Sludge suction system

Seven days after the winter solstice, snowflakes from the Kunlun Mountains rustled against the rock paintings. Chen Mo, wrapped in a felt blanket soaked with mutton fat, sneaked back into the mine at midnight. The iron nails on his boots scraped against the ice, making a soft, mournful sound. Three days earlier, at Wang Bo's funeral, he had seen with his own eyes the tortoise-shell pattern on the shards of stone the old man clutched. The midwife who performed the autopsy had quietly told him that Wang Bo had a diamond-shaped burn on his chest, exactly the same shape as the wound on his palm.

The pine torch, wrapped three times with tattered cloth, emitted only a tiny red glow, appearing minuscule before the three-zhang-high chasm. The blood jade remained embedded in its original place, but was now larger than it had been seven days ago, its surface veins writhing like living things, weaving a blurry human face in the icy mist. Chen Mo reached for the leather pouch at his waist, his fingertips touching his mother's silver hairpin inside—a dowry gift from his father before his death, its tip engraved with a half-withered lotus flower, now burning hot in the pouch, the lotus pattern subtly resonating with the dragon-turtle totem on the blood jade.

"excuse me."

He bowed towards the crack, but before he could finish speaking, ice shards suddenly fell from above. Chen Mo instinctively turned to the side, and a block of ice the size of a millstone grazed his shoulder and shattered at his feet. The air was filled with the smell of rust, and he was then shocked to realize that half a skeleton was frozen inside the ice. The deceased's fingers were curled into a grasping shape, and a fragment of blood jade was embedded in the palm. The bones around the fragment grew in a spiral pattern, as if they had been gnawed by some living creature.

The moment the Blood Jade touched his hand, a humming sound like cracking ice filled the entire mine. Chen Mo staggered backward, his lower back slamming against the cold rock wall, only to see his shadow suddenly split in two in the firelight: the main shadow was his thin, boyish figure, while the secondary shadow wore a scale-patterned cloak, cradling a jade-like female corpse in his arms, black blood seeping from the lotus birthmark on the back of her neck. He jerked his head away, the illusion vanishing, leaving only the Blood Jade burning hot in his arms, its tortoise-shell patterns seeping through the leather bag, drawing a twisted "longevity" character on the snow, each stroke resembling a molting worm.

The mother's cough, like a broken bellows, was particularly jarring in the drafty, dilapidated house. Chen Mo pulled out the blood jade hidden under the kang (a heated brick bed). Moonlight shone through the holes in the window paper, weaving spiderweb-like patterns on the jade's surface. The old woman lay on the bed, so thin she was just a skeleton, her ribs jagged like the ridges of an iceberg. But when the blood jade touched her chest, the sunken skin suddenly shimmered with a mother-of-pearl-like luster.

"mother!"

Chen Mo gasped. His mother's cough abruptly stopped, replaced by a soft, kitten-like whimper. She raised her withered hand, stroking her smooth cheek, the black grime under her fingernails flaked off, revealing new, pink skin. Even more eerie, the age spots on her wrist were visibly fading, replaced by pale blue veins. The fluid flowing in those veins wasn't dark red blood, but rather amber-colored.

“Mo Ge’er…” The mother’s voice sounded thirty years younger, yet it carried a metallic coldness, “I heard someone singing under the ice.”

Chen Mo took a half step back, his lower back knocking over a medicine jar on the table. He saw fine scales seeping from the back of his mother's neck, the edges of the diamond-shaped scales gleaming silver, their patterns resembling the blood jade totem. But when the villagers rushed into the dilapidated house with torches, they only saw the radiant old woman; no one noticed the bloodshot lines flashing in her eyes, and no one saw her hand hidden under the covers, clutching a bloodstained scale—it was a piece peeled from her heart, its shape resembling the "Xuan" character totem carved on the rock in the mine.

Blind Uncle Zhang was the first to kneel down. His cloudy eyes suddenly became clear, but he trembled when he touched Chen Mo's hand: "Yu Xian's hand... has the warmth of a dragon turtle." The lame Brother Li fainted on the spot when he saw the newly grown toes. His festering wound was covered with a translucent scab, and the skin exposed where the scab had peeled off actually echoed the tortoise shell pattern on Chen Mo's palm.

On the seventh day, Chen Mo was carried into a temple built of cedar wood by eight strong men.

