In the southwestern corner of Wangfeng City, it was like another world compared to the neat prosperity of the inner city.
The houses here were low and crooked, their walls peeling away in great chunks to reveal the blackened earth and rotting straw beneath. The narrow alleyways were just wide enough for one person to pass through. Above them hung worn-out clothes, dripping murky water. The air was thick with a mildew stench that had lingered for years, the reek of urine, and some indescribable odor of decay, all mixed with cheap face powder and inferior liquor to form a cloying atmosphere that made one want to retch.
This was Rat Alley, where the maggots and shadows of Wangfeng City's lowest depths held sway.
Li Yuan walked through it, his footsteps soundless on the slick, sticky flagstones. He still wore his gray homespun traveling clothes, but the mountain-like vitality of his blood and qi was completely out of place in these squalid surroundings. A few furtive gazes from the shadows brushed against him, then quickly shrank away as if seared by a branding iron.
The deeper he went into the alley, the dimmer it grew. Sure enough, there was a Coffin Shop, its storefront even more inconspicuous than the other dilapidated shacks around it. Two black-lacquered wooden doors stood shut, their paint peeling to reveal the rotting wood beneath. There was no sign at the entrance, only a string of long-dried, blackened claws and fangs of some unknown creature hanging from the lintel, swaying gently in the breeze with a faint clacking sound.
Li Yuan stopped at a stall across from the shop that sold cheap tobacco, pretending to browse as the corner of his eye took in everything around the Coffin Shop.
The shop was quiet—abnormally so. Though the