Dawn light sliced through the window of the Nine Clouds Inn, illuminating the continuous devastation of the west chamber.
The massive oak bed structure rested pushed against the wall, the slats of the frame cracked by the merciless friction of previous dawns. The air inside the room was thick and asphyxiating, saturated by the sweet perfume of nectar distilled through two solar cycles of carnal collision. The fragrance exhaled a lethargic and purely aphrodisiac attraction, impregnating the wooden floor with the unmistakable mark of the Forge.
The trail of time's passage was driven into the exhaustion of the furniture.
During the short daytime intervals of those days, the trio had crossed the open squares of Qīngshí. Walking side by side with his sister-in-law beneath the city's haze, Zhì Yuǎn dictated the cadence of the adolescent's pulmonary expansion. With veins newly fused in Primordial Gold, Yù Méi's wide-open pores pulled the metropolis atmosphere, swallowing the energy hovering over the commerce pavilions.
The result of the absorption rooted a permanent disgust at the base of the youngest's tongue.
The essence of the outside world exhaled the hollow taste of stagnant dust and oxidized iron. The gaseous trash the Qīngshí elite called cultivation failed miserably to moisten the girl's throat. Accustomed to the incandescent, heavy, crushing forge of her brother-in-law that had soldered her bones days earlier, the city atmosphere resembled a puddle of putrid mud before an ocean of fire. The brutal realization raised Yù Méi's chin; the scum walking the streets breathed filth, fully justifying the predatory arrogance now thickening the fourteen-year-old adolescent's blood.
The morning of the third day demanded payment of the toll.
Set aside from the oak wreckage, an improvised nest of thick blankets and silk pillows lined the dark limestone floor. Zhì Yuǎn opened his eyes. The young man's broad chest rose and fell in a mild, silent rhythm, the Mill in the center of his chest grinding the remnants of dawn to cool his skin's fever.
His massive inertia was anchored to the floor. Yù Qíng slept sprawled directly over her husband. The wife's pale leg locked his rigid hip, and the young woman's face sank into the curve of the man's neck, absorbing the thick sweat and inexhaustible heat of that musculature.
With the pragmatic coldness of one preparing to enter a slaughterhouse, Zhì Yuǎn slid his calloused hand and lifted the woman's weight to the side.
The interruption of thermal contact inflamed the girl's instinct. A hoarse, dense, and contrary grumble tore from Yù Qíng's throat. Her short nails scratched her husband's chest skin in an automatic and whiny retaliation, digging into the flesh in a blind, territorial attempt to drag the burning shelter back beneath her. The loss of heat made the young woman contort over the crumpled silk, rubbing her face into the straw pillow in pure morning dissatisfaction.
Zhì Yuǎn ignored the protest. The young man rose from the limestone, the lethargic static of a sated predator accompanying the colossal mass of his shoulders. Rustic hands pulled the charcoal-gray linen, tying the leather belt over his rigid abdomen.
Awakened by the movement and the cold breeze from the crack, Yù Qíng sat among the blankets. The eldest's skin shone with an icy and immaculate humidity, the white jade pallor contrasting violently with the purplish marks left on her hips and nape. The young woman slid the navy-blue silk over her body and secured the dark veil. Abyssal irises swept the ruined oak splinters on the wall and the blankets thrown on the floor with pure, icy satisfaction, savoring the aphrodisiac fragrance attesting to the room's physical submission, before boring into her husband's unshakeable back.
The fortune extorted from the Exchange Pavilion weighed in the thick leather pouches tied to the carpenter's waist. The grand auction of Qīngshí would open its gates, and the inn's silence gave way to heavy steps that marched into the corridor, ready to crush the mercantile aristocracy and drain the gears of that metropolis.
---
Qīngshí's haze chewed the morning mist, permeating the peripheral alleys with the pungent odor of sour sweat, cheap sandalwood, and oxidized blood.
As soon as the inn door slammed at the trio's backs, the millions of wide-open pores beneath Yù Méi's golden dress sucked the metropolis's ambient Qi. The youngest choked in the same instant. The city's mystical pollution, impregnated with the misery and exhaustion of thousands of mortals, crashed against the adolescent's newly forged and purest veins. The coppery taste of rust flooded the base of the girl's tongue. She curved her thin shoulders, coughing dry, digging nails into her own palms to withstand the weight of that sickly atmosphere without collapsing onto the dirty limestone.
