69: They came to kill me, but they exposed the real buyer

Eastern Continent, Flowing Cloud Market.

Loose Cultivator Zhang San’s steps were nailed in front of a shop named “Hundred Refinements Pavilion.”

His gaze passed through the clean display window, greedily licking a Low Grade Flying Sword.

The sword's blade had a restrained blue glow, simple and unadorned.

The price was thirty Low-Grade Spirit Stones.

He subconsciously touched his shriveled Storage Pouch, his fingertips brushing against nineteen cold stones.

That was all he had earned by risking his life in the Yao Beast Mountain Range for three months.

His Adam's apple bobbed with difficulty, the light in his eyes dimmed, and he prepared to move his lead-filled legs.

Just then, a tsunami-like clamor erupted from the direction of the market's central square.

The crowd was pulled by an invisible force, surging madly towards a newly opened stall that didn't even have a sign.

Zhang San was caught off guard, swept up by the surging crowd, and pushed to the very front.

Then, he saw a scene he would never forget.

Rows of brand-new Flying Swords were neatly arranged on the shelves.

Every single one was uniform in form, luster, and weight.

On the sword blades, two ancient small characters were uniformly branded with cinnabar: Qingyun.

Next to it, on a rough wooden sign, a line of dripping ink in large characters stung everyone's eyes.

“qingyun type i, Price: nine Low-Grade Spirit Stones.”

Zhang San’s breathing suddenly stopped.

Nine.

This number slammed heavily onto his head.

This price was less than thirty percent of the Hundred Refinements Pavilion's listed price.

“It’s fake, right? Just good-looking but useless junk?”

Someone in the crowd voiced the question in his heart.

Behind the stall, a shop assistant dressed in Wanbao Tower attire expressionlessly picked up a “qingyun type i” and casually swung it at a piece of obsidian specially used for sword testing.

“Clang!”

A sharp clang exploded, sparks flying.

On the hard obsidian, a clear, shocking white mark was left.

The quality was beyond doubt.

The boiling crowd fell silent for a moment.

The next second, the suppressed desire completely ignited.

“Give me ten!”

“Stop pushing, all of you! I want twenty! I can resell them to my fellow Sect members and make a fortune!”

“And these Talismans! One hundred armor-piercing Talismans for only one Spirit Stone? Insane! This world is f***ing insane!”

Spirit Stones were haphazardly thrown onto the stall.

Boxes of Flying Swords and Talismans were carried away by faces twisted with wild joy.

Zhang San's eyes were bloodshot. He used all his strength to push forward, slamming all nineteen of his Spirit Stones onto the table, exchanging them for two Flying Swords and a small stack of Talismans.

As he clutched the cold, heavy, uniformly metallic “qingyun type i” in his hand, a sense of security, something he had never experienced before, forcefully filled his limbs and bones.

He did not know that he was merely the most insignificant grain of sand in the storm that was about to sweep across the entire Eastern Continent.

In just half a month.

The two characters “Qingyun” became a guillotine hanging over the heads of all Low Grade Artifact Refiners in the Eastern Continent.

Countless small Families and small shops, whose Legacies spanned generations and who relied on artisanal Artifact Refining for their livelihood, collapsed with a crash under this destructive price shock, without even time to let out a wail, declaring bankruptcy.

The market price system for Low Grade Magical Artifacts and Talismans in the Eastern Continent completely collapsed.

Divine Weapon Sect, Deliberation Hall.

The air in the hall was so heavy it could crush a person's bones.

Sect Leader Wang Tiange, a Cultivator with a powerful aura at the Late Golden Core Stage, had a livid face. In the center of the jade table in front of him, cracks were silently spreading, eventually turning into a pile of dust with a “crack.”

Below, sat the helmsmen of more than a dozen commercial giants of the Eastern Continent, such as “Hundred Treasures Pavilion” and “Four Seas Merchant Association,” each with a grim expression.

“Sect Leader Wang, it’s been thoroughly investigated.” The Pavilion Master of Hundred Treasures Pavilion, a gaunt old man, said in a dry, hoarse voice, “All sources point to the Qingyun Sect.”

“Qingyun Sect?”

Wang Tiange frowned. That third-rate Sect that, in his memory, had declined to the point of being delisted at any moment?

“Behind them is the Wanbao Tower.”

“Wanbao Tower is just a distribution channel!” A corpulent merchant association president stood up, his jowly face trembling, “The key is, how could Qingyun Sect produce products with such low costs! This defies all logic! This is completely overturning the table, trying to kill all of us!”

“His actions have completely destroyed the order of the Eastern Continent! Within half a year, all of us who rely on Artifact Refining and trade will have to beg for food!”

