Before Lu Qinghe found an opportunity to take Li Ban to the River of Forgetfulness again, the prison official Huo Jiang took him away.
After training Li Ban for just over a month, they decided the time was right.
Thus, Li Ban saw Cat Girl again at the inn where he had stayed last time.
Nourished by freedom and meat, Cat Girl's previously emaciated body had completely recovered.
This time when she arrived, she brought a bundle with her.
It was already midnight. Cat Girl tossed the bundle onto the table.
"Put this on."
Li Ban opened the bundle and found a set of black clothes and shoes inside.
So this was a night-walking suit?
She was still wearing the same cyan garments from that day on the outside, but underneath, she had on a black long-sleeved shirt and pants.
Next, she pulled on a hood that completely covered her face and hair, leaving only her eyes exposed.
Her movements were crisp and efficient; in the time it took Li Ban to look up, she was almost done changing.
"What are you looking at? Hurry up and change," Cat Girl said. She finished adjusting her own outfit and reached over to help Li Ban with his.
To be honest, these clothes were quite different from what Li Ban usually wore.
The cuffs, belt, and pant legs were specially made and could all be drawn tight.
After donning the clothes and the hood, Li Ban felt like he had truly become an assassin.
"Are we going to carry out an assassination right now?"
Cat Girl burst out laughing. "Who would pay to hire a rookie for an assassination?"
"Then where are we going?"
"We'll get you an identity first. You'll only be assigned missions after they test your abilities."
Cat Girl led Li Ban straight out the window.
Many of the buildings here had pronounced eaves.
After leaping out the window, Cat Girl and Li Ban ran along the eaves to the rooftops.
Li Ban moved with extreme caution, terrified of falling.
But he soon realized that after a month of targeted training, while his hand-to-hand combat skills hadn't improved much, his body control and balance far exceeded his own expectations.
His core strength was incredibly powerful. Even when running across roofs as narrow as single-plank bridges, his body could nimbly adjust its center of gravity.
Although he had been cultivating earnestly, there were very few occasions where Li Ban needed to use force while working in the Death Prison.
Most of his usual training had taken place in cramped spaces.
Now, Li Ban clearly realized that he was truly getting stronger.
After moving quickly through an area, Cat Girl would stop and wait for him.
Seeing Li Ban replicate her movements—smoothly crossing eaves one after another and effortlessly leaping over walls and roofs in between—she widened her eyes in mild surprise.
When Li Ban reached her side, Cat Girl asked in a low voice, "You acted so clumsy in front of me before. With such massive progress now, won't they be suspicious?"
Li Ban knew Cat Girl was subtly asking if he was a Wizard again.
"This is all the result of their training. I just have good talent, alright?"
While his massive progress was certainly partly due to Huo Jiang and Lu Qinghe's training, it was mostly because he had integrated multiple elements.
For every additional element, his body could hold more spiritual rhinoceros.
The degree to which spiritual rhinoceros strengthened his body was also higher.
Because of this, his physical attributes far surpassed those of others in the same Tier.
And this was when his spiritual rhinoceros wasn't even full.
Once his spiritual rhinoceros was completely full, challenging opponents an entire Tier above him probably wouldn't be a problem either.
"Where are we going?" Li Ban changed the subject.
"To the real Black Market." Cat Girl narrowed her eyes, the corners curving into crescents.
The regular Black Market and White Market were located in the western part of Qingcheng County.
But the real Black Market was located west of the west.
Beneath the slums.
When sneaking through the county city, Cat Girl and Li Ban needed to scale walls and run across roofs, but that wouldn't work once they reached the slums.
They would crush the houses underfoot.
Moreover, there were no bailiffs patrolling the slums, making the curfew effectively non-existent here.
Li Ban followed Cat Girl to a thatched hut that looked like it might collapse at any moment, even without wind. They pushed the door open and walked in. The hut wasn't divided into inner and outer rooms.
Through a tattered, hanging straw mat, Li Ban saw an old man lying in a pile of straw, covered by a piece of clothing whose original color could no longer be determined.
The man's eyes were cloudy, and the wrinkles covering his face were caked with dirt and dust.
If it weren't for his gray beard trembling slightly with his breath, Li Ban would have thought a corpse was lying there.
Cat Girl completely ignored the old man in the room. She lifted a straw mat piled with junk and garbage, revealing a wooden board underneath.
Only then did Li Ban realize the items on the mat were all firmly affixed to it—a professional camouflage prop.
