The academy's night market operated in spaces that didn't exist during daylight hours. Corridors folded in on themselves to create hidden alcoves where senior students traded karmic fragments like currency, and shadows solidified into temporary shops selling everything from bottled luck to crystallized time.
Alex moved through the market with the calculated purposefulness of someone converting assets before a major transaction. His jade focus hung from a silk cord around his neck, its inscribed surface serving as both ledger and collateral for the deals he needed to complete before dawn.
His first stop was a cramped stall run by a third-year student whose threads were so numerous they resembled a spider's web. The girl—Senior Sister Qin—specialized in information brokerage, trading knowledge for karmic fragments with the mechanical precision of a banking institution.
"Song Clan genealogy records," Alex said without preamble, placing three carved bone tokens on her counter. "Complete family tree going back five generations, with emphasis on marriage contracts and territorial disputes."
Senior Sister Qin examined the tokens with thread-sight, cataloguing their karmic value. "Bone fragments from a dissolved cultivation sect. Interesting collateral." She paused, calculating. "The Song Clan information will cost seven tokens of equivalent value, or you can provide service-debt worth forty-three academic hours."
"Counter-offer," Alex said, producing his jade focus. "Song Clan records plus Shen Clan debt documentation, in exchange for this analysis of first-year initiate vulnerabilities. Forty-three catalogued weaknesses, seventeen with detailed exploitation strategies."
The information broker's threads flickered with interest as she examined the jade stone without touching it. Her thread-sight penetrated its carved surface, reading the stored data with the rapid precision of someone who had learned to value knowledge by its profit potential rather than its educational merit.
"Acceptable," she said finally. "But I keep secondary rights to the vulnerability data. Future buyers will pay premium prices for updated intelligence on your classmates."
Alex nodded. The residual value of his analysis would continue generating profit for Senior Sister Qin long after he left the academy, but that was irrelevant to his immediate needs. He had learned to think in liquidation rather than optimization—sometimes the most profitable strategy was to convert assets quickly rather than maximize their long-term potential.
The information transfer took less than five minutes. Senior Sister Qin touched her palm to his jade focus, her threads extending into its crystalline matrix to copy the stored analysis while simultaneously downloading the requested clan records directly into his memory. The process felt like ice water flowing through his thoughts, each new data point settling into perfect categorical organization.
The Song Clan had been founded three centuries ago by a rogue cultivator who had accumulated wealth through strategic marriages and territorial acquisition. Their current patriarch, Song Wei Ming, controlled the Eastern Province's second-largest trade network and maintained formal hostilities with the Shen Clan over mining rights to a spirit stone quarry that had been disputed for over two hundred years.
More interesting was the specific marriage contract Alex had inherited. The promised bride was Song Li Hua, the patriarch's youngest daughter, whose cultivation talent was considered adequate but unremarkable. The original betrothal had been arranged as compensation for a gambling debt, with the bride-price set deliberately high to ensure the debtor's family would default and forfeit their territorial claims.
Alex smiled as the implications crystallized. The marriage debt wasn't random academic exercise—it was a carefully structured financial instrument designed to transfer land ownership through matrimonial obligation. Professor Mu had maneuvered him into accepting not just a marriage contract, but a claim to Song Clan resources that could be leveraged during his negotiations with the Shen Clan.
His second transaction was more straightforward. Wei Chen's homesickness had reached critical mass, his guilt-threads pulsing with enough accumulated tension to power a small cultivation array. Alex found his roommate in the dormitory's meditation chamber, ostensibly practicing thread-sight but actually staring at a letter from home with the desperate intensity of someone watching his investments collapse in real time.
"Your family's winter reserves," Alex said, settling beside Wei Chen on the cultivation mat. "How much did they sacrifice to pay your entrance fee?"
Wei Chen startled, his concentration shattering like glass. "I... why would you ask that?"
"Because you're carrying approximately four hundred jin of guilt-debt, compounding at daily intervals through emotional interest. Left unchecked, it will consume your base cultivation within six months." Alex's tone carried no sympathy, only the practical assessment of someone cataloguing inventory. "I can resolve the debt, but the transaction requires full disclosure of terms."
"You can... resolve it?" Wei Chen's voice carried desperate hope that made his threads pulse with dangerous intensity. "How?"
