Sludge suction system

The snow-covered ceiling pierced the shadows, casting a cold silver hue on Yuan Xiangya's temples. She gripped her father's fingers tightly, her knuckles turning white from the force. The shards of the Blood Jade Peace Lock dug into her palm, but nothing compared to the burning sensation from the birthmark on her chest. Sang Xuan's soul hovered above her palm, its outline as points of light gradually blurring, like morning mist about to dissipate.

"How do I find the true view of non-birth?" Yuan Xiangya's voice trembled, yet it revealed a desperate determination. "You said my father's bloodline is the key to breaking the deadlock, now you should tell me where the way out lies."

Sang Xuan's points of light coalesced into illusory eyebrows and eyes, overlapping with the silhouette of the mute servant in his memory. He gazed at the fading Taotie patterns on the dungeon walls, his voice mingling with the sound of the lotus pond: "The Wusheng Temple is never in the clouds and mist atop Kunlun Mountain..." The points of light drifted towards the tortoise shell fragments beside Qian Wanguan's decaying jade body, "...in the bones and blood of every generation of jade people, in the reverse scales of the old dragon tortoise bones, in..."

"Enough!" Yuan Xiangya suddenly grabbed a shard, its sharp edge cutting her palm. Blood dripped onto the remaining traces of the character "解" (jie, meaning "solve"), which surprisingly emitted a shimmering blue light. "I don't want to hear riddles! Three hundred years ago you fed my father's blood to the old bones; now you must give me a clear path—"

Suddenly, Sang Xuan's light entered her birthmark, and countless fragments flashed before Yuan Xiangya's eyes: the back of the sixteenth generation jade maiden with the character "Xuan" carved on it, the spirit deer blood dripping from Sang Yu at the Twin Platform, the "Jie" tattoo gradually becoming clear on Tan Ge's wrist... The final image settled on the palm of a skeleton in the mass grave—the "Jie" there was not a carving, but a spell drawn with lotus juice, which would appear upon contact with blood.

“Go to the mass grave to find the sixteenth generation Jade Maiden,” Sang Xuan’s voice echoed in her mind. “The lotus spell in her palm can lead you to the true altar. But remember…” The light condensed into a warning spot in her eyes, “The door of the Wusheng Temple is only open to the pure and good. Blood with hatred will only make the old bones stronger.”

Yuan Xiangya gazed at the gradually healing wound on her palm, where a lotus mark similar to Tian Xue'er's appeared, only with the added moss-like lines from her father's finger bones. Outside the dungeon, the wind and snow gradually subsided, and a crack appeared in the clouds in a certain direction, revealing a sliver of true sunlight, different from the jade poison's eerie blue.

“A truly good person…” she murmured to herself, pressing her knuckles to her heart. “My father traded thirty years of his life for me to live as bait. Now it’s my turn to be the one to unravel this mess.” As she turned, she stepped over fragments of Qian Wanguan’s seal, the gilded shards reflecting her resolute profile in the moonlight—not the wife of the prefect, not a puppet for revenge, but the first person in the Yuan family bloodline to live for herself.

Sang Xuan's light brushed across her hair one last time, transforming into countless fireflies that flew towards the fissures in the mine. Yuan Xiangya knew that when she stepped into the mass grave with the Lotus Curse, the three-hundred-year-old Reincarnation Gu would usher in its final turning point—and the blood in her palm would no longer be nourishment for the old bones, but rather the rain and dew that irrigated new life.

The copper water clock in the corner of the dungeon dripped softly. Qian Wanguan stared at his jade-like fingertips and suddenly remembered this day last year when he was kneeling before the Ministry of Personnel, exchanging three boxes of Hetian jade for the gilded insignia on his prefectural official robes. In just 360 days, his official robes were already soaked with the stench of decaying jade, and the Pixiu waist badge had faded to a deathly white. Only the Xiezhi pattern on the insignia still gleamed with a thieving light, much like the look in Sang Xuan's eyes when he handed over the blood jade.

"He only served as prefect for a year, and he's already turned himself into a living Gu." Yuan Xiangya used a silver hairpin to lift the hem of his official robe, revealing the blue spots that covered his knees. "The Yangzhou jade merchant, Boss Qian, was shrewd in his calculations, but he didn't expect that the 'promotion talisman' given by Sang Xuan was soaked in the blood and bones of sixteen generations of jade people."