When the wooden board was moved aside, a narrow passage appeared inside.
Cat Girl simply said, "You go first."
Li Ban jumped straight down.
The earthen tunnel had no steps and sloped straight down, much like a cylindrical slide.
After jumping in, Li Ban slid all the way down the incline.
Cat Girl followed closely behind him.
After sliding for a distance, Li Ban suddenly saw a blade thrust out from the dirt wall beside him.
If whoever was sliding down wasn't paying attention, they could easily be decapitated.
Li Ban immediately raised his hand, shifting his Iron Fish Scale to his palm as he prepared to snatch the long saber.
Though the incident was sudden, Li Ban's training and cultivation over the past month had not been in vain. He firmly grasped the blade with one hand.
The blade quivered. It wasn't a trap mechanism inside the wall; there had to be a person holding it!
Just as Li Ban was about to yank the person out of the wall, a hand with razor-sharp nails thrust violently into the dirt wall from behind him.
Blood instantly stained the dirt wall a darker shade.
The force gripping the blade vanished, and Li Ban simply pulled the weapon out and took it into his own hand.
After that, they encountered no more ambushes and slid smoothly to the bottom.
The tunnel's exit was like the mouth of a sewer pipe, hanging about a meter above the ground. Li Ban landed on both feet and immediately stepped aside.
Turning around, he saw Cat Girl, who had slid down right after him, flicking beads of blood off her hand.
"Why was there an ambush? Could something be wrong with the Black Market?"
"How many honest people come to the Black Market?" Cat Girl nonchalantly retracted her claws. "There are plenty who murder and rob on a whim."
"But anyone who stakes out a place where they can't even dodge to kill someone is an idiot. He was probably at a dead end and came here to gamble his life. That blade you're holding is already the most valuable thing on him."
Walking forward along the underground Black Market's passage, they saw a few more earthen holes along the way.
As Li Ban and Cat Girl walked on, they happened to run into someone who had just slid down.
Like Li Ban, he had his face covered with a cloth.
Upon seeing each other, both sides stopped in their tracks, on high alert.
Only Cat Girl didn't care in the slightest, bypassing Li Ban and continuing forward.
Seeing Cat Girl's behavior, the person opposite them immediately pressed his back against the wall, his hand resting on his waist and his muscles taut.
Li Ban could feel the other party's tension as well.
Only someone with Cat Girl's strength could afford to be completely fearless of strangers encountered by chance and walk past them so openly. Li Ban followed behind her, maintaining his vigilance.
Cat Girl being calm was her business; Li Ban would not forget his own strength.
Walking a bit further in, an iron door appeared before them.
Cat Girl stepped forward and knocked heavily on the door.
The iron door opened a crack, and an eye peered out from inside.
It really was just an eye.
No face.
Behind the eye trailed grayish-white fascia and bright red muscle. After sizing them up from head to toe, a mouth extended from the crack in the door.
It was also just a mouth.
"What are you here for?"
"To pick up work."
"What kind of work?"
"Murder."
The mouth pursed. "Go to the Xuan passageway."
After saying this, both the eye and the mouth retracted, and the iron door opened a little wider.
Cat Girl pushed the door open and entered. Li Ban followed suit.
Behind the door, he saw a masked person wearing a dusty gray padded jacket, both hands tucked into his sleeves.
The eye and mouth from earlier were likely elements possessed by this person.
They looked terrifying, but their actual usefulness was limited.
It was as if he had been specially modified just to watch the door.
He glanced at the masked man and hurried to catch up with Cat Girl. "Were you exchanging secret signals just now?"
Cat Girl's eyes curved into crescents again. "What secret signals? He just needed to confirm what I was here for so he could direct us to the right place."
"Aren't they afraid government officials might sneak in?"
"Not at all. If government officials come to the Black Market to do business, they're treated as customers. If they're here to cause trouble, and they don't have backing, they're simply killed on the spot."
It was quite bustling behind the iron door.
Aside from Cat Girl and Li Ban, there were a dozen or so other people on the path.
Everyone seemed more confident here, lacking the mutual wariness and guardedness of the people they had encountered earlier.
Of course, it could also be because there were guards watching over this area.
There were even people setting up stalls inside the passage.
Some were selling rows of small bottles; others were selling weapons.
Most of it was just a random assortment of junk.
It looked like they were here to fence stolen goods.
Li Ban swept his gaze over most of the stalls and even saw a few incredibly lifelike human faces for sale.