Ahead of the girl, Zhì Yuǎn's colossal shoulders opened the path.
The pearl-gray tunic fell unshakeable over broad shoulders. The thermal pressure exhaled by the young man's Refined Body repelled the soot suspended in the air millimeters before the filth touched the linen. He carried the heavy animal-leather sacks stuffed with raw mineral and silver extorted in previous days casually hung over his right shoulder. The arm musculature tensed like steel cables, absorbing mountains of weight without altering the cadence of his breath.
Glued to the man's left flank, Yù Qíng adjusted the black veil over her pale nose. The eldest's abyssal irises swept the alleys and gutters with dense, purely aristocratic disgust. Navy-blue silk brushed her husband's leg with every compass of step. The young woman's thin fingers gripped firmly to his leather belt, using the human forge at her side as an absolute shield against the scum crawling on those sidewalks.
The march skirted the chaos of the open market, plunging into a narrow corridor of dark stone that culminated at the service entrance of the Exchange Pavilion. Avoiding the front gates discarded the disgust of wasting time with mortal bureaucracy.
The massive bronze arch at the back was guarded by four pavilion warriors. The chainmail armors exhaled the raw oppression of the Fifth Mortal Stage, Bone Tempering. The sentinels kept spines straight, murky eyes evaluating the outsiders with the mechanical contempt of guard dogs fed by usury.
Zhì Yuǎn halted one meter from the soldiers.
The young man's free hand moved. The black-iron medallion carved with golden grooves — the free-transit emblem torn from the Appraiser days earlier — shone in the alley penumbra. The guards widened their eyes, recognizing the mark of the pavilion's absolute lords. Before they could bow their spines, the broad man lowered his right shoulder.
In a fluid movement devoid of any ceremony, Zhì Yuǎn threw the heavy leather pouches directly against the nearest guard's chest.
The sentinel raised his arms to intercept the baggage with a loose smile, blindly underestimating the burden carried by a dusty peasant with tranquil features.
The impact crushed the smile and arrogance to dust.
The raw load of silver and condensed stones collided against the warrior's steel mesh. The sound of tendons stretched to the limit of rupture cracked in the alley. The soldier's air was summarily expelled from his lungs in a guttural wheeze. The man's kneecaps yielded centimeters, striking hard against the stone pavement in a wet thud, while his spine curved and creaked beneath the monstrous density the carpenter's arm had sustained instants earlier without a single drop of sweat.
The other three guards retreated, biomechanical terror locking hands over sword hilts before the obscene weight deposited against the floor.
Beneath the shadow of the black straw hat, Zhì Yuǎn's dark, unfathomable irises bored into the sentinels, the young man's predatory coldness asphyxiating the alley's humid atmosphere.
"The burden requires broad shoulders, and the hall requires my time," the rustic, heavy voice vibrated in the alley, cutting like an axe splitting dead wood. "Call your master. The dust of Qīngshān returned to collect the stones."
The time to burn half an incense stick had not even ended when the adjacent stone corridor echoed with hurried steps of soft silk.
The slender Appraiser of the West Wing emerged from the shadows, panting breath failing to maintain control of his own mask. Oily sweat shone on the merchant's wrinkled forehead before the outsider's unshakeable punctuality. The man ignored the gasping guards still dragging leather sacks across the limestone floor and bowed his torso to waist height.
"The Sovereign's presence honors the foundations of our humble building," the merchant hissed, voice bathed in the purest and most terrified reverence before profit and death. The man raised his face, dilated pupils overflowing the repressed hysteria of recent days. "The dense essence of the four drops of water you entrusted to us attracted the scent of the old monsters. The smell of gold leaked. The patriarchs of the border sects are gutting their own treasuries as we speak."
Zhì Yuǎn rested his thumb on the leather belt, face sunk in the darkness of the hat brim.
"They bleed for what they do not understand," the carpenter attested, apathy resonating on the vault stones.
"The hysteria is palpable on the upper floor," the Appraiser continued, rubbing bony hands. "The Pavilion estimates the drops will exceed the mark of ten thousand Medium-Grade Spirit Stones tonight. An ocean of purification. Our consortium guarantees your unlimited and anticipated credit until the curtains close in the main hall, devoid of any prior restriction. The booth is prepared, untouchable."
