The Serenitea Pot's Fair-Weather Market was packed with people, yet the atmosphere felt as taut as a drawn bowstring.
A housewife clutched her flattened purse, her fingertips turning white as she stared at a jar of starshroom powder on a spice stall. Yesterday it was priced at five thousand Mora; today, the wooden sign boldly proclaimed twelve thousand two hundred. The stall owner was a shifty, tall, and thin man whose voice came out dry and flat: "Take it or leave it, that's the price! Set by the Duvall Chamber of Commerce!" Similar scenes played out repeatedly before stalls selling textiles, high-end lamps, and even certain Fontaine mechanical toys. A silent anxiety hung heavy in the air—not a panic over survival, but the suffocating frustration of seeing one's quality of life pinched hard by an invisible hand. Pantalone's cold palm, concealed deep within Northland Bank, was precisely stirring the non-essential "grey market" of the Serenitea Pot through Duvall's lingering tentacles, brewing the anxiety of everyday life into a slow poison.
When Acting Grand Master Jean stepped into the command hall of the Qixing Emergency State Committee, the condensed urgency in the air was almost palpable. On the giant light screen, a multi-category commodity price curve chart, rendered in real-time by the "Wisdom Core," soared wildly like an out-of-control electrocardiogram. Cyno stood with his arms crossed before the light screen, his gaze beneath the brim of his hat as sharp as a blad…
Chapter 124