Destiny in Cinders

"Yvelbane, how strong was the shopkeeper when I first met her?" An Jing's mind worked rapidly as he got onto the ground to inspect the signs of battle in the store. He hoped that Yvelbane would be able to pick up on things that he couldn't. "Was she an intermediate Qi Refinement cultivator?"

"Yes. She was a fivefold Qi Refinement cultivator, getting close to sixfold. Her power is weaker compared to the manager that came later. However, she doesn't have much combat experience or the air of a killer. I didn't pay too much attention to the details."

That is odd. An Jing finished inspecting the ground and got back up, doubts intensifying. The shopkeeper hadn't been weak. Fivefold Qi Refinement cultivators were no longer mere initiates. They would be able to use all sorts of artifacts or spirit gear.

While Skysource's population all practiced cultivation, the lack of resources kept most people at the Spirit Awakening Realm, particularly, the Silk and River Essence Stages. Only a few people who had good constitutions, sufficient nutrition and talent were able to reach the Tide Essence Stage and consider trying to reach Qi Refinement.

While the shopkeeper was on the older side and had no doubt relied on sheer time and effort to cultivate, she had still reached the Life Nurture Phase of the Qi Refinement Realm. She wielded quite a bit of power, but not quite enough to be significant. Why would someone who had reached an intermediate stage of cultivation still work as a normal shopkeeper?

She must have hidden her true cultivation. Not only that, why didn't she use the sword case and the jade armor pendant? At the very least, she should be holding the swift talismans on hand. She did have enough time to use a vital talisman to sustain her life a little longer, after all.

Not to mention, the shopkeeper was oddly warm to him. She had an ocular technique that revealed how old he was, so why did she treat him so warmly? Did she misunderstand something?

"There's no sign of combat here either. She probably got caught unawares and shot by three people at the same time. The shooters didn't finish her off and probably just left after they took the goods. All this is far too weird. It's not normal at all. Was she shot by someone familiar with her? Or perhaps..."

There were too many questions that he couldn't figure out. Some experienced old veteran of the black market might be able to learn something from these loose threads, but An Jing was someone who was from a completely different world. He knew something was off, but he lacked the wider context to know what.

He put on the drone goggles once more and complained, "I just got out of Direlife Manor only to get wrapped up in this black-market fiasco right after. Why am I always in the center of dangerous events?"

"The omens must've been there. We only just stepped into them without noticing them beforehand. I didn't think that celestial arcs would bring so much trouble. If you were a cold-blooded and emotionless person, you might've avoided some of them. But alas, personality determines destiny, as the ancients used to say."

Had An Jing not saved Huo Qing's life, it would've taken him longer to enter the city, which meant that he wouldn't be able to meet Metalhand to get his city pass and referral to the black market, let alone be wrapped up in the chaos. If he hadn't been angered by the Fengdu Guard and used his chance to escape, he wouldn't have run into this odd situation at Ocher Hill either.

"Let's take a closer look." There were many suspicious points, but An Jing was no detective and didn't know how to properly follow the leads. Still, he wanted a rough idea of the background behind this whole debacle. Only with some rough understanding would he be able to nudge things his way with the meager amount of power he had, hopefully ruining the perfect plans of those lofty corporations.

He activated the drone and had it quietly tail the blurry figure. "Now then, there must be somebody waiting in ambush at the emergency exit of Ocher Hill."

The truth turned out to be as he expected. When the blurry illusion-cloaked figure reached the entrance, he suddenly stopped in his tracks. The river of blood and piles of corpses made it so that no matter what kind of cloaking he used, he would be leaving ripples in the blood as he walked. Noticing that, he stopped using his illusion technique and looked around.

"Friend, since you're waiting for me, why hide yourself? Step out." The man was tall but rather slender, clad in martial robes that seemed to be somewhat bleached from being overwashed. There were many scars and wrinkles on his face. He wore his messy white hair behind him, unstyled. His entire being seemed to constitute chilling frost and firm boulders, radiating an aura of stubborn power.

His words caused a dark figure to step out from the mist of blood. The gold mantle and metallic trigram mask obscured his appearance. This man looked like a wraith that had stepped out of a bloodbath, chilling and reeking of blood. Oddly, he seemed somewhat vivid. His spirit qi seemed present and absent at sporadic times, causing him to give off the impression of a being that wasn't quite corporeal.

The tall man raised a brow. His eyeballs twitched the moment he felt killing intent washing over him and locking him down completely, stiffening his joints and sending chills down his bones. But when he cycled his internal technique, he was able to suppress the chill. "A trigram ghost? A lingering spirit? No, you must be an interceptor."

Though he spoke without fear, his actions betrayed his hesitation. He took a step forward with his right foot while he swung his left hand backwards, slapping away a tiny box at his waist. The next instant, he vanished.

The ghostly figure's head turned to look at the small airborne box, but right that instant, the large man came charging with the full force of a wild storm! The ground exploded, sending shards of rock flying. The man's huge figure vanished within the dust clouds that resulted. All of the shrapnel on the ground shot towards the trigram mask of the ghostly figure. These were martial techniques! The large man was actually a rare martial cultivator in the world of Skysource! 𝒇𝒓𝙚𝒆𝔀𝓮𝓫𝒏𝓸𝙫𝓮𝓵.𝓬𝙤𝙢

The black figure backed away rapidly at the sight of the punch. His body moved like withered leaves in a strong wind, surfing along it as if it was a wave. He backed away to the wall and was forced to raise his arms to guard himself. Then, a solid thump could be heard as the black figure's body got slammed into a wall and created an inch-deep crater from the martial cultivator's heavy punch.

The large man's expression changed when he noticed that the force he transferred into the black figure's body dissipated as if he had punched an ocean, almost entirely channeled into the wall behind the figure. The next instant, he felt chilling sensations traveling into his body through his fist.

He rapidly abandoned the notion of following up with more strikes and took a step back, his fist leaving a trail of frost as he pulled it back. "A ghost cultivator, huh? Who do you work for?!"

The black figure hovered out of the crater in a ghostly manner without a single word. A snake-tongue sword appeared in his hand silently, emanating cold, blue spirit qi from its forked tip. Behind the figure's mask shone a bright, bloody glow. He had locked onto the huge man before him.