"Hereby, I proclaim with all seriousness of the matter, henceforth, I am and forever will be known as Lord Karl Gulden, or The Black Emperor if you really have to call me by any titles." Karl stared at Wu Han with penetrative gaze, but no one could really see where he was looking and his penetrating effort had been completely wasted on the smiling, white-haired man that had his sister stuck to him since the moment he had returned from his mission.

"All the alternatives like, Emperor of The Night, The Void Demon of Oblivion, The Terror of The Deepest Depths. Great Demonic Eye of Doom, Lord Evil Eye and similar abominations of my name are not to be used under any circumstances. Especially the title calling me Emperor Night Gulden, The Void Demon of The Deepest Karl, is strictly forbidden under the pain of death, slow and gruesome. I hope that everyone understands." Karl gazed through the wall of floating purple text he had just written and saw the nodding heads of all his human servants, except for Bei Lin who had already left under his new orders.

He would do a special address just for him later.

  Karl had assigned the cultivator to start with their business, finding potential buyers for the goods they could produce. They would be using the road that even the Water Dragon Sect needed, meaning the security was not entirely dependent on them. For the time, the sect had been placated with the assistance of the two Earth Elementals that were working on their new fortress day and night around the clock. Given how much importance Lehaim seemed to treat the construction work with, it was clear that Bei Lin had gained quite the influence in the sect by his move of providing two heavy duty workers that could shape the rock and soil faster than an ordinary worker could ever dream of.

  What was left was to bring potential buyers to inspect their produce that consisted of what could be gathered in the forest. Karl hoped to attract the attention of moderately important people with his carcasses, plants, berries and whatever he had managed to scavenge from around their location. He needed to hold back with his operation for the start, making too much money and ending up dealing with the Immortals was definitely not what he intended with his plan.

"Wu Han, you will be Bei Lin's handler, you do know him the best. I will tell you when he returns." He wrote while facing the white haired teenager and his face immediately lost a lot of its lightheartedness.

"And my sister?" He asked while his sister squeezed the young man's hand more tightly.

"Stays down here as insurance naturally." Karl wrote in response. He got his feelings, but he did not need unnecessary accidents.

"Understood." Wu Han answered dryly and the siblings left the Void Well.

  Karl decided to take a look outside, where his ever diligent Rovan had prepared all the goods to be inspected by the buyers. He exited Fort Orlov, using the brand new exit they had to make due to the Water Dragon Sect sealing the original entrance. Thankfully, Bei Lin kept the sect at bay for the time and Karl did not need to bother with any problems regarding the Water Dragon Sect at the moment.

  After the recent battle, the ruin was even more pitiful than before and the courtyard resembled only a plot of land encircled by stone rubble. In the middle of the clearing stood huge wooden planks supported by wooden stumps, a makeshift tables that served to present the goods. It was not much, but Karl did not expect his business to start as something breathtaking.

The little he had was enough.

  He saw Rovan snooping around a jar with yellow berries that his goblins had gathered. When he ordered his Void Knight to walk closer, Rovan took the initiative and began talking to Karl. Something that the others rarely did.

"Greythorn berries, I loved them mashed with milk when I was little. It used to be an easy to get meal when there still were some cows and farmers outside the wall." He was looking at the berries while talking about the past.

"Everything is on a good track to return to the old ways." Karl wrote to bring some optimism into the debate.

"As you say, Lord Gulden, after we trade the berries, some kids can have the same meal as I used to have." Rovan grinned widely while going along the plank, looking for other familiar goods.

It might be the first genuine smile Karl had seen from the man.

  Most of it had been identified by those who frequented market in the city. Most goods in slum markets were cheap, but even there had been some rarer merchandise for sale on exceptional occasions. Rovan browsed the goods under the gaze of Karl, but made no further comments.

  Karl noticed that during the long wait, that was taking more time than he had expected, two girls exited the tunnels to get a few sun rays that were sorely missing under the ground. They sat down next to one of the wooden planks and put something onto its smooth wooden surface that had been cut by Void into its present shape.. He thought that he was a little familiar with Xin Han, but the girl with green and black hair named Mei Gon was still a complete mystery to him. Actually, he was proud that he even remembered her name.

