Chapter 30 — The Invisible Prison and The Ghost Market Gamble
The Limit of a Mortal Body
The night air was so cold it felt like breathing crushed glass.
In the center of the courtyard, Long Tan stood shirtless, his skin steaming in the freezing wind. His body was a map of hard, knotted muscle, glistening with sweat and the metallic gray sheen of the Iron Skin technique.
Before him lay the granite millstone. It was a massive, rough-hewn block used for grinding corn, weighing nearly 600 pounds.
Long Tan squatted low. He wrapped his arms around the cold stone.
"HUP!"
He exploded upward.
His veins bulged against his skin like blue worms. The frozen earth beneath his boots cracked with a sharp pop.
The massive stone lifted.
One inch.
Six inches.
One foot.
He held it there, his body trembling violently.
He tried to push it higher, to press it over his head.
But then, his internal energy hit a wall.
His lungs burned as if he had inhaled fire. His muscles locked up in a painful spasm. The energy swirling in his Dantian crashed against an invisible ceiling and shattered.
THUD.
He dropped the stone. The impact shook the entire hut, knocking snow off the roof.
Long Tan collapsed against the cold rock, gasping for air, his sweat turning to ice on his skin.
"Stuck," he spat the word out like poison into the snow. "630 Jin. I haven't gained a single pound of strength in three days."
He looked at his trembling hands. They were calloused, scarred, and strong enough to snap a wolf's neck. But they weren't strong enough for what was coming.
"I am eating ten pounds of Wolf King meat a day. I am practicing the Sun Breath until I pass out. But it is useless."
He realized the harsh truth: This is the limit of mortal food.
A bucket can only hold so much water. If you pour more water in, it just spills over the sides. To make the bucket bigger—to break the barrier of the Third Grade—he needed energy that didn't exist in normal meat.
He needed Spirit Medicine.
The Eyes in the Forest
He stood up, wiping his face with a handful of snow to cool down.
He glanced toward the dark treeline surrounding his property.
He didn't turn his head. He didn't stare. He just shifted his eyes, using his peripheral vision like a hunter.
Fifty meters away, in a tall pine tree, a branch moved against the wind.
A flock of crows took flight, cawing angrily as if disturbed by a heavy presence.
Snap.
The sound was faint, masked by the wind, but Long Tan heard it.
His eyes narrowed.
They are watching.
He didn't need a servant to come and tell him. He knew.
Since the disappearance of Zhou Cang, the Zhou Family hadn't attacked. Instead, they had tightened the noose.
Zhou Ming didn't trust him. He had placed scouts in the woods. They were waiting to see if Long Tan contacted the Yan Family. They were waiting to see if he revealed any martial arts secrets.
Long Tan walked back into the hut, closing the heavy wooden door and barring it.
Inside, the warmth of the fire hit him. Su Lan was sitting by the crib, rocking Little San to sleep.
She looked up, seeing the dark, brooding look on his face.
"Tan?" she whispered. "Is something wrong?"
Long Tan moved to the back window, peering through the crack in the shutters.
"I am in a cage, Lan," he said quietly. "An invisible prison. If I walk out the front gate, they follow me. If I go to Meng City to buy herbs, they will know I am a cultivator. And if I stay here..."
He clenched his fist.
"If I stay here, I remain weak. When the war starts, I will be nothing but a stepping stone."
"What will you do?" Su Lan asked, her voice trembling with fear.
Long Tan turned to her. His eyes were hard.
"I have to break through tonight. I need to find something the Zhou Family cannot see."
He grabbed a bundle of old clothes and straw from the corner. He quickly arranged them on his bed, covering them with a thick bear-fur blanket. In the dim firelight, it looked exactly like a man sleeping on his side.
"Let them watch a pile of straw," he said grimly.
He moved to the corner of the room, under the rug. He pried up the loose floorboards he had cut days ago—his emergency exit.
Below lay the crawlspace, smelling of damp earth and cold stone.
"Lock the floor behind me," Long Tan ordered. "I will return before dawn."
