Two weeks of cold silence sit between Li Wu and the Iron-Market. On this jagged peak, thin air bites his lungs as he keeps the forbidden rhythm moving through wood, water, and earth.
Li Wu
The cadence is the same one hidden in the anchor script.
His breath settles. The stones beneath him answer in a faint pulse, not a collapse, just a careful listening.
Then the mountain seam shivers. A strip of frost-black stone turns like a page, and market script bleeds across it in pale lines.
The Jade Clerk
At last. The name you carried in the market has reached the ridge.
The seam opens wider, showing the Iron-Market's prison lattice, now keyed to Li Wu's rhythm. Hidden behind it, a second hand has already been waiting for his pulse to settle.
Guildmaster Ouyang
You learned enough to find us. That was always the danger.
The lattice tightens around the mountain light, and Li Wu sees it plainly now, his own identity is the tether they use to pull realms shut.
✓ Quest Accepted
Confront the prison lattice
“I use the Hollow Lotus Veil combined with the market's hiding technique. Then I use Soul Anchor Attunement and Iron-Market Insight with Pulse Tracking intuition to unravel the tether binding my identity. I honor the principle of the market and replace the tether with one I established before: Master Ouyang.”
SUCCESS (Legendary Willpower, rolled +0)
Li Wu lets the Hollow Lotus Veil sink deeper, then folds the market’s hiding rhythm over it like a second skin. The seam’s glare dulls. The lattice loosens its grip on his outline.
Li Wu
The tether is reading the wrong pulse.
He touches the mountain stone with two fingers and calls Soul Anchor Attunement through the hidden grooves. The prison lattice answers, not with force, but with a ledger-bright shiver.
A thin thread of identity slips free from Li Wu and slides sideways, following the older mark he planted long ago. The market’s own language of prosperity catches it, accepts it, and names it differently.
Master Ouyang’s presence surges in the seam. The tether tightens around him instead, fitting his pulse to the lock like a key turned in mud.
The Jade Clerk
He has rewritten the burden.
Guildmaster Ouyang
You pass the chain to me? Then the market will remember my name first.
Li Wu’s borrowed resonance settles. The mountain seam stops clawing at his identity, and the lattice keeps pulsing, now anchored to Ouyang’s resistance.
Quest Complete
Confront the prison lattice