A metallic taste rose in Qian Wanguan's throat—not blood, but fragments of rotten jade. He recalled the "gift" he received the day after taking office—a blood-jade paperweight personally presented by Sang Xuan, carved with the four characters "Love the People Like Your Own Children." Now, every stroke of the calligraphy seemed to ooze spiritual liquid, like countless tiny insects crawling across the paper. "That paperweight... is the skull of the sixteenth generation jade master..."

“You guessed right.” Yuan Xiangya slammed the paperweight against the stone wall, and half a jade slip fell out of the crack. It was engraved with “Qian Ji Jade Shop, March 15th, Year 1”. “You used her skull to carve the paperweight, and her leg bone to carve the jade ruyi to give to the governor. The remaining fragments of bone... were all used to fill the lotus pond in front of the prefectural government.”

The water in the copper dripper suddenly turned blood red. Qian Wanguan looked at the flickering candlelight in his wife's eyes and recalled the Lantern Festival last year when she made a wish by the lotus pond, and a skeletal hand suddenly floated up from the water. At that time, he thought it was an illusion, but now he realized that it was the jade figure whose bones he had shattered and whose ashes he had scattered, begging him to look at the character "解" (jie, meaning "solve") in her palm.

"The third body in the seventh row of the mass grave..." His jade-like jaw made a strange sound, "It's not her."

"Oh?" Yuan Xiangya raised an eyebrow, the tip of her silver hairpin pressed against the jade mark on his throat. "You still remember where she was buried?"

Qian Wanguan's thoughts suddenly returned to that stormy night. The sixteenth-generation jade beauty was chained to the jade shop's basement, the jade stain on her wrist had spread to her heart, yet she still used her fingertips, dipped in blood, to draw lotus flowers on the jade disc he had just carved. "Her name is... Ayan," he heard his own hoarse voice, "I buried her under the third willow tree in the lotus pond, paving it with her favorite fragments of jade... The character '解' (jie, meaning 'unravel') on her palm was written with my blood..."

Yuan Xiangya's silver hairpin clattered to the ground. As she looked at the clarity in her husband's eyes, she suddenly remembered the lotus pot in their old Yangzhou house—he had once said that the water in that pot was the most effective for nurturing jade. It turned out that what was submerged at the bottom of the pot was a broken stele with the character "解" (jie, meaning "to resolve") that he had carved himself.

“Use your blood to draw away the old bones.” She tore off the gilded patch from her official robe, revealing a lotus-patterned handkerchief sewn inside. “Ayan’s ‘Release’ spell requires the blood of a living person to nourish it, and you… just happen to have three hundred and sixty days left to live.”

Qian Wanguan looked down at the lotus pattern on the handkerchief, the very needlework that Ayan had taught him before she died. As the water clock ticked to midnight, he suddenly laughed, his laughter mingling with the sound of jade shattering, shaking the icicles off his head: "So Sang Xuan's biggest mistake... was thinking I had no good intentions at all."

Yuan Xiangya fastened the leather pouch containing the spirit deer's blood for him. When she touched the Pixiu waist pendant on his waist, the pendant suddenly cracked open, revealing the character "Yan" engraved on the inside—the character he had engraved on the jade pendant he gave to Ayan before he became rich.

“We must find the true view of non-birth before dawn.” She placed her father’s finger bone into his palm. “If I don’t come back, use this finger bone to knock on the hidden door at the bottom of the lotus pond—there lies the last piece of jade that Ayan left for you… to break the curse.”

Outside the dungeon, the faint sound of a lotus bell drifted through the wind and snow. As Qian Wanguan took his first step, his jade-like foot crushed half a piece of blood jade—the "Step by Step to Higher Positions" jade brick he had ordered to be laid on the steps of the prefectural capital last year. Beneath the broken jade, the character "解" (jie, meaning "solve") was faintly visible in A Yan's palm, its color still unfaded after a year of wind and rain.

As the last drop of water fell from the bronze water clock, he touched his heart, where a faint beat could be felt—not the roar of the jade poison, but the last heartbeat of a "human." The snowlight reflected on his half-jade-like face, revealing two lines of clear tears: This past year on the road to the prefecture, he had walked with lotus blossoms at every step, yet each step had trodden upon the heart of the girl who had sheltered him from the rain years before. Now, it was his turn, with these blood-stained hands, to push open the true gate of the Temple of No Life, sealed for three hundred years by the blood jade, for her, and for himself.