From the outside, the Iron Ember Valley was just another burned-out ruin—a place where fire-element sects once trained before being consumed by a wandering Netherstorm.
But beneath that scorched wasteland, buried under thirty-six formations of concealment and illusion, a new auction branch was born.
This was no ordinary branch.
It was the Karmic Refinement Pavilion, constructed under Li Xuan's direct blueprint. Its halls weren't designed for coin or treasures.
They were built for extraction—the refining of karmic knots into tangible essence, fuel for Li Xuan's growing cultivation and predictive algorithms.
Tonight, the chamber pulsed.
Six cultivators, captured across various recent events and quietly erased from memory, were suspended in floating arrays.
Above each of them floated mirrors showing moments of choice—each one a betrayal, a hesitation, a selfish ambition that condemned others.
Li Xuan stood at the center.
His robes were simple. His face, expressionless. Yet the room darkened simply from his presence.
General Ruoqi knelt beside the stone dais.
"They've been prepared. The karmic rot in their threads is thick. Shall we begin?"
Li Xuan didn't answer with words.
He raised his hand, and six black chains of karmic energy slithered into existence, entering the captives' hearts.
Immediately, their bodies convulsed. The mirrors shattered, bleeding memories across the air.
One wept for a brother he poisoned for a rank advancement.
Another begged forgiveness for leaving a village to burn to save himself.
They weren't evil men. Just cultivators who chose wrong.
And that was all Li Xuan needed.
Because karma wasn't about morality.
It was about cause and consequence.
As the chains drained the karmic essence from the captives, golden mist began to coalesce behind Li Xuan, forming symbols only visible to one who walked the path of the Voidheart Enlightenment Sutra.
Three new insight runes branded his spirit:
Karma Severance (Third Layer)
Fated Deviation Extraction
Loop Collapse Node Perception
Each was a leap forward. Each allowed Li Xuan to interfere with the fate of others more precisely, even slipping into cause-and-effect loops without detection.
He was becoming untouchable—not because he was the strongest, but because every attempt to harm him would unravel the attacker's own fate.
As the final captive fell limp, his karmic debt exhausted, General Ruoqi whispered, "Two of these were from major sects. Their disappearances will cause ripples."
"Good," Li Xuan said.
His gaze turned toward the mirror on the far wall, which now reflected the Eastern Imperial Zone, where preparations for the first Grand Auction in ten chapters were being secretly finalized.
He raised a single command sigil.
"All remaining minor auctions will pause. Every general is to send their strongest elite to the Eastern front. We will turn the next auction into a seedbed for realm-wide shifts."
Ruoqi bowed again. "And your role, Master?"
"I will not appear."
He turned away, eyes distant.
"But I will speak through every item sold. Every bid placed. Every conflict born."
Far from the valley, in the Black Blossom Sect, panic had begun to spread.
A single scroll had appeared on their sacred altar, marked with seven burning seals. No one saw who placed it. No formation had triggered.
Inside was a list.
Nine names.
Every name belonged to a core elder with ties to corrupt trade agreements.
That night, all nine elders died.
One from poisoning. Another from a duel he shouldn't have lost. A third drowned in a waterless room.
To outside observers, they were coincidences.
To the sect master, it was a warning.
To Li Xuan, it was a message.
At the same time, in the cold tundras of the Frostbound Realm, the forty-ninth elite, Xue Min, stood alone outside a massive gate buried in ice.
Behind it lay the ruins of a forgotten Saint Sect known as the Divine Weavers.
Their legacy? Ancient karmic looms.
Xue Min was Li Xuan's most precise manipulator of threads—her task was to reclaim those looms and bind them into the next layer of the auction house's infrastructure.
She raised her hand.
With a touch of her karmic mark, the ice melted.
The gate opened.
And a new era of auction control began to awaken.
In the sky above the Central Domain, cultivators began noticing strange coincidences.
Bids in auctions causing long-term sect losses.
Fortune readings failing.
Predictive techniques becoming distorted.
And somewhere, always distant, the name "Heaven Auction Pavilion" would whisper like a ghost behind it all.
They didn't understand.
But they would.
Li Xuan would make sure of it.
Because with every new realm he touched, with every auction held—big or small—he planted one more thread into the soul of this world.
And one day, he would pull.
And it would all unravel.