The next three days in the Azure Ridge Market blurred together into a grueling, monotonous cycle of survival.
Lu Chen woke before dawn, the bitter chill of the shack biting through his thin blanket. He boiled his meager ration of low-grade Spirit Rice, forcing down the bland, watery gruel purely for the tiny wisp of spiritual energy it provided. By noon, he was out in his half-acre plot, diligently channeling the *Spiritual Rain Technique* over his struggling crops, playing the role of the pathetic, Layer 2 Spirit Farmer to absolute perfection.
He kept his head bowed when the Black Tiger Gang patrols swaggered past. He hunched his shoulders, making himself look smaller, weaker, and utterly devoid of ambition. He spoke to no one unless spoken to, and even then, he only offered submissive, stammering replies.
But beneath the dirt-streaked face and the ragged clothes, Lu Chen's mind was a whirlwind of calculations.
He was an accountant. In his previous life, he dealt with ledgers, deficits, and profit margins. Now, his ledger was his lifespan, his deficit was his terrible spiritual root, and his profit was survival. And right now, he was operating on dangerously thin margins.
On the fourth morning after paying his rent, Lu Chen sat cross-legged on his straw mat, staring at the small, pathetic pile of wealth resting in his palm.
Seven spirit fragments.
It wasn't enough. The previous night, he had tried to draw more talismans, but without the proper materials, his efforts were useless. He had attempted to use ordinary charcoal and river water on scraps of normal parchment he found in the trash. The moment he channeled a sliver of Qi into the brushstrokes, the normal paper had violently combusted, leaving him with blistered fingers and a shack filled with smoke.
If he wanted to make money, he needed real talisman paper and real spiritual ink. But seven fragments wouldn't even buy a quarter of a pot of the lowest-grade cinnabar at Shopkeeper Wu's stall.
"I need a cheaper supplier," Lu Chen muttered, rubbing his eyes. "I need the dollar store of the cultivation world."
Drawing on the original owner's memories, he mapped out the layout of the Azure Ridge Market in his mind. The central square, where Wu operated, was for the 'wealthy' loose cultivators—those who actually had whole spirit stones to rub together.
But there was another place. A place deeper in the slums, nestled against the western edge of the array where the miasma naturally pooled thicker, turning the air a sickly, permanent yellow. It was called the Rotting Alleys.
It was a black market within a black market. It was where scavengers sold items stripped from the dead that were too damaged or cursed to sell in the main square. It was where grave robbers peddled desecrated burial goods, and where the absolute dregs of the cultivation world traded trash for trash.
Lu Chen dressed in his foulest-smelling robes—a garment he had purposefully dragged through the mud and let mildew to ensure nobody would want to stand near him. He hid his seven fragments in a small, hollowed-out piece of bamboo tied to his inner thigh.
Stepping out of his shack, he began the long walk to the Rotting Alleys.
The deeper he went into the western sector, the worse the conditions became. The wooden shacks gave way to crude tents made of stitched-together beast hides that buzzed with thumb-sized carrion flies. The mud beneath his feet turned thick and black, reeking of raw sewage and decay.
Cultivators here didn't even have the energy to fake civility. Men and women with missing limbs, half-melted faces from acid burns, and eyes clouded with miasma sickness lay in the gutters, staring blankly at the smog-choked sky.
Lu Chen kept his face perfectly blank, locking away his modern sensibilities in a tightly sealed mental box. If he showed an ounce of pity or fear, he would be eaten alive.
He navigated the twisting, narrow paths until he reached a small, slightly wider clearing lined with makeshift stalls. There were no shouts of merchants hawking their wares here; trades were conducted in low, raspy whispers.
Lu Chen scanned the stalls. A man wrapped in dirty bandages was selling cracked, rusted sword hilts. A woman with entirely black eyes was offering jars of murky pond water that she claimed contained 'yin-attracting leeches'.
Finally, his eyes settled on a small stall in the corner. It was nothing more than a stained cloth spread over the mud, tended by a hunched figure draped in a ragged grey cloak.
Lu Chen approached cautiously. As he got closer, the smell hit him—a thick, metallic stench of stale blood and dried marrow.
Under the hood of the cloak was an old woman. Her face was a landscape of deep, leathery wrinkles, and half her jaw seemed to be missing, leaving her with a permanent, horrifying grimace.
