Chapter 34: Recruiting Subordinates
The sinister-looking old man stared at Wei Shiyan, eyes like broken flint. Wei Shiyan looked back with an equally dark, almost intimidating gaze that made the air between them chill. For a moment the two simply measured one another—predators testing wind direction.
Then the old man laughed, a sound roughened by habit and malice. "This brother sure is right—crippling this trash is a waste. Why can't I just sell him? But tell me, brother, how much are you going to buy him for?"
Wei Shiyan's face kept its casual, dangerous calm. "You talk," he said.
The man scratched his chin, grin widening as if savoring business and blood alike. "Don't worry, brother. Give anything will do. If you have the first blood of a virgin I will be very grateful."
Wei Shiyan let out a soft, fake villainous chuckle. He liked how the old man thought in barter and base desires. "I gave it to someone last night," he said lightly, "but how about I give you one million mid-grade black crystals?"
For a heartbeat the man looked stunned—then delighted. "Good, good! Ahahaha, I like you already, brother."
Wei Shiyan produced a spatial ring, the metal cool under his fingers. He flicked it open, and the ring swallowed the exact amount he'd promised. Without ceremony he sent it to the man. The old man accepted the ring with hands that did not tremble, only greed. The deal was sealed.
The man turned and walked away as if parting with payment had been merely a morning's errand. He carried the limp youth with his indifferent efficiency—workers, men who handled human merchandise like sacks of ore. The disgust in the guide girl's eyes was thick enough to carve stone; it was almost spilling out of her.
Pighead Ma leaned close to her and whispered with a smirk, "You don't do business with this kind of people. What happened today? Are you dazzled and blinded by his handsomeness?"
The guide girl's fingers twitched as if she wanted to strangle Pighead Ma. She suppressed it because she knew she could not change how the Desolate Mirage Ridges operated—darkness here was a currency, not a condition to be cured. She swallowed her rage and watched the man that sells the boy disappear into the crowd.
Wei Shiyan signaled to some workers near the cave entrance. They approached and, with practiced motions, carried the boy to a shadowed corner. The boy was powerless to resist; his limbs lay like broken twigs, his spirit folded down where no light reached. Wei Shiyan tossed a handful of crystals to the men for their trouble, not a large amount, but enough to make them leave quickly. They did so without looking back.
Only Wei Shiyan, the female guide, and Pighead Ma remained. The boy trembled on the stone floor, breathing shallow like someone who has been hollowed out. Wei Shiyan walked over and picked up a stone slab from the ground. He sat down on it carelessly, despite the traces of luxury on his clothing—faint embroidery that caught the dim market lights and threw them back like an insult.
He looked at the youth and, in a tone that sounded absurdly ordinary under the circumstances, asked, "Are you hungry?"
The question was so small it seemed wrong. Here, where souls were traded and bodies broken, to ask if someone was hungry felt almost lunatic. The female guide's expression twisted as if she thought Wei Shiyan had slipped into madness. Pighead Ma raised a brow; his mouth shaped an unspoken question: Is this some kind of trick?
But the broken youth looked at Wei Shiyan with eyes that were more raw hunger than human—deep, painfully honest. Inside his ruined soul something stirred, like a moth sensing a faint lamp through cotton. Wei Shiyan's question had touched something the others couldn't reach.
The boy tried to nod. His body shook violently, every muscle protesting, but his throat worked and a single motion answered for him. Wei Shiyan raised a hand and stopped him, a finger steady and deliberate.
"But that will come with a price," Wei Shiyan said, voice calm as a knife. "Absolute, utmost loyalty. But you can be yourself."
The boy's nod turned into a strangled sound that was almost a laugh and almost a sob. He didn't hesitate. He would have clung to a straw if it meant breath. Loyalty, it seemed, was cheaper than pain here.
The female guide's confusion slowly gave way to comprehension. Pighead Ma's eyes narrowed; numbers and profit calculations blinked behind his lids, but even he could see the shift—Wei Shiyan didn't speak like a buyer who wanted a cheap tool. He spoke like a master claiming a living ember to tend.
