With a low, drawn-out creak, Old Ma — just about to pull the shop door shut — froze mid-motion.
A gust of wind and dust curled in through the gap, sending the single oil lamp on the counter into a violent flicker. Its trembling light fell across the figure that had pushed inside: cloaked, travel-worn, and moving with deliberate concealment.
Old Ma made out the familiar, gaunt yellow face beneath the bamboo hat — disguised, but unmistakable. In that one cloudy eye of his, a faint warmth flickered past, too quick to catch.
Over these past weeks, Lin Mu had been dropping by this damp, dim little shop every few days. He had practically turned the crumbling place into a second home in the Southern Border.
Old Ma was a man who had severed his own roots — a broken vessel by nature. He had spent a lifetime watching the cold, cannibalistic world of Gu with detached eyes, scraping by on the margins. He should have been a stone worn smooth by hatred and solitude long ago, with nothing left inside.
Yet somewhere along the way, watching this young man — ruthless in his methods, startling in his calculations, yet always knowing precisely where the line was and never crossing it — something had quietly taken root in the deepest part of Old Ma's chest.
Something that felt, uncomfortably, like the warmth an old father might feel watching his own son.
"Ahem..."
He caught the weight in Lin Mu's eyes — the kind that was almost spilling over — and felt his heart drop. Whatever teasing remark had been forming on his lips vanished without a trace.
He asked nothing. He dragged his lame leg forward at a pace that was awkward and yet surprisingly fast, crossed to the door, and threw the heavy wooden bar into place. The lock clicked shut.
Only after all of that did Old Ma shuffle back behind the counter. His withered fingers closed around the stem of his dry pipe.
He knocked it hard against the counter's edge, lowered his voice, and asked:
"What happened — did things go sideways on you at Black Blood Stockade? The sky falling?"
"No."
Lin Mu pulled a stool over and sat down, breathing hard. A wry, self-mocking smile touched his face. He didn't hide it from Old Ma — some things needed the old fox's perspective to untangle.
"It's not Black Blood Stockade. It's White Bone Stockade. Li Mang and I... have some history."
"Three days from now, that old monster Li Mang will have every right to walk through Black Blood Stockade's gates."
Lin Mu raked a hand through his hair, his eyes shadowed with deep unease.
"Hiding out on the Grey Street for a few days is easy enough. But with the tournament right around the corner, I'm a deacon of the External Affairs Hall. If I vanish without explanation during the most critical stretch... how could Lin Feng and Lin Cang not grow suspicious?"
It was a deadlock with no clean exit.
Hide on the Grey Street — and the Lin clan's upper echelons would mark him as a deserter or a traitor and come for him. Return and take his place — and Li Mang's sensing scepter might expose him on the spot.
Old Ma worked his pipe, drawing in a long pull of acrid smoke, then let the pale blue-grey haze drift slowly from the corners of his mouth and nostrils, blurring the edges of his sunken old face.
His one eye rolled around in the smoke for a moment. Then, without warning, he spoke — quiet and unhurried.
"You little bastard... don't tell me you went and lifted that old man Li Mang's most prized possession right out from under him and stuffed it in your own pocket."
"And now you've got a guilty conscience, scared that old bastard's going to use some unreasonable detection method and drag you out in front of everyone?"
Boom.
It was as though a thunderclap had detonated inside Lin Mu's skull. For just an instant, the sheer force of it locked his body rigid.
He had badly underestimated this old fox — a man who had spent a lifetime trading in intelligence and rolling through the black market's gutters.
From nothing more than two seemingly unrelated fragments — made a mortal enemy outside and terrified of Li Mang getting close — Old Ma had, in the span of a few breaths, assembled a picture that was nine parts truth.
Lin Mu's fist clenched hard. He forced the surge of alarm back down. He looked at Old Ma's calm, unreadable face — and stopped pretending.
His gaze fixed on the old man, sharp and direct.
"Still can't hide anything from you. Old Ma — since you've already figured it out, is there any way you can help me cover this up?"
"Heh heh — now you know to come begging the old man, do you?"
Old Ma laughed with a hint of self-satisfaction, showing his incomplete, yellowed teeth.
"If you don't know the trade, this looks like an absolute dead end with no way out. But for this old man here... it's really just a matter of one sentence."
He leaned in with an air of theatrical mystery, bringing his face close, and dropped his already barely-audible voice to something barely above a mosquito's hum against Lin Mu's ear.
"A while back I mentioned to you — the reason this old man has been able to sit easy on the Grey Street for over a decade without a scratch is entirely because of the protection of a certain... benefactor. You remember that, yes?"
Lin Mu gave a single nod. His expression was grave.
"Back in the day, when men were hunting me down and I cut off my own roots to survive — the fact that I'm still breathing today is entirely thanks to that benefactor."
