That night, Chen Ming returned to the Soul-Destroying Market.
He watched the casino's wooden door open again. This time, a middle-aged man in a gray robe emerged. He looked about forty, with an average build and an unremarkable face, but his eyes held a calculating shrewdness.
A pale blue-green jade pendant hung at his waist, faintly radiating spiritual energy-it was a defensive magical artifact, at least second-tier, presumably standard equipment issued by the Soul-Destroying Sect to its Outer Sect Deacons.
Two attendants followed the middle-aged man, both at the great perfection of Qi Refining. Bulges at their waists made it clear they were carrying weapons.
The three did not leave immediately after stepping out of the casino. They lingered at the entrance while the middle-aged man turned back to exchange a few words with someone inside, then burst into laughter before finally heading toward the far end of West Street.
Deep in the alley, Chen Ming slowly opened his eyes, the three indistinct figures reflected in his pupils. He did not follow immediately. Only after silently counting to twenty did he emerge from the shadows, trailing them from roughly fifty zhang away.
The tracking powder's scent was unmistakable to his senses, like an invisible thread tied at one end to his fingertips and fastened firmly at the other to that gray robe. Even with several streets between them, he would not lose the trail.
The Soul-Destroying Market was far from quiet at night. Pedestrians still wandered the streets in twos and threes. Some were independent cultivators just leaving other shops; others were drunken disciples of the demonic path, staggering along and spewing curses.
Here and there, one or two wandering cultivators sat meditating beside the road, their eyes closed, deaf to everything around them.
Chen Ming followed his target across three streets and around two corners. He noticed that the route was not a direct path back to the Soul-Destroying Sect. The man was taking a detour.
Perhaps it was habitual caution, or perhaps he wanted to browse somewhere else. Either way, it was bad news for Chen Ming. The longer the route, the more room for complications.
He began to speed up.
It was not an obvious pursuit, but a discreet closing of the distance. Using the roadside stalls as cover, he slipped from one to another, drawing a little closer each time, cutting the gap by three to five zhang. By the time his target entered a relatively secluded side street, less than twenty zhang remained between them.
Abandoned shops and warehouses lined both sides of the street, their doors and windows shut tight. Dust coated the door panels; clearly, no one had tended to them for a long time. Only one streetlamp still burned, its dim yellow light illuminating a small patch while darkness swallowed everything else.
The middle-aged man seemed to sense something. His steps faltered slightly, and he glanced back. Chen Ming was ready. The instant the man turned, he slipped sideways into the shadow of an abandoned shop's porch, becoming as motionless as a stone and slowing his breathing to a minimum.
The middle-aged man's gaze swept over his hiding place and lingered for two seconds. Finding nothing unusual, he turned back and continued walking. His pace was quicker now, and the two attendants behind him sped up as well.
Chen Ming sneered inwardly. His target did possess some vigilance, but that was all. The range of a middle Foundation Establishment cultivator's spiritual sense was limited. With the darkness concealing him and his mask shielding him, the man would struggle to detect his presence unless he deliberately released his spiritual sense for a careful sweep.
He waited a little longer, making sure his target did not look back again, then emerged from the shadows. This time, he no longer kept his distance. He accelerated and went straight after them.
A corner lay ahead. Beyond it, high walls flanked the road, with no side paths, no shops, and nowhere to hide. It was the best place along this route to strike, and the ambush point Chen Ming had planned well in advance.
He had to intercept them before they left that stretch of road.
Footsteps rang especially clearly through the silent street. Chen Ming stopped concealing his presence and quickened his pace, almost jogging as he caught up. The two attendants ahead heard the movement behind them and turned almost instinctively, their hands already resting on the magical artifacts at their waists.
"Who's there?" one attendant barked.
Chen Ming did not answer. When he was still five zhang away, he kicked hard against the ground and shot forward like an arrow loosed from a bow. His right hand slipped from his sleeve, and the bone needle flashed with a cold, ghostly blue gleam beneath the moonlight.
The attendant reacted quickly, drawing the magical saber at his waist at once. A pale red blade of light slashed straight toward Chen Ming.
But Chen Ming twisted unnaturally in midair, dodging the blade of light in a posture that almost defied human anatomy. At the same time, he flung up his left hand and scattered a handful of gray powder.
The powder spread through the air, giving off a cloyingly sweet smell. Both attendants instinctively held their breath, but inhalation was not its only means of taking effect-it worked just as well through contact with the skin.
Within a single breath, their movements began to slow, their eyes lost focus, and the magical sabers in their hands drooped.
Chen Ming wasted no time on them. From beginning to end, he had only one target.
The middle-aged man had already retreated to the foot of the wall. Every trace of drunkenness had vanished from his face, replaced by a grim composure.
The blue-green jade pendant at his waist had lit up, wrapping him in a pale blue-green barrier.
"Late Foundation Establishment, poison, a black-iron mask... one of the Heavenly South Soul Chasers? Who hired you?"
Chen Ming gave no answer and merely advanced at a measured pace. He did not move quickly, but every step was firm, as though he were measuring the distance between himself and his target.
The middle-aged man sneered. "It doesn't matter if you won't speak. You think your paltry skills can break through the defenses of my Azure Gang Jade Pendant?"
Still, Chen Ming did not answer. He stopped about three zhang from the middle-aged man, his right hand gripping the bone needle and his left hanging at his side, standing there like a statue.
The two faced each other for a moment.
The middle-aged man's expression began to change. He realized he could not fathom the depths of the person before him.
