Chapter 7: Old Wang, It's Me!

Shen Qingyue waited with her eyes closed, but Lin Ye never came any closer.

His breath had stopped just a hair’s breadth away, and the hand around her waist hadn’t loosened, yet he seemed to have been frozen in place. He made no further move.

Her embarrassment gradually gave way to confusion. Her lashes fluttered as she cautiously opened her eyes, ready to ask what was wrong, only to discover he wasn’t looking at her at all.

Eyes wide, Lin Ye stared past her shoulder into the alley, his face full of disbelief and a barely contained eagerness.

“Young Master Lin?” She instinctively turned to follow his gaze.

There was no one there, no living creature at all.

Closed shops lined the narrow alley, their walls mottled and tangled overhead wires swaying gently in the night wind. A few abandoned wooden crates were stacked at the far end, with an unremarkable gray wall behind them.

No, wait.

Shen Qingyue soon noticed something very strange on that wall.

A door.

The dark brown wooden door was tall and narrow, its top a pointed arch, its surface carved with patterns so intricate they were almost dizzying.

Vines, eyes, wings, and unidentifiable creatures intertwined in rings of bizarre designs.

Dark red metal was set into either side of the frame. Its edges had oxidized, yet still held a muted sheen.

It was unmistakably Gothic, entirely out of place among the low, shabby buildings of the Middle City.

After staring at it for a few seconds, Shen Qingyue felt her unease begin to fade. It was probably a decoration made by a nearby shop to attract customers.

Plenty of Middle City shops sold curiosities. It wouldn’t be strange for one to dress up its entrance to look mysterious.

“Is something wrong with that door?” she asked, looking back at Lin Ye, still a little embarrassed at being interrupted. “It might just be a shop entrance. It’s so late; there’s probably no one inside.”

He didn’t answer.

The light in his eyes grew brighter, and his breathing noticeably heavier.

He couldn’t possibly have mistaken it.

“Young Master Lin?” Seeing that he still wasn’t responding, she waved a hand gently before his eyes. “Do you know this shop?”

He finally came to his senses, but offered no explanation. Instead, he seized her wrist and ran toward the far end of the alley. “Come with me!”

The sudden movement nearly pulled her off her feet.

Gathering her skirt, she stumbled after him, stepping over puddles. “Slow down! It might already be closed. Even if you know the owner, there’s no need to hurry like this, is there?”

“Closed?” He didn’t look back, unable to contain the excitement in his voice. “If it’s willing to appear, it definitely won’t be closed.”

She had no idea what he meant.

They soon reached the Gothic wooden door.

Up close, its patterns looked even stranger. The carved eyes seemed to turn slowly as they moved, and the dark vines appeared to keep growing inside the wood.

A chill crept over Shen Qingyue.

She was about to warn him to be careful when Lin Ye raised his leg and kicked without hesitation.

With a tremendous, muffled bang, the heavy door crashed open inward.

She flinched, the words she’d meant to say catching in her throat.

She’d expected a narrow shop or an abandoned storeroom beyond it. The sight that greeted her instead left her rooted to the spot.

Behind the door was an impossibly vast sitting room.

From the alley, the building containing the door had appeared no more than a few meters wide, but the space inside was extraordinarily large.

Its soaring dome vanished into shadow. Massive stone pillars stood in orderly rows along either side, and oil paintings and metal candleholders hung on the walls.

A dark red carpet stretched inward from the entrance, flanked by dark wooden cabinets displaying jars and bottles, yellowed books, broken weapons, and objects whose purposes were impossible to guess.

A hand in a glass jar still scratched slowly at its sides. A dark golden eyeball floated in midair, turning as Lin Ye and Shen Qingyue entered.

In a cabinet farther away sat a piece of heart that was still beating faintly.

The hall had no normal source of light. Scattered candles provided a dim glow, their flames not warm but a sickly white that cast long, twisted shadows from every piece of furniture.

An extravagantly long black wooden table stood at the center of the room.

At its far end sat a figure completely enveloped in a black robe.

The figure was motionless, its face hidden by a broad hood. Within the hood were no skin or features, only darkness without apparent depth.

The sound of Lin Ye kicking in the door still echoed through the hall, but the robed figure showed no sign of anger.

It merely raised its head slowly, directing that pure darkness toward the two of them.

After a moment, a voice whose age and gender were impossible to distinguish emerged from beneath the robe, level and utterly devoid of emotion.

“Welcome, guests from afar. Would you be interested in making a trade?”

The opening line was more familiar to Lin Ye than almost anything. He froze for an instant, then could no longer contain his excitement and threw back his head laughing.

“Hahaha! Old Wang, Old Wang, it really is you!”

His laughter echoed through the vast hall.

Shen Qingyue jumped at his reaction. Even the robed figure at the far end of the table seemed to pause for a moment.

For Lin Ye, this Mysterious Shop had been a fixture throughout almost the entire game.

It had no fixed location and no set time of appearance.

Sometimes it appeared in an abandoned city overrun by monsters, sometimes in the deepest reaches of undersea ruins. A door might even rise without warning at the heart of a forbidden zone.