"You are beyond this world and beyond this very galaxy," Wei Shiyan said, leaning forward a fraction. His voice dropped to something intimate, intimate enough that the boy's fractured soul thinned toward it. "If you work hard, with a little push, I cannot go into specific details until you fully recover."
The boy's lips parted. To him those words were not empty promises. They were a map drawn with fire. He had nothing left to lose.
Wei Shiyan stood up and dusted his hands as if the exchange had been no more than paying for a meal. The female guide swallowed, caught between scorn for his methods and a flicker of awe for his certainty. Pighead Ma shrugged; business was business, and the market would pocket its share.
Wei Shiyan turned to leave, then paused and added without looking back, "Name?"
The boy's voice came out dry but eager. "Liu—Liu Ran," he croaked.
"Liu Ran," Wei Shiyan repeated to himself as if tasting the syllables. The name sat in him like an order to a general. He nodded once. "Good."
The travelers moved on. The bustle swallowed them, folding their conversation into the market's endless mutter. But for the boy, something had changed. Where before there had been only pain and barter, now a shape of possibility had entered the hollow. Even Pighead Ma watched with a market-hardened curiosity; the ripple of a powerful patron's will could alter prices and fates in equal measure.
On the way out, the female guide kept stealing glances at Wei Shiyan. Her disgust still flared, but now mixed with an awkward, reluctant respect. He did not look like the villain she'd assumed—he looked like a man who valued uncommon things: certain silences, strange embers, the rare potential others turned their backs on.
Wei Shiyan's mind ran faster than his steps. Each new subordinate was a chess piece. Each talent he claimed was fuel for plans that would not fit simple coin calculations. A million mid-grade black crystals was a small price for what he envisioned. The pockets of the galaxy harbored talents like seeds, and he intended to plant, irrigate, and harvest with methods only he understood.
They left the cavern's mouth because wei shiyan didn't have any interest on the planetary brick again and they cut through the mass of stalls, the Central Market's glow and clamor washing over them. Wei Shiyan's expression remained the same: light amusement, careful hunger. He was already cataloguing—minerals, merchants, guards, the map of a thousand portals that might one day be his to bend.
At a narrow lane, Pighead Ma called after them in half-grumble, half-advice: "Brother Wei, you're not wrong. Hard to find talent with recoil like that. But one million mid-grade black crystals? You're throwing away coin."
Wei Shiyan's smile was casual, almost lazy. "Coin is a tool," he answered. "Sometimes it must be burned to light the pyre."
Pighead Ma barked a laugh. "Hah, poetic. Be careful you don't burn the wrong house."
The guide girl glanced at Wei Shiyan, eyes searching. Finally she said what she'd clearly been holding back for a while. "Why save him? You could have let him go. You could have let the market take him to pieces. Why?"
Wei Shiyan's gaze slid to her, simple and plain. "Because I can see beyond the present," he replied. "Because certain things—certain people—are worth more than immediate profit. Because I want something no one else dares to keep."
She opened her mouth to argue, then closed it. She could feel the gravity of that answer like a new weight. If this man was willing to trade away coin for potential, what else would he do if the stakes rose?
They walked on. The market stretched and unspooled behind them, a landscape of small cruelties and louder bargains. Liu Ran lay in the corner, unconscious but no longer simply abandoned. In the shadows, a torch's light caught on the boy's skin and turned it for a breath into something almost human again.
Wei Shiyan did not look back. He kept his hands in his sleeves and walked as if he owned the air around him. He had made a purchase and claimed a future. It was done.
There was no dramatic flourish. No hero's fanfare. In the domain of the Desolate Mirage Ridges, real change happened in small, unremarkable moments—deals struck with cold eyes, promises whispered in half-light. Wei Shiyan had placed his bid, and the market had accepted it.
Later, when he found time and space to consider the ramifications, he would plan the boy's recovery, design a regimen that would mend bone and soul, and chart the ways Liu Ran's ember could be fanned into conflagration.
But for now he walked, the ring empty on a finger that liked the weight of others' things. The girl trailed beside him—wary, curious, and one more person he had recruited wi
thout anyone noticing. The recruitment had been quiet, efficient, and complete.