Lao’en thought it through, his mind a slow lantern in fog. What kind of trio shows up at a Black Market for rescue—a spring-bright girl, a winter-gnarled Old Woman, and a wounded fawn of a child?

He was just a regular man, blind to any glow around Night Frost and her two. Yet instinct kept tapping his ribs like rain on tin. All three of them were Magic Maidens.

Without gut feel and a bit of knack, this slot in the racket wouldn’t be his. It’d belong to some other wolf at the door.

He pressed his temper down, like a lid on boiling water. If they were Magic Maidens, Zhao Qingsnow’s “age” needed a second look.

Up close, Zhao Qingsnow wore a loli face and loli height, sugar-sweet but off. Makeup dusted her skin—foundation and concealer hidden like frost. The corners of her eyes were worked hardest. Elsewhere, she looked like any normal girl.

By his count, her true age hovered around forty. Magic Maidens slowed the fade of time, a leaf that stays green longer. Skin in its twenties at that age wasn’t strange.

He cursed his soft heart, the way wind cuts through thin cloth. The first thing he’d noticed about Zhao Qingsnow was the wound, and it hauled his daughter’s face up from memory. He’d felt pity for a paying client and even thought of guiding them for free. In this trade, that’s a blade to your own throat.

Thank heaven he had sharp eyes and a quick read, like a hawk over field. Without that, he would’ve lost a clean thousand. Guides start at five hundred, no cap. Half goes to the Black Market “uncles.”

He weighed the Old Woman against Night Frost, like stones in a palm. Night Frost held the center, a knot that pulled the rope tight. But her gaze had a clear spring to it, a bit of baby-blue naiveté. She didn’t look that old.

Probably a college kid, he thought, a calf easy to steer. Maybe he could peel another layer off their wallet mid-route.

Night Frost handed him money. Half now, half when they reached a clinic. A deposit, standard practice in the Black Market. She planned to enter the market anyway. Lao’en wasn’t worried they’d run.

He knew Zhao Qingsnow couldn’t wait; the hourglass bled fast. He moved at three times his usual pace, toward a hole hacked open and covered with thick planks.

It sat in plain sight, like a mouth in a wall—first right off the street. He’d meant to circle them through the mess of buildings, milk the minutes. But who knew if Zhao Qingsnow would keel over in the next breath?

Bamboo ladder at the lip, ribs whispering. The four of them climbed down into the throat of the city.

Inside was cleaner than Night Frost had pictured, like a winter stream poured into concrete. They had laid cement. Someone wanted this passage to last. Would the guards really never find it? A little attention, a little luck, and anyone could.

Or was it a paid blind spot—a closed eye for an open palm?

“What’s the deal between those guards and the Black Market?” Night Frost asked, a quiver of caution in her voice, like frost on glass.

“That bunch?” Lao’en shrugged, tired wind in an old coat. “You’re right to worry. Low pay, hard grind. Magic Maidens don’t thank them. Still, it’s important work. They’re folded under a Magic Maiden adjunct. They’ve got a little power.”

He shared what everyone knew but no one wrote, a rumor like smoke. Night Frost had guessed; that’s why she asked.

“They’re the base lawkeepers. They watch the low rungs in District Twenty One. The Order Keepers don’t touch that strata. The Black Market saw their bit of ‘power’ and sweetened it with profit. So the guards look the other way.”

Night Frost understood. The slum-side guards had taken the Black Market’s coin. They never meddled. They did their “real job,” and ate from two tables.

Even if the passage gaped in plain sight, even if Black Market runners opened it mid-day, the guards stayed quiet. Sometimes they’d help patch the cover tighter.

If the Black Market got shut down, that stream of silver dried up in a day.

They reached open air at the end of the tunnel. Two worlds cut along a seam. The landlord lady’s words had been too gentle; a paper umbrella in a storm.

But then, the landlord lady had never set foot in the slum. She’d heard the filth secondhand, like thunder through a wall.

The cement wore a skin of black mud. Trash piled like gray mountains on both sides. People lay among it, like driftwood after a flood. No income, no roofs. They scavenged what the “upper” slum folks dumped.

“Upper” meant nothing grand. Those folks had a few houses and could cook a pot of food. They still lived under a low sky.

