The sound of Zhao Ba’s thrust was a heavy, whistling grunt.
Two hundred pounds of muscle and Qi Gathering 3 striking force drove the solid iron probing rod downward, aimed straight through the murky surface of the sludge barrel toward the timber false bottom eighteen inches below.
If the narrowed steel point struck the greased iron metal bars, the high-pitch metal chime would echo across the entire North Gate plaza.
Arrest. Immediate impoundment. Thirty copper whip strikes.
Lin Ke didn’t move an inch.
Ten minutes ago, in the dark behind Crucible Four, he had started the math.
Tianfu. Branch.
In the mental sandbox, Lin Ke had explored three direct responses.
First: Meng Shan intercepts the rod with his forearm. Result: open brawl with gate guards, immediate alarm bell, punishment execution.
Second: Lin Ke uses a Nine-Fold Crimson heat blast to melt the rod tip. Result: forbidden technique exposed, immediate demonic fighter hearing.
Third: fluid rheology.
Non-Newtonian impact-hardening mid-air, Lin Ke had reasoned.
Water and fine specks behave as a standard fluid under low shear rates. But when subjected to sudden, high-speed sideways tearing force, the liquid carrier can’t displace fast enough between the tightly packed tiny specks. The mid-air undergoes dilatancy—the solid specks jam together mechanically, transforming the fluid in a heartbeat into an unbending, quasi-solid barrier.
In the sandbox, Lin Ke had optimized the formula. Thirty percent fine heat-proof fire clay, fifteen percent gelatinized root starch from the kitchen refuse, forty-five percent acidic iron tailings slurry, ten percent greasy latrine waste scum for smell deterrence.
Under a slow, gentle stir, the mixture possessed the runny consistency of warm porridge.
Under a violent moving impact exceeding three meters per second, the sideways tearing force locked the colloidal network into the crushing strength of dry sandstone.
Clunk.
It didn’t sound like iron hitting iron. It sounded like an iron rod being driven full-force into a block of cured oak.
Zhao Ba’s rod entered the sludge—and stopped dead four inches below the bubbling surface.
The sudden, brutal slowdown sent four hundred blasts of heat of moving recoil surging backward through the solid iron shaft directly into Zhao Ba’s wrists.
“Ugh!” Zhao Ba grunted, his wrists buckling with a sickening pop.
His grip slipped from the wet handle. The heavy iron probe bounced backward, smacking Zhao Ba square in the chest with the blunt end and sending him stumbling two paces backward into the greasy puddle.
“What in the nine hells—!” Zhao Ba yelled, shaking his stinging hands, his forearms trembling from the violent blast wave.
The two debt-inspectors reached for their swords, staring at the bubbling barrel in disbelief.
“Did that muck just hit stone?” one guard stammered.
Lin Ke took a single step forward. His hands were tucked inside his hemp sleeves, his face a mask of bored, office tiredness.
“Non-Newtonian colloidal dilatancy,” Lin Ke said.
Zhao Ba scowled, clutching his sprained right wrist. “Speak human language, you little fire rat!”
“impact-hardening fluid dynamics, Senior Brother Zhao,” Lin Ke said, speaking slowly and clearly in physical terms. “When liquid waste scum is soaked with fine heat-proof clay and acidic stone salts, sudden moving shock causes the specks to interlock mechanically. The harder you strike it, the more solid it becomes. If you thrust slowly, it offers zero pushback.”
To show, Lin Ke took a dry wooden stick from the cart rail and lowered it into the sludge with a slow, gentle pressure.
The stick sank effortlessly to the bottom, parting the black goo like warm broth.
Zhao Ba’s face flushed a deep, furious crimson. He stepped up to the barrel, snatched the wooden stick from Lin Ke’s fingers. Then he drove it down with another violent stab.
Crack!
The wooden stick shattered into three pieces against the fluid’s locked surface. It splashed two drops of foul-smelling black slurry directly onto Zhao Ba’s clean silk collar.
The acidic slurry right away sizzled against the dyed fabric, burning two neat, yellow-edged holes and releasing a noxious whiff of boiled rot.
Zhao Ba recoiled with a shriek, wildly brushing the skin-burning drops from his robes.
“Careful, Senior Brother,” Lin Ke said deadpan. “The sludge is packed ferric sulfate. Highly acid-burning to silk, steel, and exposed wet inner skin. Prolonged exposure causes severe contact dermatitis and permanent breathing ulceration.”
Lin Ke pointed to the stamped yellow scroll still fluttering on the cart frame.
“Plus, as noted in Clause 8 of Form 44-A, tampering with an active dangerous waste holding vessel incurs personal financial debt for all resulting chemical contamination. Should any of this slurry breach the roadway and contaminate the nearby wellheads, Elder Wu will be obligated to bill the remediation costs directly to the Grand Fortune Clan’s accounts.”
Zhao Ba stared at the sizzling holes in his silk robe, then looked at the bubbling, foul-smelling barrels. His wrist was throbbing, his fingers were numb, and the stench was making his stomach churn wildly.
He looked at Lin Ke’s calm, unblinking eyes. There was no fear there. Only the chilling, terrifying certainty of a clerk who knew the fine print better than the men who wrote it.
“Get this filthy carriage out of my sight,” Zhao Ba snarled. He turned his back and nursing his wrist. “Take your stinking soup to the quarry and drown yourself in it!”
