Yong Lu once again checked everything on him, then, he ruffled his appearance a bit and went out the door. As a scientist, he was very clean and liked staying so, it wouldn't look right for a rogue cultivator like him to look like a young master that left his home for experience.
He went down a few houses until he arrived at an empty restaurant. It was small and there was no sound nor smell of food, if any sane person didn't suspect this place, it was likely that that sane person was blind, deaf and anosmic, or simply stupid.
There was only one person lazily sitting behind the counter. Even when Yong Lu entered, he didn't look up and seemed to doze off while reading a simple paperback book. Lu approached and looked at the cover of the book from the corner of his eye 'The Fox Vixen and Me' it read.
The look in Lu's eyes changed a bit as he looked at the man. He stood there for nearly ten seconds before he opened his mouth saying, "I am releasing poison in the air, so if you don't want to die, you better take a pill."
Looking at Lu with a shock in his eye, the man really took out a pill. After taking it, he coughed a few times, blood flowing down the corner of his cheek. He looked even more terrified and quickly stood up "Follow me", taking him to the door of the kitchen, where there was an unsuspecting stairway straight downwards.
The man took out a square piece of jade, gave it to Lu and pointed down "After arriving at the bottom, show this and you will be allowed to enter."
Lu scoffed at the man and simply went down. Most black markets in the human territory were connected to a large organisation, the Shadow Cave. In fact, no one knew the origin and only few had a way of direct contract, but as long as one opened a black market, one would be approached by them, asking for various benefits and such.
These jade pieces were a symbol of people that had a certain status in the organisation, using this one would automatically become an outer-circle member of the Shadow Cave. Naturally the one Yong Lu received was only a simple red jade, which any qi-refiner would obtain with small effort.
It had no benefit except that showing it, one would be able to formally enter any black market, the larger ones require one such, which a small one such as this doesn't. At least he is exempted from the entrance fee.
As for why the cultivator at the counter gave him this, Lu naturally didn't care. The shadow cave's agenda would never be able to include him, a beast. Even in his current form, he didn't consider 'human'-affairs to be his affairs. The most interesting humans were poison cultivators in his eyes, and these were too rare, so rare that he was able to portray himself as one even without any closer identification.
If one took the same approach with sword cultivators, then any cultivator with a sword would be marked as such, which would really be embarrassing, since so many use the weapon.
Yong Lu went down and was soon at the bottom. It didn't take long, in his estimates, the cellar should only be a hundred metres below the earth. 'Anything lower would probably put too much pressure on early-stage qi cultivators. If I have to compare, it's like visiting an underbudgeted laboratory that finances itself by allowing frequent visits from students to gain experience…'
There was a person at the gate on the ground, he was about to say something, but when he saw the jade Yong Lu had hung on his belt, he didn't and just opened the door.
'Bad security, bad security. Bah, this isn't an underbudgeted lab, this is clearly a gathering place of students that just make a few experiments in their free time. This red jade seal looks so easy to forge, even if there was an anti-forfeit mechanism installed, they don't check it at all.'
A bit unsatisfied with the place, Yong Lu tried hard not to say anything. He wasn't a talkative person, maybe it was because of his country of origin, but complaining was a very honest habit and no one would find fault at it.
He entered and when he saw the street in the middle that went on for a few hundred metres with cultivators shuffling around, he finally smiled a bit. Left and right were many stalls, at the back, which Lu assumed to be the centre of the market, there were a few buildings.
In fact, this was called a black market, but it might as well be called a rogue cultivator market with no guarantee for anything and higher risk. The only reason anyone would come here is when they have suspicious items or because the prices in the city are too high.
Small cities don't even have a street for rogue cultivators to open stalls, and even if they have the place, the city lord wouldn't allow this. A city of this size doesn't have the resources to manage such a market.
On the other hand, even if larger cities have stalls, they are usually for long time rogue cultivators. Rogue cultivators rarely stay at a long time anywhere except they are planning to settle down, and robbers never stay at one place for long, so naturally they prefer black markets that are open, even though there is risk, their items are sold much faster and easier as long as they are willing to lower the price.
Yong Lu was looking at the stalls, he went along the street for a few dozen metres until he stopped in front of one stall. There was nothing special about the stall, he simply stared at the person sitting there.
It was a young man in the middle of qi refining, he looked tough and like he had fought many times. When the young man looked up, he saw a strong aura flowing from Lu, without any action, a sense of oppression arose in him. Lu simply said "Leave", even though the man was extremely reluctant, his instincts told him that the man in front of him wasn't simple at all. Just the passive sense of oppression that flowed out made his nerves freak out.
In fact, this sense of oppression was something every beast had, and it was effective even against others in the same realm. It's the natural suppression of blood. Human blood in itself is no special and has no way of defense. Only humans that grow into higher levels enhancing their blood thereby, become unique on its own. The disadvantage of this is that they face the problem of any race with a strong bloodline, which is the difficulty of reproducing.