  He tried to get closer without being too obvious, an action that was completely unsuccessful, and observed up close what the two were doing while they sat next to one of the wooden planks that had no goods on it.

They had some kind of coins in front of them and kept throwing them into the air, after a minute, Karl understood that it was some sort of a game.

"Oh, Lord Karl Gulden, do you want to play?" Mei Gon asked and surprised Karl who had not recognized the game at all.

"Sure, why not, but I do not know the rules." Karl agreed, because the buyers were nowhere to be seen anyway. He could as well have some fun in the meantime.

"It is good old Scratchers." Mei Gon presented smoothly, while taking out ten flat pieces of stone from somewhere.

"Here you go, you can make your own." Karl looked at her for a second, before he realized he was supposed to engrave the word into the ten pieces. After a while, he had his ten game pieces ready with a single letter on each of them.

S C R A T C H E R S

  It looked rather silly, but he was not expecting rocket science from the girls born in the slums of Jinsheng. He liked his ugly artwork.

"Now, the rules!" Mei Gon began to explain the rules. " You throw all of them high above your head and when they fall back, you will get either face or flat. Throw them!"

She urged and Karl threw all the stone pieces into the air and watched as all fell back to the ground and he got his result of four faces and six flats.

S A R S

"Well, that is ominous." Karl thought while gazing at the other six blank pieces.

"Not bad, My Lord, not bad!" Both girls quickly threw their own pieces with different results for Mei Gon and Xin Han.

C A T C H

A S

"Bad luck, Xin! Now is the betting phase. Everyone has to pay one copper to stay in the game or he is out. We have no money, means we use this!" Mei Gon slammed a green piece of stone on the wooden plank and Karl had to think for a while to realized what it was. Not far away, there was a place with a mineral reminding him of pieces of shattered green glass and the teenagers had collected the glass to use as currency in the game.

"I will give you some of mine, My Lord, we have collected plenty." Mei Gon pushed some of her wealth to Karl and he promptly bet a single piece of glass to stay in the game.

Why not? He could catch catch with sars easily!

Another throw happened with the remaining flats and Karl's luck was good this time.

S A R S T E C H

S C A T C H

C R A T E R S

He was confident that with his sarstech, craters and scatches could be beaten easily, he was just two letters short of winning.

"I win in the next round with the probability of one fourth, the game is mine!" Karl thought and happily pushed forward another glass piece.

It was really the case and Karl was able to win in the next round, both girls staring at him with blank faces.

  He stared into the big eyes of Xin Han, mesmerized by her charm. However, it was just a fleeting notion as he had no longer the fiery instincts of a human male. Suddenly, he had a feeling of deja vu and froze for a moment.

"Lord Gulden, may I touch your . . may I touch you?" Xin Han asked and lowered her head, Karl had no idea where it was coming from.

  He stared at the teenage girl, the first thing in his mind being something indecent. However, they were not private and it did not make any sense anyway. Karl thought about it again and found nothing too strange about the request.

"Well, why not, there are my minions around us everywhere." Karl thought and ordered his Void Knight to lift his finger and wrote a short answer.

"Yes, briefly." The purple text floated in the air and a slender white hand stretched tentatively to touch his surface.

"Jeeez, it feels so intimate, do not hurt my eyes!" Karl shouted inside of his mind, but his jovial mood ended abruptly when the hand touched his surface and grabbed him firmly within the frame of the next second.

  Instantly, the seemingly tender girl transformed into an enraged beast and hastily tore him off the head of the Void Knight, throwing his solid, black body towards her brother that was not nearby just by an accident.

"Kill it! Quick!" She roared at her brother who must have been expecting her action for some time.

"Knight, st. .. AGH!" Karl was reminded that the motion sickness was still affecting him when he moved abruptly and the crucial order to his minion had been interrupted.

"Gladly!" A familiar voice answered and a second after he heard the voice, he saw a huge rock falling on top of him.

"Traitor scum!" It was too late and Karl realized that it was a scheme. His faithful servants had not been just loitering around, but observing him closely. Had they realized that he had to order his minions first and could not use them on reflex? Had they deduced his motion sickness? Was that why Xin Han had always been playing near him with pebbles, in fact, observing him all the time with sinister intentions?

