A few minutes after Lin Yu disappears inside, Nora's team arrives at the Old Brick Bridge.
Oversized cloaks cover their uniforms, the hoods pulled low over their faces.
Their plan is simple—force their way in if needed.
Two guards stand at the rusted door beneath the bridge, eyes sharp in the gloom.
One of them looks at the group and asks flatly, "New?"
Anna nods once, hand hidden in her cloak.
The guard grunts. "Five people. Ten gold coins each."
Anna blinks, surprised at the blunt demand.
Mark frowns and voices the question that all of them think.
"Don't you want to check our identity? We could be police."
The first guard smirks, shaking his head.
"Doesn't matter. Even if you were, you can't do anything here."
The second guard lifts a hand and points toward the arch under the bridge.
There, carved faintly into the stone, is the unmistakable symbol of the Black Guards.
The words strike harder than the gesture.
"This market is open by the Black Guards," the man says coldly.
Anna's eyes widen, and the rest of the team exchange quick, startled glances.
They pay the fee in silence, the weight of the revelation heavy on them.
Five tokens are handed over, each carved with a mark of entry.
"You can use these to come and go for a month," the guard explains.
Without another word, Anna leads them through the door and down the stairwell.
The underground air swallows them whole, the market waiting below.
They step inside, and the first sight makes them freeze.
The smell of raw blood and iron fills their noses as they see rows of stalls, carcasses hanging, tables dripping red, and merchants cutting meat with cleavers.
For a moment, they think they have entered nothing more than an underground slaughterhouse.
But their eyes quickly catch the labels—creatures with names none of them recognise written on wooden boards above the flesh.
Names that belong neither to common beasts nor to anything listed in their reports.
A man in front of a stall raises his voice, holding a slice of raw meat between his fingers.
"Are you telling me this is the meat of Stone Boar?" he demands.
The stall owner, a scarred man with thick arms, folds his hands behind the counter and nods.
"Yes," he says proudly, "I hunted it with great difficulty this morning from the Brackendale Mountains."
The customer's eyes narrow as he presses the meat.
"Do you take me for a fool? The texture is the same as ordinary boar, and there is no magic power in the flesh."
Nora exchanges a glance with her companions, their faces pale and tight under the shadow of their hoods.
Mark leans closer to Nora, voice low with unease.
"What are these beasts? I've never even heard of them."
Nora doesn't answer, her eyes fixed on a carcass strung up ahead.
Its flesh is not red but a deep blue, slick and glistening under the lantern light.
A droplet of its blood slides down and falls onto the wooden table below.
It lands with a hiss, burning a dark hole into the surface as if it were acid.
Before she can speak, someone in a heavy cloak steps forward.
A pale hand slips free of the sleeve, brushing over the strange blue flesh, and then lifts to taste the sizzling blood.
A woman's voice follows, calm yet decisive.
"Tier 2 Blue Lizard. I will pay two energy crystals."
The stall owner's eyes gleam.
"Elemental crystals," he corrects firmly.
The woman scoffs.
"Are you mad? Who would pay two elemental crystals for Tier 2 meat?"
The stall owner slams his hand on the counter, blood splattering from the carcass.
"I hunted this only a few hours ago—it is fresh, the magic power inside the flesh is more than eighty per cent."
The woman shakes her head beneath her hood.
"When I return home, the magic power will disperse. I'd be lucky if more than fifty per cent remains."
The stall owner's jaw clenches.
"I cannot do anything about that."
"One water-element crystal and fifty gold coins," she offers coldly.
"I can only give you this much."
The stall owner hesitates, then finally nods.
"Fine."
Nora pulls her cloak tighter, quickening her pace as her group moves past the stall.
They pass row after row of bloody counters until the butcher market fades behind them.
Ahead stretches a wide street lined with proper shops, each lit with enchanted lamps, glass windows showing strange wares within.
Mark's face pales as he whispers, "Where are we? This doesn't look like a black market."
Thomas narrows his eyes, voice sharp.
"Who told you two about this market?"
Ben shifts uncomfortably under his cloak.
"We heard it from a customer inside an antiquity seller's store."
Nora doesn't answer.
Her gaze fixes on a figure stepping out of a nearby shop without a cloak to hide himself.
Lin Yu.
He scans the street, pausing to glance at the signs of other stores as if weighing his options.
From the one he just left, he had spent five hundred gold coins and obtained two shadow stones.
In this place, the prices bite deep—an ordinary energy crystal costs one hundred gold coins, while the four main elemental types—wind, fire, earth, and water—rise to two hundred each.
