The main thoroughfare of Red Mist Market was less a street and more an open trench of red clay churned into porridge by hundreds of straw-wrapped feet.
Pei Jing walked along the northern edge where the stone footing was firmer. Wooden walkway planks had once been laid over the mud, but they had rotted through seasons ago. That left slick, splintered grey planks that tipped under weight and squelched filthy water over ankles.
The smell intensified with every step: boiling vinegar, rancid lard, healing waste scum. The bitter-salt tang of untreated animal hides.
On either side of the trench, rogue fighters squatted beneath tattered oilcloth awnings stretched from crude bamboo poles. Each vendor occupied a matching patch of ground. A three-foot by three-foot square of greasy canvas spread directly over the mud.
There were no gold-trimmed counters, no smiling immortal shopkeepers offering sky wine. No jade display stone stands. The merchandise lay exposed on the canvas, covered in red grit:
Split pig-dragon tusks bound with hemp twine. Dried strips of swamp-leech skin. Rusted iron daggers with chipped tips. Glass vials half-filled with cloudy green bile. And cracked clay bowls containing dried yellow grain.
Pei Jing stopped before a stall selling grain. A hand-carved wooden sign stuck in the mud read:
