"Hold your breath going in," Nian'er said without looking back. "The stink'll get you if you're not used to blood, sweat, and hormone-synth vapor."
She knelt by a rusted steel panel near an abandoned service alley and tapped a rhythmic code with her knuckle: two short, one long, then a scan from her left eye.
Clink—sshhk.
The floor opened.
A hidden lift, stained with graffiti and faint red luminescence, waited below.
Music pulsed faintly from beneath—deep bass and industrial chimes, like a nightclub built inside a tomb.
Fang Yuan stepped inside.
The elevator shuddered down. As they descended, Nian'er pulled her hair up into a knot and slipped on a transparent holo-mask. Her face shifted instantly into a nondescript girl with purple eyes and a factory-issued barcode cheek.
"Don't look new," she muttered. "They smell weakness in here like wolves smell blood."
The elevator stopped.
The doors opened.
And Fang Yuan saw hell wired in neon.
The Core Market stretched before them like an underground city—choked with metal platforms, glowing signs, and mismatched vendors shouting over one another. Holograms flickered across broken walls. Tubes of gas lit the fog above in yellow and green.
There were no windows. No rules. Just commerce.
On one side, a hunched woman in an oily apron displayed a case of twitching Cores—red, purple, and one glowing blue. "Fresh! Teens! Ripe with terror!"
Nearby, a stall sold human arms preserved in fluid—each labeled by cultivation rank.
Above it all: flashing banners screamed digital slogans.
"INSTANT LEVEL-UP: PURE CORE INFUSIONS!"
"SEEKING SPIRITUAL FLESH—WILL PAY IN QUANTUM!"
"AUCTION: NASCENT SOUL CORE—NO BAD KARMA! GUARANTEED!"
Fang Yuan stopped walking.
He hadn't spoken since entering.
His eyes scanned the market, taking in every sign, every jar, every cackling merchant hawking the souls of the dead.
"This is…" he whispered.
Nian'er raised an eyebrow. "Opportunity?"
Fang Yuan shook his head, voice flat.
"No. This is desecration."
They moved past cages filled with coma-stricken cultivators, suspended in Qi-stasis. Past vendors who wore necklaces made from crushed Core fragments.
At the edge of a narrow corridor lined with incense smoke and static-choked lanterns, Nian'er tapped him on the shoulder.
"Here. Thought you'd like this one."
It was a tiny, dusty stall built into the bones of an old train car.
There were no Cores on display.
Only books.
Ancient. Burnt. Torn. Some preserved in plastic sleeves, others displayed openly on cracked stone slabs.
Fang Yuan stepped forward, his steps slow, reverent.
On the lowest shelf, buried beneath rotting manuals and knockoff talisman sets—
A single page of gold-flecked parchment.
Torn. Singed. But still legible.
And there, burned into the top margin, was a faded seal:
The Golden Blossom Sect.
His breath caught.
His fingers hovered over the page.
"…My sect."
He didn't touch the page.
His hand hovered over it like one might hover over an old wound—afraid to press, afraid it would vanish.
The seal was faded, but unmistakable. Five-petal lotus. Arcing lightning sigils beneath.
Technique of the Golden Blossom Sect: Eternal Bloom Thunder Formation.
One of the earliest scrolls he ever wrote.
He turned the page slowly. In the margins were training notations. Handwritten corrections. At the bottom: names.
One struck him like a spear through the chest.
Mu Ruyin.
A disciple. A prodigy. Loyal. Bright.
Once, maybe… something more.
Now reduced to ink in a stall beneath a city that traded souls for sport.
"Interested in that?" a gravelly voice rasped from behind the counter.
Fang Yuan didn't look up.
"I'm not here to buy memories."
"Memories don't come cheap," the vendor said, chuckling. "That one's from a dead dig team outside the southern waste. Almost didn't survive the extraction. You'd be surprised what old ruins still hum at night."
Before Fang Yuan could speak, a yell split the smoky air.
"That's mine!"
CRASH.
A teenager burst into the stall, shoving a rack of manuals aside. Hair wild, belt lined with half-dead Core pouches, and panic in his eyes.
