The Free Students’ Bazaar smelled of roasted chestnuts, ozone, and old parchment.
Unlike the paved, orderly avenues of the Grand Fortune Market Quarter—where armed merchant guards in green silk patrolled every stall with iron abacuses—this sprawling stone plaza sat in the shadow of the Upper Array Tower, outside the turf of the commercial guilds.
Here, independent rogue fighters, third-tier array crafters, and quirky alchemists traded in unchartered commodities under the neutral protection of the Elder Council.
Lin Ke pushed a two-wheeled wooden handcart into the corner of the west arcade, parking it beneath a sagging cloth awning.
Beside him, Shen Yue wore a deep linen hood that shadowed her eyes. Her fingers were tucked nervously into her sleeves where six Flame-Barrier Magic charms rested on hair-trigger alerts. Meng Shan walked twenty paces behind them, pretending to inspect iron nails at a neighboring stall, his broad shoulders serving as a silent, unmoving inner wall guarding their flank.
“Two guards at the north archway,” Shen Yue whispered, her lips barely moving beneath the hood. “They’re checking guild manifests. Anyone without a Grand Fortune transit stamp is being fined sixty percent in ‘unlisted check surcharges’.”
“Let them check,” Lin Ke replied calmly. “They have no legal standing on this flat stone slab.”
* * *
Lin Ke pulled back the hemp tarp on the handcart by three inches. He exposed four dark blue metal bars resting in a bed of clean sand.
He didn’t shout. He didn’t wave a sign.
He simply removed a single dampening magic charm. He allowed the natural, high-hum magnetic field of the Cold-Forged Magnetic Iron to radiate outward into the chilly morning air.
Within twelve seconds, the first customer arrived.
He was a middle-aged fighter in frayed indigo robes, sporting the silver compass badge of an independent flying-sword array master. The man was walking toward the food stalls. Just then, the compass pinned to his lapel wildly spun one hundred and eighty degrees. He locked onto Lin Ke’s cart.
The array master froze. He slowly turned, his eyes darting to the midnight-blue metal nestled in the sand.
He lunged forward, his trembling fingers hovering half an inch above the metal bars. “Is that... Cold-Forged Magnetic Bloom? Where did you get this grade?”
“Refined from deep underground vein tailings,” Lin Ke answered in a flat, cold and exact drone. “Purity: ninety-nine point four percent. Sulfur content: undetectable. Magnetic coercivity: four thousand oersteds. Ideal for third-tier flying sword forward thrust arrays.”
The array master picked up a five-pound bar. The blue metal hummed against his palm, the magnetic field pulling at the iron rings on his fingers.
“By the ancestors,” the man breathed, his eyes wide with greed and awe. “The Grand Fortune guild charges eighty spirit stones for a bar half this pure. They dilute it with zinc! How much?”
“Sixty-five low-grade spirit stones per bar,” Lin Ke stated without pause. “Cash specie only. No credit chits. A formal sect transaction tax slip included with every purchase.”
The array master didn’t bargain. He tore a heavy, stitched pouch from his belt and slapped sixty-five polished spirit stones onto the cart. He grabbed the blue metal bar as though he feared it would vanish into thin air.
Lin Ke swept the stones into his satchel with his left hand. At the same time, his right hand smoothly penned an official three-part receipt using his iron metal pen on stamped sect parchment.
“Transaction 01 logged,” Lin Ke said, handing the customer his copy. “Tax chit registered to Sector Four. Next.”
* * *
Word moved through the Free Bazaar like a flash flood.
Within forty minutes, the narrow arcade was packed with desperate craftsmen, array apprentices, and sword artisans. The Grand Fortune Clan’s artificial supply embargo on refined metals had starved the independent workshops for months. Finding pure Cold-Forged Magnetic Iron at below-monopoly prices was like finding spring water in the desert.
Lin Ke sold the metal bars in strictly limited lots of two bars per customer.
He didn’t gouge the price. He didn’t take bribes. Every single sale was logged in spotless double-entry columns on official sect dockets, complete with timestamps, purchaser registration numbers, and exact weights down to the grain.
If the Zhao Clan tried to claim the metal was stolen contraband, the ledgers would prove every ounce had been sold legally under Sect Free Trade Bylaw Section 9, with full town taxes remitted to the Elder Council.
By the second afternoon, the wooden handcart was empty.
Inside Lin Ke’s leather satchel lay three thousand four hundred low-grade spirit stones. A small mountain of glowing, sky-blue crystal-clear wealth that radiated cool, invigorating spiritual mist against his ribs.
Combined with the six hundred stones saved from fire smooth speed bonuses and Meng Shan’s old family savings, their total liquid capital sat at four thousand spirit stones.
They were one thousand stones short of the five-thousand-stone debt threshold.
Shen Yue exhaled a long, trembling breath from beneath her hood, her face flushed with disbelief. “Three thousand four hundred... I’ve never seen so many stones in my entire life.”
“Don’t celebrate yet,” Lin Ke said quietly, tying the neck of the heavy leather satchel and tucking it securely beneath his grey clerk robes. “When a monopoly loses market share, the first response is rule-book violence.”
Lin Ke lifted his chin, his cold grey eyes flicking across the crowded plaza.
Across the square, on the second floor of the Pavilion of Golden Clouds—the most luxurious teahouse in the outer sect—an arched bay window stood open.
Standing by the window, draped in gold-stitched crimson silk robes and holding a cup of steaming spirit wine in his pale, ring-bedecked fingers, stood a young man with sharp, high-born features and eyes like polished black glass.
Zhao Wuji.
The merchant-heir wasn’t drinking. He was staring directly down at the empty handcart in the west arcade, his face an emotionless mask of cold, hungry math.
Behind him, Steward Qian was bowing low, whispering urgently into his master’s ear.
Zhao Wuji slowly turned the jade wine cup in his hand. His eyes locked onto Lin Ke’s deadpan stare across the crowded square. The young master’s lips parted in the faintest, cruelest smile. A smile that promised total, systematic ruin.