394: Chapter 394 A bizarre market sells fortunes; the Heavenly Dao becomes a meal on the plate.

The dark gray, deathly silent long street receded step by step beneath Zhou Wannian's spotless cyan cloth shoes.

Cold killing intent was completely concealed deep within his eyes, like an abyss frozen for ten million years, showing not a single ripple on the surface. He walked across paving stones fired from the remains of worlds, each step steady and heavy.

After passing through a cluster of collapsed black palaces, a bizarre and variegated array of colors gradually emerged from the originally lifeless dark purple haze ahead.

Following this was a wave of noise and clamor, permeated with endless madness and distortion.

Zhou Wannian stopped and looked up.

Appearing before him was a vast open-air market located within the Inner City of the Immortal-Demon Great World.

The scene here was vastly different from the markets in the Lower Realm that were filled with Immortal Qi and sold Flying Swords and Spirit Pills. Over a dozen miniature glowing spheres locked by iron chains floated above the market, emitting a ghastly white light that barely illuminated the intricate stalls below.

Most of the stalls were crudely pieced together from the massive white bones of exotic beasts or rusty black metal. The air was thick with a nauseating smell—a mixture of strong antiseptic, the fishy sweetness of fermented flesh, and a decaying scent like rotting wood.

With his hands behind his back, Zhou Wannian walked into this boisterous market with a calm expression.

He slowed his pace in front of a wide stall cut from a single piece of obsidian.

The stall owner was a deformed monster with a pig's head and a human body, with six spider-like appendages growing from its back. This monster was waving two mucus-covered tentacles, loudly soliciting business from passing Immortal and Demon Cultivators.

“Come take a look! Fresh goods just delivered from Fishing Ground C! Packaged Heavenly Dao Origin, with all self-awareness and resistant Laws already removed—pure and flawless! Whether you take it back to refine into your Lifebound Treasure as an artifact spirit or devour it directly to sprint through Realms, it’s a top-tier choice!”

Zhou Wannian's gaze fell upon the dozens of transparent glass jars placed on the obsidian stall.

Each jar was about half the height of a person, and the mouths were tightly suppressed by lead Seals covered in runes.

Inside the jars, there were no Medicinal Pills or Magic Treasures.

There were only clumps of mist in various colors, rolling frantically.

Zhou Wannian stepped closer.

He clearly saw that on the surface of one jar filled with ice-blue mist, a thick layer of white frost had condensed. The ice-blue mist lunged back and forth inside the jar; every time it struck the inner glass wall, it made a dull sound similar to the desperate roar of a wild beast. At the core of the mist, the faint outline of a fragmented world could be seen, with collapsing snow mountains and frozen oceans.

This was a low-dimensional world with ice and snow attributes. Its mountains, rivers, living beings, and even its Heavenly Dao will had been uprooted by an Extraterrestrial Angler using that transparent thread and thrown into a high-dimensional shredder. After countless rounds of cruel purification and erasure, it had finally become this jar of 'merchandise' emitting cold energy.

“This customer has a sharp eye!”

Seeing Zhou Wannian staring at the ice-blue jar, the pig-headed stall owner immediately approached with a fawning smile. A pungent, fishy wind blew from its mouth covered in black hair.

“This jar of ice-attribute Heavenly Dao Origin is a rare item. Although that Lower Realm wasn't large, its Heavenly Dao will was surprisingly resilient. We spent a tremendous amount of effort using a Logic Brainwashing Device provided by the Truth Realm, washing it for three whole days before its sapience was completely wiped. If you're sincere, five hundred Origin Stone and you can take it!”

Zhou Wannian looked at the ice-blue mist making its futile struggles in the jar, his deep eyes showing no emotion.

He turned his head, ignored the pig-headed stall owner, and continued walking forward.

The prosperity of high dimensions was built so nakedly upon the mountains of corpses and seas of blood of low dimensions. They put a price on the survival of a world and the joys and sorrows of billions of living beings, selling them in jars like ornaments.

It was like a group of maggots sucking blood from a giant's corpse; not only were they eating until they were fat, but they also had to dismantle the giant's bones to make jewelry to show off to one another.

