I Died 2,000 Years Ago: The Underworld Fears Me-Chapter 88 - 85 — The Monster They Deployed to Save Their Money
The heavy steel doors at the base of the fossilized ribcage did not just open. They tore themselves apart.
Thick iron hinges shrieked, snapping under immense physical force. The massive barricade buckled outward, vomiting a cloud of black, necrotic smog onto the blood-soaked sand of the arena pit.
The stench hit the Skybox ventilation system a second later. It smelled of rotting bone marrow, oxidized copper, and the sharp, chemical tang of forced genetic mutation.
A shadow dragged itself out of the dark tunnel.
It was a Tier-Four Chimera.
It did not look like a natural beast. It was a corporate amalgamation. The Zhang syndicate had taken the corpses of three separate apex predators and stitched them together using thick cables of surgical steel and glowing green necro-runes.
It had the massive, heavily muscled body of a siege-lion, armored with bolted plates of depleted uranium. A thick, scaled serpent acting as a tail whipped violently behind it, the fangs dripping a black, bubbling venom. Where a normal head should be, a bleached, oversized goat skull jutted out from a mane of synthetic fibers, burning with bright blue, artificial soul-fire in its empty eye sockets.
But the most terrifying thing about the monster wasn’t its claws. It was the heavy iron collar bolted around its thick neck.
The collar was stamped with thousands of microscopic, overlapping ledgers. It was a debt-bound asset. The Chimera was fueled by the foreclosed souls of thousands of bankrupt cultivators, their trapped spiritual energy violently compressing inside the beast’s artificial core.
The sheer physical pressure of its Tier-Four aura hit the stadium like a tidal wave.
Down in the general admission bleachers, the screaming ghosts suddenly choked. Millions of starving spectators fell to their knees, clutching their heads as the ambient Qi in the coliseum grew so dense it began to crush their fragile spectral forms. Blood leaked from their eyes.
In the center of the pit, Red Dog stood his ground.
The packed sand beneath the Myrmidon’s heavy iron boots began to liquefy, vibrating violently under the competing gravitational pull of the beast’s spiritual pressure and Red Dog’s First Era density.
Up in the VIP suite, Baron Zhang laughed.
The deep, mechanical echo of his voice rattled the crystal chandeliers. He slammed his heavy, ring-covered hand onto the mahogany table nearest to his velvet lounge. The wood splintered.
"A market correction, Ren Wu!" Zhang shouted across the room, his blood-red eyes gleaming with absolute malice.
The heavy glass cylinder embedded in his chest plate flared. The Queen’s soul fragment inside the cage spun frantically, pumping thick, glowing veins of liquid Qi into the Warlord’s armor. The arena’s power grid was directly tied to his battery. Releasing the Tier-Four Chimera demanded massive amounts of energy. He was burning her soul to feed the monster.
The rusted hairpin in my breast pocket seared into my flesh. The smell of burning wool and singed skin rose from my jacket. My teeth locked together. A cold sweat broke out across the back of my neck.
I did not break eye contact with the Warlord.
Zhang tapped the holographic terminal embedded in his broken table. He possessed the Market Maker override codes.
The neon tickers flashing across the fossilized ribs of the arena suddenly froze. The automated margin calls chiming throughout the Skybox cut off instantly, replaced by a loud, buzzing reset tone.
"The Iron Bank recognizes systemic volatility!" Zhang announced to the weeping, bankrupt aristocrats cowering on the crimson silk carpet. He pointed a massive finger at the glass wall. "I am injecting a premium asset into the pit to stabilize the floor. Ticker symbol: CHIM-4. I am opening a localized credit line for all Tier-Three stakeholders. Buy the beast. Short the rusted metal. Get your money back!"
The elites stopped crying.
They stared at the Market Maker, then at the massive, terrifying Chimera pacing in the sand below.
Greed is a parasite that survives any host. The men and women who had just lost centuries of lifespan and billions in silver scrambled off the floor. They practically crawled back to their betting terminals, their silk suits stained with vomit and spilled champagne.
