The Blacksmith Association
Even at night, the Suotou City Blacksmith Association was alive. Plumes of thick, grey smoke billowed from the massive stone chimneys, and the rhythmic, deafening CLANG of hundreds of hammers striking anvils echoed through the streets.
Mame walked through the massive iron double doors, the heat of the forges washing over him. The reception hall was cavernous, filled with heavily muscled men and women covered in soot, drinking ale and arguing over blueprints.
When the figure in pure black with the featureless mask stepped into the light, the room grew noticeably quieter. The oppressive, heavy aura rolling off Mame made the hairs on the back of the blacksmiths' necks stand up.
A burly man with a thick beard and a prominent guild badge marched up to the counter, wiping his hands on a dirty apron. He was a Grandmaster Blacksmith, the night manager of the branch.
"We're closed to the public for custom orders," the bearded man grunted, eyeing Mame warily. "Unless you're Spirit Hall or military, come back tomorrow."
Mame didn't speak. He reached into his cloak and pulled out a solid gold ingot—worth at least a hundred gold spirit coins—and slammed it onto the reception desk. The heavy thud silenced the rest of the room.
"I'm not here for a custom order," Mame's voice was altered, lowered into a gravelly, metallic rasp by vibrating his vocal cords with Ki. "I'm here to do you a favor. I want your garbage."
The guild manager blinked, staring at the gold, then back at the masked figure. "Garbage?"
"Heavy Silver," Mame stated. "Specifically, the slag, the offcuts, and the impure chunks that your smiths fail to refine. The pieces that are too dense and stubborn to melt down in your standard furnaces. The scrap taking up space in your vaults."
The manager frowned, utterly bewildered. Heavy Silver was an incredibly dense, highly conductive metal, but it was notoriously difficult to work with. Unless a blacksmith was at the absolute peak of their craft, attempting to forge it usually resulted in brittle, useless chunks of blackened scrap. The Association had literal tons of it sitting in their storage yards, practically worthless to them.
"You... you want the Heavy Silver slag?" the manager asked, narrowing his eyes. "We have about four thousand pounds of it just in our back lot."
"I don't just want your back lot," Mame rasped smoothly. "I want it all. From every branch of the Blacksmith Association across the continent."
The manager choked on his own spit. "All of it? Across the whole continent?" The burly man wiped the sweat from his forehead, his soot-stained hands trembling slightly over the gold. "Sir... I'm just a branch manager. I can authorize the sale of our local stockpiles, but a continent-wide monopoly? Only Headquarters in Gengxin City can approve that."
Mame stared at him through the featureless black mask. The silence stretched, heavy and suffocating, before Mame gave a slow, measured nod.
"Acceptable. I will return in eleven days to finalize the continent-wide terms. In the meantime, draw up the contract for this branch immediately. I want an exclusive purchasing agreement for all your Heavy Silver scrap for the next fifteen years. And inform your Headquarters that I expect the exact same fifteen-year terms for the continent-wide contract."
The manager stared at the gold ingot, doing the math in his head. The scrap was a massive liability. They had been considering paying disposal crews to haul it out just to free up warehouse space. Now, this terrifying masked man was offering to buy their trash with solid gold.
Before the manager could agree, Mame reached into his cloak and pulled out a second gold ingot, placing it deliberately next to the first.
"However," Mame continued, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper, "I know you don't keep all of it in the yards. You throw the excess away. Tell me exactly where the Association has been dumping this scrap outside the cities for the last decade, and this second ingot goes directly into your personal pocket. Unrecorded."
The manager's eyes locked onto the second gold bar. A greedy, sweating grin broke out across his soot-stained face.
"Deal," the manager whispered back hurriedly. "We dump the overflow in the deep ravines of the Suotou quarry. I'll write up the fifteen-year exclusive rights contract for this branch right now."
An hour later, Mame stood in the moonlit back lot of the Association. With a faint silver glow emanating from beneath his cloak, he channeled his soul power, and the four thousand pounds of raw Heavy Silver vanished into the expanding void of his spatial ring.
He left without another word, fading into the shadows of the alleyway like a ghost.
Back in the reception hall, the burly manager collapsed into a chair behind the desk, his legs finally giving out. He was a Rank 40 Spirit Ancestor, a veteran who had fought spirit beasts and rival guilds alike, but standing in front of that masked man had taken years off his life.
With trembling hands, he grabbed a quill and a sheet of high-grade parchment, hurriedly drafting a missive to the Blacksmith Headquarters in Gengxin City.
To the Guildmaster, he wrote frantically. I have just secured the deal of the century for the Association. A private buyer is building a massive, remote estate and requires sheer, immovable density for the foundation. He is paying a premium in solid gold for our Heavy Silver slag—the scrap we normally pay to dispose of.
The manager paused, wiping cold sweat from his brow before dipping the quill back into the ink.
He demands a 15-year exclusive purchasing contract for the entire continent, and will return in 11 days for your answer. I strongly advise you to accept. I am a Rank 40 Spirit Ancestor, but the pressure rolling off this man was unfathomable. I could not gauge his true strength, but my instincts were screaming. If I had offended him, I am certain I would have died instantly.
As the manager sealed the letter with wax, Mame was already standing on a rooftop across the city.
Inside his spatial ring rested the four thousand pounds of raw metal, the Suotou branch contract, and the map to the quarry. By the time Tang San grew up and realized he needed Heavy Silver to build his advanced hidden weapons, there wouldn't be a single scrap left anywhere on the continent. Mame had just bought the future arsenal of the Tang Sect and shoved it into his pocket.
"One step closer to the Singularity," Mame whispered to the wind.
He turned on his heel and Blinked away into the darkness.
