The market’s hum tightens around Li Wu’s borrowed rhythm. The leaf key in his hand glows once, then the lattice answers with a deeper pulse from below the stalls.
The Jade Clerk
The fourth note is not a mask. It is a route.
A seam opens in the floor beside the stall, not as a crack but as a readable line of packed earth and old brick. The line runs under the district, then keeps going, hungry and precise.
Guildmaster Ouyang
If you follow that pulse, the market will take your pattern and spread it.
Ren’s eyes sharpen. He sees it too, the same mechanism Li Wu has been teaching the market to remember. Every breath Li Wu matches makes the seam widen a finger’s width, and the nearby stalls shiver in sympathy.
Li Wu
It is not just accepting me. It is copying me.
The lattice flashes through Li Wu’s meridians and leaps outward into the foundations. Far below, something answers by unlatching, as if the market has found a way to learn his flow and use it to undo itself.
✓ Quest Accepted
Keep the market from stripping away Li Wu's disguise
✓ Quest Accepted
Reach the deeper lock beneath the Iron-Market of Ouyang