The immense bronze gates of the Exchange Pavilion crushed the chaos of Qīngshí's market outside. The smell of fermented cabbage and street dust died on the building's threshold, asphyxiated by the cold aroma of sandalwood incense and the metallic stench of old coins.
The interior of the pavilion seethed. Dozens of low-level merchants and cultivators squeezed against rough stone counters. The sound of wooden abacuses clacking, the clinking of Spirit Stones changing hands, and the hoarse shouts of auctioneers in adjacent halls filled the air with the agony of desperate commerce.
Zhì Yuǎn dragged the unshakeable density of his posture across the granite floor, cutting through the flow of anxious mortals. The young man guided his wife and sister-in-law directly to the back of the main hall, ignoring the noise of haggling, until reaching the area where stone gave way to polished hardwood.
An attendant in rigorously aligned robes organized hundreds of bamboo slips. The corner of the man's lips pulled into an overt tic of disdain before the mountain dust clinging to the trio's boots.
"When does the grand auction happen?" Zhì Yuǎn's grave, direct voice ran over any greeting protocol.
The attendant blinked, breath catching for a millisecond before the gravity of the shoulders of the man before him.
"In three days," the reply came dry, loaded with the roughness of one dispatching a daily nuisance. "Access to the main hall requires exhibition of massive prior capital. Common silver does not buy seats."
"We have merchandise for appraisal."
The counter clerk let out a dragged sigh. Without wasting saliva on deluded peasants, he lazily raised his hand and signaled toward the side corridor, releasing passage solely to clear his own line.
---
The private appraisal chamber was a bare stone vault, isolated from the external murmur. In the center, a solid mahogany table divided the space.
The pavilion's Appraiser entered immediately after, silk steps muffled on the smooth floor. He was a slender merchant, cheeks raised in a fixed, immutable smile of false courtesy. With calculated movements, he served steaming tea in three fine porcelain cups that already awaited them.
"The dust of commercial routes tends to dry travelers' throats," the man's voice floated mild, murky irises tracking Zhì Yuǎn's thick linen. "Our pavilion welcomes the fruits of hard labor. What have the friends brought for my scrutiny?"
The porcelain remained untouched.
The young man's large, calloused hand descended to the leather belt. He pulled the first cheap, earth-stained ceramic bottle and deposited it directly onto the hardwood.
The hollow thud of raw clay collided against polished mahogany.
The merchant's smile froze for a fraction of a second. He blinked, eyes boring into the chipped ceramic. The host's narrow chest inflated in a long, theatrical sigh, chin rising to treat the audacity as a simple peasant joke.
The slender man raised the dirty bottle using only the tips of thumb and forefinger, lifting it against the lamplight with theatrical reverence loaded with scorn.
"Fascinating…" the appraiser's voice dragged in a tone of false admiration, thin lips pulling in pure mockery. "Observe the rustic asymmetry of the cracks. The wear of this clay clearly denotes it was unearthed from a forgotten tomb of the Transcendent Era. And this sludge embedded at the base? Probably remnants of the sacred soil where mythological beasts trod. The young mountain master must have risked his own life to rescue such a historical miracle from the mud…"
Zhì Yuǎn leaned his torso against the chair back.
"It is a crooked bottle I received as a bonus at the stall on the street behind when I bought water this morning," Zhì Yuǎn's grave, lethargic voice cut the theater in half, exhaling dry, unshakeable pragmatism. The young man's thumb pointed to the flask. "Twist the cork and evaluate what is inside, or give me back the clay."
Behind her husband's chair, Yù Qíng's shoulders trembled lightly. A muffled, mute laugh died in the wife's throat beneath the dark veil, pure territorial delight warming her spine at seeing the elitist performance crushed by her man's lethargy.
The appraiser's smile vanished, face contorting in humiliation before the harsh cut. With veins in his neck tense with rage, he grabbed the poorly cut cork stopper and yanked it violently, ready to expel the outsiders from his pavilion.
The snap of the broken seal echoed.
A thick gust, overflowing with the smell of ancient rain and electric ozone, gushed from the rustic neck. The massive essence of the Golden Drop crushed the air of the stone vault.
Breath fled the merchant's lungs in a torn choke.
The man's pupils dilated until nearly tearing his eyelids. The body of that appraiser, stagnated in the Eighth Mortal Stage for decades and dependent on weak herbs to absorb any crumb of world energy, collided head-on against absolute weight.
The physical oppression radiated from the dirty clay. The porcelain cup slipped from the man's left hand and shattered on the floor. His bone structure yielded beneath the sudden gravity of the air. His kneecaps struck hard against the table edge, the only anchor that prevented the merchant's face from plummeting face-down to the ground.