A pack of children shuffled by. Rags hung off their skinny frames. Mud-black feet slapped the grim cement. Behind them, adults drove them on, voices sour as vinegar. The children were hollow-eyed and calm, like rain that never stops.

Lao’en watched, and a thin sadness pricked him, like a thorn under nail. But his own life was no silk. He was a slum dog too; his yesterday wasn’t much better than theirs.

He urged Night Frost on, a push like wind at her back. They were here to save Zhao Qingsnow. The girl was leaking life. They had no spare breaths for other people’s storms.

Night Frost heard him. Pain first, purpose second. She shook her head, then followed, steps tight as drawn bowstring. This slum and the outer city were split skies. Outside, pressure pressed, but you could see a strip of freedom. Here, every heartbeat wrestled with mud.

Cities shift. Old centers turn to crumbs the rich won’t eat. The rich head for the edges—wide houses, clean views, pretty faces. The center sours into a slum, left like a fruit pit.

The people inside it were left too, set down and forgotten.

Night Frost’s so-called selfish heart trembled, a leaf in dark wind. She wasn’t a saint. Her hand didn’t open. And maybe living too long with the Order Keepers from the Twelfth District had pulled more threads into her life. More comrades. More knots. More hesitation.

No. Not hesitation—calculation. Before, she had only the Eye Orb and herself. She charged forward like a spear. Then came Qianchun. Then Blade, and others who knew her name and worked shoulder to shoulder. “Comrades” fit like a coat.

She could’ve left Zhao Qingsnow. She could’ve asked Zhou Jiaxin all her questions, slipped into the Modification Center, worked a little, grabbed intel on the Seekers, and left clean.

But she burned a whole day finding a clinic. A crack appeared in her plan, thin but real.

Lao’en led them through a cut of alley to a street scrubbed clean, bright as bone. It didn’t look like the slum at all. He nipped to a corner door and knocked.

“Old man. Business.”

The worn wood swung open. A man in his fifties or sixties stood there. He peered at Zhao Qingsnow in the Old Woman’s arms. Then he scanned Night Frost and company, like a doctor reading a pulse. He seemed to know enough.

He blew his moustache out, a snort like steam. He shot Lao’en a bad look; sleep-sludge in his eyes cleared. In a blink, he was sharp.

“Come in.”

He moved quick, not a slow branch at all.

Inside the shabby house was another world. Clean lines. Shelves and jars like a proper street pharmacy. The old man shrugged on a white coat, pulled a hidden panel, and led the group downstairs.

Lao’en didn’t go with them. He took the other five hundred from Night Frost and slipped off, a fox avoiding a porcupine. The old man’s temper was strange. Lao’en didn’t want the talk.

Cold hit like a slap. The basement felt like an ice cave, breath turning light to glass.

The layout looked like a traditional operating room. Three wooden chairs outside. Across from them, steel beds with thick white quilts, for parking the broken.

Facing the chairs, a giant pane of glass. You could barely make out what dances happened behind it.

The old man motioned the Old Woman to lay Zhao Qingsnow on a white bed. Then he told Night Frost the price, numbers like hailstones.

“Purging mana residue, fifty thousand. You’ll supply the Magic Stones; I won’t. Wound closure and bone repair, twenty thousand per Blood hole. That’s materials. Add a doctor’s fee. Add one more fifteen thousand for other costs. Equipment use is thirty-seven thousand. That’s a total of one hundred ninety-eight thousand. Card or cash?”

Night Frost had braced herself, but the sum still felt like a wave. Zhao Qingsnow was badly hurt; the street price would be heavy anywhere. Night Frost missed the Order Keepers’ free clinics like a warm hand in winter.

She had a few Magic Stones on her. They might cover it. No time to compare shops; saving came first. She nodded, steady as winter bark.

She took a breath and planned it out. Sell the Magic Stones. The Black Market was close, and stones moved fast. Without that, she couldn’t scrape this sum together in an hour.

The stones Qianchun had pressed into her hand before she set out were gone in a blink. She was broke again, a coin flipping into a drain. Life had just found a rise. Now the road dipped back into shadow.

Night Frost had work to finish. She asked the Old Woman to stay with Zhao Qingsnow. Then she headed for Zhou Jiaxin’s place, two women under one roof, to learn more, to go deeper.