On her cloth lay bundles of yellow paper. It wasn't the crisp, neatly cut talisman paper Shopkeeper Wu sold. These were off-cuts, irregularly shaped, stained with water damage, and fraying at the edges. Next to the paper were several small, sealed gourds.
Lu Chen crouched down, keeping his distance. "Paper," he grunted, pointing a dirty finger at the bundles.
The old crone looked at him with a single, milky-white eye. She didn't speak. She just held up three twisted fingers.
Three fragments for a bundle. It was incredibly cheap, but Lu Chen knew the rule of the Rotting Alleys: if you accept the first price, you're marked as a mark.
Lu Chen scoffed, a dry, hacking sound. He reached out and picked up a piece of the paper, feeling its texture. It was brittle, the spiritual fibers inside it practically dead.
"Trash," Lu Chen said, dropping it back onto the cloth. He held up one finger. "One fragment."
The crone hissed, a sound like water hitting a hot iron. She snatched the bundle away, tucking it under her cloak, and glared at him.
Lu Chen didn't flinch. He slowly stood up and began to turn away. It was a gamble.
"Two." The voice was a raspy, wet gargle.
Lu Chen paused. He turned back and crouched again. He pointed at the gourds. "What's in there?"
"Blood," the crone gargled. "Iron-Hide Boar. Three days old. Good for fire seals. Good for blood seals."
It wasn't cinnabar. Cinnabar was a stable, mineral-based spiritual conductor. Beast blood was volatile, dangerous, and carried the lingering, chaotic malice of the animal it came from. Using it to draw talismans increased the failure rate exponentially and could even cause the talisman to explode in the maker's face.
But it was a conductor. And it was cheap.
Lu Chen did the math. "One bundle of paper. One gourd of blood. Five fragments."
The crone stared at him. Lu Chen stared back, projecting the aura of a man who literally only had five fragments to his name and was entirely willing to walk away and starve instead.
Slowly, agonizingly, the crone nodded.
Lu Chen reached into his robes, discreetly unstopping the bamboo tube, and produced five spirit fragments. He handed them over. The crone snatched them with surprising speed, tossing a bundle of frayed paper and a small, heavy gourd into the mud at his feet.
Lu Chen picked them up, hiding them immediately within his robes, and walked away without another word.
He had two fragments left. But he had supplies.
By the time Lu Chen returned to his shack, the market was settling into its evening routine. The wails of the sick grew louder as the temperature dropped, and the howls from the Miasma Woods began to echo against the array barrier.
Lu Chen barred his door, pushed the heavy crate against it, and lit a small fire in his hearth using a tiny spark from his finger.
He sat down, spreading out his newly acquired treasures. The paper was worse than he thought. Some sheets had tiny holes gnawed by insects. The gourd of blood was heavy, the liquid inside sloshing with a thick, sluggish sound.
He uncorked the gourd. The smell was atrocious—a mixture of rust, rotting meat, and a faint, pungent musk.
"Beggars can't be choosers," Lu Chen muttered, fighting down his gag reflex. He poured a small amount of the thick, dark crimson blood into his chipped ceramic bowl. It wasn't smooth like ink; it was clotted and required stirring with the back of his brush to make it somewhat workable.
He smoothed out the least damaged piece of yellow paper. He took a deep breath, accessing the *Talisman Maker* knowledge in his mind, and adjusted it. Drawing with blood required a firmer hand and a more aggressive output of Qi to force the beast's chaotic energy into the structured lines of the spell seal.
He dipped his brush. The blood clung to the bristles like syrup.
He began to draw. A *Fireball Talisman*.
The moment the blood-soaked brush touched the paper, Lu Chen felt a vicious, phantom resistance. It wasn't the passive resistance of the paper he had felt before; this was an active, angry pushback. It felt as if a tiny, unseen boar was thrashing against his brush, trying to break the lines.
Lu Chen gritted his teeth, his brow instantly beading with sweat. He pushed more Qi from his dantian, forcing his will over the lingering malice of the blood.
*Stroke. Curve. Hook.* The crimson lines glowed with a sickly, unstable red light. The paper curled at the edges, smoking faintly as the clashing energies fought for dominance.
He reached the final seal at the bottom. He poured a surge of Qi into the brush, slamming it down and flicking his wrist to lock the energy in place.
*Fzzt.* The paper flashed violently, the red light flaring out, and then... it settled.
Lu Chen slumped forward, panting heavily. His hand was cramped, and his spiritual energy was depleted by a full twenty percent—double what it took to use cinnabar.
