53. Value Investing in the City of Stars

The moment we pass the gates, spiritual pressure hits us like a wave. The accumulated weight of thousands of cultivators and millions of mortals. Their auras blend into a background hum that’s almost audible, a low-frequency drone that vibrates in my teeth.

I’ve never felt anything like this.

Ling’er’s eyes go distant. The Sacred Cosmic Bone doing its work. She stands very still, her face blank, her breathing shallow. I wait.

“Can you estimate?” I ask quietly.

She doesn’t answer for a moment. Her lips move, counting something I cannot see.

“Foundation Establishment,” she says. “Fifteen hundred. Maybe more. My sense only reaches a part of the city.”

I absorb this. Fifteen hundred Foundation Establishment cultivators. There are two of us in the Coiling Dragon Sect. Maybe less than a dozen within our immediate region around Greenstone.

“Core Formation, a hundred. Some are brighter than others. Nascent Soul, like the one we saw in Greenstone.” She pauses. “Five. Maybe six. They’re… hard to count. Their threads are thick. They blend together.”

Five Nascent Souls. In one city. In one quarter of one city.

“There’s one above them all. Stronger than any of the Nascent Souls. ” Her voice is very quiet.

My blood runs cold.

Soul Transformation. The peak of the Lower Realm. One step from ascension.

If they notice Ling’er—

“Master.” Her voice is calm. Steady. “The big one. They’re asleep. Or meditating. Their awareness is turned inward. They won’t notice us unless we do something dramatic.”

I swallow. “How can you tell?”

“The threads.” She tilts her head, still distant, still counting. “Theirs are all curled up, not reaching out. Like a hibernating bear. They’re not paying attention to the city. They’re paying attention to something else. Something inside themselves.”

A hibernating bear. I let myself breathe.

‘Good. Very good.’

We find a modest inn in the outer district. Cheap, anonymous, run by a Foundation Establishment couple who have seen every kind of traveler. They don’t ask questions. They don’t remember faces. They take our coins and give us keys and go back to their business. Two rooms. Small, clean, with windows that face the street. I lock the door, draw the curtains, set a basic alert array across the threshold. Ling’er settles by the window, watching the city.

“Master.” Her voice is quiet. “There’s so much here. So many techniques, so many cultivators. I can feel them all—like stars in a sky. Some are bright, some are dim, some are…” She pauses. “Wrong. Corrupted.”

I turn from the door. “Demonic cultivators?”

“Maybe.” Her brow furrows. “A few have threads that look tangled. Twisted. Like they’re fighting themselves. Their own energy turned against them.” She looks at me. “I don’t know if that’s demonic. It just feels… sick.”

I file this away. In a city of this size, knowledge is the only advantage someone like me can have.

“Stay away from anyone whose threads feel wrong,” I say. “Don’t look at them. Don’t acknowledge them. If one approaches, you leave. No heroics.”

She nods. “I understand.”

We leave the inn and walk the cultivation districts. Streets stretch for several li in every direction, lined with shops selling everything the cultivation world produces and everything it consumes. Pills and weapons and formation flags and spirit beasts in cages and technique manuals in sealed jade cases. The crowds are thick, the noise constant, the smell of spiritual materials mixing with cooking oil and sweat and incense.

I walk slowly, the Gaze active, scanning without appearing to scan. Faces, auras, storefronts, prices. Information. Everything is information.

Then I see the slave market.

It occupies a full block near the district’s center: a permanent structure, not a back-alley operation. Wooden platforms, iron cages, guards at the entrances. The building is well-maintained. The signs are painted in neat characters.

Mortals in cages. Arranged by categories. Age, health, skills, something that looks like an assessment of appearance. Each one has a price tag and a history that nobody is advertising. Most are mortals. Some are Qi Condensation. A few Foundation Establishment, their auras sealed, their faces blank with something beyond resignation.

The crowds flow around it without pause. A merchant negotiates for a mortal woman with steady hands; she’s marked as a seamstress, her skills listed like the features of a good blade. A Core Formation cultivator walks past without glancing at the cages, his face untroubled, his steps unhurried. Children run between the legs of the guards, laughing, playing, already learning that this is normal.

The Gaze activates reflexively before I can stop it.

I close the Gaze. I keep walking. My hands are still. My face is still.

The practice is not illegal here. I know this. The legal protections that do exist are thin; extreme mistreatment is frowned upon, which is doing a great deal of work as a moral framework. The girl in the cage has an E-grade spirit root and probably came from a family that couldn’t pay a debt. In this world, that is a story with a known ending.

She reminds me of Mei Lin. How I found her at the foot of Coiling Dragon Mountain, hungry and scared and twelve years old. How her family had been planning to sell her to a merchant. How she ran before they could. I remember her face. The relief when I didn’t turn away. The way she cried, later, alone in the corner of the kitchen where she thought no one could see. That was me. Not the old Lu Chen. Not some previous version of this body that I’m carrying around like a passenger. Me. I found her. I fed her. I gave her a home.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

And that girl, the one in the cage, she is someone else’s Mei Lin. Someone else’s chance to do what I did.

But I keep walking.

I cannot save everyone. I cannot buy every cage. I cannot fix a system that has existed for millennia, that is woven into the fabric of this world, that powerful people profit from and weaker people enforce because it is better to be the guard than the caged. Ling’er keeps up beside me. Her face is still. Her concealment is perfect. I do not know if she saw. I do not know if the Bone showed her the slave’s threads, the fear, the resignation, the small dying ember of hope that maybe someone would look at her and see a person.

The slave market recedes behind us, a block of iron cages and painted signs and people in neat categories with price tags on their collars.

The dissonance is sickening.

In my past life, this would be a atrocity. A crime. Something that brought armies and sanctions and the collective horror of a civilization that had decided, after centuries of bloodshed, that owning people was no longer acceptable. Here, it is a regular day. This is not a secret vice. This is a district of the city, open to the public, operating under the same laws as the tea house and the weapon smith.

I clench my teeth and remind myself: my duty is to the sect.