The Outer Sect of the Lingxiao Sect, at the edge of The Mission Pavilion plaza.

  Su Wan stood alone in a striking red dress. The bottom-tier disciples surrounding her, clad in gray servant robes, pointed and whispered, their murmurs thick with schadenfreude.

  "Did you hear? This is the legitimate daughter of The Su Family, a top-tier clan in The Central Continent. The Patriarch literally stripped her of her clan robes, revoked her status, and kicked her out to the Outer Sect to be a servant!"

  "Tsk, turning down the position of young madam in The Xie Family just to resist an arranged marriage. Rumor has it the Xie heir is a degenerate who spends all his money on wine and women outside, not to mention his weird bondage fetish. No wonder she rebelled."

  "So what if she has a premium Fire Spirit Root? Her beloved half-sister, Su Yao, trampled her into the mud with just a few tears and soft daggers. In this cannibalistic Outer Sect, without a steady supply of spirit stones from her clan, let's see how long her aristocratic pride lasts..."

  The gossip sliced through the air like blades, but Su Wan didn't even flinch.

  The swelling on her cheek—a parting gift slapped onto her from afar by her biological father—was already gone. Yet, his cold words remained branded in her mind: "The clan never raises useless trash. Your life is just a bargaining chip for The Su Family to exchange for spirit stones!"

  Su Wan looked down at the Flowing Cloud Silk wrapped around her wrist—the only relic left by her mother.

  I, Su Wan, would rather die in the mud of this Outer Sect than be a stepping stone for anyone's gain. She ground her teeth, a fierce fire igniting in her eyes.

  The Outer Sect of the Lingxiao Sect, Room 73, Block Ding.

  It was a dilapidated wooden shack with a leaking roof that nobody cared to fix. Fermenting spirit herb residue piled up outside, giving off a permanent, rotting stench.

  Xu Nan pushed open the creaking door, slipped inside, and bolted it behind him.

  The instant the door sealed, the vulgar, fawning, and comically sluggish demeanor associated with his fat plummeted away like shedding skin. His spine straightened. His breathing slowed to an absolute minimum.

  He walked to the crippled wooden table and pulled out the newly acquired Heavy Earth Talisman from his robes.

  He didn't use a talisman brush. Instead, he raised his index finger, forcing out a microscopic thread of True Qi. His hand was perfectly stable, devoid of a single tremor.

  Under his control, the cinnabar dust realigned. Half a breath later, a streak of earthen yellow light flashed across the previously dull paper.

  Invested two threads of True Qi for a black market valuation of forty Low-grade Spirit Stones. A beautiful compounding of principal and interest.

  Xu Nan exhaled a breath of stale air. He had no intention of selling this asset. Walking into the shadows behind the door, he pried up a loose floorboard and affixed the Heavy Earth Talisman at a precise angle.

  This shack, which looked like a pigsty from the outside, had internally been retrofitted into a vicious, chained trap array using scrap metal he’d scavenged over the past three years. If Zhao Qi dared to kick the door in today, the moment his right foot landed, the talisman would hit him with triple gravity, snapping his ankle. Within half a breath, toxic needles from the ceiling would settle his account for good.

  In this cannibalistic Outer Sect, a man operating without a safety net had to forge his own iron shell.

  Xu Nan dusted off his hands, getting ready to boil a bowl of plain noodles.

  Just then, a faint sting pierced his chest.

  Xu Nan snapped his head toward the window. His gaze peered through the cracks in the wooden planks, locking onto The Mission Pavilion plaza outside.

  The bad debt he had spotted in the market earlier today had landed.

  It was a beautiful girl in a red dress.

  Xu Nan didn't care about her looks; his eyes were entirely focused on a hard asset appraisal: Flowing Cloud Silk. A top-tier artifact. Base valuation starting at an astronomical three thousand spirit stones. Unsteady footwork, but flawless True Qi—backed by a premium Fire-attribute cultivation method. An expression of anger, highly incompatible with the current environment.

  The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

  The abacus in his mind clattered: A high-net-worth aristocrat running from massive liabilities. In the cultivation world, this type of person is a toxic asset. Anyone who touches her gets dragged into a meat grinder between two corporate giants and liquidated, principal and interest.

  "A debt collector I can't afford," Xu Nan muttered, setting an ironclad internal rule. "Until this woman leaves the Outer Sect, I must maintain a strict perimeter of at least five hundred feet. Zero exposure."

  Decision finalized, he ate his noodles in peace, lay down on his hard wooden bed, and slept soundly. He trusted his abacus.

  —?—

  Early the next morning, bells violently tolled across the plaza. It was the signal for the sect's mandatory monthly labor distribution.

  Xu Nan shrank to the very back of the crowd, doing his best to make himself look like an inconspicuous ball of fat.

  Up on the steps, Steward Wang held a Jade Slip Ledger, mechanically reading off the roster. The girl in red stood alone to the side, her chin raised slightly like a distressed but proud swan.

