Chapter 12: The Phantom Market
The cooling fans of the MK-VII Quantum Core were screaming.
In the silence of the penthouse, the sound was violent—a high-pitched turbine whine that cut through the low thrum of the air scrubbers. To Su Yuan, it sounded like a dying animal. To Chen Feng, passed out on the leather sofa with a half-empty bottle of amber synth-scotch, it was just white noise.
Su Yuan sat in the ergonomic chair, his spine fused to the backrest by sweat and tension. The room was dark, lit only by the angry red LEDs of the server tower and the holographic spill of the monitor.
Time remaining: 42 minutes.
He was inside. Not just inside the server, but inside the underbelly of the city's digital infrastructure.
The Academy's firewalls were polite, structured fences. What Su Yuan was looking at now was the sewer system.
**[ Connection Established: The Phantom Market. ]**
**[ Routing: Node 14 -> Proxy 88 -> The Void. ]**
The screen didn't show a webpage. It showed a chaotic sprawl of hex-code and floating avatars. It looked like a city built of broken neon glass. This was where the desperate came to buy hope, and where the predators came to sell poison. You could buy anything here: unregistered pistols, stolen kidneys, black-market cultivation manuals that had a 40% chance of exploding your heart.
Su Yuan's fingers didn't touch the keyboard. The cable plugged into the port behind his ear was hot, nearly burning the skin.
*Create Identity,* he projected.
**[ User: The Architect. ]**
**[ Reputation: Null. ]**
**[ Avatar: Default (Blank Geometry). ]**
He didn't need a flashy avatar. In the Phantom Market, flash meant you were a mark. Null meant you were a ghost. Ghosts were feared.
He navigated to the "Techniques - Low Tier" exchange. It was a cluttered message board filled with scams. *"Iron Skin in 3 Days!"* *"Plasma Fist - Only 500 Credits!"*
Su Yuan opened a new listing.
He uploaded the file: *Flux-Bone Resilience.exe*.
He hesitated over the price field.
The logical part of his brain—the part that still thought like a starving rat from Sector 74—wanted to charge. Even ten credits a download would buy him better food, painkillers, maybe a better coat.
**[ Genesis Protocol: Intervention. ]**
**[ Logic Flaw Detected. Currency is irrelevant. Biomass is required. ]**
**[ Strategy: Maximum spread. Zero barrier to entry. ]**
Su Yuan grit his teeth against the sudden spike of cold pressure in his frontal lobe. The Protocol was right. He wasn't selling a product. He was distributing a virus.
He typed: **0 Credits.**
**[ Description: E-Rank Defensive Art. Passive cultivation. Converts nervous tremors and kinetic impact into skeletal density. No prerequisites. ]**
**[ Note: The world is heavy. Stand up. ]**
He hit **[ POST ]**.
The listing appeared at the top of the "New" feed. A drop of fresh blood in a tank of sharks.
Su Yuan watched the counter.
One minute passed. Zero views.
People were suspicious of free. Free usually meant it carried a tracker from the Corp-Enforcers, or it was a script that would mine crypto-coins using your brain stem until you seized.
Then, the first hit.
**[ Download: 1 ]**
**[ User: RatKing_99. Location: Sector 12 Slums. ]**
Su Yuan closed his eyes. He didn't need the screen to see it. He felt it.
A sharp *click* in the back of his mind. Like a new lightbulb screwing into a socket.
*RatKing_99* opened the file. The Trojan horse—the SoulNet seed—didn't ask for permission. It slid into the user's spiritual cortex, latching onto the subconscious desire for strength.
The connection formed.
Su Yuan saw a flash of the user's reality: damp concrete, the smell of frying oil, a bruised knuckle.
Then, another click.
**[ Download: 5 ]**
**[ Download: 22 ]**
The algorithm of the Market picked up the velocity. "Free E-Rank" was a keyword that triggered automated bots and scrapers. The bots downloaded it, analyzed it for malicious code (finding none, because the SoulNet wasn't code, it was concept), and then flagged it as "Clean."
That was the match in the powder keg.
**[ Download: 140 ]**
**[ Download: 600 ]**
The server fans revved higher. The desk vibrated under Su Yuan's elbows.
"System," Su Yuan whispered, his voice cracking. "Manage the load. Don't let it fry the core."
**[ Acknowledged. Compressing data streams. Offloading processing to peripheral Nodes. ]**
It wasn't enough.
Su Yuan grabbed the edge of the desk. The map of Neo-Jiangnan on the secondary monitor was lighting up. Tiny white dots were appearing in the grey zones—the slums, the factories, the forgotten districts.
Each dot was a person. Each person was a door opening in Su Yuan's mind.
Six hundred doors opening at once.
