The Outer Sect of the Lingxiao Sect, Nanshan Market.

  The air was thick with the stench of low-grade spirit-gathering incense and sour sweat.

  Xu Nan stood before a stall selling second-hand talismans, pinching a Heavy Earth Talisman with yellowing edges. His eyes, squeezed into slits by his plump cheeks, were locked onto the faded cinnabar array lines.

  The abacus in his mind clicked furiously: The cinnabar's spiritual resonance has depreciated by forty-five percent. But it hasn't broken below cost—realigning the array with my own true qi will take less than half a breath. Pure profit.

  "Fatty Xu, scavenging for trash again?"

  A figure sidled up beside him. It was Zhao Qi, an Outer Sect disciple at the fifth level of the Qi Condensation Realm. He made his living issuing high-interest loans and shaking down new disciples who had no backing.

  Xu Nan’s gaze turned cold, sweeping over Zhao Qi without a ripple of emotion. Red mud from the eastern mining district on his boots. A storage bag looking twenty percent lighter than yesterday. A weak, unsteady stance. Xu Nan ran a rapid mental audit: Zhao Qi’s cash flow has dried up. He’s hunting for a mark to bleed.

  "Senior Brother Zhao," Xu Nan turned, flashing a practiced, ingratiating, and entirely non-threatening smile. "This isn't trash. Half the spiritual resonance remains, but the asking price is only ten percent of a new talisman. Leveraging one copper to net a ten-copper return—this is a high-yield asset."

  "High yield?" Zhao Qi sneered, his eyes dropping to Xu Nan’s belt. "I heard you joined a rogue party heading to the Blackwood Forest for Iron-thread Grass the other day. That squad butchered a stray Black-scaled Tusked Boar. You must have taken a cut of the dividends, right? Why are you still here pinching pennies?"

  He was probing, trying to see if Xu Nan was hiding an undisclosed windfall.

  Xu Nan’s expression shifted to one of absolute gravity, tinged with genuine agony.

  "Senior Brother Zhao, you have no idea about the bad debt on that run." He sighed, the flesh on his face trembling pitifully. "That boar did sell for sixty Low-grade Spirit Stones. But Senior Brother Wang, our vanguard, shattered a wooden shield taking the charge; replacing that took thirty stones straight off the top. The squad's talisman master burned two Tier-1 Swamp Talismans to trap the beast, deducting another twenty. The veteran members split the remaining ten stones and immediately took their profits to the Nanshan tavern. A piece of trash like me, only fit to cut grass and carry baggage in the rear? I didn't even get a single pig bristle. All I got was the stench!"

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  Every single word he spoke was an audited fact.

  He simply omitted the detail that the boar had strayed only because he had dispersed a calculated dose of beast-luring powder upwind. He also omitted that the most valuable asset in the boar's nest—a companion spirit herb, Blood Rehmannia—had been seamlessly embezzled into his hidden pouch under the cover of cutting grass. On the black market, it would clear a minimum of forty spirit stones.

  "I have a Four-Element Spirit Root, Senior Brother Zhao." Xu Nan looked at him, his innocent eyes radiating sheer stupidity and financial panic. "My monthly yield for absorbing spiritual energy is worse than a dog's. Last week, I invested twelve spirit stones in Qi-Gathering Pills, and the return was a microscopic thread of true qi. That negative-ROI trade kept me awake for three days straight. How could I possibly have any dividends?"

  Zhao Qi stared at him for a long moment.

  Xu Nan’s face was perfectly round. He lacked even a fraction of a cultivator's edge. His eyes were entirely consumed by the panic of poverty.

  A useless fat guy forced to micro-manage pennies because of his bankrupt talent. Bleeding him wouldn't yield any capital; it would only dirty his hands.

  Zhao Qi curled his lip in disgust. "Trash like you staying alive is just a waste of the world's spiritual energy," he snorted coldly, turning and walking toward his next mark.

  Xu Nan watched him leave. It wasn't until that figure completely vanished into the crowd that the mercenary, greedy, and slightly idiotic smile receded like an outgoing tide. His face settled back into a pool of stagnant, emotionless water.

  For a split second just now, he had run a combat simulation: leveraging the terrain and the Heavy Earth Talisman to counter-kill Zhao Qi. The win rate was ninety percent. However, the subsequent corpse disposal carried too high a risk of leaving a paper trail. The liability of killing a desperate fifth-level cultivator far outweighed the potential asset extraction. The trade was a dead, negative-equity account.

  He turned back around. For the negotiated price of two fragmented Low-grade Spirit Stones, he acquired the stack of inferior second-hand talismans and carefully secured them in his robes.

  In truth, he didn't enjoy fraud. In this world, if you put all your cards on the table, the market would smash you and the table into kindling. Sometimes, he felt that this life of perpetual calculation suffocated him, draining his mental capital. But it was still a better alternative than death.

  Just as he turned to return to the Outer Sect's servant quarters, The Heavenly Crucible, long dormant within his chest, let out an unprompted, resonant hum.

  Xu Nan’s nerves snapped taut instantly. His Divine Sense deployed outward like a net. All the subtle anomalies ultimately pointed to a single source.

  Southeast. The location of The Twelve Peaks of the Inner Sect.

  In his mind, his abacus began to clatter frantically. A catastrophic bad debt—so massive it defied calculation, reeking of blood—was bleeding into the Outer Sect. Something dangerous, or someone, was waking up.

  A layer of cold sweat seeped from Xu Nan's spine, yet his stride maintained an exact, unvarying three-foot frequency. He reattached that harmless smile and walked steadily into the crowd.

  It seemed that merely pretending to be an impoverished piece of trash was no longer enough to hedge the risk.

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