I Died 2,000 Years Ago: The Underworld Fears Me-Chapter 93 - 90 — He Stepped Out of the Skybox and Fell
The brass clamps bolting the glass cage to the Warlord’s sternum were superheated, glowing a dull, angry orange.
I did not hesitate. I reached out with my bare right hand and grabbed the scalding metal.
The heat instantly seared my palm. The smell of burning flesh—my flesh—curled into the stagnant, bloody air of the VIP suite. I locked my jaw, ignoring the pain signaling from my eighteen-year-old nervous system. The Sovereign Law burning beneath my skin reinforced the bones in my hand, turning my grip into a hydraulic vise.
"No," Baron Zhang gasped. His massive, blood-stained fingers weakly clawed at my wrist.
He had no leverage left. The crushing gravity of my audit had completely suppressed his dark Qi. The First Era armor covering his massive chest was dead weight.
I twisted my wrist.
CRACK.
The heavy iron bolts anchoring the cylinder to his ribcage snapped. The sound echoed like a gunshot in the silent room.
I pulled.
The Warlord screamed, a wet, ragged sound that tore his throat. The thick, glowing veins of liquid Qi connecting the battery to his flesh violently severed. A burst of blinding, golden sparks showered across the ruined silk carpet.
The heavy glass cylinder came free.
The moment the connection broke, Zhang’s life-force flatlined.
He had used the Queen’s soul as a pacemaker for two centuries, pushing his physical cultivation far beyond its natural limits. Without the battery, his massively overgrown musculature and heavy gene-mods instantly collapsed.
His eyes rolled back into his skull. His jaw went slack. The towering Market Maker of Sector Eight hit the shattered floorboards like a dropped stone, dead before his massive shoulders even touched the carpet.
I stood over the corpse.
The glass cylinder in my hand was incredibly heavy, roughly the size and weight of an artillery shell. The swirling, frantic gold light inside the cage slowed. The blinding, agonizing glare softened into a warm, rhythmic pulse.
The rusted hairpin in my breast pocket stopped burning.
The searing heat against my ribs faded, leaving behind a dull, numb ache. The connection was safe. The fragment was disconnected from the parasitic grid.
Above the mahogany table, the Golden Ledger snapped shut.
The blinding ring of golden chains locking the VIP suite together suddenly dissolved into fine, glittering dust. The System had verified the kill. The conditions of the sudden-death contract were met.
The holographic terminal embedded in my booth flared with a brilliant, blinding green light.
The transfer wasn’t magic. It was raw data analytics on a divine scale. Billions of micro-transactions, life-debts, physical real estate deeds, and mercenary contracts compiled and rendered into a single, localized master file. The Iron Bank processed the hostile takeover of an entire zip code in less than three seconds.
BLOOD-WAGER COMPLETE.
WINNER: REN WU.
SECTOR EIGHT ACQUIRED.
NEW MARKET MAKER REGISTERED.
The flashing red emergency strobes cut off. The normal, dim purple lighting of the Skybox flickered back on.
I looked around the room.
Thirty elite assassins lay crushed in pools of their own blood. The former billionaires and high-tier brokers were still huddled in the corners, weeping over their zeroed accounts and lost cultivation. They stared at me, their faces pale, terrified to even breathe too loudly.
I didn’t care about them. I didn’t care about the ruined furniture or the billions of silver now routing to my factory’s vault.
I held the glass cylinder tightly against my chest.
I walked over to the heavy steel blast shields that Zhang had dropped over the shattered window.
The manual override lever was a thick iron bar protruding from the wall. I hooked my left hand under it and pulled down.
CLANG.
The heavy hydraulic gears shrieked, grinding against the rust and disuse. The thick steel plates slowly retracted upward, slotting back into the ceiling.
The toxic, sweltering air of the arena pit rushed back into the room.
I stepped up onto the lip of the shattered window frame. My ruined black boots crunched over the broken spiritual armor-glass.
The view from the edge was dizzying. The Skybox was suspended directly over the center of the Flesh Exchange, bolted to the highest curve of the fossilized ribcage. The arena floor was a hundred feet straight down.
Below me, the packed sand was a brutal landscape of flash-frozen permafrost and shattered uranium armor.
Red Dog stood in the center of the ruin, his matte-black chassis smoking in the freezing mist left behind by the Sword Saint’s attack. Lingshan stood a few yards away, shaking a thin layer of frozen, necrotic blood off the steel of Winter’s Edge.
Surrounding the pit, the millions of starving ghosts in the general admission bleachers were dead silent. They had watched a rusted golem and a human girl eradicate the Warlord’s premium monster. Now, they stared up at the shattered VIP window.
They saw a man in a ruined black suit holding a glowing glass cylinder.
They didn’t know my name. But the massive neon stock tickers wrapping the arena suddenly flickered, deleting the Zhang Clan’s corporate logos.