Whenever players opened it, they found this perpetually dim hall and the Mysterious Merchant always seated at the far end of the long table.

The things available for trade were beyond imagination.

Contained artifacts, supernatural abilities, Sequence materials, lifespan, memories, luck—even an outcome that hadn’t happened yet. If one could pay the price, the Mysterious Shop could provide almost anything.

Whenever Lin Ye killed a monster in the past, his first move had been to collect its corpse. As soon as he found the shop, he’d carry the corpses inside and trade all the useless flesh, souls, and corruption cores for things he needed.

It was no exaggeration to say this was one of the places he knew best in the game.

And now, aside from his maxed-out stats, he had almost nothing.

The artifacts, forbidden items, and contained artifacts he’d accumulated hadn’t come with him, and his active skills were completely gone. The Mysterious Shop appearing now was a lifeline when he needed one most.

Excited, he made several circuits of the hall, his gaze sweeping over the familiar counters and objects.

Shen Qingyue didn’t share his enthusiasm.

She stood tensely by the entrance, looking from the eerie robed figure at the end of the table to Lin Ye dashing around the hall. For a moment she wondered if she still hadn’t sobered up.

“Young Master Lin.” She called quietly, then raised her voice a little when he didn’t respond. “What is this place? Is that person your friend?”

“Of course.” Lin Ye finally stopped and returned to her. He slipped an arm around her shoulders and guided the still-nervous girl toward the table. “The oldest of old friends.”

She took a few steps with him, her body still stiff. She could clearly feel the temperature drop the closer they came to the robed figure; even the candlelight seemed to avoid it.

“Relax, it’s fine.” Noticing her tension, Lin Ye smiled and patted her shoulder. “Old Wang is easy to get along with. Oh, I’ve always called him Old Wang. You can call him that too from now on.”

“Old Wang… Wang what?”

She looked at him in bewilderment.

Another furtive glance at the figure at the end of the table only made the name seem more impossible to associate with the being before her.

Lin Ye had no intention of elaborating.

She took a deep breath and tried to look composed.

Lowering her head slightly, she spoke with cautious formality. “Hello. My name is Shen Qingyue. I’m a student at Skyvault Academy. I’m sorry to intrude and disturb you tonight.”

The robed figure didn’t answer immediately.

The darkness inside its hood faced Lin Ye. After several seconds of silence, it repeated in a lower voice, “Old Wang?”

For the first time, a trace of puzzlement entered its otherwise almost perfectly calm tone.

“Me?”

Shen Qingyue’s polite smile stiffened.

She shot Lin Ye a reproachful glance, as though asking why he’d casually given a nickname to someone who didn’t know him.

He saw nothing wrong with it. If anything, his smile grew brighter. “If you don’t like calling him Old Wang, that’s fine. You can use another name.”

An inexplicable sense of foreboding rose in her. Standing beside him, she asked quietly, “What name?”

Lin Ye released her shoulder and went straight to the long table.

He braced both hands on it and leaned forward slightly, his eager gaze meeting the darkness beneath the hood.

“The evil-god aspect of Sequence 0 of Distortion, the King of the End who takes away and grants all things.”

The corners of his mouth rose, the excitement in his eyes undisguised.

“The Sovereign, Mysterious Merchant.”

The instant the last word fell, the entire hall went still.

The candle flames stopped flickering. The strange objects still moving in the cabinets froze at once, and even the dust drifting through the air seemed suspended in place.

Shen Qingyue’s expression froze too.

At first she’d still been embarrassed by the name “Old Wang,” then puzzled by the unfamiliar exalted title Lin Ye spoke.

But when the words “Sequence 0,” “evil-god aspect,” and “Sovereign” registered, every trace of color left her face.

Her pupils contracted, and her body began to tremble uncontrollably. She tried to step back, only to find her legs pinned in place, unable to move even one step.

“An e-evil god?” Her voice held more than nervousness now: disbelief and deep fear filled it. “Young Master Lin, you’re… you’re joking, aren’t you?”

As though in answer, the entire hall plunged into pure darkness.

The door vanished, the walls vanished, and the cabinets full of bizarre objects disappeared completely. As far as she could see, only the long table, a chair, and the candle still burning before the robed figure remained.

Beyond the flame lay an endless abyss that no light could illuminate.

Shrill, deranged laughter sounded faintly in the depths, followed by stifled weeping, as though countless beings were wailing in despair.

Now and then, an eyeball as large as a house opened in the abyss, then slowly closed and vanished.

Other, harder-to-describe things began to emerge from the darkness.

Lumps of flesh covered in arms, figures walking upside down, a giant flower made from countless faces…

The robed figure remained seated at the far end of the table.

It merely raised its hands slowly, interlaced its fingers, and placed them calmly on the tabletop.

Yet with that simple movement, all the wild laughter and weeping in the darkness grew quieter at once.

The darkness beneath the hood slowly churned, as though something unspeakable and terrifying were waking.

“What a surprise…”

The figure’s voice remained flat.

“Even I had almost forgotten my own exalted name.”

It leaned slightly forward, the void within its hood turned toward Lin Ye.

“Then, my guest…”

“Which of my…”

“Old friends might you be?”