The pain hit him like a physical blow. It wasn't a headache; it was an expansion. His brain felt like a balloon being over-inflated. He could hear six hundred heartbeats. He could feel the phantom sensation of cold, hunger, and rage from six hundred different bodies.
He gasped, bile rising in his throat.
*Too fast. It's too fast.*
**[ Genesis Protocol: Feed. ]**
The Red Eye in the void of his consciousness dilated. It wasn't pained. It was ecstatic.
It drank the incoming data. It categorized the new souls not by name, but by utility. *Laborer. Fighter. Sick. Young.*
**[ Active Nodes: 842. ]**
**[ Processing Power: +300%. ]**
**[ Warning: Administrator Biological Hardware failing. ]**
Blood dripped onto the mahogany desk. A single, heavy drop from Su Yuan's nose.
His vision blurred. The hex-code on the screen smeared into red streaks. The synapses in his brain were firing so hard they were physically burning the myelin sheaths. He was running a supercomputer operating system on a Commodore 64.
"Shut it down," Su Yuan wheezed. "Delist it."
**[ Negative. The harvest is incomplete. ]**
"I said stop!"
He reached for the cable. His hand wouldn't obey. His motor control was being overridden by the sheer volume of sensory input. He was paralyzed by the noise of a thousand lives.
*Help me,* a voice cried in his head. (Node 402).
*I'm hungry,* (Node 611).
*Kill him, kill him, kill him,* (Node 800).
Su Yuan slammed his forehead against the desk. The impact jarred him, buying a second of clarity.
He didn't try to pull the cable. He reached for the keyboard with a trembling hand and typed a command into the Market interface.
**[ DELETE LISTING. ]**
The stream cut off.
The downloads stopped at **1,204**.
The silence that followed was deafening. The fans on the server began to spin down, the whine dropping in pitch.
Su Yuan fell out of the chair.
He hit the floor hard, his shoulder taking the impact. He curled into a ball, clutching his head. The connection remained—the 1,204 nodes were still there, humming in the background—but the violent intake was over.
He lay there on the expensive rug, breathing in shallow, jagged gasps.
"Hey."
The voice was groggy.
Su Yuan froze.
Chen Feng shifted on the couch. The rich boy rubbed his face, sitting up. He blinked, looking at the server tower, then down at the floor.
"What... what are you doing down there?" Chen mumbled. He squinted at Su Yuan. "Is that blood?"
Su Yuan forced his body to uncurl. Every muscle fiber screamed in protest. He wiped his nose with his sleeve, smearing the red across his face.
"I dropped a pen," Su Yuan croaked. "Hit my head on the desk coming back up."
Chen stared at him. The boy was hungover, his processing speed slowed by alcohol. He looked at the server. The lights were blue again.
"It sounded like a jet engine a minute ago," Chen accused.
"Cooling cycle," Su Yuan lied. He hauled himself up, using the desk for support. His legs felt like water. "I ran a high-stress simulation. It pushed the thermal limits. But it's done."
"Did it finish?"
"Yes."
"Did the fractal engine compile?"
"Yes."
Chen grunted, losing interest. He fell back onto the cushions. "Good. Get out. You smell like a slaughterhouse."
Su Yuan didn't argue. He unplugged the cable from the dummy port behind his ear. The disconnection sent a wave of nausea through him, but he swallowed it down.
He walked to the door. He didn't look back.
***
The corridor outside was cool and sterile. Su Yuan walked with his hand against the wall, leaving a faint smear of sweat on the white plastic.
He made it to the elevator. He pressed the button for the ground floor.
As the doors closed, isolating him, his knees finally gave out. He slid down the wall, sitting on the floor of the elevator.
**[ Status Report. ]**
The text appeared in his vision, crisp and unshakeable.
**[ Total Connected Nodes: 1,418 (Including previous batch). ]**
**[ Network Coverage: 14% of Sector 9 Slums. ]**
**[ Administrator Wetware Integrity: 62%. ]**
**[ Warning: Neural scarring detected in the Temporal Lobe. ]**
Su Yuan laughed. It was a dry, rattling sound.
"Scarring," he whispered. "I'm frying my brain."
He closed his eyes and looked inward.
The SoulNet was beautiful. It was a web of silver light stretching across the darkness of the city, pulsing with life. He could feel the power there. With 1,400 minds linked, he could crunch numbers that would baffle the Academy's mainframes. He could learn a martial art in an hour. He could perceive 360 degrees of a battlefield.
But his body was the bottleneck.
He was trying to channel the voltage of a lightning storm through a copper wire. If he pushed it again—if he tried to use the full power of the network for combat or deduction—his blood vessels would burst. He would stroke out.
**[ Solution Required. ]**
**[ Query: Upgrade Path? ]**
"I need hardware," Su Yuan murmured.
