Sludge suction system

Let's go back three hundred years to the perspective of Chen Mo, the founder of the Wusheng school of thought.

On the winter solstice night, precisely on the northernmost branch of the Kunlun Mountains jade mine, icy fog descended, like an invisible curtain slicing the entrance to the mine, at an altitude of 5,000 meters, into two distinct realms. Nineteen-year-old Chen Mo huddled at a corner of the tunnel, tucking his purple, frozen fingers into his rough hemp sleeve to warm them. Ice crystals fell from the wooden handle of his pickaxe, shattering into countless shimmering spots of light in the thin ice-covered puddle at his feet. In the distance, the cough of old miner Wang Bo mingled with the muffled chiseling of rocks, like the mournful cry of some endangered beast beneath the ice.

"Brother Mo, it's time to rest." Uncle Wang's lantern swayed at the end of the alley, tiny ice crystals floating in its glow. The orange firelight cast his hunched shadow on the rock wall, making him look particularly bulky. "The time for the mountain spirit to exhale has come. If we dig any further, our souls will be snatched away by the icy mist."

Chen Mo didn't respond. He stared at the blood droplets seeping from the rock wall—or rather, the blood-like liquid that hadn't frozen in the minus thirty-degree temperature of the mine, but instead shone with an eerie warmth. The liquid meandered down the cracks in the bluish-gray rock strata, drawing winding patterns on the uneven stone wall, eventually pooling into a fist-sized pool of blood at his feet, with tiny bubbles floating on the surface, much like the breath of some living creature. Even more bizarrely, when he crouched down, the bubbles automatically coalesced into the shape of a small dragon, its head slightly raised towards his palm.

Suddenly, the pine torches crackled and popped, sparks flying onto the rock face and illuminating a crevice three zhang high—where embedded lay a piece of blood jade the size of a full-term infant, its surface covered with spiderweb-like blood threads, glowing with an eerie red light through the icy mist. The blood jade wasn't still; it pulsated gently with a rhythm, each "heartbeat" causing rocks to fall from the rock face, revealing deeper carvings beneath. Chen Mo rubbed his eyes, thinking he was seeing things—within the blood jade was a turtle-shaped black shadow, its limbs covered in scales, its tail and head joined together, the legendary dragon-turtle totem symbolizing immortality. Each scale of the shadow corresponded perfectly to the patterns on the blood jade's surface, as if it were born a prisoner of this jade.

“Don’t touch it…” Uncle Wang had somehow moved behind him, his calloused hands gripping his wrist tightly. “These are the eyes of a mountain spirit, they suck the souls of greedy people. Ten years ago, Li Laosan touched a bloodstained stone, and ended up covered in scales, jumping into the mine to be fed to the ice worms…”

The old man's voice suddenly stopped. Chen Mo felt a sharp pain in his wrist, and looking up, he saw Wang Bo's pupils shrink, staring at the rock wall behind him, his cloudy eyes reflecting the flickering firelight. He whirled around and saw a small dragon formed from blood droplets slowly crawling on the rock wall illuminated by the torchlight, leaving a pale golden trail in its wake—exactly identical to the dragon-turtle totem in the murals of the City God Temple in his memory. Even more chilling was that the dragon's head was facing the blood jade, as if paying homage to its kind imprisoned within it.

The pickaxe slipped from Chen Mo's fingers, its wooden handle striking the frozen earth with a dull thud, startling several bats from the cave ceiling. They fluttered their wings past the torches, casting shimmering shadows on the blood jade, making the illusory dragon-turtle within seem to come alive, its front claws slowly rising as if to tear through the jade's surface. Chen Mo heard his own rapid heartbeat drown out Wang Bo's terrified cries; some unseen force pulled him forward, his fingertips uncontrollably reaching for the blood jade.

The moment his skin touched the blood jade, amber-colored liquid suddenly seeped from the tortoise shell pattern, seeping into the old wound on his hand, instantly causing a burning sensation in his veins. Countless fragmented images exploded before his eyes:

On the towering altar, a black lotus blooms in the blood-red moonlight, its petals reflecting his face. He wears a scale-patterned cloak and plunges a dagger into the heart of a young girl. The lotus birthmark on the girl's chest gradually dims in the light of the black lotus, eventually transforming into thousands of light butterflies, only to be burned to ashes the moment they touch his scales.

