[LOCATION: SECTOR 9 — THE DEEP DREGS]
[TIME: 04:45 PM]
The air didn't just stink.
It coated the tongue. Bitter. Metallic. Like breathing through a battery soaked in old blood.
Ren Wu stepped out of the armored hover-car. His polished black shoes sank into radioactive mud that glowed faint green beneath the smog-filtered sky. He adjusted his silk tie.
His expression didn't change.
"Sir," Ye Lingshan said quietly. Her hand hovered over her sword. "Toxicity levels are four hundred percent above lethal baseline. Your vessel is Tier-F. You should not inhale this."
"I will not," Ren replied.
The fog touched his coat — and recoiled.
Corrupted Qi parted around him in a thin, invisible radius. It did not dare enter his lungs.
They had arrived in the Dregs.
This was where Sector 9 dumped what it could not process — chemical runoff, failed experiments, forgotten people. Rusted pipes jutted from the earth like broken ribs. Pools of luminous sludge bubbled in craters that had once been streets.
Even gangs avoided this place.
"Target is inside the abandoned water treatment plant," Ren said, nodding toward a skeletal tower of rusted scaffolding in the distance. "Dr. Zhu Weiming. Former Senior Alchemist. Terminated for 'Unethical Experimentation.'"
"What kind?" Lingshan asked.
Scritch. Scritch.
Red eyes opened in the fog.
"The biological kind."
They emerged as one.
Rot-Hounds.
Twenty of them.
Flesh stitched to scrap metal. Veins glowing green beneath translucent skin. Acid dripped from oversized jaws, hissing when it struck the mud. Their bodies moved in jerks — not natural muscle memory, but engineered aggression.
The Alpha lunged first.
A blur of metal claws and exposed sinew.
Lingshan's blade flashed halfway from its sheath—
"No."
Ren stepped forward.
The Alpha was airborne. Jaws open. Teeth inches from his throat.
Ren met its eyes.
Not with fear.
With recognition.
This was not a monster.
It was a machine built badly.
And he was the Sovereign of all badly built things.
"Sit."
The word carried weight.
Ren pushed five hundred Spirit Silver into the syllable.
[DECREE: BIOLOGICAL OVERRIDE]
[TARGET: CANINE CONSTRUCTS]
[COST: 500 SILVER]
[COMMAND: SUBMIT]
The Alpha slammed into the mud as if gravity had been multiplied tenfold.
Its body convulsed. Its claws dug trenches. Then it pressed its snout to the ground in total submission.
The other nineteen froze.
Predatory instinct collided with something older.
Something absolute.
They lowered themselves.
Ren stepped through them slowly.
He placed his hand on the Alpha's skull.
Lingshan inhaled sharply. "Venom—"
Ren ignored her.
His palm rested against patchwork bone and metal.
"Meridian stitching is crude," he murmured. "Necrotic flow is leaking into the spinal column. Constant pain."
The creature whimpered.
Ren closed his fingers slightly.
"Sleep."
The pack collapsed into instant coma.
Silence returned.
Ren withdrew his hand. Black smoke curled faintly from his fingertips. His hand trembled — not from fear.
From strain.
His Tier-F body was never meant to channel Sovereign Authority.
He folded a handkerchief over his palm and wiped it clean.
"Functional," he said quietly. "But inefficient."
They stepped over the sleeping pack.
[LOCATION: WATER TREATMENT PLANT — INNER LAB]
The interior looked like anatomy and madness had merged.
Beakers bubbled in green light. Organs floated in jars of murky preservative. Walls were covered in formulas layered over older formulas, ink bleeding through concrete.
At the center of it all:
Dr. Zhu.
Wild white hair. Stained lab coat. One eye mechanical, focusing and refocusing with faint clicks.
He was stitching a third eye onto a dead rat.
"GET OUT!" Zhu screamed without turning. A beaker flew over his shoulder.
Lingshan deflected it. Acid hissed against steel.
"I have nothing left!" Zhu raved. "No funding! No license! No approval board! Leave me to my work!"
"I do not want your money," Ren said.