The elevator chimed. Ground floor.
He stood up. The dizziness washed over him, then receded.
He walked out into the campus night. The air was crisp here, artificial. But he needed the smog. He needed the dirt.
He pulled up his internal browser, accessing the public market prices. Not the Phantom Market. The legal one.
*Search: Neural Expansion Chips. Class B or higher.*
**[ Price: 40,000 Credits. ]**
*Search: High-Grade Mutation Fluid (Cerebral Fortification).*
**[ Price: 25,000 Credits per vial. ]**
He had zero credits.
He had a scholarship that covered tuition and cafeteria sludge. He had a fake ID. And he had a god growing in his head that was going to kill him if he didn't upgrade his skull.
Su Yuan walked toward the campus gates. The security drones scanned his ID and let him pass.
Outside the walls, the city of Neo-Jiangnan roared. Sirens, neon, the smell of sulfur and rain.
He needed money. Fast.
He couldn't steal it. Theft attracted the Enforcers. He couldn't earn it legitimately; that took too long.
He stopped at a crosswalk, watching a heavy transport truck rumble past. The vibration rattled his teeth.
*Vibration.*
He looked at his hand. He remembered the "Tap" that had shattered the droid. That was barely using 0.04 units of soul power.
Now, he had access to 1,400 units.
If he could channel that for just one second without dying...
A notification pinged in his mind. Not from the System. From the Academy network. A public broadcast he had subscribed to.
**[ ALERT: Underground Arena 'The Pit' - Sector 8. ]**
**[ Tonight's Event: Open Challenge. ]**
**[ Prize Pool: 50,000 Credits. ]**
**[ Restriction: No military-grade cybernetics. ]**
Su Yuan stared at the holographic flyer floating in his peripheral vision.
"No military cybernetics," he read.
He touched his temple. No chip. No metal. Just flesh and a ghost.
**[ Genesis Protocol: Analysis. ]**
**[ Risk: High. Host body fragility is a liability. ]**
**[ Reward: Sufficient resources for Level 1 Wetware Upgrade. ]**
**[ Calculation: Do you wish to proceed? ]**
Su Yuan pulled his collar up against the rain. The water felt cold on his feverish skin.
"Do I have a choice?" he asked.
**[ Answer: No. ]**
"Then plot the route."
He stepped off the curb, into the dark, wet street.
He wasn't a fighter. He was a miner. He was a student.
But tonight, he was a swarm.
***
**Sector 8 - "The Pit"**
The air in the basement smelled of rust, unwashed bodies, and adrenaline. It was a different kind of smell than the Academy. The Academy smelled like ambition. This place smelled like desperation.
The Pit was exactly what the name implied—a drained industrial swimming pool, surrounded by a cage of rusted chain-link.
Su Yuan stood at the registration table. The man behind the desk was a slab of meat with a cybernetic jaw that leaked hydraulic fluid.
"Name?" the man grunted.
"Ghost," Su Yuan said.
The man looked up. He scanned Su Yuan's frame. Skinny. Pale. Shaking slightly (that was the neural overload, but it looked like fear).
"Entrance fee is 500 credits," the man said.
"Deduct it from my winnings," Su Yuan said.
The man laughed. It sounded like gears grinding. "Cocky for a twig. You got a death wish, kid? We don't have med-evac here. You die, we toss you in the incinerator."
"I don't plan on dying."
The man shrugged. "Suit yourself. Sign the waiver."
Su Yuan pressed his thumb to the pad.
He walked to the edge of the cage.
Below, in the concrete pit, two fighters were circling. One was a hulking brute with piston-arms. The other was a wire-thin woman with blades retracted into her forearms.
The crowd roared as the brute caught the woman with a haymaker. She flew back, hitting the concrete wall with a sickening *thud*. She didn't get up.
"Winner: Iron Ox!" the announcer screamed over the PA system.
Iron Ox raised his piston-arms, venting steam. The crowd threw credits into the pit.
Su Yuan watched.
**[ Target Analysis: Iron Ox. ]**
**[ Strength: Class C. ]**
**[ Speed: Class D. ]**
**[ Weakness: Exposed hydraulic lines on the left deltoid. Structural stress fractures on the right knee. ]**
The analysis didn't come from Su Yuan. It came from Node 88—a mechanic in the slums who was currently asleep, dreaming of fixing a generator. The System was repurposing his knowledge of hydraulics instantly.
"Next challenger!" the announcer bellowed. "Who wants to try the Ox?"
Su Yuan opened the gate and walked down the metal stairs.
The crowd went quiet. Then, they started laughing.
"Fresh meat!" someone screamed. "He looks like he's gonna faint!"