The screens turned a stark, absolute black. A single, crisp line of white text appeared across every monitor in Sector Eight. 𝐟𝐫𝕖𝗲𝘄𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝕧𝐞𝚕.𝕔𝕠𝐦
PROPERTY OF REN WU.
I didn’t wait for the elevator.
I picked up the black umbrella I had dropped on the carpet. I held the heavy glass cylinder tightly under my left arm.
I stepped off the ledge.
Gravity grabbed me instantly.
The wind tore at my clothes, snapping the lapels of my suit jacket against my cheeks. The toxic yellow smog of the coliseum rushed up to meet me. Falling a hundred feet in the Underworld was a death sentence for a mortal body. The kinetic impact would shatter my femurs, drive my shins through my kneecaps, and liquefy my internal organs.
I didn’t panic. I waited.
Ninety feet.
Eighty feet.
The freezing mist radiating from Lingshan’s permafrost chilled the air rushing past my face.
Fifty feet.
I pressed the silver release button on the handle of the umbrella.
Thwump.
The heavy, reinforced black silk canopy snapped open.
The fabric wasn’t designed for aerodynamics. It was woven with the bureaucratic friction of the Golden Ledger. The moment the canopy opened, the umbrella caught the ambient kinetic energy of the fall and simply refused to process it.
The administrative drag was violent.
My shoulders jerked hard, the joints popping loudly as my rapid descent was aggressively, unnaturally arrested. My arm burned, taking the massive brunt of the deceleration.
I dropped the last thirty feet at a slow, entirely controlled glide.
The millions of ghosts in the bleachers leaned forward against the rusted iron railings, their dead eyes wide. They watched a man float down from the Ivory Sky like a dark, corporate phantom, holding an open umbrella in the middle of a sweltering indoor arena.
Ten feet.
I collapsed the umbrella.
I hit the packed, frost-covered sand.
Crunch.
My boots broke through the thin layer of ice. My knees buckled slightly under the remaining kinetic weight. A sharp spike of pain shot up my calves, reminding me just how fragile this eighteen-year-old vessel still was.
I exhaled a long, slow breath, tasting the ozone and cold dust in the air.
I stood up straight.
Lingshan turned around. She looked at the blood soaking the cuff of my right sleeve, then at the glowing glass cylinder tucked securely under my arm. She didn’t ask what happened in the Skybox. She simply sheathed her katana, dropped to one knee on the frozen sand, and bowed her head.
"Sovereign," Lingshan said. Her voice carried clearly across the silent pit.
Red Dog turned his massive, horned head. The dark, First Era gears inside his chest clicked in a low, rhythmic pattern. He took one heavy step forward, the ground shaking, and lowered his massive bulk into a stiff, mechanical kneel.
The Vanguard and the Iron Legion, submitting in the center of the slaughterhouse.
The crowd in the bleachers finally broke.
It didn’t start as a cheer. It started as a low, desperate murmur, rippling through the millions of starving souls. They looked at the dead, frozen chunks of the Chimera. They looked at the black stock tickers claiming ownership of their debt.
Then, the roar erupted.
It was a deafening, oceanic wave of pure, unfiltered noise. It wasn’t a cheer of loyalty or love. It was the feral, screaming worship of raw power. The Zhang Clan had bled them for centuries. The Market Maker was a god.
And the man in the dirty suit had just bought the god, liquidated him, and dropped from the sky to claim the change.
I ignored the screaming crowd. I ignored the flashing neon lights.
I looked down at the heavy glass cylinder in my arm. The warm gold light pulsed gently against my ribs.
"One," I whispered to the glass.
I had the first piece. The battery was disconnected. The ledger for Sector Eight was closed.
But the audit was far from over.
I looked up toward the massive, rusted iron gates leading out of the arena pit.
"Miss Ye," I said, my voice flat, cutting cleanly through the roar of the stadium.
Lingshan stood up, brushing the frost from her knee pads. "Yes, Boss."
"We are done here. Call Jian. Tell him to prep the Last Stop vault for the physical transfer of the sector’s assets."
I adjusted my grip on the umbrella, using the steel ferrule as a walking stick as I limped slightly toward the exit. The adrenaline was fading, and the human pain was rapidly taking its place.
"And tell him to order a new desk," I added. "We have a lot of paperwork to file before Judge Mortis returns."
[AUTHOR NOTE]
The eagle has landed. 🦅☂️
Ren just executed a hostile takeover, ripped a piece of his Queen’s soul out of a Warlord’s chest, and Mary Poppins-dropped into a gladiator pit to claim his new kingdom. The flex is absolute. Sector 8 officially belongs to the Bagman.
But with massive wealth comes massive attention. The Board of Directors just lost a seat, and they aren’t going to send accountants next time.
Are you ready for the aftermath? Drop those Power Stones and Golden Tickets! The Iron Bank is under new management! 💼🔥