They punched their bloody thumbprints against the glass screens. They accepted Zhang’s predatory, high-interest margin loans without reading the terms. They dumped every single borrowed coin into the Chimera’s stock, leveraging their own newly acquired debt to short Red Dog a second time.
The red graph on my terminal, which had been a flatline of pure profit, violently spiked.
`RD-DG SHORT VOLUME: 92%`
`CHIM-4 BUY VOLUME: 100%`
"You see?" Zhang sneered, crossing his massive arms. The First Era plating on his chest groaned. "Capital always flows upward. Your little mechanical toy is about to be melted down into slag. And when its value hits zero, your two point six billion silver defaults directly to my central bank."
Down in the pit, the Chimera roared.
The sound shattered the lower reinforced glass panes of the Skybox. A jagged web of cracks spider-webbed across the inch-thick armor-glass separating us from the sweltering arena air.
The beast lunged.
It didn’t just run; it manipulated the spatial pressure around it. It crossed the two-hundred-foot gap in a fraction of a second, leaving a vacuum tube of displaced air in its wake.
Red Dog raised his massive, matte-black iron arms in a cross-guard.
The Chimera slammed into him.
*CLANG.*
The impact sounded like a commercial drop-ship crashing into a mountain. The kinetic shockwave blew the sand away in a fifty-foot radius, exposing the rusted iron grates of the arena floor.
For the first time since I had unearthed him from the Sector Nine scrapyard, Red Dog was pushed back.
The massive Myrmidon slid across the exposed iron grates. Sparks showered into the sweltering air as his heavy boots carved deep, jagged trenches into the metal floor. He skidded back twenty feet before his structural gears locked, arresting his momentum.
The elites in the Skybox erupted into cheers.
"Yes! Break it!" the man in the ruined emerald suit screamed, slamming his fists against the glass wall. He had no cultivation left, but the sheer adrenaline of the gamble kept him standing. "Melt the garbage!"
The Chimera didn’t stop. The serpent tail whipped around, the fangs sinking directly into Red Dog’s left shoulder.
The thick, black venom hissed. It didn’t melt the First Era iron, but it seeped into the exposed gears of the shoulder joint, acting as a highly corrosive frictional brake. Red Dog’s left arm stuttered, moving a fraction of a second slower.
The goat-skull head opened its jaws. A blinding beam of pure, blue necro-fire erupted from its throat, bathing Red Dog in a concentrated stream of Tier-Four plasma.
The metal of the Myrmidon’s chest plate began to glow a dull, dangerous cherry-red.
*Groan.*
The ancient iron actually bent. A visible dent formed on Red Dog’s left flank under the crushing pressure of the beast’s attack.
"Your portfolio is bleeding, Ren Wu!" Zhang mocked. He poured himself a fresh glass of glowing blue champagne, completely relaxed. "Five seconds until the armor breaches. Are you ready to empty your pockets?"
I sat back in the dark leather booth.
The brand on my chest throbbed, syncing perfectly with the frantic, agonizing pulse of the Queen’s soul fragment trapped inside Zhang’s armor. The heat was unbearable. It felt like I had swallowed a live coal.
I looked at the cracked screen of my smartphone.
I looked at the glowing green terminal embedded in my table.
`PORTFOLIO VALUE: 2,610,000,000 SILVER.`
`AVAILABLE LIQUIDITY: 100%`
Zhang had made a critical, arrogant mistake.
To save his friends, to allow them to bet on the monster, he had officially listed the Chimera as a tradable asset on the open market. He had created the ticker symbol. He had opened the book.
And the book was public.
"Miss Ye," I said. My voice was quiet, but it cut through the screaming of the aristocrats and the roaring of the beast below.
Lingshan stepped forward. The tactical armor she wore shifted.
"Sovereign."
