8: Chapter 8 First Visit to the Ghost Market

On the edge of District D in Jiangnan City, at the entrance of an underpass where even the surveillance cameras had been smashed.

There were a few mobile stalls selling miscellaneous goods, and most of the stall owners were wrapped in thick clothing, looking around vigilantly.

Su Chen arrived at a stall and casually picked out the loosest black hooded cloak.

"Boss, how much for this cloak and that mask?"

Su Chen pointed to a plastic mask in the corner of the stall, which depicted a fierce ghost with a green face, fangs, and wide, angry eyes—the very image of "Shura" recorded in Buddhist scriptures.

The stall owner was an old man with one blind eye. He glanced at Su Chen's thin school uniform and said, "Sixty Star Coins."

"Fifty. If you don't sell it, I'm leaving."

"Take it." The old man accepted the money without a word of nonsense.

Su Chen took the items and turned into a nearby dead-end alley without streetlights, draping the large black cloak over himself. The cloak hung down to his ankles, completely covering his originally upright frame, and his high school uniform, which carried a hint of student youthfulness, was well hidden.

He lowered his head to look at the Shura mask in his hands.

Putting it on meant completely breaking the bottom line of order established within the high walls.

Su Chen did not hesitate and put the mask on his face.

"Click."

The edge of the mask pressed tightly against his cheeks.

In that instant, the identity of "Su Chen," a third-year student at Third High School, was completely stripped away.

Beneath the mask, Su Chen slowly opened his eyes.

There was no explosion of Life Qi, yet a bone-chilling coldness seemed to suddenly emerge in the pitch-black alley. His eyes instantly turned scarlet, and a single black tomoe slowly rotated at the edge of his pupils.

The accumulation of two lifetimes, combined with the cold aura inherent to the Sharingan, made him exude a cold, ruthless aura, as if he had crawled out of a mountain of corpses and a sea of blood.

The most terrifying nightmare of the Underworld in the Great Xia—"Shura"—was officially online.

...

The Underground Black Market in Jiangnan City is also called the Ghost Market.

Its entrance is located inside the most desolate abandoned air-raid shelter in District D. Three hundred years ago, this place was a shelter for humans to avoid exotic beasts, but now it has become a lawless land for fencing stolen goods, assassinations, and smuggling.

Su Chen arrived in front of the tightly closed, rusty iron door of the air-raid shelter.

Two burly men stood beside the door, holding heavy spirit-energy machine guns from the old era. Both of them emitted Life Qi fluctuations no weaker than a High-level Martial Apprentice.

"Halt." The burly man on the left tapped the iron door with his gun barrel. "Do you know the rules? Token."

Su Chen did not speak; he reached out a hand from under his cloak and threw the black ring left by his parents.

The burly man caught it with one hand and took out an instrument to scan it. The instrument lit up with a green light.

"A new face, huh." The burly man threw the ring back to Su Chen, looked him up and down, and sneered, "Go on in. A word of warning: inside, life and death don't matter. If you die, there won't even be anyone to collect your corpse. Take care of yourself."

Su Chen caught the ring and strode through the door.

After passing through a damp, dark tunnel, the view ahead suddenly opened up.

A gigantic underground space, the size of several football fields, appeared before his eyes.

Hundreds of dim, yellow searchlights hung overhead, illuminating the entire underground space. Various stalls were crammed together, and the sounds of hawking and arguing never ceased.

"Mutated Iron-armored Rhino horn just brought back from the outskirts of the Star Gate! Trading for a D-grade combat blade! No haggling!"

"Selling Elementary Life Qi pills! Clean source, cash only!"

But among these sounds, the loudest were the fanatical roars coming from the center of the plaza.

There was a huge wire-mesh arena there.

On the arena, two blood-covered Martial Apprentices were engaged in a fierce brawl. There was no protective gear, and no referee was present.

"Kill him! Snap his neck!"

"I bet one hundred thousand Star Coins! Do it!"

A group of gamblers with angry eyes gathered around the arena.

"Squelch!"

One of the Martial Apprentices seized an opening, thrusting his fingers directly into his opponent's eye socket, and forcibly gouged out the other's eyeball. The opponent fell down screaming, and the victor stepped on the corpse, holding up a blood-stained, tattered book high in the air, roaring like a beast.

That was the stake of their duel, an incomplete Advanced Martial Skill.

This is the Black Market.

There is no morality, nor is there any compassion; power is the only passport.

Su Chen withdrew his gaze, pulled up his hood, and with his hands in his pockets, walked toward the stall trading area.

He walked very slowly and steadily.

But in a place like the Black Market, disguises often cannot stop those eyes like vipers.

As long as a Martial Artist Cultivates, Life Qi will circulate within their body, and they will inadvertently emit weak spirit-energy fluctuations. This is common knowledge in the martial arts world.

However, because Su Chen was judged by the machine to have no spirit-energy affinity, and because he was deliberately restraining himself, he had no Life Qi leaking out at this moment.

In the eyes of the desperadoes surrounding him who lived by the sword, Su Chen's "weak" aura, which was like that of an ordinary person, made him seem like a fat sheep that had wandered into a pack of wolves.

