Down at the outer boundary bridge, the bidding war was on the verge of turning into an international incident.
"A million astral spirit stones!" the Grand Marshall of the Iron Dragon Empire roared, slamming an enchanted war mallet onto the edge of the stone platform. "And twenty war galleons! I will not leave this bridge without that handful of lawn clippings!"
"You dare threaten an imperial merchant guild with war boats?!" a rival chancellor screamed, his face purpling with rage. "We will blockade your trade routes for seventy generations!"
"Order," Lyra Ashford commanded coldly, tapping the pommel of her rapier against the table. "I warned you once. The next person who shouts will be hurled into the lower cloud sea."
The two men glared at each other, panting with fury, their knuckles white with tension.
Then, from the gravel path behind the guard station, a sound broke the silence.
*Scuff... scuff... scuff.*
It was a soft, rhythmic, completely unhurried sound.
The dull slap of cheap woven straw slippers shuffling across crushed basalt pebbles.
The sound carried across the platform with unnatural clarity.
Every cultivator on the bridge froze.
The hairs on the backs of their necks stood straight up.
A gentle, soothing warmth rolled down the mountain path like the opening of an oven door on a cold winter morning.
The ambient temperature rose by exactly three degrees.
The air smelled faintly of dry pine needles, sun-bleached linen, and clean, ionized ozone.
Lyra’s breath caught in her throat.
She stood up so fast her cedar chair skidded backward across the flagstones.
Her knuckles turned white as she pressed both palms to her knees, executing a ninety-degree imperial bow before she even looked up.
"Senior Brother!" Lyra said, her voice shaking with profound reverence.
Lord Nether-Bane dropped to both skeletal knees in the dirt, tucking his wicker basket against his ribs and bowing his bleached skull until his nose touched the gravel:
*Clack.*
"Master!" the Ghost King whimpered. "We have kept the noise down! We swear by the eternal void we have kept the noise down!"
The two hundred merchant princes, grand elders, and imperial generals slowly turned their heads toward the switchback.
Coming down the gentle slope was a young man.
He was wearing an oversized, faded hemp tunic with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows.
His loose linen trousers were wrinkled from sleeping, and his messy brown hair stuck out from beneath a battered straw sun hat.
His hands were buried comfortably in his pockets.
He was walking with the slow, meandering gait of someone who had just rolled out of bed to check if the morning mail had arrived.
Yet to the spiritual vision of every high cultivator present, the sky seemed to warp around his shoulders.
The sunlight behind him bent in a subtle, curved arc.
An invisible mass of unfathomable density moved with every lazy step he took.
They weren't looking at an ordinary mortal on a morning walk.
They were staring at a living star, cloaked in faded linen, casually strolling down to the boundary of the mortal realm!
*The Sovereign of the Great Sun,* the Iron Dragon Grand Marshall thought, his knees turning to wet clay. *He has descended from his holy sanctuary! Did our vulgar bickering disturb his cosmic meditation?! Is he here to erase our twelve empires from the firmament?!*
Sixty grand elders immediately dropped to their knees, their foreheads pressed against the flagstones in synchronized terror:
*Thud... thud... thud.*
Felix Vance blinked, pulling his hands from his pockets to tilt his straw hat back with a thumb.
He looked at the sea of prostrate figures dressed in silk and gold brocade, all groveling in the road dust.
"Man," Felix muttered under his breath, scratching the side of his neck. "These seasonal event NPCs have the weirdest animations. Why are they all doing the worship emote? Is this like a festival ritual thing?"
He ignored the groveling crowd, stepping around the Grand Marshall's enchanted war mallet as if it were a discarded soda can.
He strolled straight onto the floating wooden walkway where the visiting merchants had set up their temporary supply stalls.
To Felix, this was clearly the food court area.
Whenever a game introduced an open-world trade hub, there were always cosmetic stalls and food vendors selling cheap consumables to buff your stamina bar.
He took a deep breath, savoring the fragrant steam rising from the stalls.
The smell of caramelized sugar, roasted nuts, and fresh steamed dough was heavenly.
Felix stopped in front of a small wooden cart decorated with red paper lanterns and a fluttering silk banner.
Behind the cart stood an elderly mortal pastry master from the Azure Cloud Dynasty.
The old man had been brought along by his sect masters simply to prepare delicate treats for the grand elders during long flights.
Now, staring up at Felix Vance, the old baker looked as though his heart was about to burst through his ribcage.
His wooden ladle rattled against the edge of a copper cauldron filled with boiling amber syrup:
*Clatter-clatter-clatter.*
"H-H-Heavenly... Lord..." the old man stammered, his eyes wide with unadulterated dread. "Mercy... have mercy upon this worm..."
Felix looked at the wooden skewers displayed in the cart.
