News of the drossless elixirs produced in Pit Seven couldn’t be contained within the fiery walls of the volcano bowl.
Word traveled along the underground drainage tunnels, whispered from the lips of grateful coolies to outer sect smiths. Then he carried by caravan drivers to the bustling trade towns along the Azure River. Within three days, every impoverished outer student, every rogue fighter. Every independent mercenary within fifty miles knew that the Slag Pavilion was producing mythical Grade-Nine Marrow Pills with zero pill poison.
By the fourth morning, a line of forty cloaked figures had gathered at the southern defile of Pit Seven.
They weren’t guards. They were buyers.
Some were veteran outer students whose spirit veins were clogged with the black residue of cheap market medicine. Others were rogue fighters clutching small pouches of copper bits, desperate to cure their children of fire cough. And several were wealthy agents representing private apothecary guilds in the outer valleys.
Tie Shan stood at the entrance to the defile, his twelve-pound iron bar planted in the dirt, his massive arms crossed as he surveyed the crowd with the unmoving patience of a mountain guard.
“Form a line,” Tie Shan rumbled, his voice booming across the rocky trail. “One at a time. No weapons.”
The buyers obeyed without a murmur. In the lawless borderlands of the training world, mortal coolies were treated as insects. But a man who stood seven feet tall with bronze skin and Peak Iron-Bone thickness commanded instant, scared respect.
Inside the stone hut, Lin Tao sat behind a wide slate counter, with Deacon Chen standing beside him holding an iron balance scale and a ledger.
On the table rested four wooden display trays, each holding ten semi-clear, emerald-green Marrow-Tempering Pills. It glowed with faint gold flecks in the dim lamplight.
A middle-aged rogue fighter with graying hair and deep scars across his jaw stepped forward, placing a leather pouch containing forty silver bits on the counter. His hands trembled as he looked at the glowing pills.
“Little brother...” the man rasped, his voice thick with emotion. “My daughter... She was born with brittle bone disease. The sect apothecaries wanted three hundred silver bits for an impure Grade-Three pill that would have rotted her stomach. Will forty silver buy a single green pearl?”
Lin Tao picked up one of the semi-clear emerald pills, examining it under his left eye:
Lin Tao set the green pill into a clean fine china phial, sliding it across the slate table.
“Take the pill,” Lin Tao said calmly. “Dissolve one-quarter of the pellet in warm mountain water each morning for four days. The bone matrix will seal fully within ninety-six hours.”
The man stared at the phial, then reached for his silver pouch to push it forward.
Lin Tao raised his hand, stopping him.
“The price for independent fighters is twenty silver bits,” Lin Tao said. “Take the leftover twenty silver and buy clean winter grain for your daughter.”
The rogue fighter froze, tears welling in his weathered eyes. In forty years of walking the brutal path of training, he had known only extortion, robbery, and arrogance from the great sects. To have a master hand him a divine elixir and return half his silver was an experience beyond understanding.
The man dropped to his knees, pressing his forehead against the slate floor. “I’m Han Dong of the Iron-River Clan. From this day forward, if Master Lin ever needs a sword in the outer valleys, my life belongs to you.”
“Stand up, Brother Han,” Lin Tao said. “We trade in fair weights, not oaths.”
The man bowed three times, clutched the fine china phial to his chest, and hurried down the trail.
For six hours, the trading continued in smooth, disciplined order.
By noon, all forty pills had been sold, yielding eight hundred silver bits and three crates of rare Precursor scrap materials brought by rogue prospectors. Deacon Chen’s hands were shaking with pure joy as he counted the heavy silver metal bars into their storage chests.
As the last buyer left, a dark shadow fell across the doorway of the hut.
It wasn’t a customer.
Standing in the entrance was a tall, severe-looking man dressed in the high-collared black robes of the Grand Punishment Trial. A bronze mirror was hanging from his sash.
The clerk had arrived twenty-four hours ahead of schedule.
The silence that fell over Pit Seven was thick and choking. Outside the stone hut, the six court guards stood in rigid formation, their heavy iron plate armor gleaming dully in the gray volcano bowl light, their hands resting on the pommels of their broadswords. The forty scavengers who had been stacking copper metal bars froze in mid-stride, their breath catching in their throats as they recognized the black silk robes of the Trial.
Deacon Chen’s knees turned to water. He dropped behind the slate counter, his face gray with terror, his teeth clicking together like dry dice as he clutched the silver storage box to his ribs.
Tie Shan didn’t move. He stood in the doorway, his twelve-pound iron pry-bar resting across his shoulders, his dark eyes locked onto the black-robed clerk with the unmoving calm of a mountain guard.
Lin Tao didn’t stand up. He dipped his horsehair brush into black ink, completed the final character on his sales ledger. Then he set the brush neatly into its carved stone rest.
He looked up, meeting the severe, piercing gaze of Senior Inspector Han.
“Welcome to Pit Seven, Checker,” Lin Tao said calmly. “You’re early. But the ledgers are balanced.”
Behind the slate counter, Deacon Chen pressed himself flat against the dirt floor, his hands covering his head, praying that the severe clerk wouldn’t notice the silver storage boxes tucked beneath the wooden pallet.
Senior Inspector Han stepped forward, his cold gray eyes flicking from the scared deacon to the eight hundred silver bits neatly stacked on the slate counter, and finally to the four wooden display trays holding the leftover green marrow pills. The six court guards fanned out along the outer edge of the hut, their heavy plate armor groaning under the movement, their eyes sharp and vigilant.
Han didn’t reach for the silver. He reached for the iron counting frame in his belt, his bony fingers resting on the polished metal frame.
“We shall see, Lin Tao,” Han said, his voice cold as mountain granite. “We shall see.”