  "This expedition to Wind-Rending Gorge is rated Mid-Yellow Tier. The contracted roster is as follows..." Steward Wang dragged out his words. "The Su Family, Su Wan."

  A gasp rippled through the crowd. Wind-Rending Gorge was perpetually blasted by astral winds—it was a high-risk zone only late-stage Qi Condensation cultivators dared to enter.

  "Sword Pavilion servant, Yan Zheng."

  A youth built like a black iron tower, carrying an edgeless heavy sword on his back, stepped out of the crowd and stood silently beside Su Wan.

  Xu Nan scanned Yan Zheng: Stance stable as a boulder, deep and extended breaths. Eighth level of the Qi Condensation Realm. Despite some hidden internal injuries, he is an absolute premium meat shield. Used right, he can save the squad a fortune in medical expenses.

  He watched from the back with keen interest, silently running the numbers: A Fire-attribute aristocrat who only knows how to burn cash, paired with a physical shield. This shell corporation still needs to recruit a highly mobile operative just to break even.

  "The final member..." Steward Wang's gaze swept the crowd. Carrying a faint, imperceptible sneer, his eyes locked dead onto Xu Nan's position.

  "Block Ding, Xu Nan."

  The plaza fell dead silent for a moment, then erupted into roaring laughter.

  The smile froze hard on Xu Nan's face.

  He understood immediately. The shadow broker upstairs trying to force Su Wan's return hadn't just assigned her a suicide mission; they had intentionally strapped her to the most notorious Four-Element Spirit Root reject in the entire Outer Sect. The goal was to use this completely useless fat guy as dead weight to drag her down, disgust her, and bankrupt her pride.

  Xu Nan's blood ran cold. Eighty percent of his life-saving capital had just been wiped out in an instant. He wanted to rush forward, dump all his spirit stones on the table, and pay to settle this bad debt—but he couldn't. A piece of trash suddenly flashing massive wealth was begging to be robbed.

  When the safe path of staying hidden and the terminal risk of a death sentence were weighed on the same scale, Xu Nan found his margins completely erased.

  He took a deep breath. Then, under the mocking gaze of the crowd, Xu Nan pasted on an exaggerated, fawning smile—looking as thrilled as if he'd just found his long-lost mother—and practically rolled his way to the front.

  "Aiyo! Coming, coming! To be partnered with Senior Sister Su and Senior Brother Yan—my ancestors must have compounded good karma for eight generations!"

  Once the crowd dispersed and Xu Nan turned into a deserted alley, his sycophantic smile vanished like smoke. It was replaced by extreme, freezing focus.

  There was still some time before assembly. He didn't return to Room 73. Instead, he navigated a maze of alleys and slipped into The Underground Black Market. According to his long-term monitoring of the market's cash flow, it was exactly a quarter to noon—the precise window of shift changes, where price volatility was lowest and fast transactions were prioritized.

  Locating a hidden stall, Xu Nan poured several perfectly preserved stalks of Blood Coagulation Herb from his sleeve.

  The stall owner was a masked, skeletal man. Just as he opened his mouth to lowball the price, Xu Nan fired off the hard data without even looking up.

  "Blood Coagulation Herbs. Roots intact, sealed instantly, potency loss is under three percent. Buyout price: sixty Low-grade Spirit Stones. One stone less, and I take my business to The White Ghost across the street."

  The oppressive pressure radiating from this precise calculation forced the skinny man to swallow hard. He obediently handed over the spirit stones and closed the deal.

  The instant the cash hit his hands, Xu Nan’s brain finalized the survival simulation for Wind-Rending Gorge:

  In the squad, Yan Zheng is the textbook tank; he’ll take the first wave of concentrated fire. Su Wan has top-tier artifacts; she can weather the second wave. As a Four-Element Spirit Root reject, I rank dead last in targeting priority. That is my only operational redundancy for survival.

  Therefore, his procurement strategy was crystal clear: zero offense, one hundred percent defense, maximizing mobility and information jamming.

  "Thirty spirit stones, all on Divine Speed Talismans and Breath Concealment Talismans," Xu Nan whispered at another shadow stall specializing in talismans. "Add one spirit stone's worth of Blinding Smoke—ten units. One spirit stone for Toxin Clearing Powder—ten packets. Put the remaining ten stones entirely into the cheapest Fire Oil Talismans."

  Transaction complete. Xu Nan categorized and hid his life-saving assets close to his body. Feeling the slight, reassuring weight in his chest and sleeves, he took a deep breath, completely pulling back the ruthless edge he had just projected.

  When he stepped out of the black market and back into the sunlight, that harmless, slightly comical, and fawning smile was back on his fat face. In this high-stakes meat grinder, he didn't just have to calculate a way to survive; he had to squeeze out a massive windfall from the margins, principal and interest included.