Sludge suction system

The wind, carrying icicles from the heart of the Kunlun Mountains, scraped across Qian Wanguan's festering wrists like blades. He ripped off the collar of his official robes, revealing the spreading blue spots on his collarbone—the jade poison, which should have been deadly, now seemed suppressed by some force, condensing into eerie ice crystal patterns beneath his skin. Tan Ge helped him hide in a hollow of the snow cliff, the "Jie" tattoo on the boy's waist resonating with the lotus pendant fragments on his wrist, emitting a faint buzzing sound.

“There’s still three incense sticks’ time left.” Tian Xue’er touched the blood jade chain around her neck, her voice carrying a chilling calmness. “The jade poison has formed an ice silkworm gu in your body, which was locked by Madam Yuan using the blood of a spirit deer.” She looked up at the perpetually frozen ice plain, and in the distance, the eaves of palaces buried in snow could be vaguely seen among the ice peaks. “The ice coffin of the Wusheng Temple Master should be in that ‘Suspended Soul Peak’.”

Qian Wanguan forced himself to stand, his gilded official boots shattering the ice to reveal a neatly arranged forest of blood-jade steles. Each stele was engraved with the jade figure's birth date and time, but a groove was carved into the place of the name—a "soul urn" prepared by Sang Xuan for himself. He touched the jade spot on his chest, which was becoming increasingly hot as he approached the ice peak, as if a fire was burning beneath the ice.

"Be careful of the icy fog." Tan Ge suddenly ripped open his clothes, revealing a lotus mantra newly tattooed on his chest. "Last time, when Tian Xue'er accidentally touched it, she was almost frozen into a living ice sculpture." Before he finished speaking, the ice cliff on the left suddenly collapsed, and in the icy fog, sixteen jade-like corpses walked hand in hand. The soul-locking bells on their wrists were covered with ice shards, but when they collided, they made a sound like the word "release".

“It’s Ayan and the others!” Qian Wanguan recognized the lotus pendant on the wrist of the leader of the skeletons. “Sang Xuan’s curse has been purified by Yuan Xiangya’s blood light!” Sure enough, the empty eye sockets of the jade people were filled with a bright blue light, and each skeleton held a blood jade tablet in its palm. The character “Xuan” on the tablet was gradually fading into a transparent lotus pattern.

Tian Xue'er took the blood jade token from A Yan, its touch surprisingly warm like jade. "There are sixteen ice coffins on Suspended Soul Peak, corresponding to sixteen generations of jade beauties." She stroked the cracks on the token, suddenly recalling the glimmer of light that had entered her palm before Yuan Xiangya's death. "The Abbot used his own soul to suppress the old bones, but Sang Xuan used the blood of the jade beauties to raise Gu..."

The icy mist suddenly solidified into the phantom of Sang Xuan, his voice mingling with the roar of the glacier: "Qian Wanguan, do you think you can defy fate by using Yuan Xiangya's spirit deer blood?" With a wave of his hand, the bones of the jade figures shattered, and the blood jade tablets turned to dust. "Beneath the ice coffin of the Abbot of Wusheng Temple lies the purest blood of the jade figures from three hundred years ago—"

Qian Wanguan abruptly shoved Tan Ge forward, then turned to face the illusory figure within the icy mist. He could feel the Ice Silkworm Gu within his body awakening, but when his jade-like fingertips touched the lotus pendant fragments, blood unexpectedly seeped out—the last vestige of life Yuan Xiangya had left in his bloodline. "Go open the ice coffin!" he roared, swinging his sword at Sang Xuan. "I'll hold off this mist!"

The instant the blade cleaved through the illusory image, Qian Wanguan saw the summit of Suspended Soul Peak deep within the icy mist. There stood sixteen ice coffins, and in the largest central coffin, the Abbot's robes were embroidered with lotus patterns of Yuan Xiangya. In the Abbot's palm lay a lotus seed sealed with the blood of a spirit deer—the true key to the Wusheng Temple, which Yuan Xiangya's father had guarded with his entire life.

As the "Jie" (解, meaning "unraveling") tattoo on Tan Ge resonated with the ice coffin, Qian Wanguan finally heard a heartbeat beneath the ice. It was Yuan Xiangya's heartbeat, the heartbeat of the sixteen generations of jade maidens, the hopeful sound of all the souls betrayed by Sang Xuan beating anew after three hundred years. He smiled, letting the jade poison spread to his heart, because he knew that the moment the ice coffin opened, everything he had lost would be won back by this lotus seed. At midnight, the icy mist atop Kunlun Mountain suddenly condensed into a blood-red hue. As Qian Wanguan watched Tian Xue'er place the spirit deer blood lotus seed into the abbot's palm, black blood seeped from the lotus pattern on the surface of the ice coffin. The "Jie" tattoo on Tan Ge's wrist suddenly ignited, its pattern perfectly coinciding with the curse mark revealed on the abbot's sleeve—not "Jie," but the fragmented form of the "Xuan" (玄, meaning "mysterious") character covered by ice and snow.