Zhou Wannian's footsteps fell on the gray floor tiles of the market, the soles of his shoes rubbing against the dead low-dimensional ruins, making a slight rustling sound.

He walked to another adjacent stall.

This stall did not display jars but instead rows of white jade trays emitting a bone-chilling cold.

The stall owner was a bizarre existence with half the face of a beautiful female Cultivator and half an icy mechanical structure. She was using a pair of small silver tweezers to flip through something in a white jade tray.

“Custom Spiritual Roots, don't miss out! Custom Spiritual Roots perfectly fused with Truth Codes!”

The female Cultivator emitted a flat electronic synthesized voice from her mechanical half, while the human half of her face smiled like a flower.

Zhou Wannian looked at the white jade trays.

The trays were filled with pale green antiseptic mucus. Soaking in the mucus were bizarre pieces of flesh and blood tissue that looked like a mixture of human blood vessels and plant roots. The surfaces of these tissues were covered in dense gray patterns, through which an icy stream of data occasionally flashed.

They squirmed slowly in the mucus like skinned venomous snakes, emitting a nauseating smell of blood and machine oil.

“Customer, take a look at this one.”

The female Cultivator used the tweezers to pick up a piece of flesh root shimmering with lightning, showing it to Zhou Wannian. Mucus dripped from the root, making a crisp sound as it hit the tray.

“Thunder-Fire dual-attribute mutated Spiritual Root. We drained the world Evil Qi from ten low-dimensional lightning worlds, combined it with the vitality extracted from Mortal fetal spinal cords, and then injected the Truth Realm's latest anti-rejection code. No matter what your original Aptitude was, as long as you sew this Spiritual Root into your spine, you will immediately possess the supreme talent of Thunder and Fire mastery.”

Nearby, a passing demonic Cultivator stopped, his eyes greedily watching that Thunder-Fire Spiritual Root. He tossed out a Storage Pouch full of Origin Stone, grabbed the still-squirming Spiritual Root, and pressed it onto the back of his neck without hesitation.

“Chiii—”

A puff of blue smoke from scorched flesh rose. The Spiritual Root acted like a living creature, growing countless tiny barbs that instantly pierced the demonic Cultivator's skin and forced its way into his spine.

The demonic Cultivator let out a painful grunt, but immediately after, his eyes lit up with a fanatical thunderous light. His originally stagnant Demonic Path aura actually showed signs of a faint Breakthrough at this moment. He laughed wildly, left the stall owner behind, and strode away.

This was the fortune of the Immortal-Demon Great World.

Bloody, crude, and contrary to common sense. They pieced together their Physical Bodies and Divine Souls like assembly toys, using the lives of others to fill their own deficiencies.

Zhou Wannian watched this scene quietly.

He dusted off his faded cyan sleeves and clasped his hands behind his back once more.

He already understood the operational logic here. There was no need for enlightenment or bitter cultivation. As long as there was enough slaughter, as long as one could plunder enough low-dimensional resources, even a pig could be transformed by them into a fire-breathing Flying Dragon.

This market was the filthiest and most direct distribution of loot in this massive slaughterhouse.

Zhou Wannian stepped forward, preparing to pass through this foul market and continue toward the Fortune Hub at the deepest part of the Inner City.

However, his out-of-place attire and his Mortal Physique with no fluctuations of Immortal or Demon Qi eventually caught the attention of some 'interested parties' in this market full of distorted monsters.

In a dark corner of the market, there was a tent supported by massive black bones.

Under the tent sat a burly bald man with a face full of scars and one blind eye. His left arm was completely replaced by a thick mechanical iron arm; the end of the iron arm was not a palm, but a giant steel animal trap emitting a cold glint.

This bald giant was a boss who specialized in the 'living creature resale' business in this market.

His one good eye was like a searchlight, scanning back and forth through the crowd. When his gaze fell on Zhou Wannian's thin cyan-robed back, the eye suddenly lit up, a greedy and fierce light flickering in the pupil.

“Boss, look at that one in the cyan clothes.”

