The journey from the forested ridge to the gates of Silver-Mist City was a descent into another world. In the Blackwood Range, danger was simple and honest. A beast wanted to eat you; a cliff wanted you to fall. Here, on the wide, dusty road teeming with travelers, the dangers were veiled and complex. Every passing merchant caravan had guards whose eyes lingered a moment too long, their gazes sharp with suspicion. Every well-dressed cultivator walked in an invisible bubble of arrogance, daring the world to inconvenience them.
Wei An was a ghost among them, a thin, grimy boy in hemp clothes that marked him as little more than a beggar. He kept his head down, his senses—a tool for survival in the wild—now a source of overwhelming chaos. In the forest, he could track a single boar a mile away. Here, the scents of sweat, perfume, livestock, and cooking food blended into a thick, nauseating stew. The sounds of haggling, of cart wheels grinding on stone, of a hundred simultaneous conversations, hammered at his ears.
But the most disorienting sensation was the life force. Every person, every horse, every caged chicken was a small, warm flame of vitality. To his Asphodel Root, which was attuned to the cold finality of death, this overwhelming torrent of life felt like standing in a blizzard of hot sand—abrasive, disorienting, and immense. He felt like a creature of the deep sea dragged into the blinding sun.
He finally reached the city gate, a massive arch of grey stone that dwarfed him, making him feel as insignificant as an ant. Two guards stood sentinel, clad in polished iron armor, their halberds gleaming. They were mortals, but they carried an air of authority that came from representing the city's law. They collected a toll of a few copper coins from every person who entered on foot.
Wei An had no coins. He watched for nearly an hour from the shade of a gnarled tree, his observant eyes cataloging the flow of traffic. He saw a desperate family turned away for their lack of funds. He saw a wealthy merchant toss a silver coin with contemptuous ease. And he saw a group of cultivators in matching blue robes walk past the guards without so much as a glance, their passage paid for by the palpable energy they radiated. Power was the ultimate currency here.
He waited for a large, noisy caravan of ox-carts laden with lumber to rumble towards the gate. Just as the guards were distracted by the driver's payment, Wei An slipped from the shadows. Using the nascent skills of his Wraith Step, he melded with the caravan's moving shadow, his footsteps silent, his presence as thin as smoke. He passed through the gate like a phantom, the guards never even registering his existence. He was in.
The sensory assault intensified tenfold. The sheer density of life was suffocating. But as he pushed deeper into the city's winding streets, he began to perceive something else. Beneath the roaring river of life, there was another current, a deeper, colder one. It was faint, a barely-there echo. It was the scent of a thousand forgotten deaths.
It clung to the cracks in the cobblestones, seeped from the moss-covered walls of ancient buildings, and rose like a vapor from the gutters. It was the Remnant Essence of beggars who had starved in alleys, of victims of knife-point robberies, of the elderly who had passed away alone in their rooms. It was weak, stagnant, and tainted with misery, but it was everywhere. The entire city was an ocean of tombs, each building a headstone for the lives lived and lost within it.
This slow, constant drip of death-energy wouldn't make him powerful, but it was sustenance. It was enough to quiet the sharpest pangs of hunger from his dantian.
He knew instinctively that he couldn't survive in the clean, wide avenues of the city's center. He needed to find the places where the current of death ran strongest, where life was cheapest. Following his senses, he navigated the labyrinthine streets, moving steadily towards the city's northern district, a place the locals called the "Carrion District."
The name was apt. The streets narrowed, the buildings sagged against each other for support, and the air grew thick with the stench of unwashed bodies and refuse. This was the city's slum, a festering wound where the poor, the desperate, and the criminal were packed together.
Here, the hum of life was weaker, more fragile, and the cold undercurrent of death was stronger.
He turned into a narrow, refuse-strewn alley and froze. Ahead, two men—gaunt figures in rags—were fighting. It was a pathetic, clumsy brawl over a half-eaten meat bun. One of the men, seeing Wei An, hesitated for a fatal second. The other seized the opportunity, pulling a shard of sharpened metal from his rags and plunging it into the man's gut.
The victim's eyes went wide with shock. He collapsed, the precious meat bun rolling into a puddle of filth. The killer snatched the bun and fled, disappearing into the slum's maze.
Wei An remained hidden in the shadows, his heart pounding. And then he felt it. A small, but distinct, burst of Remnant Essence flared from the dying man. It was a pathetic thing, full of shock, despair, and the all-consuming bitterness of a life spent in hunger. It rose like a puff of grey smoke, and without a conscious thought, Wei An's Asphodel Root drew it in.
The energy was foul, leaving a spiritual aftertaste like spoiled meat, but it was a meal. It eased the ache in his dantian, a brief moment of relief in the endless void.
He looked at the cooling body, then at the sprawling, chaotic slum around him. He had found his place. He found a derelict, half-collapsed shack at the edge of the district, its door long since rotted away. It would be his sanctuary, his cave in this new wilderness of stone and suffering.
He finally understood the fundamental law of Silver-Mist City. For all its grandeur and power, life here was cheap. And for a boy who fed on death, that was the greatest opportunity in the world.
Author's Note:
Welcome to Silver-Mist City! A place of great opportunity and even greater danger. Wei An has taken his first step into a much larger world. He's survived the forest, but can he survive civilization?
His unique cultivation path makes the city a completely different environment for him than for any other cultivator. He's found a source of sustenance, but the weak, tainted essence of the slums won't be enough to truly grow strong. He needs a better source. A more powerful source.
What kind of "job" do you think a person who feeds on death could find in a city like this? What would be the most dangerous, yet most rewarding place for him to go? Let me know your theories in the comments, and we'll see if you're right in the next chapter! Thanks for reading!