Chapter Text
Over the years, he'd seen many places. He'd seen palaces and hovels. He'd seen barren wastelands and populus cities. He had seen quite a lot of places in his hundreds of years.
But there was nowhere quite like the Ghost City.
Ghost City was sprawled in multiple directions - including up. There were colorful banners and signs over the various shops that lined the streets, but if one paid attention, they would start to notice that beyond those, there were further shops and streets and walkways made of other materials, piling up, up into the night.
The Ghost Market was a bit labyrinthine and easy to get lost in, moreso if you didn't realize you'd somehow gone up or around. In a sea of masks or monstrous appearances, one could become even more disoriented. In this place, most who lived there were dead, and the most frequent visitors were also dead - or may soon be, if unfortunate. Those who came here were usually here for specific purposes, usually powerful cultivators or even gods in disguise. Usually those who came in by mistake were led to their deaths. That was the way of fortunes in these places.
Xie Lian was someone who had very poor fortune, so his first foray into the city had been completely by mistake. He hadn’t even quite realized where he had stumbled until he’d found his way to some stall and, on looking closely, realized the soup being ladeled out appeared to be primarily made of writhing hair. He distinctly recalled a story about that happening to someone in the Ghost City, and that was when he’d managed to really take stock of the place and start seeing past its illusions.
To him, one place was as good as any other - he collected scrap after all, he didn't get to be choosy. So long as he was cautious and polite, then the Ghost City could be as hospitable as any city would be to a random traveller who dealt with trash for a living. He was definitely going to have to be extremely careful about his food selection though. There had to be places that mortals could eat while visiting and whatnot, he just had to find them. That might take some doing, but it wasn’t a horribly impossible task.
Xie Lian had sat himself upon the ground outside of an alleyway to try and get his bearings and look over the area better. This is where he’d gotten a proper view of the city’s vertical elements. He tried to size up what he could of shops on the upper paths, the sorts people could be lured to when getting lost. He knew he could handle quite a lot of things in a fight, so something that may be a very dangerous trap to another could be within Xie Lian’s skill level, so long as he chose carefully.
He eventually found a restaurant run by a proprietor who neither licked the tables nor was physically part of the food nor included living materials, and he managed to acquire as plain a meal as possible. This was both for safety reasons - the simpler the creation, the less likely for strange ingredients - and so he didn’t order anything he couldn’t afford. Xie Lian didn’t dare run up a bill with the sorts of folk who’d just as soon make an offensive customer part of the next dish.
While sitting at this stall, Xie Lian was able to watch and listen to other patrons and visitors of the city. He lowered his hat over his face and tried to not draw attention to himself. At least he didn’t have a giant bag of scrap on his person just yet so that was one less thing for others to notice about him. So long as he was quiet, he was of very little interest.
In a place like the Ghost City, all sorts of discussions could be heard and quite plainly too. A mortal was a guest or a trespasser here, so naturally the actual residents could talk about whatever ghoulish subjects were of interest to them freely, rather than having to hide the more grotesque parts of their personalities. This was their territory and they could speak as they liked in it.
Traveling groups of ghostly women chattered about the quality of the skins they’d purchased, about whether their faces were starting to fade or not. They discussed whether or not they needed to kill someone to get a better one - and plenty probably would kill for a nice enough face.
A group of burly guys were having arm wrestling matches at another stall. One of them had six arms so was having several matches at once, to varying degrees of success. A few other ghosts were laughing and cheering over the spectacle, drinks being passed among them. There were apparently regular favorites for this.
Various groups were also discussing local groups and politics. The lord of Ghost City was a frequent topic in the conversations Xie Lian could hear. He was apparently out clearing up the nest of some interloper who kept wanting to take the city over from him - which really, that was the nature of these things wasn’t it? Whoever controlled it had to deal with bids to take over that control, and make displays of power to keep up their own prestige.
The populace in a place like Ghost City needed to be kept some mix of afraid, in awe, and loyal. That was the case in many kingdoms, but one beyond the living was bound to have more takers and more dramatic means. A ghost could do a lot more to a ruler they disliked than a regular citizen could - and ghosts in mass, just like ordinary people in mass, were even more powerful. To add in the mix of groups that worked and lived in this place, the amount of money and power that could be traded here, it took a lot to hold it and keep it.