He dropped into the darkness, crawling through the frozen mud like a rat until he was past the treeline.
He merged with the shadows. He was a hunter in his own territory. The city spies might be trained soldiers, but they didn't know these woods like he did.
He slipped past their perimeter like a ghost, leaving no footprints, heading toward the river.
The Ghost Market
Five miles downstream, the world became ugly.
River Village was a sore on the side of the empire. It was a cluster of rotting wooden shacks built on the unstable, muddy banks of the freezing river.
The air here was thick and yellow with fog. It smelled of dead fish, raw sewage, and old rust.
Lanterns flickered in the thick mist like ghost fires.
This was the Ghost Market.
It was a place where the law didn't exist. Thieves sold stolen goods here. Rogue cultivators sold forbidden items here. Murderers bought poisons here. Even the City Guards didn't dare come here after dark.
Long Tan walked through the sludge. Squish. Squish.
He was no longer Long Tan.
He wore a ragged, oversized cloak made of rough hemp that smelled of mold. He had rubbed ash and river mud into his face, darkening his skin and making his cheeks look hollow. He hunched his back, shrinking his height by three inches.
He let out a rough, hacking cough to sell his disguise.
" Cough... cough... "
The market was quiet. Too quiet.
Deals were made in whispers. Eyes watched him from the shadows.
To his left, two men were arguing over a silver dagger. One man moved too fast—a flash of steel—and the other man collapsed, clutching his stomach, blood pouring between his fingers.
No one screamed. No one called for help. People just stepped over the bleeding man and kept shopping.
Long Tan kept his head down, his heart beating steady and slow.
This place is a snake pit. If a Zhou spy recognizes me here, my game is over. They will kill me and dump my body in the river.
I am just an old man. Just a scavenger looking for junk.
The Search for a Miracle
He scanned the stalls, his System Scan active but silent in his mind.
He stopped at a weapon stall. A man with a scar across his eye was sharpening a rusty iron sword.
System: Low-grade iron. Rust damage 80%. Trash.
Long Tan moved on.
He stopped at a medicine stall. A woman with no teeth held up a "Tiger Bone."
System: Cow bone painted with orange dye. Trash.
He stopped at a poison stall. Blue daggers coated in rat poison glinted in the lantern light.
System: Common poison. Non-lethal to cultivators.
Long Tan was disappointed.
"Garbage," he muttered under his breath, adjusting his hood. "It's all garbage sold to fools who dream of being warriors."
He reached the end of the muddy row. The fog was thicker here, swirling around his ankles.
A shivering old man sat on a rotten crate. He looked half-dead himself, wrapped in layers of filthy rags.
On the dirty cloth in front of him lay a sad collection of items: broken jade, weird rocks, and dried roots.
Long Tan's eyes swept over the cloth carelessly.
He started to turn away.
Then he stopped.
His gaze landed on a shriveled, black object about the size of a human thumb.
It was twisted and ugly. It looked like a piece of ginger that had been thrown in a fire and left to rot in the sun for a year.
Thump.
A sensation hit Long Tan's chest.
It wasn't his eyes. It was the Vital Soil inside his soul.
The connection vibrated violently. He felt a faint, dying pulse coming from the ugly root.
It was weak—like a heartbeat buried under a mountain of ash—but it was there.
The Poker Game
Long Tan knew he had to be careful.
If he looked excited, the price would jump to 50 Silver. He had to play the game.
He crouched down, groaning like his knees hurt with arthritis. He didn't look at the root.
He picked up a piece of broken green jade first, holding it up to the lantern light, squinting his eyes.
"How much for the green stone?" he asked, pitching his voice to sound rough and raspy.
The seller coughed, spitting phlegm into the mud.
"Good eye, old man," the seller rasped, his voice sounding like dry leaves. "That is Jade from the Southern Mines. 2 Silver."
Long Tan tossed it back onto the cloth. It made a dull click.
"Glass. Worth 2 copper. You think I'm blind because I'm old?"
He picked up a strange rock next. He inspected it, shook his head, and put it down.
