Yi Yang pushed open the shabby-looking wooden door and stepped inside. The shop was dim, lit by only a single oil lamp.
The air carried a strange, pungent mixture of rust, tobacco, and some kind of animal grease.
This hardly looked like a place for legitimate business, but Yi Yang knew he had come to the right place.
Behind the room's only rosewood counter sat a one-eyed old man, a long tobacco pipe clenched between his teeth. His eye was half closed as he puffed out clouds of smoke, seemingly oblivious to Yi Yang's arrival.
Smoke swirled around him, blurring his deeply wrinkled face beneath the dim yellow lamplight.
Only after finishing his tobacco did the old man seem to notice someone had entered. He lazily lifted his eyelid, swept his cloudy eye over Yi Yang, and finally settled on the bamboo hat pulled low over his head.
"Buying or selling?" he asked hoarsely, exhaling a thick cloud of smoke. He paid no mind to Yi Yang's attire; he had seen people dressed like this here before.
Yi Yang wasted no words. He approached the counter, took a long object wrapped in black cloth from his Storage Ring, and set it down. "Selling a sword."
The black wrapping stirred the one-eyed old man's interest. He set down his pipe and slowly reached out to unwrap the object on the counter.
Once the cloth was peeled back, a gleaming blade appeared. Even in the dim shop, its cold radiance, clear as autumn waters, made the old man narrow his lone eye.
"Now that's something," the old man exclaimed. The moment that cold light appeared, he knew this sword was extraordinary-very likely a supreme-grade treasure artifact. In all his years, he could count the supreme-grade treasure artifacts that had passed through his