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Karl Gulden felt a crack and an unpleasant tension that ran through all his being.

Cracks, like spiderwebs, spread along his surface and deeper into his very core.

"It cannot be, they are just teenagers!" He had to be paranoid, but still, the kids were the breed of thieves and gang members who had been thrown out of the city because they had dared to steal from the guards at the gate. They were a completely another breed of teenagers than he had remembered from his old life and the similarity clouded his judgement.

"I was like your father! How could you?! I saved your lives! Dammit!" The black stone shattered and he felt weightlessness and pressure enveloping him from all sides. The bond with the stone that contained him had been broken and he could see its shards in sand of the Desertified forest.

  He remembered all the near death experiences he read about when he had been a human. Were the people right? Was he seeing his body before he would depart for some strange place again?

  Suddenly, he felt a pull on his being and realized he was being drawn towards the direction he had been thrown from. For a second, he dreaded that the teenagers were devils incarnate and had planned to capture his very soul.

Despicable demonic cultivators!

But then, he actually saw again.

He saw the same girl again, but this time her features were quite different.

"Da shit finally kicked the bucket!" She said in tone that he had never heard from her before, he could not understand how he had considered her cute just a moment ago.

"It did, sis, we are free." Wu Han smirked, but then the attention of everyone had been drawn by Karl's minions that began turning into purple mist.

"No, no, NO! Status?! Come on!" Karl realized that there was a single minion that had not turned into purple mist and for some reason it was still present without any connection to his previous dungeony self.

"Run, while it's still dazed!" Somebody shouted and the teenagers quickly vanished from Karl's vicinity, leaving there only a single Void Knight that had not fallen apart like all the other minions for reasons unknown.

  Karl realized slowly that he had just been stripped of all his power and his soul possessed the empty husk of his Void Knight before he had the time to disappear after his system had been destroyed.

He listened to the fading footsteps of the teenagers and suppressed an urge to chase after them and reward them for their loyalty.

How could he have been so blind, not noticing their treachery?

"Yet, it is not that surprising." Karl lifted his sword and waved it around to try out its weight, it felt unusually light.

  It was not surprising that Xin Han wanted him dead, when he kept risking her brother's life. It was no wonder that Wu Han shared her desire, being under the pressure of the possibility of losing his sibling whenever he messed up too badly. It came with no surprise that Rovan played the exemplar of servitude only to stab him in the back later.

"It is all so obvious, I was blind. A blind fool playing a happy family." Instead of chasing after the teenagers, he let them run and slid along one of the wooden stumps towards the ground, yet stood up right back, as he was not ready to give up just yet. With last sliver of hope, he wandered back down to his layer and entered the no longer functioning Void Well, a dysfunctional husk with two pillars that remained in place of his prized building, a ruin. Nowhere was the dazzling purple glow from before, all the power of Void from before absent.

All was lost.

"Positive thinking Karl, positive thinking." He kept repeating in his mind and the only positive thought he managed to have was, that with limbs and torso, he could finally dance like an elven pop-star.

"Let's dance" He stepped into the center of the room and grabbed a pillar.

He was really out of it.

The pillar blinked at him.

* * * *

  Xin Han was startled, when the big armored figure hugged her and showed no signs of letting go, gently rocking from side to side. Directly against her eyes was the mysterious black stone that housed the existence of The Black Emperor.

"Lord Gulden, are you alright?" She asked, a little bruised by the huge armor plates pressed against her skin.

"Where? What 's happening? Are you still here? Sorry about that!" The Lord finally let her go and wrote quickly.

"Where else? We are playing Scratchers. I have just asked if I may touch your stone pieces, they fell off the table. It has to be difficult to move them with your armored hands." She pointed at two pieces that had fallen off the wooden plank after being thrown too high in the air. In response, her mute game partner began writing furiously again.

"Xin, Mei, everyone, I will not hold you here against your will, none of you. You can go right now, if you wish. Your brother has to be worried about you when he goes out. It was unreasonable of me to ask you all to be here, to treat you like my property. I can escort you to the city, or get you inside from below, Bei Lin will certainly get some money and you can start a new life." Lord Gulden began ranting out of the blue and Xin was confused a little, she did not understand what had suddenly gotten into the Lord.