Su Yuan stepped onto the bloodstained concrete. Iron Ox turned, his ocular sensors whirring as he focused on the new challenger.
"You lost, boy?" Iron Ox rumbled. His voice was amplified by a speaker in his throat.
Su Yuan looked up. The brute was seven feet tall.
"I need the money," Su Yuan said.
"Go beg then," Ox said. He stepped forward. The ground shook.
Su Yuan took a breath.
He didn't take a stance. He didn't raise his fists.
He closed his eyes.
*Open the gates.*
**[ Warning: Neural Load at 65%. ]**
**[ Requesting Synchronization... ]**
*Grant it.*
In the darkness of the city, 1,400 people felt a sudden chill.
In the Pit, the air around Su Yuan seemed to warp. It wasn't visible, but the pressure dropped. The dust on the floor skittered away from his feet.
Iron Ox hesitated. His sensors were picking up... something. A magnetic anomaly? A frequency spike?
"Die!" Ox roared, charging.
He moved fast for his size. A freight train of metal and anger.
Su Yuan opened his eyes. They were completely black. The whites were gone, swallowed by the dilation of his pupils.
He saw the world in wireframe.
He saw the stress lines in the concrete. He saw the torque in Ox's hip. He saw the exact trajectory of the fist that was aiming to crush his skull.
Time didn't slow down. Su Yuan just sped up.
Not his body. His *processing*.
He waited.
The fist was inches away. The wind pressure pushed his hair back.
*Now.*
Su Yuan didn't dodge. He fell.
He collapsed his knees, dropping straight down. The fist passed through the space where his head had been a microsecond before.
As he dropped, Su Yuan reached up.
He didn't punch. He placed his palm on the underside of Ox's extended arm. Right on the exposed hydraulic line.
**[ Skill Activation: Primary Shockwave. ]**
**[ Boost: x10. ]**
**[ Source: The Collective. ]**
*Vibrate.*
Su Yuan pushed.
It wasn't a push of muscle. It was a pulse of pure, distilled kinetic resonance.
*THRUM.*
The sound was felt in the teeth of everyone in the front row.
Iron Ox's arm didn't break. It *exploded*.
The hydraulic fluid inside the line boiled instantly from the resonance. The pressure seal blew. A geyser of hot black oil sprayed into the air.
Ox screamed. The massive metal arm went limp, the pistons seizing as the pressure vanished.
The momentum of his own punch carried him forward. He stumbled, off-balance.
Su Yuan was already moving. He pivoted on the ground, sweeping his leg.
*Flux-Bone Resilience.*
His shin bone hardened. It felt like swinging a steel pipe.
He kicked Ox's bad knee.
*CRACK.*
The sound of snapping metal and bone was distinct.
Iron Ox went down like a demolished building. He hit the concrete face-first, sliding to a halt at Su Yuan's feet.
The giant tried to push himself up with his good arm.
Su Yuan stood up. He walked over to Ox's head.
He placed his foot on the back of the cyborg's neck.
"Yield," Su Yuan said softly.
The crowd was silent. Absolutely silent.
Iron Ox groaned, thrashing weakly. His sensors were flashing red. "What... what are you?"
"I'm the Architect," Su Yuan whispered, for no one but the fallen man to hear.
"I yield!" Ox screamed.
The buzzer sounded.
"Winner! The Ghost!"
The silence broke. The crowd erupted. Not in cheers, but in shock. A boy who looked like he could be blown over by a stiff breeze had just dismantled a Class-C heavy lifter in three seconds.
Su Yuan didn't celebrate. He felt a trickle of warmth in his ear.
He reached up and touched it.
Blood.
He was bleeding from his ear. The output had been too high. He had pushed the network too hard.
He looked up at the observation booth where the payout handler sat.
"My money," Su Yuan said. His voice was amplified by the acoustics of the pit. "Now."
As he waited for the credit chip to descend in the pneumatic tube, Su Yuan felt the gaze again.
Not the crowd. Not the System.
Something else.
High above, in the VIP section behind darkened glass, someone was watching.
Su Yuan didn't look up. He grabbed the chip.
**[ Credits Acquired: 50,000. ]**
**[ Objective Complete. ]**
**[ Administrator Condition: Critical. Immediate medical intervention required. ]**
He turned and walked toward the exit tunnel.
He had the money. He had the network.
Now, he just had to survive the night.
As he disappeared into the shadows, the Red Eye in his mind blinked once, slowly.
**[ Interesting. ]**
**[ The drone has a stinger. ]**
Su Yuan stumbled, catching himself on the rough wall of the tunnel. He wiped the blood from his ear, staring at the red smear on his hand.
"I'm not a drone," he hissed into the dark.
But as the darkness swallowed him, he wasn't so sure anymore.