Beside the giant, a scrawny lackey with a rat's head approached and whispered, pointing in Zhou Wannian's direction.

“He doesn't even have a badge on him, and I can't smell a bit of Immortal or Demon Qi. That outfit, that delicate appearance—he looks just like a Mortal fished up from some poor academy in the Lower Realm.”

The bald giant rubbed his bare chin, his mechanical iron arm making a clicking sound of metal friction.

"Look at his slow, dazed walk; he's probably wild prey leaked from some slave ship, or low-grade Materials escaped from the Creation Furnace."

The giant grinned, revealing a mouth full of jagged yellow teeth.

"This kind of native low-dimensional living being without a Soul brand is a hot commodity in this Inner City. Those medicine-refining lunatics love these clean Souls. Catch him, strip him bare, and throw him onto the auction stage; at the very least, he'll sell for a thousand Origin Stone!"

In the Immortal-Demon Great World, low-dimensional beings without background or strength are like weeds by the roadside, trampled and picked at will. Zhou Wannian's carefree and defenseless appearance was, in their eyes, a piece of walking fat.

"Let's go, brothers, surround him. Be quick, don't alert the Inner City patrol guards."

The bald giant stood up, his burly frame like a wall of flesh. With a wave of his hand, he led four strangely shaped lackeys, silently blending into the bustling crowd and flanking toward Zhou Wannian.

Zhou Wannian walked on the sewage-filled street.

The hawking of nearby vendors, the friction of wriggling Spiritual Roots, and the wails of imprisoned Heavenly Daos intertwined into a suffocating web of noise.

But his expression was normal, his steps still steady and leisurely.

Just as he was about to walk past a huge stall selling flesh-and-blood Puppets.

The road ahead was suddenly blocked by three tall shadows.

At the same time, heavy footsteps came from behind, cutting off his retreat.

Zhou Wannian stopped.

He didn't panic, nor did he take any defensive posture; he just stood quietly in place, raising his eyes to look at the bald giant blocking the way.

"Kid, lost your way?"

The bald giant looked down at Zhou Wannian from above. His single eye showed naked mockery and cruelty, as if looking at a lamb waiting to be slaughtered in a trap.

"This isn't a place for a Lower Realm lowly beast like you to wander. Follow your grandpa obediently, and I'll find you a good place. If you dare to move, your grandpa's iron hand wouldn't mind crushing your two legs first."

The giant waved that thick mechanical iron arm; the steel animal trap opened and closed twice in mid-air, making a crisp metallic clanking sound, the threat self-evident.

The rat-headed lackey next to him also let out a burst of unpleasant giggling, taking out a black leather whip flickering with electricity.

"Boss, why waste words with him? Just break his limbs and drag him away. Anyway, those medicine refiners only care about the Divine Soul being intact; they don't care if he's missing arms or legs."

Zhou Wannian stood in the circle of several people.

He looked at the bald giant, then at the rat-head next to him.

Those eyes, deep as an ancient well, didn't show a single ripple.

He didn't answer the giant's question, nor did he pay attention to the unpleasant threat.

He just brushed the cuffs of his green robe and said a sentence in an indifferent tone, almost talking to himself.

"Spreading ashes on the ground, putting living people in jars."

Zhou Wannian slowly raised his head, his gaze sweeping over the indifferent onlookers of immortal and demon Cultivators, and the bloody, twisted stalls.

"This place of yours, from inside to out, reeks of rotten mud that should be thoroughly cleaned up."

Hearing this, the bald giant was first stunned, then let out a deafening wild laugh.

"Hahaha! A Lower Realm Mortal waste dares to speak big in front of your grandpa! Cleaning? What are you going to clean with? That glib mouth of yours?"

The giant lost his last bit of patience. This kind of wild prey that didn't know the height of the sky and the depth of the earth wouldn't know the rules of this high-dimensional world without being given some hardship.

"Reckless thing, take him down!"

The giant roared.

But he didn't use that mechanical iron arm to smash Zhou Wannian; instead, he swung his left hand violently.

From his wide cuff, a grayish-white giant net whistled out.

