The morning sun cast long shadows across the Blackfang Mountains as Wei Lin made his way deeper into their treacherous embrace. Five days had passed since he and Lin Mei had left Azure Peak Sect, and while they'd established a comfortable routine at the small town nestled at the mountain's edge, Wei Lin's progress gathering demonic qi had been frustratingly slow.

Each evening, he would return to their rented courtyard where Lin Mei had prepared purification formations and medicinal baths. He'd present his daily harvest, mostly spiritual essence from fourth or fifth-stage demonic beasts, and she would meticulously process it, removing the corruptive elements before he integrated it into his inner marketplace.

But it wasn't enough. Not nearly enough.

Wei Lin paused on a rocky outcrop, pulling out a jade abacus from his storage ring. He slid several beads across their rods, calculating the remaining time against his progress.

The tournament was now just five days away. Accounting for the journey back to Azure Peak Sect, he really only had three days, four at most if he pushed it dangerously close, to gather enough demonic qi for his eighth stall.

"At this rate," he muttered, sliding the abacus back into his storage ring, "I'll be lucky to fill half the stall."

The breeze carried the distant howl of some beast deeper in the mountains, causing Wei Lin to look up. The peaks ahead were shrouded in mist, their jagged outlines resembling teeth against the morning sky. Beyond the area he'd been hunting lay the true heart of the Blackfang Mountains, more dangerous, yes, but also home to more powerful demonic beasts.

Including those at the seventh stage of Qi Condensation.

Wei Lin's gaze drifted back toward the town where Lin Mei waited, concocting purification elixirs for his return. He had promised her he wouldn't venture deeper than the outer valleys. It had been their agreement, their compromise.

"But what good is keeping a promise if I return with nothing to show for it?" he asked the empty air, his voice lost to the wind. "What good is being cautious if I'm still too weak to make a difference?”

Decision made, Wei Lin adjusted the defensive formations woven into his travel robes and began climbing higher. The terrain grew increasingly treacherous as he ascended, not just from the steep inclines and loose rocks, but from the growing concentration of corrupted spiritual energy that permeated the air.

Unlike the pure spiritual qi that circulated around Azure Peak Sect, the energy here felt oily and invasive, seeming to cling to his skin and meridians like sticky dew. Regular cultivators would find it repulsive, possibly even harmful. But for Wei Lin's purposes, it was perfect.

Within his inner world, his spiritual marketplace hummed with activity. The seven stalls—fire, water, earth, wind, lightning, sound, and void—processed the ambient energies he absorbed with each breath, converting small portions of the corrupted qi into their respective elements. At the far edge of the central plaza, the embryonic eighth stall pulsed hungrily, its dark seed drinking in the traces of demonic energy that his marketplace had yet to filter out.

By midday, Wei Lin had traveled far deeper into the mountains than he'd ever ventured before. The vegetation had changed, becoming twisted and malformed. Trees grew at impossible angles, their bark blackened and scored with patterns that resembled arcane symbols. Flowers bloomed in sickly colors, even the moss covering the rocks had an unnatural, pulsating quality to it.

"Perfect," Wei Lin whispered, drawing a small formation flag from his storage ring. He planted it into the ground, activating a simple detection array that would alert him to nearby demonic beasts while concealing his own presence.

He settled into a meditative position beneath a gnarled tree, closed his eyes, and waited. The Merchant's Path was about patience as much as it was about exchange. Everything had its price, its proper moment of transaction.

Hours passed. The sun climbed higher, then began its descent toward the western peaks. Wei Lin remained motionless, his consciousness split between monitoring his surroundings and tending to his inner marketplace.

Then, just as the shadows began to lengthen into dusk, the detection flag trembled.

Something was coming.

Wei Lin opened his eyes but didn't move. The first rule of trading was to understand the value of what you sought. The second was to never appear too eager. He focused his spiritual sense outward, probing the surrounding area.

It didn't take long to locate the source. A powerful demonic qi signature approaching from the east, moving with deliberate slowness. Wei Lin frowned. This wasn't the random wandering of a beast on the hunt; this was the calculated stalking of a predator who had already identified its prey.

"So much for my concealment formation," Wei Lin muttered, rising to his feet. He retrieved the detection flag and slipped it back into his storage ring, then scanned the darkening forest.

A flash of movement caught his eye, a streak of black against the shadowy undergrowth, too quick to track precisely. Wei Lin shifted his stance, drawing on the earth energy from his third stall to strengthen his connection to the ground and ensure he was firmly rooted when the attack came.

It came from behind.

A blur of midnight fur and gleaming fangs erupted from the bushes behind him. Wei Lin spun, pulling water energy from his second stall to form a hasty shield of hardened ice.

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The beast, a fox-like creature with nine tails, crashed into the barrier. The ice shield shattered under the impact, but it bought Wei Lin the second he needed to leap backward, putting distance between himself and the attacker.

"Seventh stage," Wei Lin assessed aloud, noting the density of the beast's spiritual pressure. "A Nine-Tailed Shadow Fox."

The fox regarded him with unsettling intelligence, its tails weaving hypnotic patterns in the air. Each tail ended in what appeared to be a miniature fox head, complete with gnashing teeth and glowing eyes.

"Rare enough to be valuable," Wei Lin continued, circulating his qi in preparation for battle, "dangerous enough to be interesting."

The fox growled, a sound that seemed to come from everywhere at once, vibrating through the clearing with unnatural resonance. Two of its tail-heads lunged forward independently, stretching impossibly as they snapped at Wei Lin from different angles.

