The Black Underworld Pavilion thrummed like a living heart beneath the perpetual twilight of Black Mark City.
Crystal chandeliers shaped like dripping blood hung from the vaulted ceiling, casting crimson light across tiered rows of shadowed seats. The air was thick with the mingled scents of rare incense, medicinal herbs, and barely restrained killing intent. Every major faction of the Black-Corner Region had sent representatives—faces hidden behind hoods, masks, or veils of Dou Qi suppression. No one here came to make friends.
Fan Ling occupied the Blood Sect's private box on the upper tier, half-obscured by dark silk curtains. He sat with perfect stillness, grey hair catching faint glints of red light, crimson eyes half-lidded in an expression of aristocratic boredom. Twenty elite guards were scattered throughout the hall and beyond—some in the crowd below, others already positioned along the exit routes. No one would suspect the young master was doing anything but spectating.
He had not raised his paddle once.
Not for the seventh-rank beast cores.
Not for the ancient map fragment.
Not even for the rumored Heavenly Flame seed that drew gasps from half the room.
He was waiting.
The auctioneer's voice rang out again, smooth and predatory.
"Next item: the Yin-Yang Harmony Pill—seventh grade! A supreme harmonizer of yin and yang energies, capable of resolving conflicting bloodlines, stabilizing violent breakthroughs, or granting a direct leap toward Dou Wang for those on the cusp. Starting bid: eight million gold coins!"
The hall ignited.
Paddles flashed like blades.
"Ten million!"
"Twelve!"
"Fifteen!"
Fan Ling's gaze drifted lazily toward the Sky Serpent Mansion's section—three rows of emerald-robed women, their leader a tall, scale-patterned Dou Wang whose eyes gleamed like polished jade. She sat with serpentine grace, unmoving until the bid reached twenty million.
Then she lifted her paddle once.
"Twenty-five million."
A hush fell.
The Black Skeleton Tomb elder snarled and raised his own paddle—twenty-six—but the Sky Serpent leader didn't even blink.
"Thirty million."
The elder's hand dropped. Curses rippled through his section.
No one else challenged.
"Sold! To the Sky Serpent Mansion for thirty million gold coins!"
The pill was placed in an ornate jade box and handed over with ceremonial bows. Fan Ling's lips curved into the faintest of smiles.
*Right on schedule.*
The Sky Serpent women didn't stop there.
They claimed the vial of thousand-year serpent venom essence for twenty-two million.
A fragment of Dou Zong battle armor etched with defensive arrays for fourteen million.
A cluster of seventh-rank fire-attribute demonic cores for nine million more.
By the time their section quieted, they had spent nearly ninety million gold coins—and acquired treasures worth double that on the open black market.
Fan Ling leaned back in his seat, fingers steepled.
*All of it… will belong to me before sunrise.*
He had already positioned his people.
Blood Guards—silent, lethal—waited along every known Sky Serpent escape route: the narrow Obsidian Ravine, the Fog Serpent Trail, the Crimson Fang Pass. Fan Lao had received the coded message hours earlier: *Heavy harvest tonight. Bring the reapers.* The peak Dou Huang would arrive with his personal cadre before the first blood hit the ground. The ambush would be surgical, overwhelming, and utterly deniable—neutral ground rules ended the moment one stepped outside the pavilion's formations.
Huge gains.
Enough gold to push his Wealthy System balance into the tens of millions. Enough to finally unlock something meaningful—perhaps the Itachi-version Mangekyou Sharingan, or at least a stack of enhancement pills to jump his cultivation.
But one shadow tempered the satisfaction.
Fan Ling's gaze slid sideways, down to a modest seat near the back of the lower tier.
A single figure in a plain black robe.
Hood drawn low.
No paddle.
No entourage.
Just… stillness.
The faint scent of medicinal herbs drifted even to this distance, laced with something hotter—controlled flame, coiled like a dragon in slumber.
*Xiao Yan.*
The uncertain factor.
The black-robed calamity who had turned the original Fan Ling's arrogance into ashes.
In the story, this was the night it all unraveled: the young master's flashy bids, the post-auction chase, the Green Lotus Core Flame roaring to life outside the city walls.
Fan Ling murmured under his breath, voice lost beneath the clamor of the next lot being unveiled.
"Huge gains tonight… but you…"
His crimson eyes narrowed, locking onto that shadowed silhouette.
"…you're the only variable I can't predict yet."
He exhaled slowly.
The auction would continue for hours.
The Sky Serpent convoy would leave loaded with treasures.
Fan Lao would arrive like death given form.
And somewhere in the chaos, a young alchemist might—or might not—interfere.
Fan Ling allowed himself one final, cold smile.