Monster Market Qi-Refining Saber Art

The mountains and forests stretched vast and gray.

Fang Shu slung his shoulder bag over his back and headed deeper into the wilderness, following the direction his second uncle, Yu Le, had given him.

After racing more than a hundred li, he arrived before a strange mountain.

Mist filled the mountain. Though it was dusk, ghostly flames already flickered everywhere, while the cries of old owls and the bizarre howls of monkeys intertwined from time to time, making the place especially chilling.

As Fang Shu approached, a little monkey spotted him. With its hands hanging to the ground, it hopped about in front of him and even waved at him warmly, as though taking the initiative to greet him.

At the sight of that little monkey, Fang Shu's heart stirred, and he immediately followed it.

Sure enough, after passing through the mist, he arrived in an empty valley deep in the mountain. Amid the fog lay a scene like a mass graveyard: broken walls and ruined structures everywhere, with things resembling paper houses, thatched huts, and coffins standing along both sides of the road.

Though the surroundings were gloomy, the place was far from lacking in people—or rather, monsters.

Monsters of every shape and size swayed their heads as they passed through: tall and short, fat and thin. There were also immortals and mortals with covered faces and bamboo hats. The crowd was so dense that shoulders brushed shoulders.

"Come and look! Come and see! Don't miss it as you pass by!"

"Finest ox hearts, horse hearts, tiger hearts, monkey hearts, human hearts! Males and females alike!"

Walking through the thin mist, Fang Shu looked around at the bizarre spectacle and felt that this place seemed more like the fabled immortal market than the town did.

He first wandered around