Zhì Yuǎn ignored the trembling reverence of the External Manager on the shattered threshold.
The young man's heel crushed the bronze doors, plunging the Qīngshān trio directly into the belly of the Exchange Pavilion without waiting for escort. The interior seethed.
The fervor of freshly slaughtered flesh still bubbled sickly against the rustic glass of the side display windows, exhaling lethal vapor. Dozens of mercenaries with chipped armor and stagnated cultivators squeezed against the obsidian.
The sound of short, desperate breaths and murmurs of greed filled the vitiated air of the wing. However, Zhì Yuǎn's march swept the flesh, bones, and the very crowd from his line of sight. The young man's unshakeable density forced the scum to hunch shoulders and retreat against the walls, opening a clean, involuntary path for the trio.
The young man's dark gaze beneath the hat brim bored into the adjacent wing. The environment there dried the air. Heavy leather parchments, manuals detailing the ramifications of human meridians, and rustic hammered-copper cauldrons rested beneath rudimentary security seals, buzzing with the static of lethal traps.
The theoretical and anatomical foundation to repair Yù Méi's shattered chest pathways inhabited those aged shelves.
However, the tactile evaluation of the identification plaques driven into the black granite exposed the crushing usury of the metropolis.
The markings carved beneath the parchments reduced the entire weight of imperial silver to useless gravel before the lifelong tithe charged by the pavilion. The pure silver and solid gold resting in Zhì Yuǎn's belt transmuted into mundane, useless gravel before the toll imposed by the pavilion. Arcane knowledge demanded strictly coins forged in pure vitality: Mortal-Grade Spirit Stones.
The price of a single torn manual demanded dozens of Mortal-Grade Spirit Stones. The silver they carried in their belt was merely gravel before that toll.
Financial friction collided against Zhì Yuǎn's massive inertia. The grinding mill of commerce subjugated the purchasing power originating from the Qīngshān valley.
Navy-blue silk brushed the side of the man's pearl-gray tunic.
Yù Qíng dissected the price plaques. The girl's eyelids narrowed into absolute slits. The wife's pale hand slid to her husband's arm, icy fingers digging into the young man's rigid bicep, pulling the thick linen. The dark veil concealed the movement of her lips, but the velvety voice hissed against his shoulder loaded with dense, murderous boredom:
"The prices carved on these plaques are an offense to your time, A-Yuǎn," the girl's black irises scanned the corridor sentinels as if looking at pigs in the slaughterhouse. "Break the neck of these guard dogs right now. We tear the shelves from the wall, take the manuals, and I incinerate the rest of the building. Calculating stone coins with insects is an insult to our flesh."
Zhì Yuǎn's warm, calloused thumb descended, covering his wife's cold fingers and pressing the pale phalanges against his own arm. The thermal pressure intercepted the lethal tension in the girl's tendons.
"Breaking the vault and burning the tent today locks the metropolis gates tomorrow, Qíng," his rustic, lethargic voice vibrated low, the weight of breath calming the homicidal impatience in her fingers. "The disappearance of these parchments would set the sniffer dogs turning every inn in the province."
The constant heat radiated by the man softened the young wife's shoulders. She loosened her nails, voluntarily subjugated by the insurmountable anchor of that breath and accepting the delay of the massacre.
"We will not act like rats," the young man sentenced, dark eyes abandoning the untouchable shelves to scan the geometry of the rest of the hall. "We will force the owners of this pavilion to empty their own coffers into our lap, playing by their exact rules of usury."
---
The continuous march of the triad left the corridors of aged leather behind, plunging into the structural heart of the Exchange Pavilion.
The air of the new wing immediately weighed on the lungs. The dryness of paper and cinnabar gave way to a dense, cold humidity charged with energetic static. The limestone floor displayed dozens of black granite pedestals, upon which rested heavy domes of thick glass. The space around the display windows vibrated, emitting low buzzes that raised the hairs on Yù Méi's nape, evidencing the rudimentary confinement matrices installed there solely to crush the hands and bones of unwary thieves.
The center of the exhibition displayed the absolute foundation of human greed.
Small, delicate crystal flasks rested on dark velvet cushions. The liquid imprisoned inside the glasses displayed a slight milky cloudiness, exhaling a dying, pale, thin glow.
The rustic wooden plaque driven into the base of the pedestal detailed the geography and chemistry of that product: Spiritual Water. Extracted from stagnant aquifers that rested for five decades upon the calcified ruins of an extinct Spiritual-Grade Qi Vein. Essential for organic nutrition and the mild dilation of channels in Body Tempering.
Below the description, the commercial decree of the local ecosystem: eighty Medium-Quality Mortal-Grade Spirit Stones per single flask.