"I want your experiments."
Zhu froze.
He turned slowly.
The mechanical eye whirred as it zoomed in on Ren's face.
"Consortium?" Zhu whispered. "Liquidator?"
"Investor."
Ren walked to a nearby table and lifted a vial of glowing blue liquid.
"Modified Spirit Restoration Draft," he said. "Attempting to filter corrupted Qi through mutated Bloodsucker Leech glands."
Zhu's jaw dropped.
"That's proprietary—"
"It's clever," Ren said calmly. "But flawed."
He tilted the vial.
"The Leech glands leave a necrotic residue. The patient regains Qi — and loses liver function within three days."
Zhu's breathing grew shallow.
Ren allowed a single drop of his own Qi to fall into the vial.
The liquid boiled.
Blue turned clear.
Black vapor evaporated upward and vanished.
Zhu grabbed the vial with shaking hands. His mechanical eye scanned furiously.
"Purity… ninety-nine percent…" he whispered.
He looked up.
"Can you do this for all of them? If we scaled this—"
"No."
Ren raised his hand.
Thin smoke rose from his fingertips again.
"My Qi is too dense," Ren said. "This body cannot regulate it safely. I can purify a prototype. Nothing more."
He leaned closer.
"If I infused a full production batch, the consumers would explode. Their meridians would rupture under the weight of my Soul."
Zhu stared.
Ren straightened.
"I am the architect. Not the engine."
Silence hung between them.
"You will replicate the purity," Ren continued. "Through chemistry. Through machinery. Through whatever unethical brilliance you possess."
Zhu's breathing quickened.
Ren placed a leather-bound document onto the dissection table beside the three-eyed rat.
The cover felt disturbingly organic.
[EMPLOYMENT OFFER]
POSITION: CHIEF OF RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT
BUDGET: UNLIMITED
ETHICAL OVERSIGHT: NONE (WITHIN CORPORATE INTERESTS)
Zhu's hands hovered over the contract.
"Unlimited funding?" he whispered.
"No committees," Ren replied. "No restrictions. Only results."
"And what do you want built?"
Ren pointed to the purified vial.
"A cure for Smog Sickness."
He stepped forward, shadow stretching unnaturally across the lab walls.
"We will undercut the Consortium by fifty percent."
"We will produce higher purity."
"We will make it addictive."
The air thickened.
"We will bleed them dry."
Zhu didn't hesitate.
He sliced his thumb with a scalpel and pressed it to the page.
"I'm in," he said, almost laughing. "When do we begin?"
Ren checked his watch.
"Now."
He turned toward the exit.
"Pack your rats. We launch in seventy-two hours."
[SYSTEM NOTIFICATION]
NEW VASSAL ACQUIRED: DR. ZHU WEIMING
LOYALTY: BOUND BY OBSESSION
ASSET CLASSIFICATION: HIGH RISK / HIGH RETURN
R&D DIVISION: ACTIVE
Ren stepped back into the toxic fog.
Behind him, the Dregs seemed quieter.
The monsters slept.
The madman worked.
The war had moved into production.
And production was where empires were won.
Author's Note
The King is back in the mud.
Today's chapter establishes a crucial limitation: Ren is the Architect, not the Machine. His soul is Tier-SSS, but his body is Tier-F. He can create one perfect cure, but he cannot mass-produce it without exploding his own meridians. This is why he needs minions like Dr. Zhu.
📢 SPECIAL EVENT ANNOUNCEMENT 📢
To celebrate the return of the "Ancient Shaman" tone, the next 2 Chapters will be a special "Memory Arc."
Before we launch the Trade War in Sector 9, we are going back 2,000 Years to witness Ren in his Prime. You will see exactly how he invented the "Bureaucratic Cultivation" style and how he crushed the Dragon Emperor using nothing but a Ledger.
Tomorrow: [Side Story] Memory: The First Audit.
Day After: [Side Story] Memory: The Fall of the Sovereign.
Day 3: We return to the Main Timeline for The Product Launch.
Add to Library so you don't miss the Origin Story of the Market King!