My Scales Can Make Equivalent Exchange
Chapter 149: Rapid Advancement

Chapter 149: Chapter 149: Rapid Advancement

Sorting through his gains, Wang Zijia made his way to the street stall area.

The night had fully fallen, and the entire market square was bathed in the light of countless blood-red lanterns. Several human head lanterns floated in the sky, casting eerie smiles.

Under the crimson light, the street market had lost the vitality it usually displayed during the day.

The pungent smell of rot filled the air. The vendors, dressed in shrouds, their faces painted with deathly makeup, wore stiff expressions and eerie smiles as they diligently set up their night stalls.

There were no junk spiritual objects to be seen on these stalls like during the day.

At some point, talismans and beast skins had been replaced with hairy scalps and human skins covered in bloody inscriptions. Spirit fruits had turned into rotting skulls and various severed limbs emanated a strong stench of decay.

Two rarity, fresh skeletal remains, stood out amongst the rest, like a prized jewel amidst a flock of chickens.

Suppressing the unease in his heart and the terror welling up inside him, Wang Zijia stopped in front of a stall at the edge.

"What has caught your eye, milord?" asked the vendor — a young man — forcing an obsequious, eerie smile onto his death-like face, ingratiating himself with Wang Zijia, adding another layer of creepiness to the atmosphere.

Upon looking at his stall, Wang Zijia found it to be filled with various chunks of rotting flesh, undoubtedly the worst in the market.

"I have some clandestine items I’d like to sell. Would you accompany me to the alley for the transaction?" Wang Zijia proposed tentatively.

Had it been a regular person, he would not resort to such demeaning tactics, but these creatures, set in their own patterns, could not recognize him due to his current state, equivalent to a bug in a system program.

Sure enough, the young man only hesitated slightly before nodding his head to Wang Zijia’s invitation.

The two men, one leading and one following, entered a dark alley by the market.

Despite its direct access to the busy main street, this place was unusually dark, rarely illuminated by the blood-red light.

"I wonder what you wish to sell..." the young man began to ask.

Before he could finish, the Five Ghosts emerged from the void, this time not needing to transform into a body of flesh and blood to ensnare him.

Instantly forming another cloud of ghost fog, they entered the young man’s body. The young man, who already looked like a dead person, was now completely stiff. Ghost Qi swirled around his ghostly white face, making him look like a walking corpse — a real dead man.

Wang Zijia approached with ease, a radiant grain of sand slipping from his fingers and falling into the young man’s mouth.

When a familiar sensation hit him, what surprised Wang Zijia was that each time he performed the Demon Seeding, even if the book seemed helpless, it would strongly resist.

But this time, he found to his surprise that the resistance had lessened. The book offered merely token opposition before letting go completely. Even more surprisingly, Wang Zijia felt a sense of affinity emanating from the book.

’Is it close to successful refining?’ he wondered.

’Or is it due to the Full Mastery of the Blood Droplet?’

Wang Zijia furrowed his brows, considering these changes.

However, he quickly brushed off these thoughts. As long as things had become easier for him, reducing the cost of Demon Seeding and accelerating the refining process, that was all that mattered.

He got up and left the alley, returning once again to the market next door, Wang Zijia began another round of the usual trick.

As stall owners vanished one by one, victim to Wang Zijia’s refining, the initially stagnant growth of the paper piece resumed, and the number of people in the street market area gradually decreased.

Normally, anyone would have noticed that something was off. But these stall owners just kept minding their own business, obliviously tending to their stalls, showing no reaction to Wang Zijia’s suspicious activities.

If he had acted this way yesterday, even though the members of the market square would have considered him a creature, by now, some response would have started. But at this moment, for this system bug within their ranks, the automatic defense mechanism of the entire market square was completely unresponsive.

Time flew by unnoticed. The night passed in silent anticipation, Wang Zijia tirelessly continuing his work. The volume of paper he had refined was almost the size of a book page, and he had consumed the entire street market area.

Then, after some thought, he headed to the Heavenly Fragrance Tower.

Even during the day, the Heavenly Fragrance Tower was bustling with guests. Though the girls weren’t out on the streets looking for customers like they would have been at night.

"Oh, sir, please come inside!" As soon as Wang Zijia stepped through the main gate, a woman enthusiastically greeted him, grabbing his arm and ushering him inside with warmth.

Inside, the Heavenly Fragrance Tower was a traditional brothel with seats all around the first floor and a stage at the center. A wooden staircase led up to the second floor with private rooms. One could enjoy the view of the stage below, or shut the door and mind their own business.

Upon entering the hall, Wang Zijia’s gaze was drawn to a corner.

There he saw a frail and hunchbacked young man roaming around the hall, collecting various pieces of junk. He wore a dress similar to Gui Gong, struggling to keep himself upright. It was none other than number thirteen.

"Oh, you’re interested in that, sir? Easy peasy, we have refined scholars in the Heavenly Fragrance Tower that would fulfill all your desires," the woman said with a wide smile upon following Wang Zijia’s gaze.

Wang Zijia: "..."

"Don’t worry, sir, I understand, I understand," she said, seeing the embarrassment on Wang Zijia’s face and thinking he was too shy to admit.

Wang Zijia: "..."

’You understand shit,’ Wang Zijia thought but said indifferently instead, "Just arrange a girl for me in a room."

"Aren’t you picking anyone else?" asked the woman for confirmation.

Rolling his eyes, Wang Zijia replied, "If it’s not enough, I’ll call for more."

With that, he shook off his sleeve and walked towards the second floor, and a few crystalline lights floated towards number thirteen.

········

Meanwhile, at Nanfei Square on the other side.

At some point, the square had been filled with coffins, each one carrying a lifeless corpse.

Especially in the center of the square, there were hundreds of coffins.

Inside lay young men and women, all of them meticulously adorned, sleeping peacefully like sleeping beauties in their coffins, seemingly alive.

Had Wang Zijia been there, he would have immediately recognized many of them as disciples of the Three Sects.

In the center of the square, at the edge of the altar, the people in several coffins seemed to have their eyes moving under their closed eyelids.

Among them, Gu Xuefeng, who Wang Zijia knew, was fast asleep, his eyes moving and the long sword in his arms trembling slightly under his closed eyelids.

As time went by, the Dharma Assembly was gradually perfected under the arrangement of the attendees.

When all the guests who had narrowly avoided being laid in the coffins yesterday, except for Wang Zijia showed up, the False Perfected finally appeared on the altar at the center of the Dharma Assembly.

"Paying respects to the Perfected!" the guests, who had completely forgotten their identities at this point and assumed the roles set for them by the Mysterious Domain.