In the gaunt old man’s deeply sunken eyes, a venomous, snake-like cold light burst forth.

“We can’t wait any longer.”

“I propose forming an ‘Anti-Qingyun Alliance’! From today onwards, whoever dares to sell a single ‘Star Sand’ or a piece of ‘Void Realm Crystal’ to the Qingyun Sect will be the public enemy of all of us!”

“Seconded!”

“Seconded!”

Wang Tiange looked around, his voice squeezed through his teeth.

“Just blockading is not enough.”

“We must solve the problem at its root.”

He spread his palm.

“My Divine Weapon Sect will contribute one hundred thousand Spirit Stones, plus three High Grade Magical Artifacts.”

The gaunt old man immediately understood.

“My Hundred Treasures Pavilion, two hundred thousand Spirit Stones.”

“Four Seas Merchant Association...”

Astonishing sums of wealth were quickly gathered.

They ultimately transformed into a commission written in beast blood, sent through the most clandestine channels to a place that made all Cultivators in the Eastern Continent tremble at its mention.

Shadowless Tower.

On the commission, there was only one name.

Qingyun Sect Master, Lu Yuan.

That night, moonless.

Qingyun Sect, inside Lu Yuan’s Immortal Cave, was brightly lit.

He was not meditating; his fingertips were currently twirling the ancient beast-skin book he had obtained from the Wang Family— “Introduction to Puppetry.”

The words on the pages were obscure and difficult to understand, but the ingenious ideas described within, of constructing life with machinery and Formations, engrossed him.

This was a power entirely different from the cultivation system, yet leading to the same destination.

Suddenly, his action of turning the page stopped.

It wasn't because of the book's content, but because outside the Immortal Cave, a warning rune, serving as the core of the guardian Formation, was, without any warning, stained with a faint red color from the inside out.

No spiritual energy fluctuations, no Killing Intent leakage.

It didn't even trigger any alarms.

This meant that the intruder had bypassed all conventional detection methods, touching the lowest, most core Formation structure.

Lu Yuan's eyelids drooped, his fingertips continued to slowly trace across the pages, as if nothing had happened.

But his left hand, resting on his knee and concealed by his wide sleeve, quietly crushed a communication jade Talisman.

Just then, the shadow behind him became thicker than the surrounding darkness.

A dagger, entirely black, as if it could swallow light, emerged from that thick shadow, without a whisper of wind, stabbing towards his back.

The assassin was very patient.

He waited a full ten breaths, confirming that Lu Yuan was completely unguarded, before launching this fatal blow.

But he didn't know that these ten breaths he waited were also the time Lu Yuan had given him.

“Clink!”

A crisp sound erupted just as the dagger was about to touch his clothes.

A cold sword light did not parry from outside, but directly burst forth from between the layers of Lu Yuan's back clothing, at an incredible angle, striking the tip of the dagger.

It was Han Yuexi.

She was still sitting cross-legged on a nearby futon, but at some unknown point, she had opened her eyes, which now gleamed with a chilling intensity.

The shadow clearly hadn't expected this killing blow to be blocked in such a strange way. Failing in one strike, he immediately tried to melt back into the darkness and retreat violently.

But beside him, a half-human-tall black iron Puppet, its eyes glowing fiercely red, had already roared and lunged, its sharp claws bringing an ear-piercing shriek as they grabbed towards Han Yuexi's head.

The terrifying pressure of a Late Golden Core Stage Cultivator, like a tangible tide, filled the entire Immortal Cave.

Lu Yuan, however, did not even glance at the life-and-death struggle happening inches away.

His entire attention was drawn to the ferocious black iron Puppet.

The Puppet’s movements were swift and eerie, each joint's rotation carrying an inhuman, absolutely precise rhythm.

Especially the way the core drive Formation on its chest operated... Lu Yuan's gaze fell back to the pages in his hand.

On the page was precisely a complex, advanced Formation diagram.

The spiritual energy circuits flickering on the Puppet's chest, the structure of the interwoven runes... matched the depiction in the diagram perfectly!

Not similar.

It was identical.

A bone-chilling coldness rose from his tailbone, rushing to the top of his head.

This was no coincidence.

This book was a bait, deliberately placed by the opponent in the Wang Family’s Scripture Pavilion, waiting for him, the “victor,” to discover it.

This assassination, perhaps, was not a commercial retaliation at all.

Its true purpose was to make this Puppet appear before him, to verify whether he had already begun studying this book.

Behind this lay an unknown power, incredibly vast and skilled in puppetry.

And he, Lu Yuan, had long since, unknowingly, fallen into the opponent's chessboard.

He was not the hunter; he was the prey.