Alex produced a small crystal vial filled with what appeared to be liquid starlight. "Karmic cleanser. It dissolves guilt-debt by converting emotional obligation into neutral energy, which can then be redirected toward cultivation advancement." He paused, allowing Wei Chen to absorb the implications. "The cost is your accumulated karmic credit with me, plus service-debt equivalent to twenty academic hours."
The negotiation that followed was brief and efficient. Wei Chen's gratitude for the marriage debt transfer had accumulated significant karmic value, and his desperate need for relief from his guilt-debt made him an ideal customer for overpriced solutions. Alex traded him the cleanser—which had cost three bone tokens at Senior Sister Qin's stall—in exchange for resources worth approximately fifteen tokens, plus Wei Chen's agreement to serve as information source regarding dormitory dynamics after Alex's departure.
The guilt-debt dissolved within minutes of Wei Chen drinking the cleanser, his threads shifting from gold to clear as the accumulated emotional weight converted into pure cultivation energy. The relief on his face was so intense it was almost painful to observe, but Alex felt only satisfaction at the transaction's efficiency.
One thread closed, one asset secured, one complication eliminated.
Liu Shen proved more complex. Alex found the former sect heir in the academy's night gardens, seated beneath a tree whose bark recorded the karmic exchanges of everyone who rested in its shade. Liu Shen's severed connections created strange gaps in the tree's recorded history, voids where obligations should have existed but didn't.
"Leaving tomorrow?" Liu Shen asked without preamble, not looking up from the manual he was studying. "Your threads have been shifting into departure configuration for the past three days."
"Assignment," Alex replied, settling on the ground across from him. "Standard academy business."
"Nothing the academy does is standard." Liu Shen closed the manual—a treatise on void-space manipulation that had probably cost him months of accumulated resources. "Your meeting with Professor Mu lasted forty-seven minutes. Long enough for either recruitment or elimination. Since you're still breathing, I assume recruitment."
Alex studied Liu Shen's severed connections, noting how they had begun to heal in unexpected patterns. The void-spaces weren't just absences anymore—they were becoming something else, structures that could contain and manipulate karmic energy without being bound by its normal rules.
"What do you want?" Alex asked.
"Partnership." Liu Shen's fingers traced patterns in the air, his thread-sight revealing connections that others couldn't perceive. "You see karma as currency, I see it as architecture. Your analytical abilities combined with my structural manipulation could generate profits that neither of us could achieve independently."
The offer was more sophisticated than Alex had expected. Liu Shen wasn't proposing simple cooperation—he was suggesting systematic exploitation of karmic loopholes that required both mathematical precision and architectural innovation.
"Terms?" Alex asked.
"Equal partnership in future ventures. I provide void-space storage and neutral transaction mediation, you provide strategic analysis and long-term planning. Profits split proportionally based on contribution to each specific deal." Liu Shen leaned forward, his severed connections flickering with contained energy. "Starting with whatever you're really doing in the Eastern Provinces."
Alex felt the familiar satisfaction of recognizing a profitable arrangement. Liu Shen's abilities complemented his own analytical skills perfectly, and a partner with severed karmic connections could conduct transactions that would be impossible for someone bound by normal obligation networks.
"Acceptable," Alex said, extending his hand. "But I maintain operational control of the current assignment. You provide support services only."
They sealed the agreement with a brief touching of palms, Liu Shen's void-spaces accepting the karmic binding while keeping it isolated from his core network. The partnership thread that formed between them was unlike anything Alex had seen before—simultaneously present and absent, existing in the spaces between normal causality.
Two threads consolidated into one strategic alliance. Efficiency.
His final preparation required the most delicate handling. Xue Lian's ice armor had developed critical stress fractures, but her pride made direct assistance impossible. Instead, Alex had to engineer a situation where helping him would serve her own interests while addressing her underlying problem.
He found her in the dormitory's common area, seated at a small table covered with what appeared to be financial documents. Her threads were wound so tightly around her that they created a visible shimmer in the air, like heat distortion over summer pavement.
"The Ice Palace exile stipend," Alex observed, settling across from her. "They're reducing your monthly allowance again."
Xue Lian's expression didn't change, but her threads tightened fractionally. "My finances are none of your concern."
"They are if you default on academy tuition. Unpaid educational debt creates karmic liens that affect everyone in your social network." Alex gestured toward the documents spread across the table. "Including roommates who have engaged in resource-sharing agreements."