Zhì Yuǎn confirmed with a slow, mute nod of his head. The young man's broad arm adjusted his wife's silk at his flank, and he advanced. The hidden dark mahogany staircases swallowed the trio and the Appraiser, ascending and leaving the smell of mundane sweat and the echo of the guards' cracked knees to rot on the ground floor.
The grand auction slaughterhouse awaited.
---
The hidden dark mahogany staircases emptied into the pavilion's upper ring. The slender Appraiser unlocked the bronze lock of the third chamber with hands still damp with sweat, bowing his spine to yield passage to the monsters he had brought.
The trio crossed the threshold. The massive sequoia door closed at their backs with a dry, definitive crash.
In the exact time of a heartbeat after the lock engaged, the acoustic matrix embedded in the masonry awakened. Spirit Stone shards embedded in the baseboard were drained by rustic engineering. The room's thick crystal windows began vibrating in a thick, aggressive frequency. The mechanical tremor rubbed against the room's atmosphere, raising an invisible wall of pressure.
The sonic barbarity of the ground floor — the roar of thousands of mercenaries, the shrill greed, and the smell of commercial slaughterhouse sweat — was brutally strangled. The sound of the outside world died asphyxiated by the crystal, sinking the chamber into a cocoon of dense, hermetic, absolute silence.
The defensive hostility stiffening Yù Qíng's back melted beneath the efficiency of that perfect isolation. The young woman raised pale hands and pulled the knot at her nape, allowing the dark scrap to fall onto the beast-skin rug.
The immaculate pallor of the eldest's face met the room air. In the same breath, the girl advanced.
Yù Qíng's two thin arms threw themselves around Zhì Yuǎn's neck. The man's colossal structure immediately welcomed the impact. The carpenter's large, calloused hand slid beneath the fold of his wife's knees, lifting the slight body from the floor with the ease of one moving a bundle of straw. He crossed the few steps of the room and sank his own massive structure into the central armchair sculpted from phoenix wood.
Yù Qíng settled sprawled, crossed directly on her husband's lap. She glued her entire spine against his broad, rigid chest, pale legs resting over the man's rigid thighs. Possession cemented a dragged, predatory smile on the woman's crimson lips. She reigned absolute, white nephrite skin fusing to thick fabric and absorbing the inexhaustible heat radiating from that human forge.
In the opposite corner of the rug, Yù Méi halted her cloth shoes.
The youngest swallowed dry. Boiling blood throbbed in the thick veins newly opened in the adolescent's chest. The girl's almond irises slid toward the central armchair. The feverish heat leaking from her brother-in-law's body pulled the girl's intuition, a gravitational and carnivorous attraction demanding proximity. Instinctive, covetous imagination drew her own leg crossing the rug, claiming the man's free thigh to anchor her own spine to that same muscle wall.
The temperature of the crystal cocoon plummeted to sepulchral cold.
Yù Qíng's black, abyssal irises turned in the penumbra. The eldest bored her bottomless gaze directly into her sister's face. The quiet of the elder wife exhaled murderous intent so thick and non-negotiable that the air around the youngest's neck transformed into blades of ice. The mute warning promised summary quartering of any limb daring to cross that armchair's airspace.
The blush evaporated from Yù Méi's cheeks, replaced by cadaveric pallor. The girl's heart hammered against her ribs in instinctive panic. The youngest diverted her gaze in the same instant, hunching shoulders beneath the golden skirt, and sank her trembling body into an isolated chair at the far right of the room. She drove her vision through the wide windowpane, swallowing her own audacity and refusing to return her eyes to the center of dominated territory.
Satisfied with the imposed exile, Yù Qíng leaned her cheek against her husband's tense bicep, victorious smile rubbing against pearl-gray linen.
Beneath the shadow of the black straw hat, Zhì Yuǎn kept his calloused thumb brushing his wife's waist in a mild cadence, oblivious to the war of the women, while dispassionate vigil descended through the glass thickness.
Below, on the granite stage illuminated by bronze lamps, the auction master in blood tunics raised a heavy oak mallet, ready to shatter Qīngshí's greed.
---
The thud of wood against the granite table whipped the entire pavilion dome.