The rarer ones, like shadow, are dearer still at two hundred and fifty.
And with the extraordinary world only beginning to recover, even those prices cannot guarantee supply.
He had searched four stores before this, and only here had he managed to find the two shadow crystals.
"The other stores may also not have shadow crystals," he murmurs to himself.
His eyes drift toward the street of magic beast stalls, and his decision hardens.
"Let's make do with magic beast meat."
He turns and starts walking in that direction.
At that moment, a prickling sensation crawls across his skin.
He stops mid-step.
Someone is watching him.
Lin Yu turns his head, and across the street, five figures fix their eyes on him.
He narrows his gaze, senses unfurling, and from the subtle fluctuation of a shadow, he recognises one.
He walks straight toward them.
"Nora Ashford," he says evenly, "what are you doing here?"
A familiar male voice answers before she can.
"We could ask the same question."
Inspector Thomas.
Lin Yu's lips twitch faintly.
"I come to buy things," he replies. "So what about you?"
A mature female voice cuts in, calm but edged with demand.
"Mr. Weston, can you tell us what this place is?"
Lin Yu glances at her, then turns without another word.
"Come. Follow me."
He moves deeper into the market.
Nora trails after him, glancing around as they go.
More and more people walk without cloaks, unconcerned with hiding themselves.
She recognises some sons and daughters of noble families in the city, their faces clear, their confidence unshaken.
Each one nods respectfully at Lin Yu as he passes, and Lin Yu acknowledges them with the same courtesy.
He stops before a store that looks, to her eyes, entirely ordinary—a tea shop.
Inside, he leads them through the quiet hall to a private room.
He takes a seat at the round table, gestures casually.
"All of you can take a seat."
They sit, but the silence weighs.
Five pairs of eyes stay fixed on Lin Yu.
"You all can take down your hoods," he says calmly.
They exchange wary glances, then one by one lower their hoods.
Beside Nora and Thomas sit an older middle-aged woman and two men about Thomas's age.
The woman straightens, her tone crisp.
"I'm Anna, captain of this team."
The two men follow.
"Ben."
"Mark."
Anna doesn't waste a beat.
"What is this market?"
Lin Yu studies them with faint surprise.
"This is an invitation-only market. How did you know about it?"
Their eyes drift toward Ben and Mark.
Ben shifts uncomfortably.
"From a customer inside an antiquity seller's store."
Lin Yu's voice lowers.
"That customer must be working for the Black Guards."
Anna's brows knit.
"What do you mean?"
"This market is opened by the Black Guards," Lin Yu says. "Only those who get their invitation can enter."
Thomas leans forward, voice tight.
"Then how did the guards at the gate know about us?"
Anna answers before Lin Yu.
"Our description must have been given to them, so there was no checking."
She fixes her gaze back on him.
"So, what is this market?"
Silence stretches, all of them waiting.
Lin Yu finally says, slow and deliberate.
"An extraordinary market."
They freeze, shock and disbelief flashing across their faces.
Lin Yu sits back, patient, waiting for them to recover.
But then he feels it—someone linking with him on the spiritual level.
A faint warmth brushes across his wounded spirit, easing the injury ever so slightly.
It is almost nothing for him, yet if there were hundreds of thousands of such links, the recovery would be immense.
His thought sharpens.
Tom must have formed the first wisp of shadow inner energy.
He closes his eyes and slips into the spirit space of the world.
Below, Tom's spirit glows faintly, a fragile thread binding itself to his own.
Tom has taken the first step toward becoming a Shadow Warrior.
A rare sense of accomplishment stirs in Lin Yu.
Now the true work begins—spreading Shadow Warrior cultivation among the elite of his gang.
But the flicker comes suddenly.
Tom's spirit shudders, dimming violently, a signal of life in danger.
Lin Yu's eyes snap open.
Across from him, Anna is already parting her lips to question him.
"You all will receive the information tomorrow," Lin Yu cuts in, voice clipped. "I have an important matter and must go."
He pushes back his chair, strides to the door, and pulls it open.
Then he is gone, leaving them staring.
Nora and her team exchange bewildered glances, silence pressing the room.
Mark mutters first.
"He was fine a moment ago."
Ben frowns.
"He looked like he just got some news."
Thomas leans back, thoughtful.
"Do extraordinary talk with their minds?"
Nora shakes her head slowly.
"What does it mean? We'll know tomorrow."
Anna rises, decisive.
"Let's leave here first."
They gather their cloaks, file out of the room, and soon step away from the extraordinary market.