But there, on the table, lay a completed talisman.
It didn't look like the ones he had made before. The lines were thick, dark red, and seemingly pulsed in the dim light of the fire. It felt incredibly heavy in his hand, radiating a volatile, aggressive heat.
"Blood-Fireball Talisman," Lu Chen whispered. He had a feeling this wouldn't just burn an enemy; it would likely explode like a small grenade.
It was dangerous to make, but it was a weapon.
Over the next four hours, Lu Chen waged a grueling war against the cheap paper and the stubborn beast blood. He ruined ten sheets of paper in spectacular, smoking failures that nearly set his straw mat on fire.
But by midnight, exhausted and spiritually drained to the bottom of his reserves, he had successfully crafted five *Blood-Fireball Talismans* and three *Blood-Warding Talismans*.
He didn't dare sell these to Shopkeeper Wu. They were too distinct, too obviously crafted by someone desperate or dabbling in unsavory methods. But they were exactly what he needed for the next phase of his plan.
He wasn't going to sell these. He was going to use them.
The next afternoon, Lu Chen prepared for war.
It wasn't a grand war of flying swords and shattering mountains. It was the pathetic, desperate war of a starving rat trying to steal crumbs from the jaws of lions.
He couldn't afford a real weapon, so he had spent the morning fashioning one. He had found a sturdy, relatively straight branch of Iron-Wood from the market's refuse pile. He spent hours grinding one end against a rough stone until it formed a sharp, deadly point. He then used strips of his ruined farming clothes to wrap the shaft, creating a solid grip.
It was a crude spear. Against a high-tier demonic beast, it was a toothpick. Against a low-tier beast or an injured cultivator, it might just buy him a second of life.
He strapped the spear across his back using a length of coarse rope. He placed his five *Blood-Fireball Talismans* in his left inner breast pocket, easily accessible, and the three *Blood-Warding Talismans* in his right.
He ate his final handful of Spirit Rice, scraping the bottom of his earthen jar clean. He was officially out of food. If he didn't find something today, he would begin starving tomorrow.
He waited until the late afternoon, the 'Golden Hour' of the Azure Ridge Market. This was when the shift changed for the Black Tiger Gang guards patrolling the array perimeter. For roughly twenty minutes, the boundary was loosely watched as the tired guards complained to the fresh guards, and attention drifted.
Lu Chen walked toward the northern boundary, near his farming plot. He kept to the shadows of the shacks, moving with silent, deliberate steps. He felt the heavy thumping of his own heart, a drumbeat of terror and adrenaline.
He reached the edge of the farmlands. A hundred yards away, the translucent, shimmering blue dome of the protective array pulsed softly. Beyond it lay a solid wall of ancient, rotting trees, thick grey fog, and profound darkness. The Miasma Woods.
He watched the two guards near the exit point. They were laughing, passing a small wineskin back and forth.
Lu Chen took a deep breath, dropping into a low crouch, and moved.
He didn't run. Running attracted the eye. He used a slow, fluid, gliding walk he had practiced, keeping his silhouette low against the backdrop of the withered rice stalks.
He reached the boundary line. Up close, the array hummed with a low, vibrating frequency that made his teeth ache. The barrier was designed to keep the miasma and beasts out, but it allowed humans to pass through with a slight resistance.
He glanced back. The guards were still drinking.
Lu Chen stepped forward, pushing his body against the blue shimmer. It felt like walking through thick, cold gelatin. The barrier resisted him for a second, then popped, letting him through.
Instantly, the world changed.
The background noise of the market—the coughing, the haggling, the crying—was abruptly cut off, replaced by a heavy, suffocating silence. The air here was ten degrees colder. It smelled of wet, decomposing leaves, ozone, and a sickly sweet scent that made his head spin slightly.
The Miasma.
Lu Chen immediately channeled a thin layer of Qi over his skin, focusing heavily on his nose and mouth, forming a crude, invisible filter. It was a basic survival technique every loose cultivator knew, but it constantly drained a tiny amount of spiritual energy. He couldn't stay out here long.
He was in the woods.
Panic, primal and overwhelming, surged up his throat. The trees were massive, their bark slick with dark, viscous sap. Thick vines hung down like nooses. Shadows seemed to writhe and shift in the corner of his eyes. Every snapped twig under his bare feet sounded like a thunderclap.
*Focus. You are an accountant. This is an audit. Find the discrepancies. Find the assets.*
He forced his breathing to slow. He unslung his crude spear, holding it tightly in both hands, the wood biting into his callouses.
