Chapter 313: The Black Market (2)
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 313: The Black Market (2)
Ting.
A small bell jingled as I opened the old, worn-out door, its sound echoing through the shop.
Having entered the bookstore the merchant told me about, I habitually scanned my surroundings.
Dust had settled everywhere, and the musty smell of old paper hung in the air. Hundreds of books packed the shelves.
It looked like any other ordinary bookstore you could find anywhere.
But the scene gave me a strange sense of unease.
I’d heard the Black Market's location changed every time it opened, yet this shop looked like it had been doing business in the same spot for a very long time.
For ten, maybe even twenty years.
Is this the effect of a formation?
It was a little strange, but not important enough to dwell on, so I surveyed the shop's interior again.
My eyes stopped on a pile of books in the corner. For some reason, a worn-out manual at the very bottom of the stack caught my eye.
Just as I reached for it—
“Who’s there?”
An old man with sparse white hair walked out from the back of the shop.
His back was stooped, and he looked to be in his seventies.
I suddenly recalled what the merchant had said.
—If you go there, you’ll find a bookstore run by an old man named Hwang. He’s a cantankerous old fellow, but they say he was a pretty famous thief in his younger days. If you’re lucky, you might find a decent martial arts manual.
Circumstances suggested this was the Old Man Hwang the merchant had mentioned, but it was too early to jump to conclusions.
To survive as a renowned thief in the Central Plains, one had to be a master of considerable skill.
But the old man before me didn't look like a martial artist at all.
Far from showing any signs of martial arts training, he didn't even have a single callus on his palms...
...Wait a minute.
Just as I felt that unidentifiable sense of unease again—
“Oh, a customer?”
The old man approached with a bright smile.
He looked so natural that I would have believed him if he’d said he’d been a bookstore owner for decades, not a former thief.
“Ah, yes. I heard you sell martial arts manuals here, so I came to have a look.”
“Martial arts manuals?”
The old man seemed to hesitate for a moment at my words, then glanced at my clothes and nodded.
I could almost hear him thinking that since I looked like I had a fair bit of money, he would treat me as a customer.
“Hmm... You might have the wrong place, but feel free to look around. I’ve just piled up the books I scraped together from all over the Central Plains in my youth without any order, so even I don’t know exactly what I have.”
With Old Man Hwang’s permission, I immediately picked up the worn-out manual at the bottom of the pile.
It was quite an old book, and the letters of the title were faded here and there, but it was still legible.
“Great Mind-Spirit Art...?”
I chuckled at the grandiose title and opened the book.
I didn't have high expectations.
Like the merchant in Wuhan who sold the ordinary Three-Talents Sword Art disguised as the Three-Talents Divine Art, most of the so-called divine arts in the Central Plains were either forgeries or fakes with impressive-sounding names.
I naturally assumed this one would be the same.
‘...The Great Mind-Spirit Art does not follow the fundamental purpose of the Martial Way—killing enemies and defending oneself. It is this sect's internal energy cultivation method, aimed at cultivating the mind and body. Though the process may be slow, the ultimate goal of Buddhist cultivation is to build up an endlessly clear and pure energy to drive out the demons in one's heart.’
I stood there and read through the manual quickly.
It was over two hundred pages long, but it took me less than fifteen minutes to read and memorize it completely.
I learned two things. First, the Great Mind-Spirit Art was a Buddhist martial art.
Just as the Formless Vajra Art had its roots in the Shaolin Temple, the Great Mind-Spirit Art was also based in Buddhism.
...It’s a bit much that half the book is just Buddhist scriptures.
It was a little absurd, but I read every single word carefully.
Thanks to that, I learned the second fact: the Great Mind-Spirit Art wasn't some third-rate martial art with a fancy name, but a genuinely proper one.
Of course, I couldn't be sure if it deserved to be called a divine art, but it was undoubtedly a high-level martial art.
However, as stated on the first page, the Qi Cultivation process was extremely slow.
Even if you trained like hell for ten years, you would probably only accumulate five or six years' worth of internal energy in your dantian.
But even considering that drawback, it was a martial art worth learning.
That was how important pure internal energy was in martial arts.
There was a reason martial artists went to such lengths to purify their internal energy, even just a little.
Thirty years of internal energy built with impure energy couldn't compare to ten years of energy cultivated by a Buddhist or Daoist sect.
You could think of it as the difference between premium gasoline and a cheap blend.
Moreover, the Great Mind-Spirit Art had another advantage: a woman's cultivation speed would increase when practicing it.
