Sludge suction system

Sang Yu wrapped the blood jade tortoise shell inside her close-fitting coat. When her fingertips touched the cracks on the edge of the shell, her palms broke out in a fine sweat. The Kunlun Mountains in the depths of winter were like an ice sword piercing the clouds. She walked forward through the knee-deep snow. The old scar behind her ear where the blood jade had been implanted throbbed with each breath, as if someone were gently tapping her skull with the tip of a silver hairpin.

“The Broken Jade Mine should be just ahead.” Her breath condensed into ice crystals on her eyelashes as her gaze swept across the distant glacier—between the fractured ice walls, the eaves of half a pagoda were faintly visible, and the copper bells hanging from the eaves were covered with icicles. The lotus pattern on the bells was similar to the blood jade Guanyin statue in the Sang family's Buddhist hall.

The tortoise shell suddenly burned against her chest. Sang Yu staggered, grabbing for support against the ice wall. The blood-stained jade fragments seeping from the crack gleamed a pale blue in the snowy light. She recalled the record she had seen in the secret archives of the Sang family last night: "In the ruins of Kunlun, a dragon tortoise lies hidden, severing the jade veins, using blood as the key." She pressed her fingertips against the old scar, and the seeping blood dripped onto the ice wall, melting a thin crack along the tortoise shell's patterns, revealing ancient seal script engraved inside: "Enter the Wusheng Temple here."

The ice layer at the fracture point of the mine was as thin as a cicada's wing. When Sang Yu stepped on it, she heard faint dragon roars. She gripped the tortoise shell tightly and heard her father Sang Xuan's voice echoing in the wind and snow: "Yu'er, stop. The mine holds a secret that the Sang family cannot tell..." His voice trembled with a rare tremor, but she bit it off between her teeth.

The ice suddenly cracked, and as Sang Yu plunged into darkness, the tortoise shell emitted a clear chime, illuminating the vertically descending mine tunnel. The walls were inlaid with blood-red jade, each piece concealing a pale human face. Their clothing varied greatly, yet they all wore the same silver hairpin as hers. "The seventeenth generation..." one of the blood-red jade pieces suddenly uttered a faint call, "Take us out..."

At the end of the mine tunnel stood a circular altar, with the blood jade tortoise shell she carried suspended in its center. Beneath the tortoise shell lay a bottomless pool of blood. The moment Sang Yu stepped onto it, all the blood jades lit up simultaneously, reflecting countless overlapping shadows behind her—the afterimages of the "Jade People" of past generations, their hands traversing time and space, channeling their power into her brow.

“So we were all keys after all,” she whispered, embedding the tortoise shell in her bosom into the altar’s groove. The earth shook violently, the blood pool churned, revealing skeletons at the bottom—each skeleton had a blood jade embedded behind its ear, and its palm clutched fragments engraved with different totems. Sang Yu recognized one of the phoenix-patterned fragments; it was her mother’s dowry hairpin, which had suddenly disappeared when she was seven.

"Yu'er..." A familiar voice came from the blood pool. Sang Yu looked up sharply and saw her mother's face appear on the blood jade tortoise shell. "The mine is a cage used by the Sang family to imprison the dragon tortoise. The curse of the blood jade is not immortality, but to ensure that the dragon tortoise will never find peace..."

The ice suddenly collapsed, and Sang Xuan's figure plummeted from above, the blood-red jade on his silver hairpin shattered in two. "Don't listen to her nonsense!" He grabbed Sang Yu's wrist, his sleeve slipping down to reveal their old scars. "The dragon turtle in the mine can ensure the Sang family's eternal power, and your blood is the final step to awaken it!"

Sang Yu stared at the bloodshot in his eyes, a color no human should have—clearly the color of a living dead corrupted by the Blood Jade. Suddenly, the tortoise shell emitted a blinding light, blasting Sang Xuan away. Her mother's afterimage transformed into a faint glow, merging into Sang Yu's brow. She felt something awakening within her; the old scar behind her ear split open, revealing blue dragon tortoise scales.

“The dragon turtle never needs to be awakened,” Sang Yu gripped the turtle shell, and the bones in the blood pool turned into specks of light. “What needs to be awakened is the human heart.”

The altar collapsed with a deafening roar, and as Sang Yu fell, she saw the truth about the mine: the so-called broken jade was nothing more than a corner of the dragon turtle's shell, and the Sang family's blood sacrifice was nothing more than a betrayal of the guardians over a thousand years. As she landed on the snow, a faint light seeped from the cracks in the turtle shell, and the three characters "Wusheng Temple" on the ice wall faded away, revealing the true inscription: "Dragon Turtle Shrine".

As the snowstorm subsided, Sang Yu gazed towards the summit of Kunlun Mountain, where the clouds dispersed, revealing the full splendor of the Dragon Turtle Shrine. She knew that the true solution lay not in destroying the Blood Jade, but in restoring the Dragon Turtle to its rightful place. Clutching the tortoise shell, she stepped onto the new snow line—this time, she was not a sacrifice, but a guide to unraveling the millennia-old mystery.

Sang Yu sat down with his back against a glacial crevice, his fingertips tracing the cracks along the edge of the blood jade tortoise shell, white mist seeping from between his teeth: "Little scum, tell me, where exactly does the Sang family's curse come from?"

