Buying and Selling Souls

At the bottom of the well lay a narrow stone stairway. The two followed it down into an underground cave.

The cave was not large. Many stalactites hung from its ceiling, some draped with faintly glowing moss, making the place all the more sinister.

A sparse few figures stood in shadowed corners or sat upon casually placed stone stools, far apart from one another as they spoke in low voices. Their words sounded especially blurred in this underground place.

The cave was dim, its light and shadows swaying, casting human silhouettes upon the jagged stone walls like ghosts and demons in a shadow play.

Yu Heye led Sun Lingtong straight toward one corner of the cave.

There sat a figure in a voluminous gray robe, a hood nearly concealing his entire face. He sat cross-legged atop a flat boulder. There was no stall before him; he merely sat there like a statue.

Yu Heye and Sun Lingtong stopped before him.

Yu Heye asked quietly, "Do you have the goods?"

The gray-robed cultivator did not nod. The surrounding space twisted faintly, revealing several floating gray-white ceramic jars.

"The goods are all here," he said.

Yu Heye turned his head slightly and glanced at Sun Lingtong beside him.

Sun Lingtong had naturally disguised himself already. His height and build were no different from an adult's.

He immediately sent his divine sense into the gray jars.

Each gray jar contained at least one soul.

There were several hundred Qi Refining Stage souls, gathered inside the smallest gray jar. Most were merely indistinct humanoid balls of light, dim in color like gray mist. They writhed and crashed about mindlessly within the container, letting out soundless shrieks, their distorted faces filled with instinctive fear and pain.

Most of the gray jars held Foundation Establishment Realm