A Trap

"That was all?" The man called Boss sat upright in the seat of honor within the inner hall.

One foot rested on the broad chair, most of his propped-up figure hidden in shadow. Only when he looked down could they see the small tuft of mustache beneath his nose and the ferocious grin at the corner of his mouth.

"You people said there was a fine treasure, so I came all this way."

"Do mobile puppet beasts not require Spirit Stones to operate?"

"Do I not need time to cultivate?"

"Or did I come all the way from Star City, the subsidiary minor realm of Heavenly Mechanism City, just for a mere two thousand-odd high-grade Spirit Stones?"

"Two thousand!" The man suppressed his fury. The faint spiritual aura around him descended like a giant hand over the heads of the two kneeling men, as though with the slightest squeeze, they would die choking like chickens and ducks caught by the neck.

The gaunt, sallow-faced cultivator kneeling on the ground hurriedly kowtowed. "Reporting to Boss, we really did get a treasure. It belonged to an out-of-towner, a cultivator who seemed to be visiting Heavenly Mechanism City for the first time. Otherwise, Old Six Wang could never have sweet-talked him."

"He brought a treasure that looked like a ring."

"That treasure seemed to have been corroded by something and was covered in pits and dents, yet no matter how hard we tried, we couldn't budge it."

"Look, this is my magical treasure. It cracked and split open this badly." Sick Tiger hurriedly cupped his hands and presented his loop-shaped magical treasure.

The treasure's hardness had been too strange, so he had tested it with his magical treasure. Who could have expected that after a single strike, a faint ring of cracks would