"The Market Maker has listed a new asset," I said, dragging my blood-stained thumb across the holographic terminal. "He expects the market to dictate the violence. I prefer the violence to dictate the market."
I tapped the screen.
I didn’t buy shares of the Chimera.
I initiated a naked short.
I took the entire two point six billion silver in my portfolio—every single coin I had just bled from the VIP suite, plus the hundred million I had brought in the briefcase—and I dumped it directly against the monster.
The system choked.
The neon tickers across the massive arena lagged for a full two seconds as the automated algorithms tried to process the sheer, impossible volume of the hostile trade.
A massive red line plummeted down the center of the Skybox terminals.
`CHIM-4 SHORT VOLUME: OVERLOAD.`
`SELLING PRESSURE: CRITICAL.`
Baron Zhang’s champagne glass stopped halfway to his mouth. The Warlord blinked, staring at his terminal. The green numbers projecting his monster’s value were suddenly flashing a violent, terminal red.
"What did you just do?" Zhang demanded, his voice dropping into a dangerous, mechanical growl.
"I shorted the beast," I said.
I picked up my black umbrella. I stood up from the dark leather booth. The movement was slow, deliberate, and entirely devoid of fear.
"But a short only pays out if the asset’s value drops to zero," I continued, adjusting the cuffs of my ruined suit jacket. I looked at the Sword Saint standing beside me.
Lingshan’s dark eyes locked onto the massive, three-headed amalgamation tearing at Red Dog’s armor in the pit below.
She gripped the hilt of *Winter’s Edge*.
*Schwing.*
The blade cleared the scabbard.
The temperature in the VIP Skybox did not just drop. It plummeted into the absolute, freezing depths of a sunless ocean. The synthetic jasmine moisture in the air instantly crystallized, falling to the crimson carpet like glass snow. The glowing blue champagne sitting in Zhang’s crystal flute flash-froze, shattering the glass in his massive hand.
The man in the emerald suit gasped, his breath visible in the suddenly freezing air. He backed away from the window, wrapping his arms around his ruined body.
Lingshan did not walk toward the pneumatic deployment chute at the back of the room.
She walked directly toward the curved, inch-thick spiritual armor-glass overlooking the arena.
"Audit the beast, Miss Ye," I ordered.
Lingshan didn’t slow her pace. She stepped up onto the dark mahogany wood of an empty betting booth.
She channeled her suppressed, Tier-3 Sword Saint Qi directly into the freezing steel of her blade. The metal hummed, emitting a blinding, pale blue mist that violently displaced the oxygen in the room.
She swung the sword in a single, flawless arc.
*CRACK.*
The reinforced spiritual glass, designed to withstand the impact of a commercial transport vessel, completely shattered.
Millions of jagged, glittering shards exploded outward into the sweltering, toxic air of the coliseum. The sudden depressurization sucked the silk curtains and loose betting slips right out of the Skybox.
The aristocrats screamed, dropping to the floor and grabbing the bolted furniture to keep from being pulled out into the void.
Lingshan didn’t look back.
She stepped off the mahogany table and walked straight out into the open air, falling hundreds of feet directly toward the blood-soaked sand.
I stood at the edge of the shattered window, the hot, sulfur-scented wind of the arena whipping my ruined tie against my collar.
I looked down at Baron Zhang, who was staring at the shattered glass in absolute, paralyzed shock.
"Let’s see if your monster can survive a margin call," I said.
---
**[AUTHOR NOTE]**
Lingshan has entered the chat. ❄️⚔️
Zhang thought he could rig the casino by dropping a boss monster. Ren just weaponized his entire 2.6 billion war chest to short it. The Sword Saint is dropping from the sky, and she isn’t bringing a calculator.
Next up: Half the Room Went Bankrupt in 12 Seconds. Ice meets Debt. The Chimera is about to learn what happens when you fight the Vanguard.
**If that glass shatter gave you chills, drop those Power Stones and Golden Tickets! The IPO is crashing! 📉🩸**