The threat was subtle but clear. Xue Lian's financial instability could create obligations that would bind Alex through their dormitory connection, giving him legitimate interest in her situation regardless of her preferences.
"What do you propose?" she asked, her voice carefully neutral.
"Temporary employment. I need someone with ice-element cultivation to serve as bodyguard during a negotiation in the Eastern Provinces. The assignment pays enough to cover your tuition shortfall plus reasonable compensation for services rendered."
Xue Lian studied his face, looking for deception or ulterior motive. "Why me? There are dozens of ice cultivators in the academy's upper years."
"Because you're the only one whose karmic connections won't complicate my negotiations. Your exile status makes you a neutral party, and your financial desperation ensures loyalty through economic necessity rather than personal attachment." Alex's tone carried the same mechanical precision he used for all business arrangements. "Sentiment is expensive. Necessity is reliable."
The negotiation took nearly an hour, but the outcome was inevitable. Xue Lian needed resources, Alex needed a cultivator whose abilities complemented his own strategic requirements, and their existing roommate connection provided sufficient karmic foundation for temporary employment arrangements.
By dawn, Alex had successfully consolidated his academy relationships into their most useful configurations. Wei Chen was now a grateful information source whose guilt-debt had been resolved. Liu Shen had become a strategic partner whose void-space abilities would prove invaluable for complex transactions. Xue Lian was temporarily contracted as bodyguard and ice-element support, her financial desperation ensuring reliable service.
Three potential complications converted into three useful assets. The mathematics of social optimization demonstrated once again.
Professor Mu arrived at his dormitory precisely at sunset, her threads extending through the academy's corridors like a vast neural network processing countless simultaneous calculations. She carried a leather satchel that hummed with contained karmic energy and a jade slip inscribed with transportation coordinates.
"Your resources," she said, handing him the satchel. "Cause coins, thread scissors, a mirror of result calibrated for your specific karmic signature, and documentation establishing your authority to negotiate on the academy's behalf."
Alex examined the contents quickly but thoroughly. The cause coins were genuine academy issue, each one containing enough stored karmic value to fund a small war. The thread scissors were masterwork quality, their blades sharp enough to cut connections that lesser tools couldn't even perceive. The mirror of result was perhaps the most valuable item—a device that could show probable outcomes of specific actions before they were taken, essentially allowing him to preview the consequences of his choices.
"And my companion?" Alex asked, gesturing toward Xue Lian.
"Will be transported separately and arrive at the Shen Clan compound twelve hours after you. This ensures that any initial negotiations occur without the complication of obvious backup." Professor Mu's threads shifted subtly, accounting for new variables. "Remember, your primary objective is protecting the academy's interests. The Shen Clan's survival is secondary to debt recovery."
The portal activation required careful timing. Professor Mu led Alex to a chamber he had never seen before, deep beneath the academy's foundation levels where the walls were carved from raw earth and inscribed with equations that predated written language. The portal itself was a circular depression in the floor, filled with what appeared to be liquid mirror that reflected not light but probability.
"Step into the center," Professor Mu instructed. "The transportation process will feel like drowning in mathematics. Do not attempt to resist or control it—simply allow the karmic equations to solve themselves around your presence."
Alex moved to the portal's center, feeling the liquid probability begin to rise around his feet like sentient quicksilver. The sensation was exactly as Professor Mu had described—mathematical concepts flowing through his consciousness like water through a sieve, each equation carrying him further from his starting point and closer to whatever waited in the Eastern Provinces.
The last thing he saw before the transportation completed was Professor Mu's smile, razor-thin and absolutely certain that her investment would generate appropriate returns.
Then Alex was standing in moonlight beside a mountain road, the academy's weight disappearing from his consciousness like a released breath. The air here tasted different—thinner, sharper, carrying the mineral scent of approaching conflict.
In the distance, lantern lights marked the location of a sprawling compound where the Shen Clan waited unknowingly for their new creditor to arrive. Somewhere beyond that, the Song Clan prepared for whatever disruption his marriage debt would create in their carefully maintained hostilities.
And in between all of them, a twenty-year-old transmigrant began walking down the mountain road, calculating threads that needed to be pulled, debts that needed to be restructured, and prices that would need to be paid before the Eastern Provinces' karmic market learned to account for his presence.
The snake had shed its academy skin and was ready to begin feeding in earnest.