Stepping into the market district was like running face first into a wall of sound. Ji Kang and his companions were following the second set of directions they had gotten, from the dock to the market, hearing the loud buzz that was the background noise of the city, when they passed through an invisible wall and were assaulted by the unbelievable din.

Criers yelled at the top of their lungs about their products, customers shouted into the ears of sellers in an attempt to be heard, and intertwining with it all was the irregular and interminable clash of metal on metal coming from the many forges as blacksmiths made pieces to order.

Ji Kang was surprised to notice that his enhanced hearing was able to clearly distinguish the source of every sound. He was impressed with the mystical qualities granted by cultivation, but he still felt a headache coming on.

The point where they had entered the market was one of the enormous spoke-streets that radiated from the center of the city and it seemed to be the main avenue that the rest of the market branched off of.

Ji Kang signaled Lu Wu that they should split up with crude hand signs rather than adding to the noise by shouting. Lu Wu nodded and then tugged Jin Xun’s sleeve and the two dove into the crowd. The crowd was so thick that they were almost immediately out of sight.

Yu Shuren and Ji Kang made their way towards the source of the metalworking sounds to try and find a suitable replacement weapon for Yu Shuren.

Pushing through the crowd wasn’t a feasible or efficient method of traversing the market, so they were forced to follow the natural flow of traffic. The crowd was so dense that it had started to behave almost like a fluid, there were circuitous currents formed from large numbers of people, leading to the different sections of the market and then back towards the main avenue.

Once Ji Kang and Yu Shuren entered the current that seemed to be going towards the hammering sounds, all it was possible to do was to drift along at roughly the pace of the crowd.

Entering the side street that all of the forges were on, the noise oddly seemed to diminish. Although the metallic hammering and clinking was louder, there was no one shouting about the quality or variety of their wares.

The crowd also loosened up and the two boys were free to walk wherever they chose once again.

Every building on this street seemed to have been built by following the same blueprints, with the only differences being the scale at which the different businesses operated and the artistic designs carved into every building’s front exterior wall which depicted what kind of work they did.

The buildings were all divided into two parts that performed the same function in every building, the forge and the store. The forges were open air with thin stone columns holding up tile roofs, supported on one side by the store section of the building.

The stores were all exactly what you would expect if a merchant was forced to forego using any flammable materials but still wanted to provide a high quality buying experience. There were intricate tile murals on every interior wall, private rooms for discrete discussion with the employees, and a large open floor plan room filled with premade products being displayed.

Goldsmiths and silversmiths had small scale forges, handling delicate work with small amounts of materials, and large stores with plenty of private rooms. Blacksmiths’ stores were small with only one or two private rooms while the forges were enormous, sprawling monstrosities, with dedicated areas for the unloading of carts of ore and the loading of carts with bulk iron goods too large to be displayed in the attached shop. Ji Kang saw wrought iron fences, bundles of iron rods longer than a person was tall, and more being loaded into carts and shipped off.

Ji Kang and Yu Shuren spent some time walking around, looking into the various forges to watch the work in action. Some smiths were clearly experts of their craft, incredibly competent and experienced, devoting their full focus to projects. Others were obviously apprentices, learning over the master artisan’s shoulder or working on odd jobs.

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They knew they were looking for a blacksmith whose focus was on weapons, so paid close attention to the carvings on the exterior of the blacksmith stores. Some showed chefs at work with knives, surrounded by pots and pans, others showed fences and barred windows. They wandered around until they saw a building with carvings depicting armored soldiers in battle, this was clearly what they were looking for.

Inside the main room of the shop were rows of shelves with a counter at the back of the room with two sales representatives behind it. On the back wall were two doors, one leading to the forge and the other presumably leading to private rooms.

Ji Kang and Yu Shuren didn’t want or need a private room. They had discussed their budget with Lu Wu on the way to the market district, so they knew they’d be buying a temporary weapon that was on the cheaper side to act as a placeholder until a better option became practical.

There wasn’t much point buying a masterwork if Yu Shuren wasn’t able to wield it to its full potential.

Selecting Yu Shuren’s new spear was easy, there was a selection of spears hung vertically in one section of the shelves. Yu Shuren picked a few up and tested their balance and weight before making a quick decision. The sales representative they talked to was very professional and Ji Kang and Yu Shuren were walking out of the shop with a new spear in just a few moments since they entered.

“Brother Yu, I know we got the cheap option with the idea of breakage in mind, but please try not to throw this one away in your first fight with it.” Ji Kang pretended exasperation.

“But I just love to ruin my new toys, Brother Ji! Whenever I get a shiny new toy, the first thing I want to do is set it free!” Yu Shuren’s voice rose an octave and he clasped his hands under his chin while batting his eyes and crossing his ankles.

Ji Kang tried to maintain his stern exasperated expression, but he couldn’t help but break out into laughter. Ever since Zaotong Ji Kang had been working on thawing their relationship. They had always been cordial, but they were so formal.

That was his fault, he had decided on the tone that he wanted to set, the first night after he had been told he would become a cultivator. An impartial observer would forgive him if, while his thoughts were filled with schemes to kill someone in cold blood, he hadn’t been in the right mindset for making new friends.

In the week on the boat, he had decided to officially collaborate with Yu Shuren and also become friends with him. After all, they were sharing each other’s biggest secret. If they weren’t friends they would almost certainly kill each other and that just seemed unnecessarily melodramatic to Ji Kang.

“Should we go meet back up with Lu Wu and Jin Xun?” Yu Shuren got serious.

“I don’t see why not, unless you had something else you wanted to do while we’re separated?” Ji Kang answered with a question.

“No. I was thinking you might, you’re sneaky like that.” Yu Shuren narrowed his eyes and smiled like he was joking.

Ji Kang decided to ignore that. Yu Shuren wasn’t wrong, but there was no point talking about things like this on a public street when they knew for a fact spies were all around this city. He didn’t think it was likely a spy was listening to their conversation or that if there was that they would care about their schemes, but there was nothing to be gained from being incautious.

“So we’ll make our way towards the cultivation materials market?” Ji Kang changed the topic.

There was an exclusive section of the market catered to cultivators of all paths. The place they were supposed to make the symbol to get in contact with the spy was in that section, presumably because it wouldn’t be considered unusual for any or all of the four boys to spend time there.

“Well, if you’re sure you don’t ha-”

Yu Shuren’s reply was interrupted when a chorus of screams from elsewhere in the market rose in volume enough to be heard over the din. Everyone in the market stopped and turned to look, trying to find out where the screaming was coming from.

As far as Ji Kang could tell, the screaming was happening deeper in the market district, one or two streets over. It wasn’t a single person screaming continuously, there were many different voices and they were accompanied by crashing and rumbling from the ground.

It wasn’t clear how long the screaming had been happening before it had managed to overwhelm the other noises, but now that it had, every other source of noise died down.

There was a single moment where the entire crowd seemed to have reached the same conclusion. People were being killed.