with only a razor-thin boundary between.

Standing over this monstrous arrangement was the artisan.

It was a humanoid aberration nearly ten feet tall, its grotesque body a perfect and horrifying shape for labor in the deep earth.