Dark Market

The sun had just set, and the sky was not yet fully dark. A smudge of dark orange afterglow still lingered on the western horizon, like dying charcoal flaring one last time.

The east had already darkened completely, with a few stars faintly emerging.

The shops along the streets closed one after another. The last wisp of cooking smoke dispersed from the rooftops, and Dingshan County slowly sank into the twilight.

When Chen Qian arrived at Chen Chong's courtyard, Chen Chong was just about to leave. He looked up, and his steps halted.

Chen Qian wore black from head to toe, with fitted sleeves and short martial attire, a leather belt cinched at her waist. A black veil covered her face, revealing only her eyes. Chen Chong looked down at his ordinary gray cloth robe and realized he had not thought things through.

Chen Qian handed him a black face covering. Her eyes curved playfully, as if saying, "See how clever I am?"

Chen Chong took the face covering and tied it on, then followed Chen Qian out.

They turned left and right through nothing but narrow alleys. Dingshan County's lanes were already winding by nature, and at night, it was even harder to tell direction.

Chen Qian walked slowly, stopping from time to time to confirm their bearings. Sometimes she looked over the walls; sometimes she counted the locust trees by the roadside. They passed an abandoned ancestral hall, circled around a dry well, and went through two passages so narrow that only one person could fit through at a time. At last, she stopped before a house.

The house looked unremarkable from the outside—gray walls, black tiles, a narrow frontage—but it occupied a vast stretch of land, extending out to either side like a gigantic beast crouching on the ground.

Two people stood outside the door with their arms folded, leaning against the wall. Their gazes swept over them, then drifted lazily away, as though they could not care less.

Chen Qian stepped forward and said something softly.

The gatekeepers nodded. She took out a small pinch of broken silver and handed it over. One of them weighed it in his hand, then stepped aside.

After entering, someone led the way. They passed through an ornate hanging-flower gate, turned twice more, and arrived at a side room. The guide lifted a wooden plank from the floor, revealing the entrance to an underground passage.

The passage was wide enough for three people to walk abreast.

Every few steps, a luminous jade stone was set into the walls on either side. Soft white light shone from the stones, illuminating the passage as brightly as day.

Chen Chong followed Chen Qian for roughly a hundred paces. The passage sloped downward and gradually widened.

Then the view suddenly opened up.

A massive underground market spread out before them.

The vaulted ceiling was extraordinarily high, several zhang at least, with huge swathes of luminous jade embedded in it like an inverted river of stars.

Stalls stood one after another, stretching along both sides of the passage as far as the eye could see.

The crowd buzzed with noise, livelier than any street aboveground. Some sold medicinal herbs, some weapons, some ancient books, and some all manner of strange and curious items.

The moment Chen Qian entered, she let herself loose, looking here and touching there like a child at a temple fair.

At first, it still resembled an ordinary marketplace, selling herbs, sundries, and old books, with people coming and going and haggling over prices. But as they went deeper, the goods for sale became utterly different.

Quite a crowd had gathered before a large stall. Chen Chong squeezed closer for a look, and his pupils contracted slightly.

A group of people dressed as refugees was being sold openly.

More than a dozen people, men and women, young and old, were tied to a long rope.

They wore tattered coarse clothes, and some were barely clothed at all. Whip marks, wounds, and brands ran stripe after stripe from shoulders to wrists, from backs to ankles.

Most had hollow eyes. A few still retained a glimmer of light, but that light was even more painful to see than emptiness—like wild beasts trapped in cages, despairing yet clutching at the faintest thread of hope.

Many people were watching. Some stepped forward to pinch their arms, some pried open their mouths to inspect their teeth, while others poked their legs with sticks to see whether their bones had been injured. Business appeared fairly brisk.

Chen Chong watched for a moment without saying anything, then turned and left.

They were selling for quite a bit less than outside.