"You think you can just walk in and take my legacy?!"
He lunged—faster than most with his rank. A plasma dagger shimmered in his hand, aimed straight for Fang Yuan's throat.
The blade never landed.
Fang Yuan turned, caught the boy's wrist, twisted.
CRACK.
The boy screamed. The dagger dropped.
He fell to the floor, gasping, arm limp.
Fang Yuan didn't speak. He stepped over the boy's writhing body, placed two fingers against the center of his chest.
A faint gold shimmer pulsed from his fingertips.
The air around them grew heavy.
The boy's Core—weak, angry, impure—rose from his body like smoke drawn to fire. It floated midair, glowing dully.
Nian'er had appeared at the entrance, watching with surprise.
"…You can draw a Core without a harvester?"
Fang Yuan didn't answer. He stared at the Core.
The boy whimpered. "Please… don't. I just needed a few more levels. I was—close—"
Fang Yuan narrowed his eyes.
Then clenched his fist.
CRACK.
The Core shattered in the air, turning to glittering dust.
The boy fainted.
The room went silent.
Even the vendor looked stunned.
"…Why'd you waste it?" Nian'er asked, voice low.
Fang Yuan turned toward her, face expressionless.
"Because I'm not like them."
The dust from the shattered Core still floated in the air, sparkling in the dim stall light.
Fang Yuan slowly returned his gaze to the scroll.
He picked it up this time—carefully, reverently—and let his fingers trail the ink grooves. It still carried traces of Qi. Very faint. But unmistakably real.
It hadn't been copied.
This was original.
This scroll had survived the fall of his sect. Had crossed centuries of blood and concrete. And now… it was here, gathering mildew beneath price tags.
He turned the page.
Along the spine were notes he recognized—training records, adjustments to the thunder-flow technique—and names. Familiar names.
And then: her name again.
Mu Ruyin — Core Bloom Stabilization Trial
His fingers tightened slightly.
She must have survived the early war. Long enough to leave this behind. Long enough to pass on what little remained.
But no—if this scroll ended up here, it meant no one protected it. Her efforts… were buried with her.
"Found something sacred?" the vendor said, voice suddenly cautious.
Fang Yuan looked up. His voice was low. Flat.
"How much."
The vendor hesitated, watching the tension in Fang Yuan's shoulders. He saw something ancient behind those eyes—something that didn't flinch when Cores shattered.
"…Take it," he said. "You don't bargain with ghosts."
Fang Yuan held the scroll, jaw tight.
Nian'er stepped beside him. "You really think this dusty thing matters? You said it yourself—this world is rotten. What use is one dead flower in a desert?"
Fang Yuan didn't look at her.
"If even a single petal survives… then the garden isn't lost."
She scoffed, but there was something in her face—hesitation.
On their way out, Fang Yuan passed another vendor. This one sold old weapons: cracked spirit blades, broken talismans, even the skeletal remains of Qi conduits.
But in the back of the stall, behind a tarp of digital mesh—
A single spear, wrapped in yellow silk, sealed behind a containment field.
It pulsed. Old Qi.
He paused.
The vendor leaned forward.
"That one's not for sale," he said.
Fang Yuan raised an eyebrow.
"Someone's been buying old pieces," the vendor said. "Scrolls. Blades. Spirit remains. Doesn't resell them. Just… stores them."
"Who?"
"Never seen a face. Just a sigil. Black sun, cracked in half."
Fang Yuan's breath stilled.
That was no sect.
That was a heretical mark.
A symbol from the final days of the war.
And not just any faction—
It was the first sign of the Heavenly Demon's disciples.
"Down here," Nian'er muttered, pulling Fang Yuan toward a curtained chamber lit by sterile blue lights. "This place pays double for clean Cores—maybe more if you have something… unusual."
The chamber's entrance was guarded by twin mechs, chrome bodies gleaming under bio-scanners. Above the doorway, a digital sigil pulsed faintly—a stylized eye encased in helix strands of DNA.
Fleuve GeneWorks: Private Buyer Access Only
As they stepped inside, the noise of the market dulled—replaced by the slow hum of machines and a faint wetness in the air.