The thick crystal windowpane of Booth Three strangled the ground floor's roar, but the panoramic view laid bare predation in its smallest details. The auction master radiated short waves of Qi directly through his own vocal cords. The reddish timbre of that voice tore the dome's acoustics, invasively and palpably accelerating the heartbeat of thousands of mercenaries squeezed in the lower rows.
The underground gears turned, and the first lot was vomited onto the jade altar.
A long saber, forged in Shadow Steel, rested on black velvet.
"Steel buried in the Northern Ash Basin for three centuries!" the auctioneer's voice exploded, operating as the conductor of the mass's psychological combustion. "Blade tempered in the vanguard mortal's blood! The opening bid demands five hundred Low-Grade Stones!"
The ground floor boiled in barbarity. The smell of sour sweat and greed permeated the dust while small gang leaders and independent warriors raised bamboo plaques, screaming bids until throat cartilage scratched, mutually killing each other for sharpened crumbs to guarantee their own survival on the roads.
In Booth Three, funereal, hermetic quiet reigned.
Crossed on Zhì Yuǎn's lap, the millions of open pores on Yù Qíng's white nephrite skin pulled the dome atmosphere. The crystal barrier yielded before the eldest's aberrant sensitivity. The girl's innate Forge swallowed the hall's vitiated air, filtered the shouting, and dissected the molecular structure of the metal exposed dozens of meters away.
The resonance striking the young woman's perception exhaled a hollow, brittle cold.
Aristocratic disgust wrinkled the eldest's pale nose. She nestled her cheek even more against her husband's rigid chest, rubbing lips lightly against pearl-gray linen to seek the man's heat.
"Polished trash," the woman's velvety whisper hissed in the booth, hot breath striking Zhì Yuǎn's clavicle. "I feel the vibration of the cracks in that steel from up here, A-Yuǎn. The core will crumble on the third heavy impact against a real bone."
The second item took the stage before the saber's financial hysteria even cooled. A wrinkled, thick root, pulsing with a dark-red tone beneath the bronze lamp light.
"Blood Ginseng!" the auctioneer roared, stoking desperation and visceral hunger for the lesser patriarchs' longevity. "Nourished in soil drenched with Established Foundation warriors! The chance of organic rebirth!"
The bidding war exploded at the pyramid base once more, voices tearing dignity before the illusory promise of prolonging days.
Isolated in the chair at the booth's extremity, Yù Méi straightened her spine. The youngest inflated her chest beneath the golden skirt. The adolescent's thick, newly forged veins sucked the hall atmosphere, imitating the lethargic respiratory cadence her brother-in-law used.
The dense, earthy smell of the root invaded the girl's nostrils through the crystal's isolation cracks. A presumptuous smile curved her juvenile lips.
"The smell of blood in this root is dense, brother-in-law," the adolescent's voice echoed confidently in the muffled room, almond eyes seeking the shadow of Zhì Yuǎn's black hat in expectation of praise. "The shell cracks are full. The weight of this ginseng will boil the water of our forge."
The temperature in the booth plummeted to sepulchral cold.
Crossed on the man's lap, Yù Qíng moved only the axis of her neck. The eldest's abyssal irises turned, boring into her sister's audacity.
"Dense?" Yù Qíng's velvety whisper hissed, cutting like a stake of ice. "Quantify the direction of this sap's flow, Méi. Where does the blood's pulse drain beneath the shell?"
Yù Méi's smile collapsed. The youngest forced perception against the windowpane, but the ardor of her veins found only static. Blood encrusted in the root below displayed absolute paralysis.
"The crown… the root's crown seems heavy…" the girl stammered. Hot blush of humiliation rose abruptly, scalding the neck and igniting the adolescent's ears. Dirty nails sank into the upholstery of her own armchair.
Yù Qíng let out a short, dry, purely sadistic laugh. She rubbed her cheek lightly against her husband's pearl-gray linen, delight at crushing her sister's illusion leaking from her pores.
"Dead roots," the young woman mocked, distilling the world's ignorance in a single breath. "The ginseng leaked all vital humidity into the earth before the exact moment of harvest. You try to evaluate the abyss by paying attention to dust, Méi."
Beneath the shadow of the black hat, Zhì Yuǎn kept his calloused thumb brushing his wife's waist. The young man's broad face inclined millimeters toward his sister-in-law huddled in the room corner.