"What are you talking about, Lord Gulden? We have more food than we have ever had!" She giggled while waving off all his worries with her hand.

"Your brother has to be stressed out! I haven't. .. do you hate me? You can speak freely, I will not hurt you." The Black Emperor still continued conveying the strangest of messages.

"I . . .I will move your piece, Emperor." She bent and stretched her small hand, picking up two pieces of rock that fell there when the Lord threw them up clumsily before. The pieces appeared in their new place and Xin brushed her hair out of her face.

"We never think about tomorrow, another day in the slums is just another day of pain and survival. We can eat to our fill here, that is more than we ever had. We know that at some point, you will get tired of us and throw us to your monsters, but we have no hope of any other existence." She gestured her hand in the direction of the forest dejectedly and continued after taking a deep breath." All we can do is enjoy the days we have left and forget about our future." She said in a sad tone and Lord Gulden paused, finally understanding that the game was not meant to entertain Xin, or Mei, but to amuse him.

To amuse him and prolong their lives.

"You have won again!" Xin Han shouted merrily and clapped with her hands.

Yet, he knew he did not. He saw the flats down in the grass.

"I am not The Black Emperor for nothing!" Karl proclaimed pompously, playing along, while thinking about that very future. Then he began to write with big letters for everyone to see.

"From this day forth, you must not fear tomorrow, none of you will. I will not let suffering dominate your days ahead, as long as I can draw even a sliver of power, I will do my very best to take care of you. Of us." Karl was moved by how the reality actually compared to his worst hallucinations. Clearly, there was hope even in the darkest of places and not all was just filth in the slums. He had never been a father, but he thought that what he felt at the moment was not very far from that exact feeling.

  He could not say that suddenly, surrounding himself with people and becoming a grand savior of everyone had become his goal, it was just a detail. However, despite a single detail was not enough to mean anything on its own, a collection of details that one surrounded oneself with meant everything. The life itself was just a collection of details.

Xin Han stared back at him like a statue, but he could tell that all her facial muscles were tight, her jaw clenched from suppressing emotion.

"Thanks for the game, but I have an empire to run." He wrote jokingly, not wanting to turn the moment too awkward and ordered his minion to quickly walk out in the direction of Bei Lin, who had just arrived with the delegation of potential buyers.

He assumed the role of an ordinary minion and waited for what was to come.

* * * *

"Here are the goods I have prepared, it is trivial for my servants to gather large amounts of anything your eyes can see. You can say that the very forest around you is under my command." Bei Lin walked towards the former courtyard of Fort Orlov, hands clasped behind his back while being followed by several men that had obviously the status of trusted gang members at most. They also might have been formerly influential members fallen from grace who had been chosen for a highly risky mission, their rivals hoping for their thorough disappearance in the dangerous forests around Jinsheng.

"It is amazing, Sir Bei Lin. With your power, the business will be booming soon." One of the rugged men that followed Bei Lin exclaimed, trying to remain in the good books of the clearly extremely powerful cultivator.

"Minions, create a secure perimeter while the guests are browsing the goods!" Bei Lin gestured haughtily and the Goblins, Void Horrors and Void Knights assembled at the edge of the clearing, following his command. It was beyond obvious how much he enjoyed the borrowed power he wielded.

After the initial hesitation, that was natural given the visage of the monsters, the guests swarmed around the makeshift tables and began browsing the goods that could be obtained from their new business partner.

"How much for the food? I will buy all the food you can gather!"

"The stumps are for sale too? Wood is currently expensive. Can your servants transport the goods?"

"Shut it, all meat is mine!"

  The potential buyers started bickering among themselves, the animosity they held towards each other quickly skyrocketing. They had not expected the venture to be a profitable one, expecting it to be simply a plot to get them all killed. Yet, out of the blue they were presented with a deal like no other. All the sects were busy building their forts, walls and roads, no one had the capacity to do business at the time. What was painstakingly gathered in the forests by the cultivators was being redistributed by The Council and only a few rogue cultivators had the guts to do a small scale business for the black market.