From what Xie Lian could hear, the current lord had to be a force of personality as well as of power. A ghost in red who the Heavens feared to cross and many spoke of in hushed tones. There were all sorts of topics that circled back to him - conversations on new skins would come back to how fine his were or how varied. Topics on strength would sometimes pick up with how strong he was without always looking it, yet all present were in agreement he looked imposing. Current events, of course, brought up where he was or what he was currently doing or had recently done, and what was being done with him being away from the city.
It seemed his systems were so good that this Hua Chengzhu could go away on business for long periods of time and his home would remain safe. The ghosts were all more than sure of it - even if some would chuckle at the idea of fools trying something. It was apparently a running joke to the residents.
For Xie Lian, it wasn’t much of a deal. He wasn’t local, and he didn’t intend to stay long enough to be of notice to the lord or any of his business. He had no interest in trying to cause trouble in the Ghost City either so it was just intriguing topics of gossip to listen to and get a feel for the area as he sorted himself out. The sights and sounds were more than enough to occupy the tired scrap collector, and he ate and drank slowly as he took this all in. There was no one who seemed interested in bothering him either. Those around were too busy with their own matters to even look in his direction.
From where he sat, there was a decent view on the street below of the Gambler’s Den. It’s wildly written verses were a bit of an eyesore to him at first, but with time to get used to seeing them, Xie Lian was rather getting to think he was growing fond of the horrifying style of caligraphy. There was something unique to it, and there was something about just seeing ‘HAHAHAHAHA’ in the most frightful writing ever that matched the grotesque nature of the place.
It was while he watched this area that he noted something odd. He’d seen a few different cultivators, masked and surreptitious, meeting then parting, meeting then parting, in a little area of stalls near the entrance to the Gambler’s den. They were trying to act casual, seeming like they were bumping into each other at random while shopping, but it all felt very staged. Xie Lian kept a watch on them, mostly for interest’s sake. One of their original ‘group’ disappeared into the Gambler’s Den for a time, and the rest continued their maneuvering. They weren’t quite shopping, but making enough pretense of it to be believed as browsing customers and the like.
A commotion eventually broke out with one of these cultivators starting a fight with a shopkeeper. Another pushed over a stall, and a third separately seemed to nick something from a passerby. All the events seemed disconnected if one hadn’t been watching the members as a group and instead took them as individuals. The pattern and setup and timing were too precise to be random acts taking place at the same time, and Xie Lian was off at once, realizing just what was happening.
The street the stall he was at had been on one of the vertical streets. Armed with that knowledge and a good view, Xie Lian took off running and took a well timed leap. He landed in range of the fray just as the last of this group rushed out of the Gambler’s Den, attempting to get away while his cohorts caused various distractions. With enough mayhem, they seemed to think they wouldn’t be caught.
It was complete chaos. The actual authorities were on the way, but getting caught up in the crowd of rowdy and angry ghosts, which had been the real reason to cause such different diversions. If the ghosts had no idea where the actual perpetrators were, or that they were connected, they could be distracting into fighting each other. Some had joined in purely because a fight was a fight, and sometimes locals just wanted to get in on a screaming match in progress or throw some hits of their own. Other stalls were being pushed around in this process as well.
With quick moves of a trained body, Xie Lian managed to grab each of the cultivators to pull together. He had to yank one from where he was pulling on and shaking a shall, which fell with him, but he let it go after. The next had to be yanked from where he’d been about to be picked up by a surly ogre he’d seemingly tried to pickpocket. It took a little doing but he managed to grab all of them.
In the end, Xie Lian found himself sitting on a pile of masked cultivators who were all cursing their plan going awry.
The upside was, when the actual authorities for the city arrived, led by a masked man in black who others moved aside for swiftly, all of the responsible parties were caught, unable to escape. He had rounded up this entire group of cultivators before any could make off with anything or try to pass stolen goods off.
On the downside, there had been a lot of destruction in his wake.
The stalls that the cultivators had been at were damaged - possibly moreso from Xie Lian’s quick grabs of them. There was a mob of angry ghosts - some had been shopkeepers, some had just been riled up by the cultivators… and some Xie Lian had run through or accidentally shoved while apprehending the cultivators.
And right at the front of the group, quickly coming towards him, was the owner of the stall he’d been eating at…
Whoops.