Yù Qíng's pale fingers squeezed the sleeve of her navy-blue silk. The thin fabric creaked.
"Eighty medium-quality stones for a few drops of water bathed on the corpse of an old rock…" Yù Qíng's voice descended to a harsh whisper, irises piercing the wooden plaque. "The audacity of these bureaucrats borders on absolute delirium. This toll would sink the barns and coffers of our village for ten entire generations."
A few steps away, Yù Méi swallowed dry. The youngest bored almond eyes into the shining flasks. That thin, incredibly expensive water was exactly the type of biological fuel demanded by the outside world's manuals to wash and solder ruined channels like hers. The financial abyss crushed her into the stone floor itself with the inertia of a mountain.
Zhì Yuǎn stopped before the thick glass.
The immense, broad-shouldered silhouette leaned the torso slightly forward. The defensive static current of the matrix flashed and whipped the air toward his face, but the hyper-density of the Refined Body's skin absorbed the shock like a dry leaf falling on grass.
The millions of newly opened pores beneath the pearl-gray tunic pulled the microscopic space between him and the altar. The young man's sensory perception filtered the physical barrier and dissected the aura and stagnant odor leaking through the cork stopper's isolation.
The absolute absence of haste cemented the man's posture. The result of the evaluation was a hollow, pathetic echo.
The energy confined in those flasks smelled of stagnant rainwater. Geology demanded a rustic, slow time from the world; common water had needed to rest for fifty entire years merely to absorb the pale dust of a dying stone vein.
Zhì Yuǎn's mind silently compared the dying slowness of the outside world with the tireless forge burning beneath his sternum.
At the exact core of his flesh, the invisible Mill spat invaluable, dense golden Primordial Qi. The substance running thick in his veins was liquid gold, scalding and infinitely more condensed and heavy than any emanation from a piece of rotten rock underground. If proximity to a dead stone made mundane water valuable in half a century, the forced injection of a single, microscopic drop of his internal sweat would boil and alter the constitution of any mortal liquid in the fraction of a millisecond.
He possessed the monopoly of his own living forge in the blood. And the entire metropolis begged to be dissected by him.
Zhì Yuǎn straightened his spine, turning his heel on the bone dust of the floor. Broad back abandoned the illuminated display window without a drop of deference to the hall's treasures.
A few steps away, Yù Méi's breath emptied.
The youngest saw her brother-in-law's massive silhouette turn his back on the shelves that guarded her cure. The unshakeable mountain had just slammed into an insurmountable financial wall. The void broken in the adolescent's chest throbbed with a stabbing phantom pain, and the girl's throat closed. Dirty nails dug into the golden dress, the crushing terror of continuing to be a ruined insect in the gutter nailing her shoes to the limestone, feeling that her only chance of survival had been left behind on those unreachable shelves.
"The foundation we ground in the dark burns much heavier than the sludge trails they bottle here," Zhì Yuǎn's grave, rustic voice vibrated in the corridor, oblivious to his sister-in-law's panic, guided by pure pragmatism.
Yù Qíng's black irises dilated as they absorbed her husband's scorn.
"The stalls outside the Pavilion sell dead mineral water for copper coins, Qíng," he sentenced, steps already marching toward the colossal bronze gates of the exit. "We will buy the mud from their streets and turn it into gold."
---
The static, perfumed, cold air of the Exchange Pavilion vanished. The climate plummeted abruptly, replaced by dusty haze, the sour sweat smell of the crowd, and the oppressive heat of mortal street commerce. The late-afternoon sun still punished the loose limestone.
Zhì Yuǎn guided the march through the crowd, pearl-gray tunic opening a path in the human mass. The infernal haze burning the plebeians' napes collided against the natural heat of Zhì Yuǎn's body and simply evaporated, nullified by the continuous, regulated atmospheric pressure of the protagonist's flesh. The walk halted before a worn canvas stall, where the smell of cooked cabbage and damp clay permeated the flies over the wood.
The peddler pushed a hand-stitched leather canteen and five small empty ceramic flasks onto the irregular wooden counter.
"Purified water from the east well, outsider," the seller stretched cracked lips in a gap-toothed smile. "Boiled three times over burning charcoal. Two pure silver slivers for everything."
Zhì Yuǎn's large, calloused hand pulled the cork stopper from the canteen. The young man tilted the opening slightly, dark, lethargic gaze dissecting the thin transparency of the liquid before raising his face again to the merchant.
"Boiling spared the work of chewing leeches," the man's grave, dragged voice vibrated in the hot air, slow and loaded with the unshakeable weight of a roof builder. "But the bottom of this leather carries enough sand to set the bricks of an entire wall."