His own palms were covered with bluish-gray scales, and blood dripped from his fingertips. He was dissecting the chest of a jade corpse. The jade corpse had a faded lotus birthmark on the back of its neck. Suddenly, the blood jade fragment embedded in the jade corpse's heart emitted a bright light. The fragment reflected a mine from three hundred years ago, and a man who looked like him was holding the blood jade with a strange smile.

- In the icy mist atop Kunlun Mountain, a young girl from three hundred years in the future lowered her head, revealing a lotus birthmark on the back of her neck, identical to the one on his palm. Her eyes reflected a black lotus about to collapse; the roots of the black lotus crumbled inch by inch in the light, revealing the soul of the jade maiden imprisoned within for three hundred years. Each soul transformed into a spirit deer and a blood lotus, weaving a sea of ​​light on the altar.

"Brother Mo!"

Wang Bo's scream was swallowed by the sound of an avalanche. The blood jade suddenly trembled with a buzzing sound. Chen Mo staggered and steadied himself against it, only to see the illusory dragon turtle within the jade slowly open its eyes. Its pupils were two clusters of flickering ghostly flames. The flames did not reflect his face, which was covered in mineral dust, but a face that was both strange and familiar—a face covered in diamond-shaped scales, with a lotus flower turning black between its brows, and a half-smile on its lips, much like the ghostly apparition in traditional opera. Even more bizarrely, the expression on that face was completely synchronized with his inner thoughts. When he felt fear, the face showed mockery; when he felt curiosity, the face showed greed.

With a deafening crash as the blood-red jade struck the ground, Chen Mo heard a muffled thud from deep within the rock strata, as if some ancient seal had finally been broken. The jade rolled twice on the ground, revealing the rock carvings on its back. Eight large characters were carved into the stone wall, but were incomplete due to the erosion of time: "Dragon Turtle Devours Soul, Twins Break Curse." The remaining half of the sentence was obscured by the blood-red jade, revealing the four characters "Use Blood as a Guide." The last character, "Guide," was missing a stroke, like an unhealed wound, or perhaps some kind of veiled warning. The surrounding rock wall was covered with dense, worm-shaped indentations, like the marks left by countless insects desperately gnawing at the rock before their death.

He scraped away the bloodstains from the carvings with the tip of his hoe, expecting to reveal the blue of the rock. Instead, he found tiny insect corpses embedded in each stroke—leeches, legendary demonic insects that feed on the souls of cultivators. These were now frozen into translucent specimens, their legs still in a gnawing posture, as if they were fighting for something in their final moments. The insect corpses were arranged with unusual neatness, in groups of three, forming a shape resembling the character "玄" (xuán), with the center of "玄" precisely where the character "解" (jiě) in the rock carving was located. When he pried out the first insect corpse, the Blood Jade suddenly emitted a sharp shriek. The juice seeping from the tortoise shell pattern outlined a dragon-tortoise devouring its tail on the ground, and in the center of the image was his terrified reflection, with the outline of a lotus birthmark slowly emerging between his brows.

"Anyone who touches it will die."

Uncle Wang had somehow crept up behind him, his voice trembling and incoherent, murky saliva dripping from his chin onto the icy ground. The old miner's lantern rolled beside the blood jade, the lamp oil spilled onto the rock carvings, causing some strokes to glow—it was pigment made from human blood mixed with ground insect corpses, revealing hidden incantations in the firelight: "One soul, two lives, one enters the jade, one becomes a slave." The word "slave" in the incantation was surrounded by insect-shaped symbols, like countless leeches tearing at the word, trying to erase it from the rock carvings. Chen Mo felt goosebumps rise on the back of his neck. He saw the wound on his palm healing, the scab faintly revealing tortoise shell patterns, and the direction of those patterns perfectly matched the dragon-tortoise totem on the blood jade.