The market seam answers Li Wu’s offered memories with a deeper pulse. The jade witness mark turns cold as if recording a debt. Beneath the stalls, the foundation begins to mirror his circulation, line for line.
Guildmaster Ouyang
Stop. If the market copies that rhythm any farther, it will chew through the whole district.
Ren watches the pulse spread, then glances toward the hidden passage below. The hungry light is not just feeding on Li Wu, it is learning how to keep feeding.
Li Wu
It is taking my pattern into the market.
Ren
You can feel it now. Every place you open with this method becomes a mouth that remembers you.
The seam brightens again, and a second channel opens under the first, thinner but faster. Guildmaster Ouyang’s qi drops another notch as the foundation borrows from him to keep the exchange alive.
Guildmaster Ouyang
If you keep ascending by this path, Li Wu, you will not just pass through realms. You will rewrite them until they are spent.
The market gives a low, listening shudder. In that instant, the connection is plain, Li Wu’s forbidden ascent is consuming the very place that teaches it.
✓ Quest Accepted
Preserve Li Wu's memories from the market's consumption
“I turn to Ren and speak, "If it desires memories, we have plenty of those already." I activate my qi and manipulate the tether I previously looped through the jade witness mark when I formed the Hollow Lotus Burial on it earlier; then I draw everything the jade witness mark has recorded and feed its memories into the market itself whilst using the glowing scroll inside me to move along the path of the Hollow Lotus Burial technique and gently detach my memories from the parasitic market.”
SUCCESS (Superb Willpower, rolled +0)
Li Wu
If it wants memories, we already have plenty.
Li Wu turns the tether through the jade witness mark, and the market takes the bait. The mark flares, then empties into a cold, listening hush.
His qi sinks through the Hollow Lotus Burial path, gentle and exact. The recorded memories peel free from the mark and pour into the market’s second channel.
The hungry foundation drinks the old records first, crowding on them like a crowd at a gate. Its pull loosens around Li Wu’s own mind as the decoy weight settles deep below the stalls.
The scroll’s pulse inside him carries his circulation along the right seam, and his true memories slip sideways from the parasitic pattern. They do not fight the market, they part from it.
Ren’s eyes narrow as the exchange changes flavor. Guildmaster Ouyang feels the district go quiet in a new way, as if the market has swallowed one story and found another gone.
The jade witness mark dims from cold record to dull glass, while Li Wu’s own memory flow stays sealed within him. Beneath the stalls, the market keeps chewing on the borrowed past, waiting for what he does next.
Quest Complete
Preserve Li Wu's memories from the market's consumption