Rows of vertical tanks lined the walls.
Inside floated bodies—half-grown, incomplete. Cultivators stripped of features, suspended in fluid. Some twitched. Others looked disturbingly peaceful.
At the center stood a man in a long white coat, back to them, gloves black and glistening.
Without turning, he spoke.
"Nian'er. You brought me something?"
She stepped forward and retrieved a sealed Core from her pouch. "Level 2. Stable condition. Young. Still intact."
The man turned.
His face was smooth—unnaturally so. Skin too even, like poured wax. One eye was glass, the other mechanical, with a glowing blue iris that dilated unnaturally as it locked onto Fang Yuan.
"Hm…" he murmured, holding the Core up to a scanner. "Fresh. Well-preserved. Shame about the resonance index—it's slightly corrupted."
Nian'er frowned. "Still valuable."
"Perhaps," he said. Then added, smoothly, "But I'm seeking… more refined samples now. Not just raw Cores. Compatibility is everything."
He set the Core aside.
Then looked at her.
"What I need," he said, "is a template. A living one. Your spiritual signature would be ideal. I'll pay five hundred thousand yuan if you let me map your soul for six hours. No pain. Minimal risk."
Her breath hitched.
Fang Yuan's expression darkened.
The man continued, undeterred. "Just a scan. Not an extraction. You stay conscious. We simply copy the pattern. You walk out richer."
Nian'er hesitated.
Then Fang Yuan stepped forward.
"No."
The man tilted his head.
"It's not your decision," he said coolly. "The offer is hers."
Fang Yuan didn't blink. "If you lay a single thread of Qi on her soul, I'll turn your lab into an ancestral grave."
The room chilled.
A faint golden shimmer passed beneath Fang Yuan's skin—his inner Core responding to threat. The tanks in the room vibrated slightly. The lights dimmed.
The man paused.
His mechanical eye whirred. Measured.
Then he smiled.
"Fascinating," he whispered. "You're not registered… not Neo-Core… and yet something ancient hums in you. You're not a relic."
He leaned forward slightly.
"You're a fossil."
Fang Yuan said nothing.
"Very well," the man said, stepping back. "No scans. No transaction. Take your Core and go."
As they turned to leave, his voice followed them.
"You should be careful, Fang Yuan."
Both stopped.
Fang Yuan didn't turn. "I never told you my name."
"No," the man said softly, "but history did."
The stink of blood and Core resin still clung to the air as Fang Yuan and Nian'er stepped back into the upper corridors of the market. Light from cracked neon signs flickered across their faces, casting blue-green shadows on the walls.
Nian'er walked in silence.
Fang Yuan did not speak either, but his body was tense—shoulders stiff, jaw clenched.
He felt it.
A gaze.
He slowed near an intersection lined with scrap dealers and Core recyclers. From across the walkway, standing just beside a crooked vendor stall, an old man stared directly at him.
He was hunched, with wires fused to the side of his head. His left eye was cybernetic, flickering and red—but it didn't move.
It was locked on Fang Yuan.
The old man didn't blink. Didn't speak.
Just watched.
Fang Yuan returned the stare.
The vendor beside the man shouted for customers. "Soul filters! Cultivator marrow at half price!"
No one paid the old man any mind.
Fang Yuan took a step forward—
The man turned.
And vanished into the folds of the scrap dealer's tent.
Fang Yuan moved toward the spot.
Nian'er grabbed his arm. "What are you doing?"
He pointed.
"Look."
On the back wall of the stall—half-covered by grime and peeling digital ads—was a carved symbol.
Faint. Weather-worn.
But he knew it.
A black circle with twisting root-like lines branching inward. In the center: a closed, vertical eye.
Nian'er's voice dropped. "...Is that—?"
"Yes," Fang Yuan said coldly.
The mark of the Heavenly Demon.
Not just a relic. Not graffiti.
A sigil of allegiance.
Fang Yuan stared at it for a long moment, the shimmer of his internal Core pulsing faintly in response.
Someone had seen him.
Someone had recognized him.
And somewhere in the depths of this city—
The shadows of the past were waking.