Hell sure had a fascination with Heaven! These Technique shops found a way to squeeze the word into the title of nearly every manual—Heavenly’ this, Heavenly’ that. Dorian strolled past grimy windows crammed with display cases, all variants of the same sleazy design, each shoddier than the last—a fake gold stand which held up books with fake-gold letterings atop fake-leather covers. All polished to an oily shine. All boasting “HEAVENLY POWER!” or “SECRETS OF THE TOP-RANKERS!” or “6 MONTHS TO EMPYREAN OR YOUR MONEY BACK!”. Though Dorian had a strong suspicion money flowed like a waterfall here: quickly, and in only one direction.

It nearly offended him. Dorian was a scam artist—and scamming was indeed an art, no matter what anyone said! It required a certain subtlety, a certain guile. All these shops screamed their fakery.

Yet they bustled with action! Wide-eyed, lolling-tongued demons poured in and out. Most looked quite pleased walking out one thick tome heavier and a chunk of change lighter. These were tourists, probably, here to trade and gawk. They seemed eager to cross over to Gym Street and test out their shiny new toys, happily oblivious.

Gym Street… You’d think it was a street full of alchemists’ workshops, with all the BANGs and outbursts and shockwaves rippling over it. It was where the Techniques sold on Technique Street performed their purpose: making bright lights and loud noises. They were more concerned with seeming impressive than being so—and why not? There was no real fighting allowed in Ur. Even hard sparring was banned. Flashiness was the currency.

Only once these monsters got out of Ur—and tried their new wares in life-or-death battles—would they realize they’d been scammed.

And then they’d be too dead to tell anyone about it! As grifts go, it was pretty good. Dorian would give it that. He strolled into a store at random—smaller one, squeezed between two big booksellers, though it felt the need to make up for its lack of stature with sheer loudness. Every inch of its front face was crammed full of eye-watering displays.

There was only one shelf, and one desk, and supremely bored-looking goblin sitting behind the desk. Didn’t so much as glance up as Dorian came in. The shelf was lit up like a holiday light show, certain spines glowing hot pink and stark red.

Dorian strolled past a stream of bold names and hit upon a vaguely promising-looking title. He recognized the name. It purported to be a fist Technique of the top ranking Empyrean Ronan the Executioner—the most legitimate collection of syllables here. He knew Ronan. Damned good fighter, all told, a veteran of Spirit Pavilion duels. Golem. Rank #10 Empyrean by raw power ranking, but his combat ability vaulted him a few ranks higher in practice. He’d held the Spirit Pavilion Champion titles for a dozen-odd years.

Shrugging, Dorian slid it out and thumbed through a few pages. “…”

Sighing, he slid it back in and promptly left the shop.

That mess was most definitely not what Ronan the Executioner used. ‘Ronan the Executed,’ perhaps. He tried another store, picked out a few titles at random, and found not a hint of genuine Technique in them.

It wasn’t even that they tried to be powerful. These were deliberately bad. They were specially engineered to use 90% of their qi for flashiness, and only 10% for any semblance of force! He tried a third shop, and was met with much the same dross.

“…”

Hands on hips, he squinted down either side of the street. He hardly needed to check the rest of them. He was trying to find a Roc egg in a Wyrm’s nest. Simply looking in the wrong place.

Where was the right place? Perhaps Gerard had some contacts in Ur’s upper crust who might know. A little slow for his taste, though. Surely there was someplace he could scour now—

“OI!” A screech pierced the street. “IT’S DORIAN! GET HIM!”

Dorian went utterly still. The crowd halted in its tracks. It seemed to him that every head and every eye was turning, turning, staring—

Slowly he turned too, Eclipse qi pooling in his hands.

But they weren’t looking at him. They were looking behind him, where a Jiangshi was pointing a quivering finger at a confused-looking drake-kin.

This drake-kin had two chins, watery, droopy eyes, and a hair like a dried bush. He gawped. Dorian gawped. How could they possibly…?

But then again, he could hardly tell one Roc from another if they seemed about the same size. Distinguishing by facial features was an intra-species thing.

“Me?” The poor sod raised his hands in a panic. “Hold on—I’m not!—” Then the crowd was on him.

“I saw him first!”

“My hands are on him! He’s mine! That bounty’s mine, you hear?!”

“Fuck off!”

Out of the corner of his eye Dorian spotted a startled lizardman guard speaking urgently into his hand.

There was a punch, an indignant cry. Then the clamor grew louder, the crowd pressed in tighter, and it all jumbled in a blur of hot noise. Anger and eagerness boiled in the crowd, rising quick to a fevered eruption—

There was a crack!

A point of harsh silver light drew a vertical line in the air. Then it opened like a glaring eye, exposing a rift in space. And out stalked a silver-haired girl with a silver eyepatch. Familiar-looking. Next to an even more familiar-looking three-legged White Tiger, limping growling into the light.

“Halt!” roared First Princess Senna of Ur. “Cease this madness at once! By order of the Kingdom of Ur!”