It wasn't a dramatic increase, but it was better than nothing.
But there was something strange.
This is clearly a proper martial arts manual, so why isn't an item information window popping up?
Until now, whenever I acquired a new item, a corresponding information window would appear.
But no matter how long I waited, there was no sign of any information about the Great Mind-Spirit Art.
...Is it because it's too old?
I looked at the last page and saw traces of erased text.
That was probably it.
Of course, it didn't seem to be a major obstacle to learning the martial art.
Still, just in case, I planned to circulate my own qi to check for problems before telling Noel and Jeon Seoha about it.
Thump.
I closed the book with a satisfied smile.
This was a fortuitous encounter.
I didn't know which sect this martial art belonged to, but it was definitely not something you'd expect to find in a shabby bookstore.
If I put it up for auction right now, it would easily fetch dozens of gold pieces.
At that point, the sense of unease I’d felt earlier crossed my mind again.
How did a bookstore owner who hadn't even learned martial arts get his hands on a manual like this?
There were two possibilities.
Either he got incredibly lucky and found it, or, as the merchant said, he was truly a renowned thief.
Personally, I was betting on the latter.
Tuk.
“How much is this?”
“Hm? You’ve chosen already? You can look around a bit more if you’d like—?!”
The moment he saw the Great Mind-Spirit Art manual on the counter, a look of bewilderment crossed the old man's face.
At first, I thought he was just an ordinary old man who hadn't practiced martial arts.
But a glimpse of his hands told me the truth.
His fingers are subtly bent.
As befitting a bookstore owner, his hands were free of calluses, his fingerprints worn down, but fingers bent in such a way were proof that he had handled hidden weapons for many years.
Either that, or it was a congenital physical trait.
“...Hmm.”
The old man seemed flustered for a moment, but he quickly composed himself and looked back and forth between me and the manual, his eyes holding a profound meaning.
Even if he named an outrageous price, I was prepared to accept it.
The Great Mind-Spirit Art was worth that much.
But if he suddenly showed hostility and attacked me, that would be a different story.
I doubted it would happen, but this was the Black Market, a market for those of the Black Path.
There was no telling what tricks someone might pull to rob a rich-looking young man.
“Just give me ten silver pieces.”
“...What?”
But contrary to my worries, the old man neither showed hostility nor tried to rip me off.
“Ten pieces is a very good price. Are you short on money?”
As I stood there stunned by his unexpected reaction, the old man scowled at me.
He looked like a merchant who’d just been asked for a discount.
Clink.
I placed the silver coins on the counter.
Only then did the old man smile brightly and collect the money.
“Is there anything else you need? I have a few decent erotic art books, you know.”
“...I’m fine.”
Pushing aside my uneasy feeling, I left the bookstore.
I wanted to look for other martial arts manuals, but I had a feeling I shouldn't get involved with that old man for too long.
I decided to just assume he was a retired martial artist from the Evil Faction living in hiding and headed toward the auction house.
I had obtained a useful manual, but since I was already here, I figured it wouldn't hurt to watch the auction.
*
The moment Kang Hyun-woo left the bookstore, Old Man Hwang, who had been watching the door, wiped away a cold sweat.
He let out a sigh of relief as the presence faded into the distance, then grabbed the skin around his chin and tore it off.
Riiip—
A meticulously crafted human skin mask peeled away, revealing not Old Man Hwang, but someone else's face.
He looked to be of a similar age, but his features were slightly softer.
“...Shit, how can a young bastard like him have such a murderous aura?”
Crack, crack—
The old man, his voice now a complete 180 from before, let out a string of curses. He stretched lightly, straightening his stooped back.
His face was more plain than handsome, but there were probably less than five people in the entire Central Plains who knew his true identity.
The Shadowless Divine Thief.
The legendary thief who was said to have even robbed the imperial treasury.
“Damn it... I went through so much hell robbing the library pavilion of the Emei Sect, and I sold it for a measly ten silver pieces!”
But right now, he was nothing more than an old man who’d been taken for a sucker by an unexpected visitor.
Old Man Hwang—no, Geum Muntak—scratched his head furiously as he recalled the young man who had just visited his shop.
“What kind of monster just showed up? Tsk!”
He had never seen the face before, but the moment their eyes met, he, a man who had weathered the perilous martial world for decades, had felt overwhelmed.
Not even the elder-level figures of the Nine Great Sects and One Alliance or the Five Great Families could do that.