More and more refugees were pouring into Dingshan County now. It was said that life outside the city was like purgatory. Chen Chong recalled what he had seen when he and Li Zhaoning had distributed relief to refugees. At least those shanties gave them some shelter from wind and rain.

But what about now? Refugees kept flooding in endlessly. There were not enough shanties anymore; some slept in the open, while others crammed into ditches. Food was running short. The lines before the porridge cauldrons grew longer and longer, while the porridge ladled into each bowl grew thinner and thinner.

Disease had begun to spread as well. Coughs rose and fell one after another, and every morning, someone failed to wake again.

Chen Chong continued onward. Suddenly, he stopped.

Several cultivation manuals lay on display before a stall. He picked them up and flipped through them. Most were in the chest Li Zhaoning had given him: Four Directions Fist, Clear Spirit Sword, Falling Cloud Art, and the like.

Only one was a handwritten copy, with two large characters written on its cover.

Tyrant Blade.

Chen Chong's heart jolted. The Tyrant Blade Sect was a prominent sect in the surrounding region, not small in scale and with countless disciples. Someone actually dared to sell their martial arts manual?

The stall owner was a thin, middle-aged man. Seeing Chen Chong staring at the booklet, he came over with a genial smile. "Good eye. An outer disciple saber art from the Tyrant Blade Sect, handwritten. But—"

He lowered his voice. "It's incomplete."

The prompt on the panel confirmed his words—"Tyrant Blade (Incomplete) discovered. Consume one thousand taels of silver to deduce?"

Chen Qian leaned over to look and said softly, "An incomplete manual is worthless. A cultivation art is a whole; regulating qi and executing moves are both indispensable. Cultivating an incomplete manual is simply impossible."

"Either the moves are incomplete and there is no path for the qi to flow, or the qi pathways are damaged and the moves cannot form their full force. Force yourself to practice it, and at best your qi will stagnate and your blood will clot; at worst, you will suffer qi deviation."

Chen Chong looked at the stall owner and said with a smile, "I've long heard of the Tyrant Blade Sect's great reputation. I'll just buy it as a keepsake."

Two taels of silver bought him the incomplete manual.

There were quite a few people like Chen Chong who bought incomplete manuals. They really did treat them as souvenirs, displaying them at home or using them to boast to others someday. No one would truly cultivate one. An incomplete manual was an incomplete manual; everyone knew that.

But Chen Chong was thinking that even an incomplete manual from the Tyrant Blade Sect could never have leaked out in the past.

Yet now it was being sold so casually in the Dark Market. It might be a dark market, but in the past, who would have dared sell something belonging to the Tyrant Blade Sect?

This chaos seemed far more chaotic than he had imagined.

The night had grown rather late. Chen Chong escorted Chen Qian home.

The two walked through the night. There was hardly anyone left on the streets, only the distant clack of the night watchman's wooden rattle.

Chen Qian walked half a step ahead of him. Her black clothes blended into the darkness; only the fair curve of her chin beneath the veil and the occasional glance she cast back let him know she was there.

When they reached a small courtyard, Chen Qian stopped.

She turned around and waved to Chen Chong.

She had removed her veil. Under the moonlight, her face bore a faint smile, her eyes curving into crescents. She said nothing, merely stood at the doorway and looked at Chen Chong.

Chen Chong could tell that Chen Qian had simply wanted to ask him out. She had probably developed some different feelings for him. But Chen Chong could only play dumb.

A mountain storm was on its way. Tyrant Blade Sect cultivation arts had found their way into the Dark Market, the refugee tide was worsening by the day, Yang He was tangling with government soldiers outside the city gates, and wealthy families within the city were being wiped out overnight.

At a time like this, he did not want to be delayed by outside distractions.

Chen Chong waved at Chen Qian's retreating back, then turned and left.

The night wind blew over, carrying faint cries from the distant refugee district. Chen Chong pulled his clothes tighter around himself and walked along the empty streets toward his own small courtyard.

The moon emerged from behind the clouds, shining upon his back and drawing a long shadow across the ground.