“Acknowledged,” Lin Ke replied. “Meng Shan. Proceed.”
Meng Shan gripped the shafts, threw his weight forward, and hauled the cart through the North Gate.
The two debt-inspectors stepped back into the rain. He held their noses and waved them through without another word.
Once they had cleared the gatehouse by two hundred paces and entered the winding, boulder-strewn canyon road leading between the sect outer edge and Cloud Mist Market, Meng Shan let out a low, rumbling laugh that shook in his chest.
“Brother Lin,” Meng Shan grinned, looking back over his shoulder. “I swear by the mountain spirits, you turned swamp mud into armor plate. The look on Zhao Ba’s face when his stick snapped was worth a year of fire soot.”
“It’s not armor,” Lin Ke said, walking beside the cart and monitoring the drainage ditches. “It’s basic fluid mechanics. But the illusion won’t last forever. Once Zhao Ba’s wrist cools down, he’ll realize the cart was too heavy for two barrels of water.”
“Then we move fast,” Meng Shan said, quickening his pace.
The canyon road curved around the western slope of the mountain. It dropped rapidly toward the sprawling, lawless basin known as Cloud Mist Market.
Unlike the sterile, strictly regimented terraces of the Azure Cloud Sect, the market was a chaotic tangle of canvas tents, multi-story timber pavilions, and narrow, mud-slick alleys packed with rogue fighters, disgraced clan exiles, and independent tradesmen.
Here, sect bylaws had no turf. The only law was cold, hard spirit currency.
Lin Ke directed the cart down a narrow side street lined with apothecary stalls and scrap-metal dealers, finally halting in front of a three-story building built of weathered black timber.
Above the top door beam hung a tarnished bronze sign depicting a set of balance scales: Silver Scales Pavilion.
“Watch the cart,” Lin Ke instructed Meng Shan. “If anyone approaches, don’t engage. Tip the barrel over their boots.”
“Understood,” Meng Shan chuckled.
Lin Ke lifted two heavy bundles wrapped in greased pigskin from the false bottom of the cart—seventy pounds of Grade-2 Cold-Patterned Iron metal bars—and stepped through the beaded curtain into the pavilion.
The inside of the Silver Scales Pavilion was cool, dim, and smelled of dried tea leaves and ancient parchment. Behind a high counter of polished red sandalwood sat a withered old man with a wispy grey beard, squinting through a brass jeweler’s magnifying glass at a cracked jade ring.
“We buy scrap at four bronze coins the pound,” the pawnbroker droned without looking up. “No stolen sect magic charms. No blood-stained clothes.”
Lin Ke placed the two heavy bundles onto the counter.
The sandalwood creaked under the dense weight.
Lin Ke unwrapped the greased pigskin, revealing the seven metal bars of Cold-Patterned Iron. In the soft glow of the hanging spirit lanterns, the frosty feather dendrites across the grey metal shone with a pale, cold soft glow.
The pawnbroker froze.
The jeweler’s magnifying glass dropped from his eye, clattering onto the red counter.
He picked up a small silver testing hammer and struck the nearest metal bar.
Ting.
The tone was pure, ringing, and hung in the quiet room for five full seconds.
“Grade-2 Cold-Patterned Iron...” the old man whispered, his watery old eyes darting up to Lin Ke’s worn clerk robes. “No sulfur air holes. No melted rock waste veins. Hand-refined or crucible tapped?”
“Crucible tapped with a bitter salt-phosphate flux,” Lin Ke said flatly. “Seventy pounds here. Another eighty pounds in the cart outside. Total one hundred and fifty pounds. Market value: sixty low-grade spirit stones.”
The pawnbroker wiped his hands on his apron, his gaze darting nervously toward the front curtain.
“I can give you fifty spirit stones in raw jade pebbles,” the old man said. He lowered his voice. “And three sacks of high-purity Red ink flux. But you have to take something else off my hands. Right now.”
Lin Ke tilted his head. “What?”
The pawnbroker reached under the lowest drawer of the sandalwood counter. It pulled out a heavy, lead-lined iron box secured with three magic charm seals. He cracked the seals, lifted the lid. Then he placed an ancient, blood-stained roll of carved bone slips onto the counter.
The air in the room instantly dropped by ten degrees.
A sickly, freezing chill rolled off the bone slips, carrying the faint, nauseating scent of dry crypt dust and decaying marrow.
“A rogue fighter died in my guest room three nights ago,” the pawnbroker whispered. His face was pale with dread. “Dissolved into a puddle of grey jelly right through the floorboards. His family left this behind to pay the cleaning fee. Zhao Wuji’s debt collectors are coming at sunset to seize my shop collateral. If they find this cursed relic here, they’ll execute me for harboring demonic contraband.”
Lin Ke looked down at the bone slips.
The faint spiritual deep ring leaking from the carvings passed through the air and struck his left forearm.
Instantly, the hardened bone marrow inside his broken radius began to thrum with a deep, violent, and sickening shaking.
Lin Ke’s eyes narrowed.
“What’s it called?” Lin Ke asked quietly.
The pawnbroker swallowed hard, glancing at the front curtain as if expecting a headsman to burst through.
“The Deep-sea Bone-Melting Ashen Marrow Chant,” the old man whispered.