He didn't venture deep. That was suicide. He began to walk a parallel line to the array barrier, staying no more than thirty yards away from the glowing blue safety net. He was hunting in the 'Death Strip'—the area where beasts probed the barrier and where foolish cultivators were ambushed right out of the gate.
He crept through the dense undergrowth for what felt like hours, though the sun barely moved in the smoggy sky. His muscles ached from the tension. He saw nothing. He heard nothing but the wind rustling the dead leaves.
Doubt began to creep in. Maybe this was a mistake. Maybe there were no corpses just lying around. Maybe the forest devoured its dead too quickly.
Suddenly, he stopped.
He flared his nostrils. Through the overwhelming smell of rot, he caught a sharp, distinct scent. Copper. Fresh blood.
He gripped his spear tighter, his knuckles turning white. He turned toward the scent, moving with agonizing slowness, placing each foot deliberately to avoid snapping branches.
He pushed through a thick patch of thorny brambles, wincing as the thorns tore at his clothes and skin, and stepped into a small, muddy depression.
He froze, his breath hitching in his throat.
It was a massacre.
The clearing was torn to shreds. Trees were splintered, the mud was churned violently, and the air was thick with the metallic tang of spilled blood.
Lying in the center of the depression were three bodies.
Two of them were humans. Cultivators. They were dressed in matching grey robes, heavily armed, but it hadn't saved them. One was missing the upper half of his torso entirely, the wound cauterized by some kind of intense heat or acid. The other was pinned to the trunk of a massive tree by a thick, bone-white spike that had pierced straight through his chest.
They were dead. Brutally, recently dead.
And lying ten feet away from them was the victor, which had apparently succumbed to its own injuries.
It was a beast the size of a small car. It looked like a cross between a wolf and a massive, heavily armored beetle. Its fur was patchy, giving way to thick, dark green chitinous plates. A row of jagged, bone-white spikes ran down its spine—identical to the one currently pinning the cultivator to the tree.
A *Spine-Backed Terror Wolf*. A mid-tier Layer 4 demonic beast.
Lu Chen stood paralyzed at the edge of the clearing. His brain screamed at him to run. A beast that could slaughter two heavily armed cultivators was a nightmare made flesh. Even dead, its sheer size and presence emanated a terrifying aura.
But then, the system panel in his mind pulsed, a gentle, alluring throb.
*The fresher the corpse, the higher the extraction yield.*
Lu Chen swallowed hard. His mouth was completely dry. This was the motherlode. Three corpses. Two cultivators and a high-tier beast. If he devoured them, the gains would be astronomical. It could push him straight to Layer 4.
He took a step forward.
*Snap.* A twig broke beneath his foot. The sound was deafening in the silence.
And then, the nightmare happened.
The Spine-Backed Terror Wolf, which Lu Chen had assumed was dead, let out a low, wet, rattling growl.
Lu Chen's blood turned to ice. He watched in sheer horror as the massive beast slowly, agonizingly lifted its massive head from the mud. One of its eyes was a ruined, bloody mess, but the other, a burning, hateful yellow orb, locked directly onto Lu Chen.
It wasn't dead. It was dying, heavily injured by the cultivators, but it was still clinging to life.
And it saw him.
The wolf tried to stand, its front legs trembling violently. Dark blood poured from a massive gash in its side, but pure, demonic malice fueled its movements. It let out a weak but terrifying roar, baring teeth the size of daggers.
Lu Chen didn't think. He didn't calculate. Pure survival instinct took over.
He dropped his wooden spear. It was useless against armor like that.
His hand darted into his left robe pocket. His fingers closed around the rough, heavy paper of a *Blood-Fireball Talisman*.
The wolf lunged. It was clumsy, dragging its back legs, but it covered the ten feet between them in a split second, its jaws snapping open to tear Lu Chen in half.
Lu Chen threw himself backward, falling hard into the mud. As he fell, he channeled a massive, reckless surge of Qi directly into the talisman in his hand and hurled it point-blank at the wolf's face.
The paper left his fingers.
*BOOM!*
The explosion was deafening. It wasn't the clean, controlled burst of a normal Fireball. Because of the chaotic beast blood, the talisman detonated with volatile, concussive force. A shockwave of dark red flame and kinetic energy slammed into the wolf's snout.
The beast was thrown backward, howling in agony, the explosion shattering its remaining teeth and blinding its good eye.