Finally, casually, he picked up the shriveled black root.
He turned it over in his dirty fingers, scratching the dry skin with his fingernail. Flakes of black dust fell off.
"And this? Is this dried rat meat? Or dog poop you found on the road?"
The seller sneered, offended. "You are ignorant. That is a Blood Ginseng."
The seller sighed, his shoulders slumping. He decided to be honest because the item looked so terrible, and he hadn't sold anything all night.
"I dug it up from an old ruin three months ago. Based on the rings, it's at least fifty years old. If it were fresh... a Blood Ginseng of this age would sell for 100 Silver Taels. It contains enough Yang energy to help a warrior break through to the Third Grade."
Long Tan's heart skipped a beat.
100 Silver? A Third Grade breakthrough item?
This was it. This was the key to breaking the 630 Jin limit.
The seller kicked the dirt. "But look at it. It's withered. The spiritual energy leaked out years ago. It's dead. No alchemist wants it."
Long Tan scoffed. He tossed the root in the air and caught it.
"If, if, if. If my grandmother had wheels, she would be a cart. This thing is stone. It's dead."
"It still has lingering essence!" the seller argued, though he sounded unsure. "You can grind it into powder. Good for... tea. Gives you a little heat in the winter. Good for old bones like yours."
Long Tan started to put it down. He made a motion to stand up, dusting off his knees.
"I need something to chew on while I walk. It's ugly, but I collect odd shapes."
He paused. He looked the seller in the eye. The lantern light flickered between them. The tension was thick.
"2 Silver. For the dead root."
"5 Silver," the seller snapped greedily. "It was a Spirit Medicine once. The ghost of the medicine is worth 5."
Long Tan hesitated. He scratched his chin. He pretended to be annoyed, calculating the cost of a meal versus the root.
Inside, his heart was screaming. Take it! Give it to me!
But he kept his face like stone.
"You are robbing a poor old man," Long Tan grumbled.
He reached into his dirty robe. He counted out five silver coins slowly.
Clink. Clink. Clink. Clink. Clink.
He dropped them into the seller's dirty hand.
"Fine. 5 Silver for the dead stick."
The Escape
Long Tan grabbed the Withered Blood Ginseng.
The moment his skin touched it, a feeling of pure knowledge flashed in his mind. The System confirmed what his instincts told him.
Item: High-Grade Herb.
Status: Near Death (0.5% Life Remaining).
Potential: Mutated Evolution.
It wasn't dead. It was sleeping.
"Pleasure doing business," the seller grinned, showing rotten teeth. He quickly hid the silver in his boot, thinking he had just scammed a fool into buying a piece of trash. "Come back if you want more garbage, old man!"
Long Tan stood up. He hunched his shoulders and walked away into the fog.
He forced himself to walk slowly.
Step. Cough. Step. Cough.
He felt eyes on his back. Not the Zhou spies, but the thieves of the market. They had seen silver change hands.
Long Tan turned a corner into a dark alleyway, heading for the exit.
Two men stepped out from the shadows. They were filthy, holding jagged knives.
"Hey, old man," one whispered, stepping forward with a grin. "You have silver for roots, you have silver for us."
Long Tan didn't stop walking.
He didn't use a technique. He didn't draw a weapon.
He just stopped coughing.
He lifted his head. Under the hood, his eyes glowed with the cold, murderous intent of a man who had slaughtered a Wolf King and a 700 Jin Master.
He released his Killing Aura.
"Get lost."
The voice wasn't an old man's voice. It was the low growl of a beast.
The thieves froze. Their instincts screamed danger. The hair on their arms stood up.
They stepped back, pressed against the wall, letting him pass.
Long Tan vanished into the woods.
As soon as he hit the tree line, he straightened up. The "old man" disappeared.
He moved with speed now, clutching the withered root against his chest.
"Laugh all you want," Long Tan whispered to the darkness as he ran back toward his fortress.
"You saw a corpse. I saw a dragon."
He had the key.
Tonight, the 630 Jin limit would shatter.
[AUTHOR'S NOTE]
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