320: Plan ahead

The north wind was like a knife, whistling through the Logistics Camp behind Iron Wall Pass.

This was the dimmest corner of the entire pass; the massive cloud ship landing platforms blocked out the starlight, and the mountain-like piles of waste slag and broken Magical Artifacts emitted a stale smell of rusted metal.

Every new moon, a trading post known as the "Ghost Market" would spontaneously form here.

There were no stall fees, no patrol teams, and not even any lights.

Only Cultivators wrapped in black robes and wearing masks shuttled through the shadows like ghosts. Here, as long as you had Spirit Stones, you could buy blood-stained Magical Artifacts, Medicinal Pills of unknown origin, and even certain Materials for evil cultivation that were strictly prohibited.

Su Ming wrapped his dusty grey cloak tightly around him, a bronze mask he had scavenged from the Artifact Hall's scrap pile covering his face, completely concealing his figure in the darkness.

He walked very slowly, his deerskin boots stepping on the frozen slag without making a single sound.

Although he was now the highly sought-after "Instructor Su" of Iron Wall Pass—the "Su Half-City" who could mobilize a dozen defense zone Formation Masters with a single word—here, he was just an ordinary buyer known as "Water Ghost."

"A net worth of ten million is not as good as a single Talisman for saving one's life."

In his Sea of Consciousness, Lin Yu's voice was kept very low, tinged with a bit of wariness. "Disciple, that Loose Cultivator selling poisonous insects to your front-left has looked at you three times. The fellow carrying the coffin to your back-right just swept his Divine Sense across your waist. This place is even more dangerous than the Yao Beast battlefield ahead."

"I know, Master."

Su Ming kept his eyes straight ahead, his hands tucked into his sleeves, clutching two "Ice Needle Talismans" that could be activated at any moment as he walked straight through the crowd toward a corner in the deepest part of the Ghost Market.

There was a huge piece of broken sailstone there, and huddled in its lee was an old man as thin as a stick.

The old man's eyes were rolled back, showing only the whites, and his sockets were deeply sunken. In front of him was only a tattered beast hide with a few crookedly drawn Talismans scattered upon it.

Su Ming squatted in front of the stall. Without wasting words, he tapped his finger lightly on the beast hide three times—two light taps and one heavy.

"Buying a path."

Su Ming's voice, squeezed through his throat cartilage, became hoarse and piercing.

The Old Blind Man's grey-white eyes didn't move at all; he just used two fingers that looked like withered twigs to scratch at the beast hide.

"The sky path, or the ground path?"

"The sky is sealed by a great formation; one cannot fly out," Su Ming said flatly. "I want the ground path."

The Old Blind Man's wrinkled face finally twitched, revealing a smile that looked more painful than crying.

He slowly fished out an oil-paper bundle from his robes, peeling it back layer by layer to reveal three Talismans. They were a dull yellow color, looking as if they had been rubbed from an old tombstone.

The surfaces of the Talismans were not marked with cinnabar-red characters, but were instead outlined with the blood of some Yao Beast mixed with gold powder, forming patterns that felt as heavy as mountains.

Even a single glance was enough to feel a thick, earthy scent rushing at one's face.

"High Grade 'Earthen Soil Escaping Talisman'."

The Old Blind Man's voice was raspy, like two rusty iron plates rubbing together. "Once activated, the body turns into quicksand, allowing one to travel five hundred zhang underground, ignoring ordinary rock layers and low-grade Restrictions. If attacked, it can even sustain an 'Earthen Soil Shield' for three breaths."

A glint of light flashed in Su Ming's eyes.

A distance of five hundred zhang didn't sound far. But in the underground of Iron Wall Pass, which was filled everywhere with Restrictions and hard rock, five hundred zhang was the boundary between life and death.

"The price," Su Ming said succinctly.

"If this were anywhere else, this kind of life-saving divine Talisman would cost at least twenty Mid-Grade Spirit Stones," the Old Blind Man chuckled, revealing a few missing black teeth. "But here at Iron Wall Pass, the ground is full of Black Iron ore veins and Geng-Metal Qi. The effect of an Earth Escape Talisman is greatly reduced, so no one buys this stuff."

He held out a withered palm, his five fingers spread.

"Five Mid-Grade Spirit Stones. No bargaining."

Su Ming's brow twitched slightly.

Five Mid-Grade Spirit Stones were equivalent to five hundred Low-Grade Spirit Stones. For an ordinary Qi Refining Cultivator, this was a massive sum that might take half a year of fighting on the battlefield to save up.

But for such a life-saving high-level Talisman, this price was practically a steal—one could call it a "clearance price for unpopular market items."

Clearly, the Old Blind Man also knew that keeping this item was as good as holding onto scrap paper, so it was better to trade it for some solid Spirit Stones for his retirement.

Su Ming didn't hesitate for a moment. With a flip of his hand, five crystal-clear Spirit Stones brimming with Spiritual Qi appeared in his palm.

These five Mid-Grade Spirit Stones were not something he had exchanged for with military merit.

With the expansion of the "Spirit-Responding Spider Web," Su Ming's previously empty Storage Pouch had gained quite a bit of this "grey income" that he found hard to refuse or turn away.

After all, as an "Instructor Su" who held a monopoly on technical expertise, he was a living God of Wealth that those captains desperate to survive had to appease.

"Deal."

Su Ming placed the Spirit Stones on the beast hide.

The Old Blind Man's withered hand shot out like lightning, snatching the Spirit Stones into his sleeve so fast that even Su Ming's "Micro-Observation" vision only caught a blurred afterimage.

"Goods delivered, transaction cleared."

The Old Blind Man pushed the three Talismans over and, lowering his voice to a level only the two of them could hear, said, "Kid, take a piece of advice from an old man. If the time really comes when you need to use these Talismans, don't run north. Go south."

Su Ming's hand paused slightly as he took the Talismans.

He gave the Old Blind Man a deep look but didn't ask more. He tucked the Talismans into his robes, stood up, and melted back into the darkness.

"Go south..."

On the way back, Su Ming chewed over those two words in his mind.

The south was the rear of Iron Wall Pass, the retreat path leading to the inland heartlands. The north, however, was the direction from which the Yao Beast tide surged, and also where the underground "river" of Dark Gold was at its most turbulent.

"It seems this Old Blind Man isn't simple either. Even if his eyes are blind, his heart is clearer than anyone's," Lin Yu sighed in the Sea of Consciousness. "There really are crouching dragons and hidden tigers everywhere in this Iron Wall Pass."

Su Ming didn't respond.

He quickened his pace, moving like a wisp of smoke drifting in the wind, silently avoiding two waves of night patrols as he slipped back into Stone House Bing Seven.