"Second Brother, look over there."

A thug with a scar on his face nudged the person beside him, lifting his chin toward Su Chen's direction.

"Not a single bit of spirit-energy fluctuation. Probably some sheltered young master from a rich family who ran to the Black Market looking for thrills. Look at his cloak; the material is old, but there isn't even a patch on it. He must be loaded."

The bald man known as Second Brother spat out the toothpick in his mouth, his eyes sinister. "Old rules, go up and frisk him. If he's got nothing, forget it. If he's got a black card, cut his hand and foot tendons directly and throw him into the sewer."

Scarface chuckled, a wine bottle appearing in his hand, and he swayed toward Su Chen.

Su Chen was observing the stalls on both sides. His Single Tomoe Sharingan slowly rotated beneath the mask, his gaze piercing through the flashy fake goods on those stalls, searching for items containing the abyss source.

"Oops, sorry brother, had too much to drink."

Scarface pretended to stumble, his body charging straight toward Su Chen.

Just as the two were about to collide.

Scarface's arm holding the wine bottle dropped slightly, and a small knife coated with dark blue poison slid from his sleeve into his palm.

His target was extremely precise—not Su Chen's money bag, but the kidney area on Su Chen's side and back.

Bleed them first, then take the money. This was their common tactic.

A cruel smile already curled at the corners of Scarface's mouth. He could even imagine the smooth sensation of the blade piercing into flesh.

Five centimeters.

Three centimeters.

One centimeter.

"Do you want to die?"

A hoarse, cold voice, devoid of any emotional color, suddenly rang out in Scarface's ear.

Scarface's pupils constricted.

He hadn't even seen how Su Chen moved!

Su Chen, wearing the mask, didn't even turn his head.

In his Sharingan vision, the heart rate, the degree of shoulder drop, and the contraction of the forearm muscles of Scarface as he walked over from twenty meters away had already signaled the trajectory of this blade a fraction of a second ago.

Su Chen shifted half a step to the left.

Just this one step allowed the poisoned knife to graze past his black cloak without touching a single thread.

After Scarface missed with his strike, his body involuntarily fell forward due to inertia.

But before he could even steady himself, Su Chen's right hand had already reached out from under the cloak.

There was no sound of any Life Qi explosion.

Su Chen's index finger and thumb were instantly covered in a layer of profound black Armament Haki, precisely grabbing Scarface's wrist that held the knife like a pair of iron pliers.

"Crack."

The crisp sound of bone breaking seemed insignificant in the noisy Underground Black Market.

But to Scarface, it was like a clap of thunder from the Nine Heavens.

"Agh!"

Intense pain instantly tore through Scarface's nerves, and the knife fell to the ground with a "clatter." He felt as if his wrist hadn't been grabbed by a person, but crushed by a ten-thousand-ton hydraulic press! Bone shards directly pierced through his skin, and blood gushed out wildly.

He opened his mouth, wanting to let out a shrill scream to call for help from his companions in the distance.

But the moment he looked up, the sound was stuck in his throat.

He saw a Shura mask with a green face and fangs.

Deep within the eyeholes of the mask, a blood-scarlet eye, with a black tomoe inside, was spinning crazily.

Scarface felt that his pride-worthy killing experience was like that of a babbling infant before these eyes. It was an absolute suppression from the depths of his Soul, as if with a single thought from the other party, he would be dragged into an endless sea of blood and shredded.

Cold sweat instantly soaked Scarface's back, and he could even feel a warm current slowly spreading down his inner thigh.

He had peed himself out of fear.

Su Chen slowly released his two fingers.

Scarface slumped to the ground like a pile of mud. Clutching his broken wrist, he scrambled backward, not daring to say a word, and like a stray dog, he desperately squeezed into the crowd, disappearing in the blink of an eye.

In the distance, the "Second Brother" who was supposed to provide backup saw this scene, and cold sweat also broke out on his forehead.

"Se... Second Brother, are we still going to attack?" The underling beside him swallowed a mouthful of saliva.

"Attack your mother's head!" The bald Second Brother slapped his underling on the head and roared in a low voice, "Didn't you see that he didn't even use his Life Qi, and crushed Third's wrist bone with just two fingers? This is a tough guy hiding his cultivation! At the very least, he's a High-level Martial Master! If you don't want to die, don't look over there!"

The several pickpockets and thugs around who had also been eyeing Su Chen immediately withdrew their greedy gazes upon seeing this, and one after another turned around to pretend to look at the stalls.

In this place, bullying the weak and fearing the strong is the first priority for survival.

Someone who can directly cripple a Martial Apprentice without using spirit power is not someone they can afford to provoke.

Su Chen took a tissue out of his pocket, carefully wiped the two fingers that had just gripped Scarface's wrist, and then casually threw the tissue on the ground.

He patted the dust off his cloak, not caring about the awed and wary gazes around him.

Like a ghost, Su Chen strode into the crowded flow of people in the Black Market, walking toward the deeper stall area.

"The trash has been cleared away; it's time to get down to business."