The peddler's jaw locked in the same instant, false cordiality evaporating before the mute oppression leaking from the outsider's tunic.
Zhì Yuǎn slid fingers into his belt and threw a single pure silver sliver onto the rotting counter. The density of the metal collided against the rustic wood with a dull, heavy thud, sinking into the splinters of the furniture. The incontestable weight of that wealth cemented the rules.
"One sliver for the useless effort of your firewood. And the five clay flasks come as a bonus to compensate for the taste of square mud."
The density of shoulders beneath the gray tunic crushed any bargaining response. The peddler swept the silver coin quickly, hunching his spine and pushing the canteen and ceramics with trembling hands and nape cowardly tucked against his own chest.
Behind the wall formed by the couple, Yù Méi squeezed the fabric of her own golden skirt until her fingers hurt.
The youngest's tongue itched. They had crossed the mountain, encountered resplendent stones that would extort the entire village, and now her brother-in-law was throwing the family's sacred silver in exchange for water tasting of dirty earth and empty clay pots. The adolescent puffed her chest, filling her lungs with dust and hot air to bellow at the top of her lungs why the family's sweat was being traded for the taste of mud.
The icy rustle of fabric interrupted the girl's vision. Yù Qíng's shoulder blocked the space in a millimetric manner, the axis of the eldest's neck remaining perfectly turned forward.
The eldest merely inclined her head millimetrically in her sister's direction. Abyssal irises bored into the youngest. The gravitational pressure of that gaze descended like lead onto the adolescent's back. An icy chill whipped the base of Yù Méi's spine, causing an acidic dizziness that darkened the edges of her vision. The girl recoiled her shoulders, subjugated by the pure terror ingrained in her own flesh. She dug teeth into her lower lip until tasting the coppery blood, swallowing the question in silence and bowing beneath the lethal authority of the elder.
Yù Qíng's attention returned to her husband's hands.
The young wife evaluated the rustic leather canteen and clay flasks. Her dark gaze rose from the mundane liquid directly to the exposed veins in Zhì Yuǎn's neck. The mild fever radiating uninterruptedly from the muscles beneath his gray tunic bathed the woman's pale face. The thermal shock between the muddy water pushed on the counter and the living forge pulsing a few steps away ignited the spark.
The raw heat of that plan rose aggressively through Yù Qíng's pale cheeks beneath the dark veil. The girl's pupils dilated to the maximum, swallowing the late-afternoon sunlight. She slid her icy hand along Zhì Yuǎn's arm, thin fingers squeezing the thick linen with a trembling, anxious force. Her breath lost cadence, lips brushing the fabric of her husband's shoulder, hot, ragged breath claiming the space, the girl's mind already savoring in advance the blood of the stones that the city lords would vomit into that mud.
Zhì Yuǎn stored the ceramic flasks in his leather belt.
The density of the torso cemented the posture, absorbing the trembling tension of his wife's fingers in absolute silence. The boot heel turned in the dust, abandoning the sunny tumult of the square. He guided the two women toward the darkest, narrowest alley of the limestone street, moving away from the flow of the road, preparing the exact shadow for the friction.
---
The narrow shadow of the limestone alley completely swallowed the noise and punishing heat of street commerce. The tall, moss-covered walls cornered the oxygen, creating a dome of dense, icy humidity, isolated from the curious eyes of peddlers and the spears of guards.
Zhì Yuǎn halted his step. The heavy boot crushed the dark mud of the ground.
The young man pulled the cork stopper from the leather canteen. With the metric precision of a carver, he tilted the neck, pouring the mundane, purified water directly from the street into the five small rustic ceramic flasks. The muddy, tasteless liquid filled the raw clay to the exact brim.
Behind him, Yù Méi held her breath, almond irises fixed and dilated on her brother-in-law's immense hands. Yù Qíng sustained crimson lips pulled into an arc of pure hunger, the tips of white teeth grinding ferociously beneath the black veil as hot breath leaked through the fabric, yearning for the economic carnage that would follow.
Zhì Yuǎn rested the empty canteen on his belt. He raised his right hand and positioned the index finger exactly one centimeter above the neck of the first rustic flask.
The young man's dark gaze lost focus on the clay and street. Inner vision plunged through his own skin, dissecting the thick layers of muscle until finding the pulsing chamber beneath his sternum. Golden Primordial Qi rested there, massive, thick, and incandescent, fruit of the continuous crushing generated in the straw cabin.
Zhì Yuǎn's focus crushed his own energy.
