Chương 90: A Malfunction in Hell (2/3)

It continued, its voice threading through the frozen air like iron wire drawn taut across bone.

"The toll of the Midnight Market admits no exception. One may offer a portion of the Divine Soul, or else pay with years stolen from one's allotted span."

The words fell heavy, each syllable settling into the mist like stones dropped into still water. The black surface below rippled faintly, as though listening.

"Cultivators are different. Their foundations are firm, their vitality abundant. If the lantern takes a few months of life, or scrapes away a shred of Dao insight, they may still endure. They pass through this mist diminished, yet living."

The Gatekeeper's bone-white fingers tightened incrementally on the lantern's cord, the translucent skin stretching tighter over knuckles that seemed carved from old ivory. The motion was minute, nearly imperceptible, but the cord creaked softly—a sound like sinew pulled to breaking.

"But a mortal..."

The lantern flame shuddered violently, guttering low before flaring high again, casting green shadows that writhed through the fog like drowning hands grasping at nothing. The sickly jade light crawled across the rotting planks, pooling in the gaps and crevices where black water seeped upward.

"A mortal's soul is as thin as withered paper. When my lamp demands its due, such a being cannot withstand the reckoning."

The voice dropped lower, and with it came a sound like cloth tearing in a sealed tomb—dry, final, utterly devoid of mercy.

"We do not take a part. We take all. Before ever beholding the ghost-fires of the market, they collapse upon these boards as empty shells."

Under the straw hat, the darkness around the Gatekeeper's face seemed to contract, folding inward upon itself as though the void were inhaling. The gray nothingness beneath that wide brim sharpened, focused, became something with weight and intent—like the gaze of something ancient and patient finally turning its attention fully upon prey.

The temperature plummeted. Frost crept outward from where the entity stood, tiny crystalline fingers spreading across the damp wood with soft, brittle whispers.

"And yet you..."

Its voice sank lower still, turning sharp and sinister, like a ghost whispering beside an open grave—or worse, like the grave itself speaking through cracked earth and rotted roots.

The sulfurous air thickened, curdling with the reek of extinguished incense and something older, something that had no name but carried the stench of endings.

"When the lantern inquires, it receives nothing. No tribute from the soul. No severed lifespan. No karmic thread. No trace of Dao-mark. You show neither the resonance of the living nor the corruption of the dead. In the eyes of the crossing, you are but rotten timber and rusted metal—yet you walk."

The pale light trembled once, a single flicker that sent ripples of green luminescence cascading across Shi Yan's iron mask, painting the Yaksha's snarling features in spectral hues.

"You are not mortal. You are not ghost. You are an aberration beneath Heaven."

The words hung in the air like a pronouncement from the Yellow Springs themselves, carrying the weight of law and condemnation intertwined.

"Reveal your true countenance, trespasser," the Gatekeeper said.

Its voice was like iron dragged across the floor of a burial hall—deliberate, grinding, inexorable—and with those words the cold Qi about it grew heavy enough to smother breath. The mist recoiled, then pressed inward again, wrapping tighter around the bridge like burial shrouds wound round a corpse.

"Stir your blood. Kindle your Dantian. Draw your Qi. Manifest the weight of your immortal path and render unto Heaven its due. Otherwise, this seat shall cast you into the dark waters below, there to sink as mire!"

These were no idle words.

At once, the pressure upon the bridge thickened severalfold, bearing down with the crushing weight of deep earth and drowned tombs. The pale mist that drifted over the water began to writhe like living silk, coiling and uncoiling in patterns that hurt to perceive. Then it sharpened—transformed into streams of frigid force that howled soundlessly as they cut at skin and bone, seeking any weakness, any gap in flesh or will.

The air itself became viscous, resistant, as though the space between breaths had filled with ice water.

But thanks to Shi Yan's Daoless body, he could not feel the spiritual pressure.

The invisible weight that would have driven a mortal cultivator to their knees, that would have crushed meridians and shattered foundations, slid past him like wind through an empty window frame. His chest rose and fell with the same controlled rhythm. His stance remained unchanged. Only the faint ache in his locked jaw betrayed the effort of maintaining absolute stillness.

It's trying to force a reflex, he judged in an instant.

Through the subtle tremor of blood and sound—the hyper-sensitive perception granted by [Acoustic-Blood Tracker]—he sensed a vast surge of strange air gathering within the thing's right arm. The buildup was methodical, deliberate, like water accumulating behind a dam before the flood.

It knows I'm concealing myself. It thinks I'm using some cultivation techniques to hide my aura?

The logic crystallized with cold clarity.

Was that the reason this gatekeeper let out its spiritual pressure and changed the environment—to force him to use his veil again?

But it was useless. Even if this thing forced him to act against it, he had no Qi. His only strength was the Daoless System, so there was no Qi to draw from heaven and earth, and obviously no internal or external art to display.

Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings. Yet under his watchful eyes, behind the narrow slits of the Yaksha mask, Shi Yan witnessed how the gatekeeper's figure shot forward like a shade loosed from the mouth of hell.