“Haa... Was it a mistake to come to the Black Market? If I’d known this would happen, I should have fled to Yunnan.”
He said that, but Geum Muntak himself knew it was impossible.
The only reason he, the so-called Shadowless Divine Thief, was disguised as a shabby bookstore owner was to escape the relentless pursuit of the Eastern Depot.
If he had been any slower, he would have been dragged to the imperial dungeons for torture. Fleeing from Wuhan to Yunnan?
Without the help of the gods, it was impossible.
“What the hell is ten silver pieces... In the Black Market, even the Three-Talents Sword Art would go for twenty...”
That item should have been worth at least one gold ingot.
But it was ridiculous to demand such a price in a shabby bookstore. It might have been different at an auction house, but here, it would have been a blatant rip-off.
Besides, Geum Muntak realized that Kang Hyun-woo had already discerned the value of the Great Mind-Spirit Art.
To ask for a gold ingot in that situation?
A greedy martial artist would have undoubtedly drawn his sword and taken the manual by force.
Even the rules of the Black Market could not extinguish the greed of a martial artist.
It was a truth he had learned firsthand from living in the martial world for decades.
The moment they judged the gain to be greater than the loss, they would act without a shred of hesitation.
“Fucking bastard...”
Thump.
Geum Muntak, who had spent his entire life stealing the property of others, felt a sense of emptiness at having his own possession taken for the first time and collapsed onto the bookstore floor.
But what could he do?
The martial world was the law of the jungle.
If he was pissed, he had only himself to blame for having trained in nothing but the Lightness Skill his entire life.
*
There's a saying that the Black Market is the Black Market.
In other words, almost all the administrative power, wealth, and manpower of a faction that formed one of the pillars of the Twelve Demonic Sects were concentrated in just a few dozen markets.
As a result, the scale of the auctions held at the Black Market was far larger than I had anticipated.
After paying an entrance fee of ten silver pieces and entering the auction house, I saw a crowd of at least two hundred people already filling the seats.
They were all martial artists.
Among them were two or three masters who had reached the peak.
Taking my assigned seat, I glanced at the man next to me.
His buck teeth were impressive; he looked like the type who'd spill information if you just gave him a tap.
“Hey.”
“Hah?”
As expected of a martial artist from the Evil Faction, the man immediately released his aura to intimidate me as soon as I spoke.
“Who the hell are you to talk to me—?”
Tuk.
I struck his paralysis point and mute point.
His words weren't kind, so there was no reason for me to be.
“If you want to die, close your eyes once. If you want to live, close them twice.”
The man blinked twice without a moment's hesitation.
I released the pressure on his acupoints.
Though his body was free, he seemed to have realized the gap between us and immediately clammed up.
“Hey.”
“Yes, sir!”
I was quite pleased with his disciplined demeanor.
“Do you know anything about the auction?”
“I’ll tell you everything!”
The man with the impressive buck teeth began to spill information just as I'd expected.
His words were disorganized, but I figured he was just an ignorant fool and filtered through them.
Still, it wasn't his first or second time at an auction, so he knew quite a bit.
So it's a simple system where you raise a paddle and shout the price if you want to bid.
However, if you won the bid, you had to pay 50% of the price upfront. It was a sort of deposit.
For reference, if you couldn't pay the remaining balance when the auction ended, the Black Market would simply swallow the deposit.
That alone made them seem like daylight robbers, but when I heard they also took an additional 10% of the bid price as a commission, I realized who the real madmen were.
Dirty Black Path bastards.
“The Black Market is open for a total of six days, and the items up for auction change daily. If there are no changes to the schedule, the first day will be focused on elixirs and spirit herbs.”
“What’s the usual price range?”
“It varies wildly. Since it’s an auction, prices can get endlessly high if there are competitors.”
“And if there are no competitors?”
“It’s still expensive.”
“Why?”
The man glanced around for a moment, then whispered just loud enough for me to hear.
“...There’s a rumor that if the price isn't what they want, the Black Market uses shills to drive it up.”
“Typical of the Black Path.”
“Well, most people just accept it. It’s rare for that to happen anyway, since the competition is so fierce.”
I nodded and continued to listen to the man.
Most of it was worthless chatter, but I let it go in one ear and out the other to pass the time.
Not long after, the Auctioneer walked onto the stage.
The noisy auction house fell silent in an instant.
“The auction will now begin.”
Just as you'd expect from the Evil Faction, there wasn't even a perfunctory greeting to liven up the mood.
I watched as the first item was brought onto the stage.
...Is that?