The pine wood was still covered in fresh resin, mixed with the fishy smell of pheasant blood, making one dizzy. The villagers used pheasant blood to draw a dragon-turtle totem at his feet. The totem's eyes were two living human eyeballs—those of the hunter who had offended "Jade Fairy" yesterday. His eyeballs had not rotted after being gouged out, but instead rolled three times on the snow. When they stopped at Chen Mo's feet, the pupils reflected the red light of the blood jade.

"The Jade Immortal has descended to earth, beyond birth and death!"

Suddenly, Sang Hong, the patriarch of the Sang family, stepped forward. He was the only person in the village who had read the "Mysterious Ice Records," yet he held up an ancient book with charred edges, and dried leeches were tucked between its pages. "Ancient times said that the dragon turtle devours souls, requiring blood as a lure and souls as bait. A hundred people's blood sacrifice can build an altar of eternal life!" His sleeve slipped down, revealing the blue veins on his wrist and Chen Mo's, within which a jade-like worm-like shadow was wriggling.

A cheer erupted from the crowd. Someone slashed their wrist with a hunting knife, and the blood dripped onto the altar, blooming into a dark lotus flower, the patterns on its petals perfectly mirroring the blood jade totem. Chen Mo tried to stop them, but found a cold scale lodged in his throat—the one he had picked up from his mother the night before, now sliding down his esophagus toward his heart, the edge of the scale engraved with the tiny character "玄" (xuan).

When the hundredth drop of blood touched the jade surface, the blood jade burst forth with intense light, and a phantom of a dragon-turtle appeared within the pillar of light. Chen Mo saw an illusion in the light: the dragon-turtle's claws trampled his mother; the old woman's body was turning into jade, yet her scale-covered face wore a dazed smile. Sang Hong handed over a bowl of spiritual liquid, in which floated the corpses of sixteen infants, each with a lotus-shaped birthmark on the back of its neck: "Master, you must drink the 'Hundred Sons Soup' to wash away your mortal form."

Three months later, the first stone tablet was erected atop Kunlun Mountain. Its surface was constructed from powdered bones of a hundred blood donors, mixed with fragments of blood jade. The three large characters, "Wusheng Guan" (Hall of No Birth), were written with living blood mixed with jade powder, each stroke of which contained a leech, the sound of its fluttering wings blending into the low murmur of a dragon tortoise. Kneeling before the tablet was Sang Hong, who was cutting open his own wrist with a silver knife. Blood flowed into the ground along the grooves of the tablet, where the skull of the hundredth blood donor lay buried—a sixteen-year-old boy Chen Mo had once seen chasing butterflies at the village entrance, now serving as the tablet's "guardian."

"The abbot needs a complete overhaul."

Sang Hong handed over the blood-jade coffin. The inside of the coffin lid was engraved with the lotus birthmark that matched Chen Mo's palm, surrounded by sixty-four insect-shaped incantations. Only then did Chen Mo realize that the villagers no longer called him "Brother Mo," but respectfully addressed him as "Master." His mother had become the first "Jade Beauty" in the temple, sealed in the blood pool in the side hall. Floating in the pool were sixteen female corpses of the Sang family, each with a silver bell tied to her wrist. The sound of the bell overlapped with the laughter of Yuan Xiangya in his memory.

Before lying down in the blood jade coffin, Chen Mo caught a glimpse of the jade pendant on Sang Hong's sleeve—a fragment of a dragon-turtle totem, mirroring the blood jade fragment totem found in the mine. As excruciating pain spread from his heart, he finally understood the metaphor in the rock carving: the so-called "twin curse removal" was nothing more than a deception of exchanging a new soul for an old one; each "newborn" was merely nourishment for the next vessel. And the lotus birthmark on his palm was not an auspicious sign at all, but rather a mark used by the dragon-turtle to mark its host.

In the snowy night, the lanterns of Wusheng Temple lit up one after another, each containing a leech of rebirth. Amidst the flapping of the leech's wings, Chen Mo heard his mother murmur in the blood pool: "The lotus will bloom again after it withers, but once a person is gone, they are truly gone..." But her voice grew fainter and fainter, eventually swallowed by the roar of the dragon turtle. When the blood jade was completely embedded in his heart, he saw a scene three hundred years later: a girl named Sang Yu stood in the center of the altar, the birthmark on her chest burning, and in the black lotus core, his face was reflected—a face covered in scales, his eyes devoid of fear, only filled with a greedy desire to devour everything.