Nobody paid her the slightest attention. If anything the crowd grew rowdier.

“I said—CEASE!” And this time she held up a badge bearing the emblem of Ur. It glowed deep purple.

The sky changed faces. It was your typical Hellish sky—coal clouds, ghostly streams. All gone the next instant. In its face was a total blackness, veins of deep pulsing purple splayed across it,stretched out to every horizon. Suddenly they all felt frighteningly small, trapped under a giant fishbowl.

But Dorian knew its true nature—knew it better than nigh everyone else here. That was no false sky. That was no normal array formation…

This was a giant portal to the shadow realm!

There was an instant of shocked silence. Then a few grumbles still rippled up the crowd—of the “who the fuck are you?” variety, chiefly, with a few “fuck off!”s and the like.

And then the eyes opened. From the blackness came spheres of white slitted with bright, staring red irises. Wraith’s eyes. They dotted the sky like perverse stars, and there must’ve been thousands, some big, some small, some rolling about in their sockets.

So many Empyreans… Their collective aura hung over them like an executioner’s blade.

That shut everyone up.

“Good.” The Princess marched toward the fake Dorian, and the crowd scrambled over one another to get out of her way.

A beat. Fake-Dorian gulped.

“What.” She frowned at him, then turned her frown on the rest of them. “This isn’t him, idiots!” She cursed. Then she spoke into her hand. “False alarm. Fourth fucking time this week!”

Without so much as a parting shot she stalked back into her spatial rift, angry as when she’d first come out. It closed behind her, and the blackness above melted away.

There was one blessed beat of sheer stunned silence. Then the crowd went back to its jostling and cursing and threatening, as though nothing had happened.

Dorian scratched thoughtfully at his neck. How… illuminating. Is that their last line of defense? Something to keep in mind as they planned their escape.

Then Dorian, too, went back to his business. Trying to find a real cultivation Technique in this dung-heap…

You’d have better odds looking in an actual dung-heap.

…

…

Hmm. He tossed the idea about in his mind. He wouldn’t actually go dumpster diving, but he did like the idea of unearthing hidden gems. Creatures died at astounding rates here in Hell, and items changed hands with astonishing frequency. Including Technique manuals. And often their new owners hadn’t the faintest appreciation of their value.

A fair number of folk stopped by Ur after a fruitful season of raiding to offload their ill-gotten goods. The knickknacks they didn’t know what to do with ended up in some of Ur’s seediest establishments.

Its pawn shops.

***

The pawn shops did not have their own street. There was not even a sign announcing their presence. Instead they clung to the walls of Ur’s less respectable back alleys—and for Ur, that was saying something—like barnacles.

I dearly hope their insides are more promising than their outsides.

Dorian strolled up to the first shack on the dingy, moldy, fly-infested alleyway. ‘OLDE LOCKJAW’S FAMOUS GOODS.’ The shack was made of stone and steel so old and weathered you could hardly tell which was which. It looked like its plans had been drawn up by a blind architect and then built by a worker suffering from a debilitating case of arthritis.

“You!”

The voice, high, young, accusing, came from within the hut. Dorian blinked, glanced to either side of him.

“Yes, you!”

An Ifrit boy—humanoid, ram’s horns, thick gray skin—stalked out, arms crossed, and stared down Dorian like he owed him money.

“Dragon-man! You wanna buy something?” He hacked out a gob of phlegm and spat it. The he bent over in a coughing fit, and Dorian got the impression it was the boy’s first time trying the move.

Dragon-man? Then Dorian recalled this body had horns. And a tail. He’d gotten so used to his qi Techniques, and his Javelin, that he forgot all the nasty close-combat weapons this body had…weapons the right manuals would make deadly.

“…Sure, I’ll have a browse around,” said Dorian, amused.

“Come on in then! Whatcha waiting for?” The Ifrit boy sprinted back in. In the same breath—“And don’t you steal not a crumb, you hear? I’m watching…. always watching…”

The boy’s face said he was barely pubescent, yet for some reason he spoke like an old curmudgeon. Like a child trying on a grown man’s suit, only it didn’t quite fit him.

The room had just three things. The Ifrit boy behind his counter, stairs in a corner going gods-knows-where, and mounds upon mounds of motley knickknacks. One appeared to be of books. Cultivation manuals, Technique manuals, cookbooks, history books, encyclopedias and test booklets all heaped together.

“Who the hells is down there making all that racket? ’S that a customer?” screeched a rough old voice from up the stairs.

“Yeah, you old fuck!” shouted the Ifrit boy.

“You reeled in a customer?” A sound like someone upstairs was hacking a gob of phlegm. A sound like spitting. “I’ll be damned! Maybe you’re not such a sorry little shit after all!”

“Shut the fuck up, gramps!” The Ifrit boy cringed. “I’m tryna work him!”

“Ha! You?! You couldn’t sell water to a burning man!”

“Fuck you!”

“Fuck you!”

Humming to himself, Dorian went digging through the books.