His opponent's cultivation was clearly only at late Foundation Establishment, in the same realm as his own, yet that unhurried bearing and the utterly untroubled gaze behind the mask filled him with an unease he could not explain.
He decided to wait no longer. Forming hand seals with both hands, he made the pendant at his waist blaze with light. A stream of blue-green spiritual energy formed a three-foot sword of light that whistled toward Chen Ming.
Chen Ming sidestepped. The sword of light skimmed past his shoulder and carved a deep fissure into the ground behind him. Turning with the momentum, he snapped his right hand forward. The bone needle became a fine streak almost too fast for the naked eye to follow, shooting straight toward the middle-aged man's throat.
The blue-green barrier flared in time. The bone needle struck it with a crisp ring and bounced away.
A smug smile rose at the corner of the middle-aged man's mouth. "I told you. You can't break through."
He never finished speaking.
Chen Ming had already closed to within a zhang of him. The fingers of his left hand spread wide, revealing a black sphere the size of a walnut in his palm. Fine cracks covered its surface, leaking a dark green mist that reeked with a suffocating stench.
The middle-aged man's pupils abruptly contracted. "A Poison Miasma Pearl?!"
Before his words had faded, Chen Ming slammed the sphere into the blue-green barrier.
With a muffled boom, the black sphere burst apart. Thick green poisonous mist instantly engulfed the barrier like a living creature. The barrier hissed beneath its corrosive assault, the spiritual glow on its surface dimming visibly.
The middle-aged man's expression changed drastically. He frantically poured spiritual energy into the barrier, trying to keep it stable. But Chen Ming had refined the Poison Miasma Pearl using a secret method from the True Explanation of a Hundred Poisons, expending a great deal of materials. It was designed specifically to corrode spiritual-energy barriers-the very bane of defensive magical artifacts like this one.
In less than three breaths, spiderweb cracks spread across the blue-green barrier, and it shattered with a bang.
At the very instant the barrier shattered, Chen Ming's right hand had already caught the deflected bone needle again. With a flick of his wrist, he drove it precisely into the side of the middle-aged man's neck.
The middle-aged man's eyes bulged. His lips moved as though he wanted to say something, but only a few indistinct, breathy sounds escaped his throat.
His body began to shake violently, and an eerie bluish-purple color spread over his skin. Then he toppled stiffly backward, hitting the ground with a dull thud.
Chen Ming stood where he was, looking down at the corpse without expression.
His breathing was slightly hurried, and a fine sheen of sweat had formed at his temples. That sequence of movements had looked effortless, but in truth, it had taken a tremendous toll.
He bent down to retrieve the bone needle, wiped it clean with a fresh cloth, and tucked it back into his sleeve. Then he quickly searched the middle-aged man's Storage Bag and examined the shattered Azure Gang Jade Pendant.
Although the pendant was ruined, its materials could still be sold for some Spirit Stones.
He turned and swiftly vanished into the night, leaving only three cold corpses lying in the silent street.
Half an hour later, Chen Ming returned to his temporary shelter in an abandoned mine outside the Soul-Destroying Market.
Calling it a shelter was generous. It was really a miners' shack abandoned for years, with several holes in the roof and cracks in the walls wide enough to fit a fist. But such a place had its advantages: no one would come here, and no one would ever imagine an assassin living somewhere like this.
He sat down in a corner, lit a crude oil lamp, and emptied everything from the Storage Bag.
There were not many Spirit Stones-roughly two hundred Middle-Grade Spirit Stones and a dozen or so low-grade ones. A few bottles of pills contained the usual healing and energy-restoring pills used at the Foundation Establishment stage, all of average quality. There were also assorted odds and ends, including several internal documents from the Soul-Destroying Sect, an identity token, and a notebook recording some low-tier spell.
The truly valuable items were the fragments of the Azure Gang Jade Pendant. Although it was damaged, the piece of Azure Gang Jade set into it remained reasonably intact. Sold at a cultivators' market, it would probably fetch around a hundred Middle-Grade Spirit Stones.
Chen Ming sorted everything and silently estimated its total value. Including the payment for the mission, this outing would earn him a little over four hundred Middle-Grade Spirit Stones.
For a black-iron-ranked assassin, that was already a substantial income. But compared with the vast resources needed to attempt a breakthrough to Golden Core, these Spirit Stones were no more than a cup of water thrown onto a blazing cartload of firewood.
The third level recorded a secret technique called the "Ten Thousand Poisons Infant-Transformation Art." Supposedly, once cultivated to full mastery, it could turn his spiritual energy into deadly poison, allowing him to poison every living creature within a hundred zhang with the slightest movement. But all of that required him to form his Golden Core first.
Chen Ming opened his eyes and looked at the broken, leaking roof overhead. Through its gaps, he could see a few cold stars in the night sky.
The road ahead was still long.
He packed everything away, extinguished the oil lamp, and lay down in the darkness. Tomorrow had tomorrow's mission, and the day after had its own. He did not know when he would save enough resources to attempt a breakthrough to Golden Core, but he knew he had to keep going.
Because he no longer had any path of retreat.
In this world, independent cultivators had only ever faced two paths: climb upward until they reached a height where no one could bully them anymore, or die along the way and become a stepping stone for someone else's ascent.
He closed his eyes and soon entered a light state of meditative regulation. Spiritual energy slowly circulated through his body, repairing the minor depletion from tonight's battle. The bone needle lay quietly in his sleeve, waiting for its next drink of blood.
Night deepened over the Soul-Destroying Market. A few faint barks drifted from a distant street, then silence returned. No one knew that tonight, an assassin wearing a black-iron green demon mask had once again completed a mission without a sound.