Chapter 4

Clear River City operated on two levels.

The surface was straightforward: merchants traded, cultivators trained, officials administered, and the occasional martial dispute was settled in the designated arena outside the north gate. Laws existed. Order was maintained. The Martial Alliance ensured it.

Beneath that surface, however, was a different world entirely.

Lin Feng learned this in his third day at the inn. The innkeeper—a quiet man named Old Zhou who asked no questions and watered his wine with practiced skill—mentioned it in passing.

"The information market meets at midnight. The third bridge. Bring silver, bring secrets, or bring nothing at all."

Lin Feng went.

The third bridge was a stone arch over a canal that smelled of rust and old fish. At midnight, it was empty—except for a handful of figures in dark clothing, standing in careful distance from one another.

An information market. Cultivators who sold secrets the way merchants sold silk.

Lin Feng approached the nearest figure—a woman with a scar across her left eye and the still demeanor of someone who had survived things that would kill ordinary people.

"What do you sell?" he asked.

"Information. Names. Locations. Sect movements. The price depends on what you want and how badly you want it."

"I want to know about the Five Great Sects. Specifically, I want to know who sits on the Martial Council."

The woman's eye studied him. "That's expensive information. Twenty silver taels."

Lin Feng placed the silver on the bridge between them. He had acquired it the old-fashioned way—working for it. Two days of labor at the city's eastern dock, moving cargo from river boats. His body, rebuilt by the Demon Vein, was stronger than it had ever been.

The woman swept the silver away. In its place, she left a folded piece of paper.

"The current council has seven seats. Three are held by the Five Great Sects. Two by independent cultivators. One by the Martial Alliance's chosen representative. And one..." She paused. "One has been vacant for ten years."

Lin Feng looked at the paper. Seven names. Six of them he recognized from his previous life—not as council members, but as junior disciples. Young cultivators who had been nothing when he last saw them.

Now they held the power that his former sect had once challenged.

"The vacant seat," he said. "Why is it vacant?"

The woman's smile was thin. "Because some things, even we don't sell. You'll have to find that out yourself."

She turned and disappeared into the darkness.

Lin Feng folded the paper. He stood alone on the bridge, the canal water murmuring below him, the names of his sect's destroyers heavy in his hand.

Ten years. They had had ten years to build their power, to fill the seats, to forget.

He would remind them.

The next morning, Lin Feng returned to the inn. Old Zhou was wiping down the counter, his expression as placid as ever.

"You went to the bridge," it was not a question.

"I did."

"Find what you were looking for?"

"Some of it."

Old Zhou nodded. "Be careful, young man. Clear River City has long ears and sharp knives. The Martial Alliance does not like people asking questions about the council."

Lin Feng met the innkeeper's eyes. For the first time, he noticed something—a stillness in Old Zhou's movements, a precision in the way he wiped the counter. This was not a man who had always been an innkeeper.

"You've cultivated," Lin Feng said.

Old Zhou's smile was gentle. "A long time ago. Before I decided that tea and silence were better company than swords and secrets."

"What level?"

"Does it matter?" Old Zhou refilled Lin Feng's cup. "Drink your tea. You have bigger problems than an old innkeeper."

Lin Feng drank his tea. And he thought about the vacant seat on the council.

And why, after ten years, it remained unfilled.