  A golden opportunity had been presented to them and they planned to make the most of it, turning themselves from the outsiders sent on a suicide mission back into influential members of their respective gangs and societies.

"I will sign preliminary contracts with everyone, the most promising customers will have their contracts extended." Bei Lin was enjoying his position of a big shot and the center of attention. He was not the only cultivator present, as influential gangs had their own resources.

"Sir Bei Lin, could you perhaps provide even military assistance? For the right price of course!" One of the more shady people among the guests asked and winked at Bei Lin, who chuckled in response.

"Everything is opened for negotiations, for the right price, of course." Bei Lin nodded back at the man who immediately smiled and stroked his black beard, appearing to be thinking of something sinister.

* * * *

"What were you thinking, you dummy!?" Karl wrote, enraged by the little man standing in front of him who shivered like a dry leaf.

"They paid a lot, so I thought. .. . " Bei Lin whispered in low voice, his demeanor completely different from the haughty lord he had been impersonating just an hour ago.

"Then stop thinking! You were supposed to get us a low profile deal, an ordinary deal. We are not a mercenary band!" Karl was displeased with the result of their presentation. Everything went well, except for the fact that Bei LIn had sold a squad of Karl's minions to raid a food bank in Jinsheng. The action was intended to create serious trouble for a competing gang called Wolves who ruled the territory from the shadows, tolerated by the authorities.

It was exactly the kind of thing Karl wanted to avoid.

"We need to cancel the deal somehow without damaging out credibility." The action had already been paid for and Karl did not want to enter Jinsheng as a liar who was breaking deals. At the same time, he could not act as aggressively as raiding a food bank.

"I have an idea." Suddenly, a person stepped up to the task. Surprisingly, it was the youngest member of Karl's little empire, Kou Linhai. His long black hair a tangled mess as always, he stopped playing with the others and stood up to tell them his opinion. "Just smash their noses! The dogs should be left barking on the moon, that is all they can do. That is what the old Karzak used to say."

"Care to explain?" Karl turned to Kou Linhai, more out of decency than any hope that his proposal could actually lead to something.

"He is right, do it like the old fox and smash their noses. What can they do?" A whirlwind of red hair joined the debate, as Rovan had long concluded his inspection of the goods and Scratchers seemed to no longer amuse him.

Bei Lin and Karl simply turned to face Rovan, expecting the answer from him.

"Karzak is the old shopkeeper that used to be in the Purple Lotus Sect, but was kicked out because of his methods. He opened his business at the border of the slums and the old manufacturing district. Some gangs tried to collect protection from him, but did it twice at most."

"How is that possible? Whole gangs could not be afraid of a single shopkeeper." Karl wrote with doubts about the story of a tough shopkeeper facing the gangs. "Had he connections in the sects?"

"Nah, no one influential. He was selling subpar goods and the gangs lost a few members every time they have tried something. He was not worth the effort and the gangs did not want to risk too much just for posturing, as he was dangerously close to the Liang Plaza." Rovan continued, expecting that there would come a moment of realization to Karl and Bei Lin, but they just kept staring blankly at Rovan.

"Well, we are very close to the fortress of the Water Dragon Sect and we peddle basic goods. Our merchandise might be very valuable to ordinary people, but not to the cultivators. We are in the very same position as old Karzak. I propose to just bully the gangs and keep our word only when dealing with serious customers." Rovan shifted his glance from Bei Lin to Karl and this time, he saw understanding in Bei Lin's eyes. "Just keep the advanced payments from everyone and honor the deals that we made with serious customers."

"Interesting proposal, we can try that." Karl said after a while. The fingers of the city gangs were not long enough to reach them where they were and even if they managed, it would pose an opportunity to gain information as well and that was the purpose of the whole operation.

  With time, the forest around them would inevitably turn into just another district of Jinsheng. They needed to integrate into the city, but no one said that being integrated equaled to being exploited, Karl only needed to look like a too tough target to be worth the trouble for the big players. It might be wise to take a different approach with the gangs.

"Generalization is for amateurs, we need to deal with different players differently to achieve good results." Karl Gulden thought while recalling the names of organizations that had just paid them a visit.