Old Ma drew a long pull from his pipe and exhaled a drifting ring of smoke.
"Years ago, so that I could move freely across the Southern Border gathering intelligence without being detected by my enemies, that benefactor personally applied a unique and singular Gu technique to my body."
"The Gu worm involved is extraordinarily transcendent. It can completely conceal every trace of Primeval Essence and Blood-Qi fluctuation on your person. It can even alter your bone structure and facial features."
Old Ma licked his cracked lips with something approaching fervor.
"But its most unreasonable aspect is this — once you have been treated with this Gu technique, your figure and appearance are forcibly faded in the subconscious minds of all who look at you."
"Even if your worst enemy is standing directly in front of you, staring straight at your face — their spiritual sense, their attention, their instincts will be twisted and redirected by some profoundly strange law."
"Their focus will be deliberately steered away from you."
"To look and not see. To listen and not hear."
Old Ma enunciated each word with deliberate weight, and the four syllables he produced next stopped Lin Mu's breath cold in his chest.
"It is a Rank 4 wonder Gu — the Sparse Shadow Gu."
"As long as you can persuade that benefactor to act on your behalf and apply the Sparse Shadow Gu's supreme concealment technique to you — even if Li Mang has a Rank 3 peak cultivation and the most sensitive detection treasure in his hands, under the law of 'sparse shadow, slanted light' that the benefactor commands, he will find not a single flaw. Not one."
Boom.
Lin Mu felt as though lightning had struck him directly. His mind went completely blank. Even his breath jammed hard in his throat and refused to move.
A Rank 4 Sparse Shadow Gu.
To wield and fully nurture a Rank 4 auxiliary Gu worm — there was no question. That required a cultivator of absolute, transcendent power — a Rank 4.
Lin Mu had always assumed that the figure behind the Grey Street — the one who had carved out a lawless sanctuary in the gap between two great stockades — was, at most, a Rank 3 peak powerhouse on par with Li Mang or Lin Cang.
He had never imagined that here, in the deepest reaches of these ten-thousand-li mountains — in this filthy, remote, backward corner of the world — right beneath the noses of Black Blood Stockade's elders...
There had been, all along, a figure in secluded residence who had crossed beyond the limits of the mortal realm and stepped into the Rank 4 tier.
An absolute titan.
"That benefactor... is Rank 4..." Lin Mu's voice came out hoarse and barely recognizable.
"Brother Lin — how about it? This old man's trump card — solid enough for you?"
Old Ma savored the stunned, stupefied expression on Lin Mu's face with evident pleasure and let out a smug little chuckle.
Lin Mu drew a deep breath and wrenched himself back from that helpless, overwhelming shock by sheer force of will.
The Sparse Shadow Gu of this Rank 4 powerhouse living in seclusion deep within the Grey Street — it had just become the only lifeline he could grasp.
The one thing that might let him continue to hide and bide his time within Black Blood Stockade's unfolding game.
"Old Ma."
Lin Mu's expression turned more serious than it had ever been. There was even a thread of all-or-nothing resolve in it.
"How do I get in contact with this benefactor? What are his preferences? What kind of price would I need to... pay?"
At that string of rapid questions, Old Ma did not answer immediately.
He exhaled a slow breath of pale blue-grey smoke and watched it curl and dissipate in the dim light of the oil lamp.
The dense web of wrinkles across his old face shifted in this moment — unsettled, unreadable. And deep within his single eye, a dangerous and complex glint passed through.
"That benefactor..."
Old Ma let out a long, quiet sigh, his voice dropping low enough to sound like he was talking to himself.
"He has lived in this world long enough that gold and silver mean nothing to him. Primeval stones and material resources mean nothing to him."
"The common things of this mortal world are no different from mud on the roadside in his eyes. He never meets outsiders lightly. He never lets others handle his private affairs lightly."
Old Ma's fingers tapped against the bone-surface counter — tap, tap — each sound precise and deliberate, as though dancing on the tip of Lin Mu's heart.
"But he has always had one obsession."
"He has lived in seclusion in these ten-thousand-li mountains, running the Grey Street — and for decades, his one and only purpose has been to collect the most secret, unknown intelligence: rare accounts and inheritance information from across the Southern Border, past and present alike."
Old Ma raised his head. That single eye locked onto Lin Mu's taut face with the finality of a blade clearing its sheath — and he produced the ultimate condition, the one that made every hair on Lin Mu's body stand on end and his scalp nearly split apart.
"The benefactor's rules are absolute. To ask him to act even once, you must add an entry to his ledger — one that carries sufficient weight."
"His one and only condition is this — he requires you to offer him..."
"The true whereabouts of the Black Bone King's inheritance — that Rank 5 powerhouse of the Southern Border — or a lead substantial enough to find it."