Survival instinct whipped the room in pure panic, striking against the predatory static of the seated silhouette on the other side of the mahogany.
"Raw clay tends to weigh the wrists of those who only lift ink brushes all day," Zhì Yuǎn's grave observation vibrated in his throat, dismantling the man's weakness. The calloused thumb pushed the brim of the black hat millimeters backward, revealing dark irises overflowing with dry humor. "Better pull up a chair. If the leg trembles and you drop the flask, the silver of this entire building will not pay for the puddle the floor will drink."
The appraiser's knees trembled against the limestone floor. Blood running from the freshly torn palm in the porcelain mixed with the scalding tea puddle. Ignoring the acute pain, he supported bloodied hands on the mahogany edge, raising his trembling torso with the desperation of a drowning man seeking that thick air.
"Eighty thousand…" the merchant's whisper tore the silence, thick saliva pasting the words. Loyalty to the Consortium disintegrated before the implacable vice of trapped flesh. "I will pay from my own family's vault. One hundred thousand Low-Grade Spirit Stones. You leave this water on my table, and I deliver the silver now."
Zhì Yuǎn's heavy inertia moved. The young man's calloused hand covered the flask, and the thumb descended like an anvil, pushing the cork back into the neck.
The thud of the sealing immediately strangled the air's density. The sudden amputation of the aroma made the merchant gasp, shoulders dropping in a jolt of brutal withdrawal.
Zhì Yuǎn rested his elbow on the mahogany chair arm. Rustic fingers held the neck loosely, tilting the ceramic from left to right. The thick liquid sloshed inside. The appraiser's pupils tracked the pendular swing, sanity tied and dragged by the rhythm of that bottled filth.
"Your stones reek of old incense," Zhì Yuǎn's voice vibrated grave. The finger of his free hand pointed to the thick stone wall on the left. "I want the parchments from the west wing. The anatomy manuals locked beneath the glasses."
The appraiser's trembling smile collapsed, eyebrows furrowing in a spasm of shock that locked thin saliva in his throat before the absurdity of the demand.
"The dead bodily sutras?" the merchant stammered, fresh blood dripping from his chin. "The study of flesh is dust before the arts of Qi…"
Zhì Yuǎn's leather boot sole scraped the floor, crushing the appraiser's speech. The rotation of the flask stopped suddenly.
"Empty the west wing glasses onto my table," the order descended dry and cutting. "The wisdom of your shelf for this remainder of dirty water. Now."
The silk-clad man ignored the tea puddle, turned his back on his own security rules, and yanked the heavy iron key ring from his belt with frantic haste, marching breathlessly toward the west wing corridor.
Silence returned. And only then did Yù Qíng sink teeth into her own lower lip. Thick heat descended through the young wife's spine as she savored the city elite crawling before her man's mud, soaking the base of her womb in pure predatory delight.
---
The silk merchant returned breathlessly from the west wing. The heavy thud of dozens of ancient parchments, sealed in rustic glass cylinders, collided against the mahogany table.
Zhì Yuǎn swept the excavated knowledge with a lethargic gaze. The young man's large, calloused hand descended to the leather belt.
Toc. Toc. Toc. Toc.
Four new dirty ceramic flasks struck the noble wood, aligned millimetrically exactly beside the first.
The cartilage of the appraiser's neck cracked. Dilated veins in the man's eyeballs jumped in a vivid red tone. The pressure in the stone vault plummeted vertiginously beneath the impact of the revelation. The dust-covered peasant carried a spring of that miracle tied to his waist.
"Thirty Medium-Grade Spirit Stones and eight thousand Low-Grade."
Zhì Yuǎn's grave, dragged voice vibrated in the environment, dry and cutting like an axe splitting wood. The young man's rough finger pointed to the first flask, still damp from the forced cork.
"This one stays on your table. The other four open the grand auction in three days."
Hunger swallowed any trace of the appraiser's composure. The slender man marched trembling to an iron vault embedded in the stone, activated the manual seal, and yanked heavy animal-leather sacks from inside. He dumped the volume all at once onto the mahogany. The thick clinking of Spirit Stones flooded the room.
The heavy amount on the wood represented the lifelong tithe of a smaller border pavilion — wealth ready to be devoured, which few merchants would have the audacity to pour without first begging on knees for permission from the Greater Consortium.
With hands still sweaty, the merchant pushed a heavy black-iron medallion carved with golden grooves — the free-transit emblem of the pavilion's high dome — onto the wood.
Zhì Yuǎn collected the stolen knowledge and the sacks of shining stones, throwing the monumental burden directly over his broad shoulder. The triad turned their backs on the panting man and crossed the immense bronze gates back to the implacable light of the street.
Behind the young man's unshakeable back, Yù Méi's heel yielded.