Chapter 9: The Heist of the Century (Continued)
Mame didn't stop at the Blacksmith Association. The night was still young, and his pockets were heavy with a dead Douluo's fortune. If he was going to build a multiversal foundation, he needed more than just gravity-plating. He needed the catalyst materials that the current era of Soul Land considered absolute garbage.
Over the next four hours, the "Phantom of Suotou" visited three more major commercial hubs, leaving a trail of terrified managers, solid gold, and ironclad contracts in his wake.
The Ocean Trade Coalition
His next target was the sprawling warehouses of the Ocean Trade Coalition near the city's river docks. The smell of salt and rotting fish hung thick in the air.
When Mame stepped into the dimly lit ledger room, the temperature seemed to plummet. The night supervisor, a scarred sea captain with a walrus spirit, froze mid-sip of his rum as the black-masked figure approached.
"I am building a massive, remote estate near the coast," Mame rasped, his Ki-infused voice vibrating the glass bottles on the shelves. "I require extensive, industrial-grade waterproofing for the foundations. I want your Whale Blubber."
The captain blinked, setting his rum down slowly. "Whale Blubber? You mean the fat from the Deep Sea Whales? Sir, we strip the skin and bones for armor, but the blubber is useless. It reeks, it's too dense to eat, and it repels standard soul power. We usually just burn it or dump it back in the ocean."
Fools, Mame thought. Tang San focused entirely on poison and bones, completely ignorant that this highly elastic, energy-absorbent fat was the key to surviving the brutal physical strain of DBZ-style body tempering. Without it, Mame's muscles would tear under 100x gravity.
Mame dropped a gold ingot onto the ledger book.
"I will buy every barrel you have, and every barrel you extract for the next fifteen years. Draw up the contract for this branch immediately. And write to your Headquarters in Sea God Island's outer trading hubs. Tell them I want the exact same continent-wide monopoly, or I take my gold to a competitor. I will return in eleven days."
The captain stared at the gold, then at the terrifying pressure rolling off the masked man. He nodded frantically, his hands already scrambling for a pen.
The Apothecary Guild
An hour later, Mame pushed open the frosted glass doors of the Suotou Apothecary Guild. The scent of a thousand medicinal herbs hit him instantly.
The night attendant, an elderly Spirit Grandmaster, looked up irritably. "We are closed for—"
The words died in his throat as Mame's heavy, abyssal aura filled the room. The old man felt like he was suddenly standing at the bottom of the ocean.
"Ice Essence Pith," Mame demanded softly. "I need it to cool the industrial forges of my estate. I will buy your entire stock."
The old man's jaw went slack. Ice Essence Pith was considered a massive nuisance by alchemists. It was a byproduct found near high-tier frost herbs. It was too volatile to consume—it would freeze a Spirit Master's meridians solid—and if stored improperly, it ruined other delicate medicines. Guilds spent money just to contain it safely in lead-lined boxes in their basements.
For Mame, however, it was the only thing that would prevent his DBZ-style "Soul Overdrive" from literally melting his internal organs into ash. It was his cryogenic coolant.
Two gold ingots hit the counter.
"A fifteen-year exclusive contract for this branch's entire supply, signed tonight," Mame ordered, his featureless mask staring down at the trembling elder. "And send a missive to your Headquarters in Heaven Dou City. I want the continent-wide rights on the same terms. I return in eleven days."
"Y-yes, my lord! Immediately!" the old man gasped, reaching for the gold as if it were a lifeline.
The Antiquities Exchange
Mame's final stop just before dawn was the Suotou Antiquities Exchange, a guild that handled rare gems, ores, and ancient relics.
Here, his request was the most baffling of all.
"Star-Luo Stone Eggs," Mame told the bewildered guildmaster, dropping his final stack of gold onto a velvet display case. "I want them for decorative garden gravel."
The guildmaster, a wealthy nobleman, looked at Mame as if he had lost his mind. Star-Luo Stones were incredibly dense, smooth, oval rocks. They were completely immune to soul power, meaning they couldn't be used to forge Spirit Tools or weapons. Because they were notoriously ugly—a dull, mottled grey—they couldn't even be sold as jewelry. They were literally used as paperweights by the receptionists.
But Mame's Z-Sensing knew the truth. They didn't conduct traditional soul power, but their internal structure was a perfect vacuum for Ki. They were natural, unbreakable Spirit Soul "Batteries." Mame was going to use them to harvest and store raw energy. Tang San only knew how to store things in a belt; Mame was building a localized energy grid.
"Fifteen-year branch contract," Mame repeated the now-familiar script, his aura suffocating the nobleman into submission. "Send a letter to your HQ. Tell them I am paying a premium for their trash. Eleven days."
The Haul
The sun was just beginning to peek over the high stone walls of Suotou City when Mame finally returned to his room at The Sleeping Boar.
He locked the door, stripped off his black mask and cloak, and collapsed onto the bed. He was physically exhausted from maintaining the heavy Ki-pressure all night, but his mind was racing with electric excitement.
He pulled out the stack of freshly signed parchment from his spatial ring and laid them out on the mattress.
Heavy Silver. Whale Blubber. Ice Essence Pith. Star-Luo Stones.
In a single night, an eleven-year-old boy had orchestrated a hostile takeover of the continent's most vital future resources. Four different branch managers were currently writing frantic, terrified letters to their respective Headquarters, begging them to accept the "deal of the century" from a mysterious, wealthy powerhouse.
They thought they were selling their garbage. They had no idea they had just funded a Singularity.
"Now," Mame whispered, looking out the window toward the distant mountains, his tail giving a satisfied flick. "I have eleven days to kill before the continent-wide contracts arrive. Time to go to the Suotou quarry and build a gravity chamber."