Night swallowed the Western District by the time they slipped back into Jade Immortal City. Jared led Luther through a lattice of half-collapsed alleys until the abandoned shack reappeared, squatting behind a curtain of moldy bamboo.
Inside, the young cultivator hunched over a pile of prime crystals, lips shaping silent numbers. The door scraped, and he jerked so hard that glittering stones sprayed from his palms like startled fish.
His voice cracked before his knees did. “S-Seniors, I swear that was everything I knew. Press me again and it will still be nothing!”
Jared said nothing. He untied a broader sack and let it settle between them with a muted thud.
The mouth gaped just enough for light to spill out, hundreds of high-grade prime crystals blazing beside sleek vials of recovery and cultivation elixirs. Seeing this, the boy’s pupils dilated, breath snagging like cloth on a nail.
Jared let the silence do its work, then spoke in a tone that offered no exits. “We are not here to rough you up. You live by trafficking whispers, so you know which doors such people hide behind.”
The boy flicked a glance at the treasure, then at the quiet blades hiding in Jared’s eyes. His tongue rasped over cracked lips before words emerged. “S-Senior… One wrong step could cost me my head… No, my very soul on Soulfall Slope.”
Luther cut in, voice low but steady. “Exactly why we need them. This cache is your fee for the introduction. When the job is done, more will follow.”
He watched calculation muscle its way past fear in the boy’s eyes, silver always out-shouted terror. Teeth set, the youngster, named Monkey, scooped the sack to his chest and whispered, “Follow me… No talking, no sightseeing…”
Monkey slipped ahead like a shadow, never pausing long enough for Jared’s boots to settle on the cobbles.
Broken walls rose like jagged ribs; every few breaths Monkey vaulted one, obliging Jared to scramble after.
When gaps narrowed into black mouths, Monkey ducked and slid into tunnels that stank of wet stone.
Half an hour bled away before the alleys spat them into a district of sprawling, once-grand manors. Their roofs still dwarfed the street, yet vines throttled every beam, and windows gaped like pulled teeth.
Monkey halted at a gate where half a door dangled from a single hinge. He rapped the frame, three slow, two sharp, each strike echoing like a code Jared could not read.
A drawn-out creak answered. A narrow slice of courtyard appeared, framed by a single suspicious eye.
“Monkey? That you?! Who are the others?!” The voice was a low growl, the kind that suggested steel lived somewhere beneath the speaker’s ribs.
“Panther, it’s me,” Monkey hissed. “These two want in, hard fighters, generous gifts, serious about the big score.”
Silence stretched, then the door yawned wider.
A scar-faced man, compact as coiled rope, stepped aside and barked, “Inside, quick.”
Jared crossed the threshold and felt the air shift, as though a film slid over his ears.
The courtyard sprawled, improbably neat amid ruin, flagstones reset, roofs patched. A faint ripple of warding energy kissed his skin, someone had carved symmetry into the chaos.
A few cultivators crouched in shadowed corners, oiling blades or steadying their breath. Their eyes lifted together, weighing the newcomers like coin.
Panther threaded them between columns into a smaller yard muffled by bamboo and mist.
A tall woman in teal fighting leathers stood with her back to them, studying the bamboo as if rehearsing a duel only she could see. She turned. Clean-cut features, unflinching eyes, the cool authority of someone who had never lost her footing.
Her aura pressed out, High Immortal Realm Level Four, sharp enough that Jared’s bones felt counted.
Panther dipped his head. “Boss Lady, Monkey’s here with two arrivals who want in.”
Her eyes skimmed over Luther, lingered on Jared, then moved on, yet the weight of them remained against his chest. He kept his own cultivation folded tight, a coin concealed in a fist, Luther let his power breathe. Together they must have looked like mismatched pieces from two puzzles.
“Who are you, and why seek us?” The woman’s tone was winter-clear.
Monkey hurried forward, spine nearly folded in half. “Ms. Lyza, these seniors are hunting word on Jade Immortal Manor and the celestials. Especially the business at Soulfall Slope. Their purse is heavy, and they felt trustworthy, so I…”
Lyza’s stare sharpened. “Soulfall Slope is not yours to gossip about. You forget your place, Monkey.”
Monkey’s shoulders jerked like strings had been yanked, and silence swallowed him.
Jared stepped into the tension, palms pressed together in greeting. “Forgive him. I am Jared, this is Luther… Those executed at Soulfall Slope were likely mentors of mine. The debt of blood cannot rest. I bear no mercy for Jade Immortal Manor or their celestial patrons. I come seeking comrades, not secrets.”
Jared felt Lyza’s gaze digging for something buried beneath his calm. From the corner of his eye, he saw her pupils hold the hard glint of a smith testing steel.
Jared kept the grief and the cold promise of violence locked behind steady lashes, yet some shard of it must have slipped because a faint tightening rippled across Lyza’s shoulders. Words mean nothing.
“For all I know the Jade Immortal Manor sent you as bait to flush us into the open. We’ve buried too many brothers lately.”
“We can swear a Heavenly Law Oath,” Luther offered, ghostly breath coiling around his words.
“A Heavenly Law Oath?” Lyza scoffed, the corner of her mouth slicing upward. “With celestials worming their influence across the Azure Firmament Immortal Continent, tell me… Does the sky still bother to judge fairly? Oaths leak if you pry at the seams.”
Jared’s brow tightened. “What, then, would satisfy you?”
Lyza pivoted, eyes sliding toward the stand of emerald bamboo. “Follow me. We’ll talk somewhere safer.”
She slipped between the stalks.
Jared exchanged a silent nod with Luther, then drifted after her, boots crunching on dry leaves. Behind them, Monkey started to tail along, only to freeze when Panther’s stare cracked down like a silent whip.
The grove looked ordinary, thin sunlight, green shafts, cool air. Yet the instant Jared crossed the threshold the space twitched, as though someone tugged a hidden thread, and the flow of spirit energy bent sideways.
Ten or so steps in, Lyza’s figure blurred, smudged like wet ink, and then she was simply gone.
All at once the surrounding stalks shivered without wind. Leaves hissed overhead, knitting together until daylight drowned beneath a swaying green ceiling.
The grove tightened, a living cage. Pressure flooded from every direction; the soil split with glowing turquoise sigils that slithered like awakened vines toward Jared’s and Luther’s ankles.
