Black Stone Market

Three days later, at the Hour of the Rabbit.

Outside the North Mountain Gate, the morning mist had yet to dissipate.

Li Xuan, with the Blood Wolf Saber strapped to his back and a pouch containing dried rations and ten low-grade Spirit Stones at his waist, stood on the stone steps looking down. The mountain path wound into the fog, its end unseen.

Footsteps sounded from behind him.

"Just you?" Shi Yong's voice.

Li Xuan turned around.

Shi Yong, carrying that heavy saber on his back, a bundle in his left hand, and a hot meat bun in his right, walked over while taking bites.

Following behind him was Su Ying. The young girl also had a bundle on her back, cradling her long hammer, its head taller than she was.

"Why are you two here?" Li Xuan asked.

"The Shadow Division approved it," Shi Yong swallowed the bun and grinned. "They said the mission this time is dangerous, one person isn't enough, so they added two to make up the numbers. Contribution Points will be split equally."

Su Ying nodded beside him, her eyes bright. "My uncle said it's good to go out more. If you just mope around in the sect, you'll never grow up."

Li Xuan glanced at her.

Su Ying was seventeen, at the ninth level of Body Tempering, with terrifying strength, but she was indeed timid.

Last time in the mine, she had been so scared by that dark figure that her legs had gone weak, and she had almost not escaped.

"Where's Zhou Wu?" Li Xuan asked.

Shi Yong's expression darkened slightly. "Still lying there. The poison is gone, but his leg was saved. He'll need three months to recover. As for Xu He..."

He paused.

"Xu He was taken away by the Shadow Division."

Li Xuan's heart stirred. "Taken away? Why?"

"To cooperate with the investigation," Shi Yong lowered his voice. "The Shadow Division wants to get to the bottom of what happened that night. Qin Henian is dead, the mine collapsed, and that bone staff was confiscated by them. Although the 'Thought' in Xu He's body has been resolved, he touched a magical artifact and needs to be observed for a while."

Li Xuan fell silent.

He still remembered what Ying had said that night: the Shadow Division had been investigating this mine for three years.

Now the mine had collapsed, Qin Henian was dead, Xu He had been taken away, and Ying had disappeared.

What exactly was the Shadow Division investigating? How much did they know?

"Let's go," Li Xuan turned and started walking down the mountain.

Shi Yong and Su Ying followed behind.

The three of them walked down the mountain path, passing through the outer areas of the Crimson Firmament Mountain Range and entering the official road.

On both sides of the official road were large tracts of farmland and villages. The further north they went, the sparser the villages became, and the more desolate the farmland grew. By the third day, they could no longer see continuous fields of crops, only scattered wastelands overgrown with weeds.

"We're almost at the border," Shi Yong pointed to the faint outline of a mountain range in the distance. "Cross that mountain, and it's the Northern Territory."

Li Xuan looked at the mountain.

It wasn't high, but it stretched endlessly, like a gray wall across the horizon.

Beyond that mountain was the path he had taken.

Iron Wall City, the Barbarians, the battlefield, Wang Meng, Yun Qingxuan...

And that black-robed Ghost Face.

On the evening of the fifth day, the three arrived at Black Stone Market.

It was a small border town, built against the mountains, with less than two hundred households in total. The town was surrounded by a fence made of rough wood. Two oil lamps hung at the entrance, their oil nearly gone, the flames flickering in the wind.

Li Xuan pushed open the fence gate.

The town was very quiet, unnaturally so.

No dogs barked, no children played, and there were only a few wisps of cooking smoke. Most of the houses lining the street were closed. Occasionally, one or two pedestrians hurried past with their heads down. Upon seeing the three outsiders, their eyes darted away, and they quickened their pace.

"This place... why does it feel so eerie?" Su Ying whispered, hugging her hammer tighter.

Shi Yong frowned. "Didn't they say there were hundreds of households? Why does it look like a ghost town?"

Li Xuan remained silent, his gaze sweeping across both sides of the street.

He noticed some details: strange symbols were carved on some door panels, like some kind of protective totems; black bowls containing burnt paper ash were placed on some windowsills; and piles of old clothes stained with dark red smudges were in some corners.

This was not normal.

"Let's find someone to ask," Li Xuan said.

He walked towards the nearest house and knocked on the door.

No one answered.

He knocked again.

Still no answer.

Shi Yong walked up and pushed the door open.