The heavy, burning matter obeyed the command of Will instantly, pulled outward from the central reservoir. Golden Qi rose, forcing a raw path through the widened meridians of the right chest. Thick heat traveled the shoulder, descended like molten lead through the rigid bicep, crossed the elbow curve, and funneled with crushing pressure directly to the last phalanx of the index finger.
Mastery over his own essence flowed in the veins like ancient blood, an instinct ingrained in the bones, as if he had commanded the mechanics of the universe's fluids since before his birth.
At the tip of the young man's index finger, the hyper-dense matter broke through the membrane of the pores.
A single, microscopic drop of golden sweat condensed in the cold penumbra of the alley.
The particle burst exhaling caustic heat and a mass that crushed the wind around it. The thin air distorted immediately. Temperature boiled the local humidity and carbonized the moss on the stone walls in an exact perimeter of two steps, crackling the tiny leaves into dry ashes. The incandescent, thick glow of that suspended fraction of power captured the alley in a trance of non-negotiable attraction.
Yù Qíng's black irises dilated to the extreme, devouring the geometric perfection trembling at the tip of her husband's finger. Yù Méi's breath stopped in the middle of her trachea, the adolescent catatonic, paralyzed by the lethal authority that tamed pure cosmic energy.
The man's finger yielded millimeters downward.
The drop of liquid gold detached from calloused skin and fell.
Tssss.
The dead water in the flask boiled violently. A thick cloud of white vapor burst through the neck, carrying the asphyxiating aroma of a primordial storm and life in raw state. Boiling ceased abruptly. The liquid, instants before thin and muddy, assumed a milky, silvery, incredibly thick glow, weighing against the fragile bottom of the clay flask with the massive inertia of molten lead.
The asphyxiating and organically pure aroma leaked into the confined air.
Yù Méi's knees bent a centimeter toward the damp earth of the alley. The youngest's torn meridians in her chest throbbed in uncontrollable spasms of pain and a carnivorous thirst of her own flesh. Saliva immediately flooded the fourteen-year-old girl's mouth. Yù Méi's shattered channels demanded, in a pure instinctive roar, that she tear the small clay pot from her brother-in-law's hands and swallow the burning content to solder her own shattered bones, but the brutal atmospheric density emitted by his body acted like an invisible column of steel, cementing the young woman's cloth shoes in the dark mud.
To the flank of the paralyzed girl, Yù Qíng's dark fabric slid against the rough stone of the wall. The young wife's breath was short, shallow, and frantic. Yù Qíng's pale cheeks flushed violently beneath the dark fabric, pale fingers trembling uncontrollably as she watched the millennial gear of the metropolis — upon which the mortal elite had depended for centuries — be irrevocably trampled and humiliated by the filth manufactured in that filthy alley.
Zhì Yuǎn's mind returned to the surface of his own skin, registering the thermal result without accelerating heartbeats. The mental calculation collided against the reality of the boiling ceramic throbbing in his calloused palm.
The absurd heat of the liquid generated imperceptible micro-fissures in the rustic ceramic, threatening to shatter the cheap pot. Zhì Yuǎn's calloused thumb drove the cork stopper in a dry jolt, stabilizing the pressure and asphyxiating the leakage of that cataclysm inside the raw clay.
"Hm…" A dragged, rustic, grave murmur vibrated at the base of Zhì Yuǎn's throat.
The young man's broad, massive shoulders rose and fell in a short, relaxed movement loaded with unshakeable indifference. The absolute contrast between the indescribable alchemical heresy his hand had just generated and the tranquility of one setting floor wood dominated the space.
"I think it will do for the job," he sentenced. The corner of rigid lips loosened millimetrically, the mild, rustic exhalation of the carpenter breaking the asphyxiating tension of the alley. The calloused hand rested the newly born "miraculous" fraud safely in the leather belt.
Repeating the invisible path of Will through the arm channels in a thick, continuous flow, he replicated the surgical process in the other bottles. Four more drops ejected and fell in cadenced fashion into the bottled mud. The clays foamed, hissed boiling, generated rustic smoke, and silenced beneath the rapid seals of cork stoppers struck by his thumb.
Zhì Yuǎn stored the last flask in his belt and turned his heel on the damp earth of the alley.
"Now the lords of that Pavilion will empty their own coffers just for the privilege of drinking the dirty street water."
The Yù family left the narrow alley behind, plunging back into the crowd. Two dark-tunic trackers tried to follow them into the shadows of the alley but halted on the second step. Breath fled their tracheas and kneecaps groaned beneath crushing pressure. They staggered backward, asphyxiated by the heavy gravity overflowing from the man in the black hat.
The trio's march now possessed a fixed, non-negotiable target. They tore through the dusty square in a straight line, walking directly toward the colossal bronze gates of the Exchange Pavilion.