Shake Off the Tail

The alley was deep and narrow.

The towering earthen walls on either side sliced the moonlight into fragments, casting mottled, eerie shadows across the ground.

Su Chen walked at an unhurried pace. Each step landed almost soundlessly.

He deliberately kept his breathing slow and shallow, as though he had melded with the night.

Yet about thirty meters behind him, another pair of footsteps swung like the pendulum of a death knell, following close on his heels without hurrying.

The sound was faint, their steps leaving no trace. They were clearly skilled men who had received special training.

But they had overlooked one thing.

Last night's light rain had left several small, inconspicuous puddles on the alley floor.

Each time the corner of Su Chen's eye swept over the murky water, he could clearly catch the reflections of two black silhouettes following him like ghosts.

He'd been marked.

A chill crept up his spine, inch by inch.

They weren't after the twenty gold coins in his pouch.

If they were ordinary bandits, facing a scrawny boy like him, who couldn't fight his way out of a paper bag, they would've rushed him and struck him down long ago.

There was only one reason to follow him at a distance like this.

They weren't after money.

They wanted the fire.

They wanted the secret behind producing the Rock Fire Seed!

The realization made Su Chen's heart sink.

The innocent man gets into trouble because of his wealth.

He'd understood that truth in his previous life, but now it bared its fangs before him in the cruelest, most direct way.

He didn't look back, nor did he break into a desperate sprint.

On the Dou Qi Continent, an ordinary person trying to outrun trained cultivators was no different from courting death.

His face remained calm, almost numb.

But inside his sleeves, his fingernails had already dug deep into his palms.

The pain kept him perfectly clearheaded.

His mind raced faster than ever before.

A map of Wutan City's slums rapidly unfolded in his mind. Every alley, every corner, every patch of terrain he could use became crystal clear.

Over the past few days, he'd familiarized himself with the area by measuring it out, step by step.

He hadn't expected it to come in handy so soon.

He needed somewhere complicated and chaotic enough to shake off the tail behind him.

One place leaped out from the map.

Labyrinth Alley.

It was the most chaotic, filthiest, and most notorious part of the slums.

The alleys crisscrossed like a spiderweb, and countless illegally built shacks cut the sky into narrow strips.

They said that even the City Guard could lose their way in there.

It was his only path to survival.

At the next intersection, Su Chen turned as if by chance and headed toward Labyrinth Alley.

The two shadows behind him followed without the slightest hesitation, sticking to him like his own shadow.

In their eyes, this prey had already fallen into the net. He was merely making one last, futile struggle.

* * *

A quarter of an hour later.

Su Chen stepped into Labyrinth Alley.

The air reeked of rotting food, filth, and poverty. The stench churned his stomach.

But he couldn't afford to care.

His pace abruptly quickened!

Like a slick mudfish, he darted into a narrow gap barely wide enough for one person.

The footsteps behind him suddenly sped up as well!

The two shadows stopped hiding their presence. Faint blue-green Dou Qi swirled around them as their speed surged. Like two hawks swooping on their prey, they stayed hot on Su Chen's heels!

"Kid, stop running!"

A cold shout came from behind, taunting him like a cat playing with a mouse.

"Come with us, and you'll suffer a lot less!"

Su Chen ignored them.

His chest heaved, his lungs burning as though flames were scorching them.

But he didn't dare stop.

Relying on the map in his mind, he tore through the labyrinthine alleys.

He took a left, circled right, cut through a yard piled with garbage, then ducked beneath the shack of someone's home.

His pursuers were far stronger than he was, but their unfamiliarity with the tangled terrain became their greatest handicap.

Several times, unexpected dead ends and blocked passages held them up.

Those few precious moments gave Su Chen time to catch his breath.

But the gulf between their abilities was ultimately an impassable chasm.

The distance between them was closing, little by little.

Thirty meters.

Twenty.

Ten!

Su Chen could even feel the fierce wind behind him, stinging the skin on the back of his neck.

Just then, a fork appeared ahead.

The alleys on the left and right were dark and deep, leading to who knew where.

Straight ahead, though, stood a high dead-end wall built of gray bricks.

He was trapped.

"Heh, where are you going to run now?"

The pursuers behind him let out a sinister laugh.

One moved to the left, the other to the right, cutting off every escape route as they slowly closed in.

