Ghost-Screaming Fish

Most of the items displayed on the stalls were materials related to magical beasts: hides, bones, organs soaked in jars, bone-and-flesh inscriptions, magical implements... and even living creatures.

Alchemical arrays that suppressed leaking energy had been etched into the ground, with dried, unidentified bodily fluids still lingering in the cracks.

Most of the wizard apprentices passing by looked hurried, wrapping their robes tightly around themselves for fear of leaking even a trace of their elemental fluctuations.

Dago stopped before a secluded stall, the faint blue glow of the Eye of Truth flickering beneath his hood.

His gaze pierced through appearances and looked directly at the essence, leaving him unmoved by those flashy yet impractical low-grade magical devices.

What Dago asked about was a living creature kept in a transparent tank.

It resembled a miniature piranha, except it had a pair of pale, tender little feet like a baby's, kicking about in the water. It looked both lively and bizarre.

The liquid in the tank was not clear water, but a pale green alchemical nutrient solution used to sustain life.

The stall owner was a pale-skinned middle-aged wizard, a First-Ring Formal Wizard. He had a black mole the size of a mung bean beside his lips and carried a cold, gloomy air. He was obsessed with Flesh Alchemy research; most wizards who dealt with corpses year-round were like this.

Even with his hands hidden in his sleeves, one could faintly smell the stench of corpse oil that could never be washed away.

It was the mark of long-term dissection and corpse stitching, of necromantic elements corroding deep into the marrow.

"Your Excellency has a sharp eye. This Ghost-Screaming Fish is the product of twenty years of my research."

Seeing Dago inquire about it, the middle-aged wizard immediately forced a smile onto