The room was empty, with overturned tables and chairs, a cold stove, and broken bowls and plates scattered on the floor. The bedding on the bed in the inner room was messy, as if it had been hastily thrown aside.

"No one's here," Shi Yong said.

The three of them checked a few more houses, all the same.

Some rooms still had unfinished meals, already moldy and fuzzy; some rooms had bundles of belongings left behind, as if the owners had left in a hurry, taking nothing.

"Something's wrong," Shi Yong said in a low voice. "This looks like... people fleeing?"

Li Xuan squatted by the stove in one of the houses, picking up a bit of ash from the bottom of the pot. The ash was cold, but it hadn't been blown away by the wind, indicating that people hadn't left long ago, at most three or four days.

He got up and walked into the courtyard.

In a corner of the courtyard was a pile of burnt items—not firewood, but clothes and paper. He poked through the ashes and found a corner of cloth that hadn't completely burned.

A half-rune was embroidered on the corner of the cloth.

A Barbarian rune.

Li Xuan's eyes narrowed.

"Senior Brother Li?" Su Ying walked over.

Li Xuan put the cloth corner into his robe and stood up. "Let's go to the town hall."

The town hall was in the center of the town, a two-story wooden building, grander than ordinary residences. A plaque hung at the entrance, bearing the words "Black Stone Market Public Office" in mottled characters.

The door was ajar.

Li Xuan pushed the door open.

A person was sitting inside.

It was an old man, with white hair and beard, wearing a worn cotton robe, dozing at the table. Hearing the door open, he startled awake, looked up, saw three strangers, his face changed, and he reached for the knife on the table.

Shi Yong stepped forward and pressed down on the hilt of the knife.

The old man's strength was no match for his. He struggled a few times and gave up.

"Who... who are you people?" the old man's voice trembled.

"Disciples of the Crimson Firmament Sect," Li Xuan said, flashing his token. "We're here under orders to investigate a missing persons case."

The old man stared at the token for several breaths. The fear on his face slowly turned to surprise, then to grief, and finally, tears streamed down his face.

"You've finally come... you've finally come..." He knelt down and kowtowed. "Please, immortal masters, save us! Please, immortal masters, save us!"

Shi Yong helped him up. "Get up and tell us what happened."

The old man, wiping his tears, spoke intermittently for half an hour.

It turned out that strange things had started happening in Black Stone Market three months ago.

At first, it was a child who went missing while herding sheep outside the town. The adults went to look and only found a shoe and a few bloodstains. They thought a wolf had taken him and didn't pay too much attention.

Later, more and more people went missing. Some got up in the middle of the night, some went up the mountain to chop wood, some went to visit neighboring towns—they vanished without a trace, their bodies never found.

The townspeople panicked and invited Taoist priests to perform rituals, but it was useless; they pooled money to buy talismans and paste them on their doors, but it was also useless.

A month ago, someone saw a black shadow outside the town, saying it could move, fast as a ghost. Since then, people had been disappearing every night.

The townspeople began to flee. But of those who escaped, eight out of ten disappeared halfway. The remaining two fled to other places and didn't dare to return.

Now, only about thirty households of the old, weak, sick, and disabled remained in the town. They closed their doors every night and just tried to survive day by day.

"That black shadow..." Li Xuan asked, "What did it look like?"

The old man thought for a moment. "Those who saw it said it was dark, like a person, but they couldn't see its face clearly. Sometimes its eyes would glow, green."

Green light.

Li Xuan and Shi Yong exchanged a look.

"When does that black shadow usually appear?"

"After dark," the old man said. "It comes out as soon as it gets dark and leaves when dawn breaks. For the past three months, no one has dared to travel at night."

Li Xuan walked to the window and looked out.

The sky had already darkened.

The last trace of red in the west was being swallowed by the darkness.

"We'll stay here tonight," Li Xuan said. "Old man, find a safe place to hide. No matter what you hear, don't come out."

The old man nodded repeatedly and ran out the back door.

Shi Yong closed the door, bolted it, and then moved a table to prop it shut.

"That black shadow," he said in a low voice, "is it the same kind as the one in the mine?"

Li Xuan shook his head. "Not necessarily. But the green light... it's not a coincidence."

Su Ying hugged her hammer and huddled in the corner, asking softly, "Are we... really going to wait for it to come?"

"If we don't wait for it, how can we investigate?" Li Xuan said. "Missing persons, Barbarian runes, green glowing black shadows—these things connected together are not a coincidence. If it doesn't come tonight, we'll wait here for three days. If it still doesn't come after three days, we'll go out and look for it."

He drew the Blood Wolf Saber, laid it across his knees, and sat down cross-legged.

Shi Yong also sat down, placing his heavy saber within reach.

Su Ying looked at them, put her hammer on the ground, and sat down next to Shi Yong.

Silence fell in the room.

Only the sound of the wind outside the window, and the occasional bark of a wild dog in the distance.

Hai Shi.

The moon had risen.

Moonlight streamed through the paper window, casting faint white beams on the ground.

Li Xuan closed his eyes, his internal energy flowing slowly within him.

Suddenly, he opened his eyes.

There was something outside the window.

It was very light, so light he could barely hear it—but Li Xuan's spirit had a strength of six point five, making his senses far sharper than ordinary people.

It was a faint sound of footsteps, like a cat walking on tiles, step by step, moving across the roof.

He raised a hand, making a gesture to Shi Yong and Su Ying.

The two immediately tensed, gripping their weapons.

The footsteps stopped on the roof.

Then, a black shadow flashed past the window, moving so fast that Li Xuan only saw a blur of black before it had already flipped in through the window!

Shi Yong let out a low growl, his heavy saber slashing horizontally!

The black shadow flickered, dodging the blade, and landed in the center of the room.

In the moonlight, its silhouette became clear—

It was humanoid, but definitely not human!

It was wrapped in black mist, so thick it was like a living thing, slowly writhing. Its face was indistinguishable, only two balls of eerie green light visible where its eyes should be.

Green light.

Exactly like the thing in the mine.

Li Xuan drew his saber, Blood Fiend Gang Qi instantly covering the blade.

Seeing the blood-red light on the saber, the thing paused.

Then, it spoke.

Its voice was hoarse, like rusty iron scraping:

"You... have... his... mark... within you..."

Li Xuan's pupils contracted sharply.

It was speaking Barbarian.

But how could it recognize the Wolf Soul mark within him?

Before he could figure it out, the thing suddenly lunged at Su Ying!

Su Ying let out a scream and swung her long hammer. The hammerhead struck the thing, but it was like hitting a ball of cotton—the head sank in, then sprang back out. The thing was unharmed and instead slid along the handle towards Su Ying!

Li Xuan moved.

The Blood Fiend Gang Qi left his body, transforming into a blood-red saber energy that slashed towards the thing's back!

The saber energy struck, and the black mist exploded. The thing let out a sharp shriek, released Su Ying, and turned towards Li Xuan.

The green light in its eye sockets flared, like two burning ghost fires.

"You... deserve... to die..."

It lunged at Li Xuan.

Li Xuan didn't retreat, his Blood Wolf Saber slashing horizontally.

The blade cut into the black mist. This time, it didn't feel like cotton, but like cutting into something solid—like bone, or perhaps rotten wood.

The thing shrieked again, the black mist churning violently. It actually broke free from the saber's edge and darted towards the window.

Shi Yong blocked the window, his heavy saber chopping down.

But the thing was too fast. It directly smashed through the window frame and disappeared into the night.

The three of them chased after it.

The outside was empty, with nothing there.

Moonlight illuminated the deserted street, with only a few dog barks echoing from the distance.

Su Ying's legs gave out, and she sat on the ground, gasping for breath.

Shi Yong cursed and punched the door frame.

Li Xuan stood in the courtyard, staring in the direction the thing had disappeared.

The words it spoke still echoed in his mind:

"There is his mark within you."

His.

Whose?

Gurqin? The Shaman King?

Or--

Li Xuan suddenly remembered something.

When the shaman's mummified corpse in the mine opened its eyes, it had also glanced in his direction.

At the time, he thought it was a coincidence.

Now, he realized it wasn't.

They recognized the Wolf Soul mark within him.

Or rather, they recognized Gurqin's aura.

And Gurqin had said that half of his power was in his magic artifact.

So, what was the relationship between these black shadows and Gurqin?

Were they his subordinates? His clones? Or his scattered "eyes"?

Li Xuan didn't know.

But he did know one thing.

The disappearances at Black Stone Market and the seal in the mine were on the same thread.

And at the end of that thread was Gurqin.

In another month, the seal would completely break.

Within a month, he had to uncover everything.

Otherwise--

A wolf howl echoed from the distance.

Li Xuan looked up to the north.

The night was deep, and he couldn't see anything.