The entity moved with unnatural speed, not the explosive burst of a cultivator's movement art, but something else—a gliding, inevitable advance like shadow spreading across ground when the sun sets. The straw raincoat barely stirred. No sound of footsteps. Only the sudden, terrible closeness.

It did not raise the lantern.

Instead, the rust-eaten iron hook in its left hand stabbed toward Shi Yan's chest, savage and direct, carrying enough force to pierce stone and smash bone. The corroded metal caught the ghostly light, revealing pitted surfaces and edges that had tasted flesh countless times before. The hook cut through the mist, trailing wisps of black droplets that hissed faintly as they fell.

So, eventually—violence.

Then Shi Yan turned his waist and entered the blow.

With a sharp twist of the hips, Shi Yan drove his left shoulder forward and met the incoming hook with the heavy mountain-iron armor bound upon his arm. The motion was brutal, economical—no wasted movement, no hesitation. His weight shifted entirely into the forward drive, thighs coiling and releasing like compressed springs.

Clang!

The sound split the deathly stillness, a high, piercing ring that shattered the oppressive silence like a hammer through ice. A ring of force burst outward from the point of impact, driving back the white mist in all directions and leaving a perfect circular void in the fog. The shockwave rippled across the black water, raising small, sharp waves that slapped against the bridge's rotting supports.

The rusted hook struck the thickest, cruelest-spiked portion of his pauldron—the black mountain-iron ridges that rose like demon's horns from the shoulder guard. Sparks erupted, brief and fierce, showering down onto the damp planks where they died with soft hisses.

The force behind it was monstrous, carrying the tyrannical weight of pure Yin-Qi—cold that sought not merely to freeze but to drain, to leech vitality and warmth until nothing remained but brittle, lifeless matter.

This…

The gatekeeper's movements stilled for a fraction of a heartbeat. Beneath the straw hat, the void-like emptiness seemed to waver, as though something within was recalculating, reassessing.

If this had been an ordinary cultivator—even one who had tempered their physical body—they would have instinctively flared their Dantian's Qi to reinforce their skin against the impact, wreathing themselves in protective spiritual light.

If it had been a true Body Cultivator, their internal "Blood-Furnace" would have violently erupted, pushing back the Yin-energy with raw vitality—flesh blazing with yang heat, blood roaring like fire through their veins.

But this mortal… possessed neither?

On the other hand, from Shi Yan's side, the impact passed through the iron into flesh, seeking to shatter what lay beneath. The cold burrowed inward like ice-needles driven deep, probing for bone, for organ, for the soft mortality that should have been waiting there.

Yet his body was of course not that of an ordinary man.

Bone naturally strengthened to impossible density by the System's tempering absorbed the shock, distributing it through a skeletal structure that had been reforged at the cellular level. Flesh packed like forged hide—dense, resilient, unyielding—resisted the crushing force. And the layered protection of Stoneback Boar leather and pond-spider silk dulled the greater part of that murderous force, each layer stealing momentum, eating away at the killing intent embedded in the strike.

His feet slid backward across the slick, rotting planks, boots carving harsh lines through the damp wood, splinters flying upward in small, chaotic sprays. The friction burned, the planks groaning and cracking under the sudden pressure before his stance rooted once more—thighs locked, weight sinking low, center of gravity dropping like a stone finding the riverbed.

But that was all.

He did not fall.

He did not bleed.

More importantly, not the slightest wisp of Qi, nor a single spark of Body-Cultivator Blood-Force, escaped his body. No aura flared. No protective light kindled. No spiritual resonance rippled outward. He simply… endured. Like stone endures. Like iron endures.

The Gatekeeper slowly withdrew the rusted hook.

Metal scraped against mountain-iron with a shrill, grating cry that set teeth on edge—a sound like nails dragged across a coffin lid from the inside. The noise echoed strangely in the mist-choked space, bouncing back distorted and multiplied until it seemed a dozen hooks were being dragged across a dozen surfaces.

Beneath the broad hat, the gray emptiness where a face should have been remained fixed upon Shi Yan's unbending figure. The void did not blink—it could not—but the quality of its attention changed, sharpened, became something more unsettling than mere scrutiny.

"No Blood-Furnace... no Qi-suppressing talisman..."

Its voice was no longer filled with the chill of slaughter. Instead, it sank into a hoarse murmur, like dry bones grinding beneath yellow earth—slow, contemplative, carrying the weight of something ancient trying to reconcile the impossible with the observable.

"You received a strike from the Netherworld and met it with mere mortal flesh. Strange. Most strange. A body so tempered should carry the pulse of the Flesh Dao within it. Yet within you, this one perceives only emptiness."

The lantern swayed slightly, its pale green light washing over Shi Yan's form from head to foot, illuminating every surface, every angle, searching.

Under the dim, ghost-green glow of the lantern, Shi Yan stood tall and unmoving.

His Ironfang Panther hide brigandine hung still, the layered leather plates showing faint moisture where mist had condensed but otherwise unmarred. His eyes, hidden behind the narrow slits of the iron Yaksha mask, were cold and level, without the slightest ripple—no fear, no triumph, no readable emotion. Just the flat, professional assessment of a man who had learned long ago that survival depended on offering nothing.

