The western boundary of Red Mist Market sat directly above the main drainage ditch. There, the collective filth of three thousand rogue fighters flowed down into the swamp.
It was here, surrounded by rotting wooden palisades and buzzing swarms of black corpse-flies, that the Monster Beast Processing Yards operated.
The stench struck Pei Jing fifty paces before he reached the gate. It was an overwhelming, greasy reek. A combination of stale marsh mud, iron-heavy beast blood coagulating in open stone troughs, sulfuric bile, and the foul ammonia of punctured entrails.
Pei Jing’s nasal membranes twitched, his mortal Viscera Refinement automatically adjusting his chest muscle to filter the heavy fine dust matter. He pulled his cone-shaped bamboo hat low, shielding his eyes from the oily drizzle that hung permanently over the valley. Then he stepped through the open gate.
The yard was a muddy clearing paved with uneven granite slabs, slick with animal fat and red slime.
Dozens of heavy wooden chopping blocks—solid cross-sections of ancient iron-maple wood four feet in width—were spaced across the yard. Overhead, a framework of greasy pine beams held iron chains and balance weight pulleys used to hoist the massive corpses of swamp hunting beasts.
At the central chopping block, a violent fight was underway.