Their faces held the cruel confidence of men certain of victory.

Leaning against the cold wall, Su Chen gasped for breath. Despair and terror seemed written all over his face.

As the two men advanced, his body trembled with "fear."

"W-who are you? What do you want?"

His voice shook just enough.

One of the men in black, a little taller than the other, sneered.

"Quit pretending, kid. Hand over all the flames on you, and... the method for obtaining them. Maybe we'll even leave your corpse intact."

Su Chen's pupils suddenly contracted.

Just as he thought!

His guess had been confirmed.

He slid slowly down the wall, seeming to have given up resisting.

"The f-flames... they're all where I live..."

The two men in black exchanged glances, greed thickening in their eyes.

"Take us there!"

The instant they let their guard down and moved to seize Su Chen—

Everything changed!

The fear and despair vanished from Su Chen's eyes in an instant, replaced by a near-mad calm and decisiveness!

His body snapped sideways like a spring compressed to its limit!

In the corner behind him, a pile of broken boards and stinking straw mats had been lying against the wall.

Su Chen grabbed the heap and heaved it aside!

Beneath the clutter, a pitch-black hole appeared.

It was a dog hole.

A cramped, filthy dog hole that reeked of stench!

Without a moment's hesitation,

Su Chen scrambled on all fours and shot headfirst into it, in a posture as ungainly as it was impossibly fast!

"Damn it! We've been had!"

The two men in black blanched, finally realizing what had happened.

They'd never imagined that this boy, seemingly out of options, would escape like this!

Furious, they rushed forward and tried to crawl through after him.

But the dog hole had been just big enough for the slender Su Chen. For two grown, burly men, they couldn't even squeeze their heads inside!

"Damn it!"

The man in black at the front roared and smashed his fist into the wall. The hard gray bricks instantly filled with cracks like a spiderweb.

"Split up and search! He can't have gotten far!"

* * *

Elsewhere.

Su Chen wriggled out of the dog hole and immediately sprinted off, ignoring the filth and stench covering him.

He knew the dog hole had bought him only a dozen or so breaths.

But that was enough.

He used that precious lead to race through several shortcuts that only local rats could find.

At last, he plunged into a night market that was still brightly lit and bustling with people.

The noisy cries of vendors and the packed crowds swallowed him in an instant.

He was a drop of water flowing into the sea.

Su Chen didn't dare linger. He pushed into the crowd, dropped a few copper coins at a stall selling old clothes, and snatched the most nondescript gray jacket to throw over his shoulders.

Then he ducked into an empty corner, turned his original, faded shirt inside out, and smeared muddy water across his face.

When he was done, he looked like an entirely different person.

Leaning against the cold corner of a wall, his back to the bustling crowd, he finally gave out and began to pant violently.

His back was already soaked through with cold sweat.

The weakness that came after narrowly escaping death washed over him like a tide, making his legs tremble.

He'd won.

He'd won this hunt, despite the gap in their strength, by using a method no cultivator would deign to use—one they'd be ashamed to even mention.

Dignity?

In the face of life and death, dignity wasn't worth a penny.

* * *

It was already late at night.

By the time Su Chen dragged his exhausted body back to the dilapidated little courtyard, the moon was high overhead.

He bolted the creaking wooden door, then shoved a broken table hard against it.

Only after that was done did he finally let go. He collapsed to the floor, utterly spent.

The room was deathly silent, save for the sound of his own ragged breathing.

His brush with death had doused the smugness he'd felt after earning his first fortune as thoroughly as a basin of ice water.

He was completely clearheaded now.

In this world, without strength, the slightest display of wealth could bring death to your door.

He'd thought he'd been careful, but in the end, he'd underestimated people's greed and overestimated his ability to handle it.

Selling his wares at a roadside stall had to stop.

It was no different from a three-year-old child walking through a crowded market clutching a gold brick.

He needed a safer, more discreet, and more powerful platform—one that could turn the Rock Fire Seed in his hands into real strength.

An idea became crystal clear in his mind.

The old blacksmith's words echoed in his ears once again.

"Go to the Alchemist Guild in the city center, or... go to the Miteer Auction House."

"That's where it belongs."

Su Chen slowly raised his head, his gaze seeming to pierce the dilapidated roof.

Before, he'd regarded it as just one possibility.

Now, it was his only choice.

The Miteer Auction House.