The youngest stumbled on the stone gutter, thin fingers scratching and crushing the wall masonry to avoid collapsing to her knees. Breath fled the adolescent's trachea. The crystallized fortune sustaining the foundation of an entire clan had just been hung on her brother-in-law's shoulder as if they were sacks of old grain. The physical impact of the weight of that power crushed the young woman's lungs.
To Zhì Yuǎn's left flank, Yù Qíng's blood throbbed at her temples.
The metropolis aristocracy had just crawled on cold stone, bleeding their own coffers before the mud bottled by her husband. The eldest's breath shortened in wet, irregular gasps against the dark veil fabric. A thick, musky heat descended through the young woman's spine, immediately soaking the base of her womb, while the coppery taste of blood flooded her mouth from biting her own lip.
Yù Qíng's pale nails advanced and dug into Zhì Yuǎn's rigid arm, sinking into the linen with feverish firmness. The woman dropped her head millimeters, hot face nearly touching the curve of his neck.
"The Blind Dog reeks of dead straw and peasant sweat, A-Yuǎn," she hissed. Black irises, dilated and wet, pierced the square crowd, savoring the stones he had just dominated. "Get me out of this dirty street. Now."
The retrieval of clothing bundles at the old inn lasted no longer than the time of a few breaths. Dust and the smell of cheap straw were abandoned in the gutters.
The absurd density of Zhì Yuǎn's musculature supported the mountain of heavy Spirit Stone sacks thrown over his own shoulder without emitting a single gasp, leather boots cracking the cobblestones with every massive step.
The trio crossed three paved blocks, guided by the weight of the black-iron medallion, to the massive mahogany double doors of the Nine Clouds Inn. The interior exhaled the icy, purifying aroma of ice-lotus incense. Zhì Yuǎn halted in the center of the impeccable hall. The broad shoulder inclined millimeters, and the heavy animal-leather sacks plummeted.
Boom.
The mineral fortune collided against the varnished floor, the seismic thud shattering the noble wood beneath the leather and making porcelain cups tremble on distant tables.
The innkeeper's breath locked in his trachea before the structural violence, but the white-silk man immediately curved his spine upon glimpsing the black-iron emblem hanging from the young man's belt. Yù Qíng's pale hand cut the air before any ceremonial word could be spoken.
Clack.
A Low-Grade Spirit Stone struck the untouchable counter.
"The last room in the east corridor for the girl," Yù Qíng's voice hissed muffled beneath the veil. Her black irises bored into the innkeeper, freezing the man's spine. "Ours is the main chamber on the west side. Set your mute dogs to drag our load upstairs. And if any employee's boots cross my corridor before dawn, I will break the bones of the busybody's legs."
The innkeeper swallowed dry, sweeping the shining stone from the table with a trembling sleeve, and extended two heavy iron keys.
Yù Méi grabbed her own key. The youngest bored almond eyes into the limestone floor, forcing her own legs to march hurriedly toward exile in the opposite corridor. The asphyxiating heat exhaling from her elder sister crushed the adolescent's lungs, expelling her without mercy from that corridor about to enter thermal combustion.
The massive sequoia door of the west chamber opened and closed with a dull thud. The snap of the thick iron bar sealed the outside world, plunging the room into penumbra.
In the exact millisecond of the door locking, Yù Qíng's composure exploded.
The girl's icy hands grabbed the collar of Zhì Yuǎn's pearl-gray tunic. The slight body pushed the man's massive inertia against the heavy door planks. The black veil plummeted to the floor. The young wife's pale face burned in a feverish red.
"The entire metropolis crawled on the stone floor today…" she whispered, voice failing, hot lips brushing her husband's rigid chin. Panting breath permeated the penumbra with the sweet smell of sweat and sandalwood. "They emptied their coffers before our filth…"
Yù Qíng's short nails tore the leather laces of his tunic, throwing the fabric wide and exposing his burning chest. The girl's porcelain skin collided against the incandescent musculature, thermal friction tearing a strangled moan from her throat.
"You crushed their elite beneath your boot, A-Yuǎn…" she gasped. The girl's soaked womb struck violently against the young man's groin, rubbing against the heavy, pulsing volume throbbing beneath his linen. "Now sink that arrogance into me. Burn my flesh. Make me swallow your entire weight."
Zhì Yuǎn locked his jaw, teeth grinding with the wet impact. The Forge instinct responded to his wife's delirium in a lethargic and implacable manner.
The carpenter's two calloused hands descended like anvils. Thick fingers gripped the back of the woman's thighs, lifting her into the air in a single raw jolt. Yù Qíng crossed thin legs around his broad hips, spine glued against the door wood, crimson lips open awaiting the merciless friction that would breach the room's limit.