Wei Lin drew on his wind stall, accelerating his movements as he dodged the first tail-head, then twisted in midair to avoid the second. He landed on a tree branch, hands already forming seals to activate a trade within his inner marketplace.

"Convert wind to fire, thirty percent efficiency," he murmured, feeling the change ripple through his meridians. His wind energy diminished as fiery qi surged through his body, manifesting as a cloak of crimson flames around his right arm.

The fox leapt, its main mouth opening to reveal rows of needle-like teeth. Wei Lin met the charge head-on, driving his flame-wrapped fist toward the creature's chest. At the last possible moment, the fox's body seemed to melt into shadow, flowing around his attack like ink in water.

"Void conversion," Wei Lin hissed, instantly trading fire energy for void essence. His body became partially intangible just as three tail-heads bit through the space where he had been.

The sensation of using void energy was always disconcerting, like existing between heartbeats, neither fully present nor entirely gone. Wei Lin maintained the state for less than a second before resolidifying, now standing behind the fox with lightning crackling between his fingers.

The lightning surged forward in jagged arcs, striking the fox and causing it to convulse. Its fur stood on end, smoldering in places, but the creature recovered almost immediately. It whirled to face him, darkness pouring from its mouth like viscous oil.

Wei Lin recognized the attack pattern and threw himself sideways. The darkness splashed against a tree where he had stood, instantly corroding the bark and causing the wood to wither and crack.

"Corruption breath," Wei Lin noted grimly. "Good thing I didn't try to block that."

The battle intensified as they danced through the darkening forest.

The fox was incredibly agile, its movements unpredictable as its nine tails acted independently, each seeming to have a mind of its own. Wei Lin found himself constantly shifting between his energy types—earth for defense, lightning for quick strikes, water to counter the fox's corruption attacks, wind for mobility.

Seconds stretched into what felt like hours as they fought. The surrounding forest suffered collateral damage: trees splintered from misdirected attacks, undergrowth withered from corruption breath, and rocks shattered from impact.

Wei Lin's travel robes were torn in several places, and a shallow gash across his left forearm leaked blood whenever he moved too quickly.

The fox wasn't faring much better. Its midnight fur was singed in several places, one of its tail-heads hung limp and useless, and its movements had grown perceptibly slower.

But as the battle wore on, Wei Lin became increasingly aware that time favored the beast, not him. His energy reserves were depleting faster than he could replenish them, while the ambient corrupted qi of the mountains seemed to strengthen the fox with each passing minute.

"Time to end this," Wei Lin decided, retreating to a small clearing to catch his breath. He pulled a small jade bottle from his storage ring and quickly downed its contents to recover some qi.

The fox stalked toward him, its eight remaining tail-heads weaving menacingly. Wei Lin stood his ground, focusing inward. In his inner marketplace, he initiated a complex series of trades, simultaneously converting portions of five different energies into void essence.

"All trades at fifteen percent efficiency," he directed, feeling the massive energy loss that accompanied such wholesale conversion. But what remained was concentrated void essence, enough for one decisive attack.

The fox pounced, all eight active tail-heads stretched forward with mouths agape. Wei Lin held his ground until the last possible instant, then activated the void essence.

His entire body became intangible, transforming into a ghostly silhouette through which the fox passed harmlessly. The beast's momentum carried it through Wei Lin's incorporeal form, momentarily confused by the lack of resistance.

With perfect timing, Wei Lin allowed only his right hand to become tangible while keeping the rest of his body in its ghostlike state. His now-solid fingers materialized directly inside the fox's body, encircling the demonic core.

"Merchant's claim," Wei Lin whispered, closing his fist around the pulsating mass.

The sensation was revolting, like grasping a cold, writhing mass of eels. But Wei Lin didn't hesitate, he pulled the core from its housing within the fox's body.

The fox's shriek pierced the air as its source of power was ripped away. The creature's body convulsed violently, its tails thrashing in death spasms before it collapsed to the forest floor. The tail-heads snapped blindly at the air for several more seconds before falling still.

Wei Lin fully materialized, his breath coming in ragged gasps as he examined the core in his hand, a sphere of swirling blackness flecked with crimson, roughly the size of a plum.

"Seventh stage demonic core," he confirmed, a smile of exhausted satisfaction crossing his face. "Worth the effort."

He reached into his storage ring for a specialized containment box, carefully placing the core inside. Then he turned his attention to the fox's corpse, which had already begun to darken and dissolve, the demonic qi that had sustained it now unbound and dissipating.

Wei Lin knelt beside the remains and produced another jade container from his storage ring. He began the process of extracting the residual demonic qi from the corpse, watching as threads of darkness flowed from the beast into his container.

"Not as potent as the core," he murmured, "but waste not, want not."

When he finished, the fox's body had been reduced to little more than mundane animal remains. They were valuable for their pelts and teeth but no longer carried any trace of demonic energy.

Wei Lin nodded in satisfaction and reached to place the corpse in his storage ring for later processing. The fur and bones would fetch a decent price in the right market, and Lin Mei had mentioned wanting fox teeth for a purification formula.

Just as his hand touched the remains, instinct screamed a warning. Wei Lin threw himself sideways, feeling displacement in the air where his head had been a moment before. Something crashed into the ground beside him, sending up a spray of dirt and fragments of stone.

Wei Lin rolled to his feet, instantly circulating qi through his meridians as he assessed the new threat.

A tall gaunt man dressed in dark crimson robes stood at the edge of the clearing, partially obscured by shadow. But what was visible were the eyes - completely black from corner to corner, with thin rings of blood-red circling the irises like crimson halos.

A demonic cultivator.