In his left shoulder, a dull ache throbbed faintly, like embers buried beneath ashes—the echo of impact radiating through muscle and tendon—yet he did not spare it even a glance. Pain was information. Information was noted, cataloged, and set aside.

The Gatekeeper stared for a long while, the silence stretching taut as a bowstring. The black water lapped softly against the bridge supports—a rhythmic, patient sound, like the breathing of something vast and submerged.

Then the void beneath its hat seemed to contract slightly, folding inward with the finality of a decision reached.

"If you bear no Dao-mark, then you are but common mortal clay. And when mortals cross the Yellow Spring, the toll taken is the whole of the mortal shell. Offer it."

As the final word fell, the Gatekeeper abruptly lifted the green lantern and thrust it before Shi Yan's face.

The sudden motion stirred the stagnant air, bringing with it a fresh wave of that cloying grave-smell—wet earth, rotted silk, the sweet-sick corruption of flesh long drowned.

At once, the pale flames within surged high.

The wick blazed with renewed fury, the fire roaring upward as though fed by invisible oil. Wisps of ghost-fire twisted free from the main blaze, coiling through the air like serpents, then transforming—stretching, sharpening—into barbed threads that gleamed with spectral malice. The threads multiplied, weaving themselves into spectral hooks, dozens of them, each one etched with patterns that seemed to writhe and shift when glimpsed from the corner of the eye.

Then they shrieked—a sound like wind through the hollows of a broken skull—as they shot toward Shi Yan's chest.

I—I can't…

This was his true response, the instinctive recognition of a threat he possessed no tools to counter. He looked down at his chest, then up at the gatekeeper, and his eyes widened behind the mask—pupils dilating, the whites visible even through the narrow slits. His jaw clenched harder, teeth grinding together with enough force to send sharp pain shooting up through his temples. He could not move.

Something held him. Not physical restraint—his muscles responded when he tested them—but something deeper, more fundamental. A metaphysical weight, a law of this cursed place asserting itself. The bridge, the market, the crossing—they had rules, and those rules had teeth.

But… then a word rang in his mind…

From what Su Yin had told him, when cultivators crossed this road of the dead, the Netherworld levy did not touch the flesh. It shaved away years from the Divine Soul, cutting lifespan as one cuts candle-wax from a wick—painful, diminishing, but survivable for those with deep foundations.

But for mortals, the tax was crueler still: the hook seized the native soul outright, leaving behind nothing but an empty, breathing corpse. A body that would walk a few steps further before collapsing like a puppet with cut strings, eyes open and vacant, chest still rising and falling in mockery of life.

But despite this, he felt nothing.

No tearing sensation. No sense of spiritual violation. The hooks should have already plunged deep, should have been ripping and tearing at the very fabric of his being.

On the other hand, the ghostly hooks plunged into Shi Yan's chest, seeking the Three Huns and Seven Pos—the root spirits bestowed upon all living beings born beneath the Heavenly Dao, tied from birth to the Six Paths of Reincarnation. The barbed threads passed through armor, through flesh, through bone as though none of it existed, diving for the metaphysical core that should have been anchored there like roots buried in fertile soil.

The Gatekeeper's fingers tightened on the lantern cord, pulling the threads taut, beginning the extraction.

At the same time, a transparent screen flashed before Shi Yan's eyes out of sudden.

[System Warning: Foreign Karmic Extraction Attempted.] [Targeting: Foreign Soul Merged.] [Anomaly: 10 -> Quarantine Protocol Engaged. Reincarnation Tether: NULL.] The widening, and the slightly narrowed and gritted teeth of hopelessness when he was in an immovable state made by this gatekeeper vanished the instant he saw this screen.

His expression smoothed. The tension bled out of his jaw. His eyes, which had been wide with the appearance of helpless mortal terror, narrowed to cold slits once more.

Heh!

The sound came from deep in his chest—not spoken aloud, but felt, resonating through bone and breath. Dark amusement. Professional satisfaction. The grim humor of a man who'd just watched his opponent's killing blow miss by a hair's breadth.

The instant the screen appeared, his widening eyes narrowed—and then the green fire touched his soul slipped away at once.

Like hooks cast into empty void, they found nothing upon which to fasten. The spectral threads passed through, curling back upon themselves in confusion, scrabbling blindly for purchase that did not exist. They writhed and twisted, seeking, probing deeper, but there was simply… nothing there. No Three Huns. No Seven Pos. No karmic threads anchoring a soul to the wheel of reincarnation.

Shi Yan had no native Hun, no native Po. His name had never been inscribed within the Book of Life and Death of this heaven and earth. To the laws of the Netherworld, he was not a living being improperly recorded—he was something never entered at all. A foreign object. An anomaly that the system of reincarnation could not parse, could not categorize, could not claim.

Also…

His eyes, cold and level behind the mask, stared directly into the void beneath the Gatekeeper's hat.

Shi Yan was never his name, either.