Lu Chen didn't wait to see the damage. The blast had thrown him further into the mud, ringing his ears and scorching his eyebrows, but he scrambled to his feet like a madman.
He turned and bolted.
He didn't care about stealth anymore. He tore through the undergrowth, branches whipping his face, thorns tearing his skin. He ran with a desperate, frantic speed he didn't know he possessed. He could hear the heavy, thrashing sounds of the blinded wolf behind him, crashing blindly into trees in its fury.
He saw the blue shimmer of the array barrier ahead through the trees. It looked like the gates of heaven.
"Move, move, move!" he screamed internally.
He burst out of the tree line, practically diving headfirst into the glowing blue dome. The barrier resisted heavily, shocked by his momentum, but he forced himself through, tumbling onto the hard, cracked dirt of the farming plots.
He rolled to a stop, gasping for air, his lungs burning like fire. He lay on his back, staring up at the smoggy sky, his entire body trembling violently.
He had survived. By a fraction of a second, he had survived.
He slowly pushed himself up, looking back through the barrier. The woods were quiet again. The wolf hadn't followed him out. It was likely dead now, succumbing to the explosion and its previous wounds.
Lu Chen sat in the dirt, the adrenaline slowly ebbing away, leaving a hollow, aching exhaustion in its wake.
He looked at his empty hands. He had lost his spear. He had used one of his precious, hard-earned talismans. He had almost been eaten alive.
And he had gained absolutely nothing.
He had found the goldmine, but he had been too weak to claim it. The *Corpse Devourer* system was powerful, but it had a fatal flaw: the target had to be entirely, unequivocally dead. He couldn't kill a Layer 4 beast, so he couldn't devour it.
He punched the dirt, a frustrated, angry sound escaping his lips.
"Weak," he hissed at himself. "You're too weak. You can't just scavenge blindly. You need a way to ensure they're dead. You need a way to kill."
He pulled himself to his feet, wincing as his bruised ribs protested. His clothes were torn, he was covered in mud and minor cuts, but he was alive.
He began the long walk back to his shack, his mind shifting gears. The panic was gone, replaced by a cold, hard pragmatism.
The Miasma Woods were a treasure trove, but they were also a meat grinder. He couldn't rely on luck. He couldn't rely on finding bodies that were already perfectly dead and safe.
If he wanted the resources the woods offered, if he wanted to use his panel to its full potential, he had to stop playing the passive scavenger.
He reached his shack, barring the door and sliding the crate back into place. He didn't even bother washing the mud off. He collapsed onto his straw mat, staring at the leaky ceiling.
He brought up his panel.
**Name:** Lu Chen
**Cultivation:** Qi Condensation Layer 3 (12/100)
**Spells:** - Spiritual Rain Technique (Proficient: 15/100)
* Fireball Technique (Novice: 18/100)
**Professions:** - Spirit Farmer (Novice: 45/100)
* Talisman Maker (Apprentice: 35/100)
The small increments of growth from his daily farming and talisman practice were there, but they were agonizingly slow. The panel was a tool, but it was up to him to feed it.
"I need a weapon," he whispered into the dark room. "Not a stick. Not a volatile piece of paper. A real weapon. And I need a martial skill. Something to close the distance or keep them at bay."
But weapons and skill manuals cost dozens, sometimes hundreds, of spirit stones. He had zero stones and two fragments.
He looked over at the corner of his room, where the remaining four *Blood-Fireball Talismans* lay neatly stacked next to the *Blood-Warding Talismans*.
A dangerous, risky idea began to form in his mind.
He couldn't kill a Terror Wolf. But what if he didn't have to fight it directly? What if he used the environment? What if he used the nature of the beasts against them?
He remembered the old crone in the Rotting Alleys. She sold beast blood. There were trappers in the market, people who caught low-tier beasts alive or fresh for their parts. They used bait.
He was an accountant. He understood supply, demand, and overhead.
His overhead was low: his life, and a few explosive pieces of paper.
The supply in the woods was infinite.
He just needed to create the right demand.
Lu Chen closed his eyes, his exhaustion finally pulling him into sleep. He didn't dream of his old life, of spreadsheets or quiet city apartments.
He dreamed of blood, ash, and the terrifying, beautiful glow of the blue panel filling up with stolen years and stolen power.
Tomorrow, he wouldn't go into the woods to scavenge.
Tomorrow, he was going to set a trap.