Cultivator of the End: I Refine My Own Death-Chapter 148 – Rotroot City

The scent hit before the walls came into view.

A wet, fermented stench of rotting spirit flesh, dried bloodlotus resin, and incense meant not to honor the dead—but to preserve them. Rin stood atop a hill of collapsed barkstone, peering down the broken road that snaked into the valley. Beyond a stretch of graveyard plains and rusted shrines loomed a fortress-city choked in crimson banners and fungal smoke.

Rotroot City.

Once a burial citadel belonging to the Verdant Bone Cultivators of the Eastern Repose Sect, it had been devoured by the Collapse Wars. Now it belonged to no sect, no emperor, no divine lineage. Only the merchant clans ruled here, draped in corpse-silk robes and jade teeth, trading in death like gold.

Slaves, cultivator cadavers, withered beasts of burden, ghostwood talismans, and the occasional living alchemist: all passed through Rotroot's gates, priced and weighed like salt.

Beside him, the girl known as Cinder shifted beneath her wide-brimmed mask. Her fire-burned skin remained wrapped in soot-treated bandages, and her voice had not returned since the Scorched Valley. But her silence had grown communicative. She tilted her head toward a procession of wagons heading down the valley trail—each stacked high with wrapped bodies, robed men guiding them with soulbrands stitched into their brows.

Corpse haulers.

Perfect.

Rin adjusted the tattered cart they'd stolen from a roadside ambush earlier that week, reinforcing the illusion with shattered spirit tags and bones he'd scavenged from the Gorge of Chained Lament. Yi Mu, now hidden within his Death Core, pulsed faintly with quiet awareness.

He took one last look at the horizon, where sickly red sun filtered through clouds like old blood, then descended toward the city.

The gates of Rotroot weren't guarded by soldiers.

They were watched by weighers—gray-robed appraisers carrying long iron rods tipped with soul-weighing pendulums. At the threshold, they waved their instruments over incoming carts. Corpses were priced by spiritual residue, flesh purity, and market desirability.

"Too much rot in this one," said a weigher, jabbing a pike at a hauler's bundle. "Toss it to the fungal pits or pay rot tax."

"But it was fresh three days ago!" the hauler protested.

"And now it's street meat," the weigher replied, slamming his pike down. "Next."

Rin's cart rolled forward. Cinder kept her head down, adopting the mannerisms of a subservient beast handler. Rin allowed himself the gait of a weary corpse merchant—indifferent to suffering, fixated only on coin.

The weigher waved his rod.

The pendulum spun once. Then halted.

"Mm. Strong spirit residue. What are these—cultivator corpses?"

"Bandits from the Unspoken Ravine," Rin replied. "Rotten with regret. Good for pill distillation."

The weigher grunted. "Name?"

"Bo Lin."

"Clan?"

"None."

The man sneered. "Of course."

He stepped back and waved them through, tossing a rusted jade chit toward Rin's cart. "Two-day pass. Don't cause messes. The Flesh Tribunal doesn't care for unfixed haulers."

Rin caught the chit midair and pocketed it.

Rotroot swallowed them whole.

The streets within were narrower than expected, congested with tiered scaffold markets and fungal trellises grown from bones and rotbark. Merchants shouted prices in five dialects. A blood-soaked auction bell rang from a platform where a shackled cultivator screamed as his meridians were mapped with branding iron.

Children with half-formed cores danced for food scraps.

Blind monks sold spiritual silences.

At the edge of a cul-de-sac plaza, Cinder stopped, nostrils twitching beneath her mask. She tapped twice on the cart handle. Rin followed her gaze.

A coffinhouse, shaped like an inverted pagoda, its eaves draped in mourning robes. Inside, bodies floated in preservative ichor, suspended like sleeping beasts in amber. Buyers drifted through, pointing to corpses with manicured fingers.

Rin's attention drifted—but not toward the goods.

It was her.

Lei Qing.

She looked young—no more than sixteen winters—but her eyes were old, set in a sharp face that had learned to slice before speaking. She wore bone-jade sleeves, and her fingers glimmered with prismatic soul-rings, indicating both merchant rank and successful trades.

She moved like someone who owned every shadow in the street.

Their eyes met for a flicker of a second.

And she smiled.

"You're not from around here," Lei Qing said over the sound of butchered spirit-tendons being flayed behind them. "But you walk like someone who knows what rot costs."

They sat at a marrow bar tucked into the basement of a collapsed shrine. The drinks were distilled from corpse-nectar and grieflotus—a delicacy for the shameless.

Rin hadn't touched his glass.

"You followed me," he said.

"I noticed you," she corrected. "There's a difference. Most corpse haulers don't stare at the Flesh Tribunal's tower like they want to burn it down."

He didn't deny it.

"What do you want?"

Lei Qing swirled her drink.

"You're looking for the Death-Forged Portal. Or something close enough. I can smell death riddles on your soul like perfume."