"Watch out!" Qian Wanguan's jade-like hand instinctively swung towards Tian Xue'er, but the abbot suddenly opened his eyes. What surged in his pupils was not the divine light of revival, but the swarm of blood jade insects with Sang Xuan. The lotus seed exploded in his palm, revealing not hope, but the crushed souls of the sixteen generations of jade figures. Each soul was wrapped with the "Xuan" character incantation, emitting a shrill scream in the icy mist.

“Three hundred years ago, when I fed the dragon turtle with the heart of the first Jade Maiden,” the Abbot’s voice came from the depths of the ice, yet it was mixed with Sang Xuan’s sinister tone, “that fool willingly used his soul to suppress the old bones, but he didn’t know that his ‘good intentions’ were the best poison.” The ice coffin shattered with a crash, and the Abbot’s body transformed into thousands of blood jade insects, each insect’s body engraved with the Abbot’s “compassion” inscription from back then. “Sang Xuan thought he was using me? No, he was nothing more than a puppet I kept on a string in the mortal world.”

Tian Xue'er's lotus-shaped birthmark suddenly throbbed with pain. Only then did she see clearly the lotus seed pattern on the abbot's palm, which was actually the character "困" (trapped) woven from the blood and tendons of the jade maiden. Tan Ge's silver bell fell to the ground, emitting a death knell with the character "玄" (mysterious) that was completely opposite to what she remembered. The purified jade maiden's bones were suddenly covered with blue spots again, and the light dancing in their eye sockets was no longer a bright blue, but the abbot's eerie green pupils.

“The Wusheng Guan is never a place for saving people,” Qian Wanguan said, watching the lotus pendant fragments on his wrist turn to ashes. He finally understood that what Yuan Xiangya’s father had carved in his finger bone was not “liberation” but “calamity”, “a mass grave built with the word ‘goodness’ and a living hell with ‘compassion’ as bait.”

The abbot's illusory figure overlapped with Sang Xuan's silhouette within the blood mist. With a wave of his hand, countless blood-jade chains surged from the ice fissures deep within Kunlun Mountain. Each chain bound a jade skeleton, the character "解" (jie, meaning "untie") forcibly twisted into the character "玄" (xuan, meaning "mysterious") on the skeleton's palm, forming a complete dragon-turtle totem. The instant Tian Xue'er was entangled by the chains, she saw a ghostly blue light rise from the direction of the distant mass grave—Yuan Xiangya's remnant soul was being reassembled by the abbot's curse, transforming into the final seal of old bones and a new shell.

“The blood of the spirit deer of the Yuan family lineage, the pure soul of the sixteenth generation jade maiden,” the abbot’s fingertips brushed over Qian Wanguan’s jade spots, and the suppressed Gu poison suddenly erupted, “plus your heart full of regret, the rebirth feast of the old dragon turtle bones is finally complete.”

Tan Ge threw the silver bell with all his might, but the sound of the bell did not bring to mind A Yan's smiling face, but rather the scene of the abbot's blood sacrifice—he personally pushed the sixteen generations of jade maidens into the blood pool, each corpse's back engraved with the lie of "sacrificing oneself for righteousness." Qian Wan Guan stared at the lotus pattern peeking out from the abbot's sleeve; the pattern was so similar to Yuan Xiang Ya's birthmark, but with an additional ferocious beast head in the center.

"So you are the true creator of the 'Xuan' character curse," Qian Wanguan's jade-like jaw cracked, but at that moment he saw the spirit deer blood seeping from Tian Xue'er's birthmark burning cracks in the abbot's curse pattern. "And Yuan Xiangya and the others... are a light that you can never devour."

A soft sound of lotus blossoms blooming came from the icy mist, and Qian Wanguan felt warm liquid slide down his cheek—long-lost human tears. He knew that no matter how deep or far-reaching the abbot's conspiracy was, as long as there were people who remembered Yuan Xiangya's smile, remembered Ayan's lotus pendant, and remembered those crushed good intentions, the true view of non-birth would always have the possibility of rebirth.

In the wind and snow, the abbot's maniacal laughter and the low murmur of the old dragon turtle bones intertwined into a spell. At that moment, Qian Wanguan heard the clearest bell sound—a three-hundred-year-old faith in "goodness" that emanated from the finger bones of Yuan Xiangya's father. He smiled, letting the blood jade chains pierce his heart, for he knew that at the end of the lies, there would always be someone like Tian Xue'er, carrying lotus seeds, replanting a pure world on the ruins, a world without the "Xuan" spell.