"You were snoring against the veranda pillar when I explained the weight difference between a live root and a hollow branch, Méi," the carpenter's rustic voice vibrated in the booth, dragged and loaded with perfectly dry humor.
Yù Méi swallowed dry, stomach plummeting. The youngest sank into the chair, hunching beneath golden silk and crushing her own haste before the short, direct vexation.
The inertia of that central armchair cemented the absolute sovereignty of the two. The mortal world crushed itself in the ground-floor slaughterhouse, desperately fighting for scum and scrap, while the family's living Forge pulsed untouchable, arrogant, and perfectly bored inside its glass cocoon.
---
The unshakeable lethargy of Booth Three remained untouched while the rusty saber and dead root found desperate buyers in the lower rows.
The underground gears ground again beneath the granite altar. The auction master retreated one step, allowing three colossal iron chests to be dragged into the bronze lamp light. The containment locks snapped, and the heavy steel lids plummeted backward.
The opaque, gray, absurdly dense glow of dozens of Deep Silver Ore ingots crashed against the hall atmosphere, resting beside thick ebony masts wrapped in dark silk — Turtle Shield Formation Banners.
"The backbone for any escort that values keeping its own organs in the abdominal cavity!" the Qi-loaded voice of the auctioneer whipped the pavilion acoustics, selling raw survival. "The foundation of unbreakable defense for the black gravel routes of the Far South! The opening bid demands five hundred Inferior-Grade Spirit Stones!"
The scum on the ground floor boiled. The smell of sour sweat and logistical panic flooded the hall. Mercenary guild masters raised bamboo plaques, neck tendons jumping while barking bids of five hundred and ten, six hundred, eight hundred stones, cannibalizing their own gangs' coffers to guarantee carriage armor before winter.
In Booth Three, the musculature of Zhì Yuǎn's back tensed millimetrically against the phoenix armchair backrest.
The carpenter's dark gaze dissected the raw silver ingots through the crystal windowpane. The journey toward the South ruins would exact friction, asphyxiating winds, and ambushes. The family carriage's armor required that exact mineral to isolate the axles, and the formation banners would raise the inert wall so the Forge of Flesh could operate at night on the road without disturbances.
He completely ignored the pathetic shouting of the ground floor. The broad man's time would not be chewed by shallow mercenaries.
Zhì Yuǎn raised his right hand. The rustic, calloused thumb found the copper acoustic funnel embedded in the side of the windowpane. Dispensing with the useless effort of his throat, the young man merely pulled a fraction of the heavy, golden energy boiling beneath his sternum, injecting the mass of his own Qi into the mechanism's metal.
"Five thousand stones."
Zhì Yuǎn's grave, dragged, lethargic voice collapsed from the top of the pavilion, amplified by the funnel's matrices. The sound collided against the ground floor with the non-negotiable weight of an anvil plummeting into a lake of mud.
The impact crushed the crowd's vocal cords. The raised arms of mercenary leaders froze in the air. Silence strangled the auction dome, the currency disparity obliterating competition. Throwing five thousand stones on an opening lot of raw scrap and crude mineral was an apathetic display of force that castrated the ego and finances of the pyramid base in a single breath.
On stage, the auctioneer swallowed dry, predatory smile wavering before the too-rapid slaughter, and brought the oak mallet down against stone in a definitive thud.
Security gears were activated. Silver-chainmail guards collected the metal chests and marched to deliver them into the darkness of the third chamber.
Yù Méi, huddled in the isolated chair in the VIP booth corner, held her breath. The youngest drove dirty nails into the fabric of her golden skirt. The fortune her father spent entire seasons sweating soot to accumulate in the Qīngshān mine had just been thrown through a copper pipe, without her brother-in-law even blinking or altering the slow cadence of his own breath.
Oblivious to her sister's shock, Yù Qíng leaned her pale cheek back against Zhì Yuǎn's chest. The young wife rubbed lips lightly against the tunic linen, smile beneath the veil overflowing the purest, most sated territorial delight. Her man had just shackled the world's logistics to his own feet purely out of boredom.
Zhì Yuǎn kept his thumb caressing the eldest's waist curve, lethargic gaze sweeping the altar below, settling into the armchair's inertia to await the province's true old monsters beginning to bleed their own inheritances.