This net wasn't woven with hemp rope or animal sinew, nor did it flicker with the spiritual light of any immortal Magic Treasure.

It was woven from grayish-white lines of light. These lines were straight and rigid, automatically arranging themselves into perfect hexagonal grids in mid-air.

The giant net expanded with the wind, instantly covering the entire space above Zhou Wannian's head.

With the appearance of this giant net, the originally noisy market actually fell into an eerie dead silence at this moment.

It wasn't that the sound was blocked, but that the physical Laws in this space were forcibly suppressed by this grayish-white giant net.

The giant net emitted a cold, rigid, and lifeless aura. It was like a mathematical formula representing absolute rules, descending unresistingly to strip the prey in the net of all mobility and forcibly compress them into a string of data code that could be contained.

A triumphant, cruel smile appeared on the bald giant's face.

This was an Advanced capture net he had bought at a high price from those mysterious Truth Realm merchants. This net was fused with space-binding code from the Truth Realm; let alone a mere Mortal, even an immortal or demon Cultivator at the Nascent Soul Stage would have their True Qi frozen instantly upon being caught by this net, leaving them to be captured obediently.

The giant net carried a whistling wind pressure, seeing that it was about to fall on Zhou Wannian's head.

Standing in the center of the net, Zhou Wannian still didn't dodge.

He didn't manifest any magical power to resist, nor did he use his Physical Body's Absolute Mass to smash the net.

He just slightly raised his head, his deep gaze fixed firmly on the descending grayish-white geometric giant net.

At the very moment when that cold, rigid code light was less than a foot away from his forehead.

In the deepest part of Zhou Wannian's profound and boundless Divine Soul, which seemed capable of swallowing the entire Universe.

Those 99,999 ancient chains intertwined into an absolute closed loop, used to Seal his inner universe Great Perfection Laws.

For a long time, even facing the collapse of star rings or dimension-reduction strikes, the Law Seal had never shown the slightest fluctuation.

At this moment.

After sensing the special aura emitted by that grayish-white giant net.

One of the chains hidden in the deepest part, without any warning.

Experienced an extremely subtle yet truly existent tremor.

"Buzz..."

This tremor didn't spread outside his body; only Zhou Wannian himself could perceive it.

It was like a dead leaf suddenly falling onto the surface of a stagnant lake that had been calm for billions of years, causing an imperceptible ripple.

Zhou Wannian's pupils slightly contracted at this moment.

On that handsome face that had always remained lazy and casual, as if everything in the world was beneath his notice, all expressions completely froze at this moment.

His gaze pierced through the appearance of the giant net, stabbing straight into the bottom-level logic of those grayish-white codes.

The aura that triggered the tremor in his Divine Soul Seal wasn't some powerful attack or some profound Space Law.

But a sense of familiarity.

A sense of Origin-sharing aura that crossed endless dimensions and endless years, making him feel disgusted, yet forcing him to face it head-on.

In the Absolute Truth Realm.

In the Taiwu Ancestral Court.

These terms flashed through his mind rapidly. In the material of this capture net, some kind of Origin substance was mixed in, which only appeared at the beginning of the Universe's birth or the extremity of its destruction.

And this substance was once one of the core Materials he used to forge these 90,000-plus Seal chains!

The The Angler beyond the heavens. The Immortal-Demon Great World. The Absolute Truth Realm.

These few threads, at this moment, completely intertwined in Zhou Wannian's mind, forming a clear outline.

"So that's how it is."

Zhou Wannian stood under the giant net that was about to press down on his head and murmured softly.

His voice was calm, yet it carried a bone-chilling coldness sufficient to make ten thousand worlds collapse.

The giant net crashed down.

The cruel smile on the bald giant's face expanded to the extreme; he was already prepared to step forward to harvest his spoils.

However.

At the very moment when that grayish-white giant net filled with Truth Codes actually touched Zhou Wannian's body.

Zhou Wannian slowly raised his right hand.

His long, fair fingers didn't close into a sword-finger or a fist.

He just casually extended two fingers.

Facing that Truth net capable of imprisoning space.

He plainly pinched one of the grayish-white lines of light.