Each skewer held five plump, deep-red mountain berries, coated in a glistening, glass-like layer of clear, hardened sugar.
Felix focused his vision.
His passive Inspector HUD flared to life with a neat black bracket:
【Item: Candied Mountain Hawthorn Skewer】 【Grade: Common Street Snack】 【Quality: Masterwork Sugar Crust (Crunchy & Tart)】 【Origin: Hand-dipped by a third-generation royal street confectioner】 【Effects: Restores 15 Stamina. Grants the 'Sugar Rush' buff for 10 minutes (+5% Movement Speed).】 【Inspector Note: Crispy, sweet, and wonderfully sour in the middle. Exactly what you need after eating salted radish porridge for seventy-two consecutive hours. Fair market value: One copper coin.】
Felix smiled.
It was the first genuine, relaxed smile anyone on the boundary bridge had seen from the master of Solitude Spire.
"Hey," Felix said, his voice mild and friendly. "Those look pretty good. The sugar glaze is really even."
The old pastry chef let out a squeak that sounded like a stepped-on mouse.
Behind Felix, the Azure Cloud grand elder was hyperventilating on the flagstones.
*The Supreme Lord praised the mortal sugar glaze!* the elder thought frantically, his mind racing through nine hundred ancient scriptures. *What is the hidden Daoist metaphor?! Sugar... sweetness distilled from bitter cane through the trial of fire! The glaze... a translucent barrier separating the inner sourness of mortality from the outer sweetness of immortality! He is testing our sect's philosophical depth!*
"How much for one skewer of hawthorns?" Felix asked, pointing a lazy finger at the cart. "And do you have any of those sweet red bean buns in the steamer?"
The old baker fell to his knees behind the counter, knocking over a stack of empty bamboo trays.
"S-Supreme Sovereign!" the old man sobbed, clutching his flour-dusted apron. "Take them! Take the cart! Take the sugar! Take my soul! I do not dare speak of money before the Primordial Sun! If my humble sugar can serve as fuel for your heavenly core, my entire clan may die without regret!"
Felix frowned slightly, rubbing his forehead.
"Why is every vendor in this game so melodramatic?" Felix muttered tiredly. "I just asked for a price. Is the trade interface bugged?"
He tapped the side of his leg, realizing the NPC probably had a dialogue tree triggered by local currency.
He reached into the small coin pouch tied to his belt.
He dug past a couple of ancient iron keys and pulled out two tarnished, completely ordinary copper coins he had found in the kitchen cupboard three months ago.
He placed the two copper coins gently onto the wooden counter.
*Clink.*
The tiny sound echoed across the silent market like a thunderclap.
"Two coppers," Felix said clearly. "One for the fruit, one for the bun. That should cover it, right? Keep the change if there's tax."
The old baker stared at the two copper coins as if they were burning pieces of fallen heaven.
To Felix, they were two worthless pennies.
To the high cultivators kneeling around the stall, those two copper coins were utterly terrifying.
The moment the coins left Felix's fingers, the faint residue of his Sol-Class core's gravitational density soaked into the cheap metal.
The copper didn't melt.
Instead, the molecular structure of the copper atoms compressed, locking into an ultra-dense crystalline lattice that radiated a faint, warm, golden amber halo.
The two coins rested on the pine board with the unyielding presence of two mountain peaks!
The Azure Cloud grand elder nearly passed out from religious ecstasy.
*Primordial Solar Talismans!* the elder's mind screamed. *He traded two artifacts of eternal astral balance for two sticks of sugar! This is not commerce! This is a divine covenant between heaven and our dynasty!*
Felix didn't wait for the baker to recover.
He reached out, picked up a glossy skewer of candied hawthorns, and lifted the lid of the bamboo steamer to pluck out two steaming, snow-white buns stuffed with sweet red bean paste.
He took a bite of the top hawthorn.
*CRUNCH.*
The thin, glass-like sugar shell shattered crisply between his teeth.
The rich, sweet syrup melted across his tongue, followed immediately by the sharp, refreshing tartness of the ripe mountain berry.
Felix let out a long, deeply contented sigh.
"Oh yeah," Felix whispered, chewing with a happy nod. "That is the good stuff. Fresh fruit hits different when you haven't seen an orange in four months."
He turned around, holding his snack in one hand and the warm paper bag of buns in the other.
He looked down the floating boardwalk toward the other stalls.
There were fruit carts, roasted nut vendors, and rows of colorful woven fabrics.
"Since I'm already out of the house," Felix said, his slippers scuffing against the boards as he continued his stroll, "I might as well see what else they have in the produce section."
Behind him, sixty imperial rulers remained glued to the stone, too terrified to stand, watching the master of the cosmos happily munch on a candied berry like a schoolboy on summer break.