Cinder tensed beside him, bandaged hands twitching. Rin remained still.

"And?" he asked.

"I can get you the pass," she said. "Tribunal archives have the records. But the pass requires bloodchain approval. You'll need a merchant sponsor. That's me."

"And you're just offering it?"

Lei Qing smiled. "No. I'm selling it. For a price you can pay."

"What price?"

She leaned forward.

"You're carrying something dead. But not dead enough. I want it. Just a taste. A glimpse."

Rin understood.

She'd noticed Yi Mu.

A soul-bound spirit still writhing with ancient knowledge—something rare enough to tempt even the most calculated profiteer.

He considered.

Then nodded once.

One heartbeat.

Yi Mu surged into being behind him, form semi-visible, face hidden, aura bound by Rin's cruel pulse-rune.

Lei Qing inhaled sharply.

Her pupils dilated.

"By the Scars... That's a Seer's ghost, isn't it? A Twilight Seer?"

"No," Rin said. "It's mine."

She shuddered.

Then downed her drink.

"Deal," she whispered.

They walked through the lower tiers of Rotroot, passing slave corridors, bone vaults, and spirit pits where rejected cultivators were broken down for talisman paper. Rin listened to Lei Qing speak of merchant politics, of rival clans bribing each other with death-marriage rituals and ghost-husband contracts. Rotroot did not thrive in lawlessness. It worshiped it.

"Everyone wants a piece of someone else," she said. "It's all corpse-games. You just have to make sure you're not the one being weighed."

Cinder stayed close. She didn't trust her.

Neither did Rin.

And yet... something in Lei Qing's poise echoed his own path. A girl who had carved her way up, not out of cruelty—but necessity.

They reached a chamber beneath the Tribunal tower. Black-tusk guards let her pass with a nod. She whispered in a clerk's ear. Papers were shuffled. A bloodchain stamp was produced.

She handed Rin a scroll.

"This will give you access to the archives under Flesh Tier Three. The Death-Forged Portal lies somewhere on record. Your pass grants you one hour."

"Why help me?" he asked.

She didn't answer at first.

Then turned.

"You remind me of my father," she said.

"Did he die poor?"

"He died trying to trust a world that doesn't care."

She left.

Rin and Cinder descended into the archive vault, stone lit with corpseflame lanterns. Rows of death records filled the shelves—files on ancient rituals, forbidden portals, forgotten gates.

Yi Mu guided him to a slab marked G-1492: Ascension Events - Pre-Sundering.

He reached for it.

And heard the door above them close.

Click.

Cinder spun, knives half-drawn. But it was too late.

Gas hissed through the vents.

The lights flickered.

Chains dropped from the ceiling.

The Flesh Tribunal did not believe in mercy.

It believed in balance.

When the doors opened again, Rin was chained in a jade-etched ring, surrounded by robed adjudicators with skull-visors. Lei Qing stood before them, calm.

No hatred. No malice.

Only calculation.

"I found them attempting to forge a soul-binding outside regulation," she said, voice flat. "They were carrying a bound Seer. That violates two statutes of Corpse Accordance."

One adjudicator turned to her.

"Your reward?"

"Six blood sigils. And his papers."

The adjudicator nodded.

She bowed. Then left.

Rin didn't look at her.

But inside his chest, his heart pulsed once—and Yi Mu's whisper rippled in his mind.

"She does not lie. But she doesn't need to. This place... was always built for betrayal."

Cinder stared at Rin, eyes unreadable beneath her bandages. She waited for his word.

He gave it.

The bindings shattered.

The chamber erupted.

Cinder moved like flame. Her daggers bit through flesh, not to kill—but to silence. Rin surged forward, releasing a compressed wave of death aura, the air singing with Requiem Bloom's resonance. The tribunal guards tried to raise their barriers—but death unbound is not so easily denied.

Rin's aura devoured light.

The air became grave-silent.

Only one adjudicator managed to scream before his spirit unraveled.

When the silence cleared, only Rin and Cinder remained standing.

He picked up the bloodstained scroll from the floor.

Not broken.

Just interrupted.

They left through the fungal trellis vents, emerging in a market square already echoing with alarms. Rotroot would remember them now. There would be no return.

But Rin didn't care.

He'd seen enough.

In the alleys behind the marrow bar, he found her again.

Lei Qing.

Counting her sigils, back turned. freewebnoveℓ.com

She noticed him when it was already too late.

"I warned you this city doesn't care," she said softly.

"You didn't warn me. You priced me."

She turned.

Her face was calm. Even a little sad.

"I don't hate you. This wasn't personal. But everyone sells something to survive."

Rin stepped closer.

She flinched—but he didn't raise his hand.

He looked her in the eye.

And said:

"Then may you never stop paying the cost."

He turned.

Cinder followed.

And Rotroot City howled behind them, already preparing the next corpse to trade.

To be continued...