The system's projection coalesced in the snowlight, still resembling a twelve-year-old pageboy, but the totem fragments on its dark green robe were dull and lifeless—this system, which had traversed five worlds, now seemed hesitant. "Host, the Sang family's curse is not a 'spell' in the traditional sense, but a symbiotic deception spanning a thousand years."

He raised his hand and unleashed a beam of light, illuminating the yellowed, tattered pages of an ancient book:

"The Secret Records of the Sang Clan: The Blood Jade Chapter"

Two hundred years ago: Sang Hong, an ancestor of the Sang family, discovered a dragon turtle fossil in the Kunlun mine. Its bone marrow crystallized into blood jade, which could "bring the dead back to life and restore flesh to bones," but it needed to be nourished with human blood.

- Origin of the curse: The essence of the blood jade is the "spiritual bone" of the dragon turtle. Long-term contact will erode human genes. The male members of the Sang family died because their internal organs gradually turned into jade due to their direct participation in the refining of the blood jade. The female members were selected as "jade people" and offered their virgin blood to the blood jade. In reality, they were "symbiotic containers" selected by the dragon turtle.

- Vicious cycle: After each generation of "Jade People" undergoes a blood sacrifice, the Dragon Turtle Spirit Bone will split into new Blood Jade. The Sang family uses this to maintain its power, but it also plunges the family into a dead end where "men cannot live past thirty and women cannot live past sixteen."

“Wait a minute,” Sang Yu pressed his hand to the old scar behind his ear, “Then the blood jade fragment behind my ear…was it used by the dragon turtle to mark the container?”

Xiao Zha nodded, and the light membrane screen switched to the surveillance footage in the secret chamber of the Sang family mansion: Sang Xuan used a silver hairpin to implant fragments of blood jade behind the ear of seven-year-old Sang Yu. The jade fragments emitted a fluorescent glow under the skin, resonating with the dragon turtle spirit bone deep within the mine. "This is the 'Spirit Bone Recognizing Master' ritual," his voice was cold, "Sang Xuan wants to use your blood to fully awaken the dragon turtle spirit bone, thereby gaining control of the 'Jade Life Power' of the Kunlun mine."

The snowflakes suddenly grew larger, pattering against the light membrane. Sang Yu recalled the skeletons in the blood pool of the Buddhist temple, each wearing a silver bracelet engraved with the character "Xuan"—not a mark, but an instrument of torture used by Sang Xuan to extract the blood of the "Jade People." "So the Jade People of all generations didn't offer themselves as sacrifices voluntarily, but were used as...nourishment for the Blood Jade?"

"To be more precise, he is a double victim of the Dragon Turtle and the Sang family." Xiao Zha pulled up the genetic testing report, and there was a sequence at the end of Sang Yu's DNA chain that perfectly matched the Blood Jade. "The Dragon Turtle needs human genes to maintain the activity of the spirit bone, while the Sang family uses the Blood Jade to seek power. The symbiosis between the two comes at the cost of the life of the Jade Man, forming a curse loop that spans thousands of years."

Sang Yu gripped the blood-jade tortoise shell tightly, recalling the skeletons at the bottom of the blood pool at the altar—the phoenix pattern fragments and taotie pattern remnants in their palms, perhaps marks of resistance. "That dragon tortoise... friend or foe?"

The light membrane suddenly switched to an image of the core of the ore vein: a huge dragon turtle skeleton floated above the magma, and in the blood-jade liquid seeping from the cracks in its carapace, the faint afterimages of jade people from past generations could be seen. "The dragon turtle was originally the guardian of Kunlun Mountain," Xiao Zha said softly, "but after being imprisoned by the Sang family for a thousand years, its skeleton has long been twisted. It needs the blood of jade people to complete its 'rebirth,' and Sang Xuan wants to use this to become the 'Master of Living Jade'—you are all just tools for it to break free from its cocoon."

Amidst the howling wind and snow, Sang Yu stood up, the dragon turtle scales spreading across her shoulders like armor. She finally understood the look in her mother's eyes before her death—it wasn't fear of death, but despair at her daughter being reduced to a mere vessel. "Little scum," she pressed the blood jade turtle shell onto the glacier, the scales resonating with the dragon turtle relief on the ice, "our goal isn't to destroy the blood jade, but to completely sever the symbiotic chain between the dragon turtle and the Sang family."

The system's projection nodded emphatically, and the totem fragments on the dark green robe suddenly lit up: "Host, the spacetime rift in the mine is expanding, and Sang Xuan's puppet army is approaching the snow line. And the key to breaking the curse... lies in the tortoise shell in your arms."

Sang Yu gazed at the Dragon Turtle Shrine at the end of the glacier. The three characters "Wusheng Temple" on the broken stele had been worn away by the wind and snow, revealing the "Shedding Bone Platform" carved at the bottom. She knew that when the Dragon Turtle's spiritual bones were reborn, the curse of the Sang family would collapse along with the old bones—no matter the cost, she would end this blood sacrifice that had lasted for thousands of years.

“Little scum,” her voice mingled with the wind and snow, yet carried an unprecedented firmness, “activate the ‘Spiritual Bone Resonance’ program. I want Sang Xuan to see how the jade maiden he used as a tool can personally sever his dream of immortality.”