Sludge suction system

Sang Xuan's childhood was steeped in the aroma of cedarwood and the smell of rust.

On his ninth birthday, his father, Sang Hong, took him into the forbidden area of ​​the Wusheng Temple for the first time. In a side hall where the temperature was thirty degrees below zero, sixteen female corpses of the Sang family floated in a pool of blood jade. They wore red dresses for their sixteenth birthday coming-of-age ceremonies, and silver bells engraved with the character "Xuan" were tied to their ankles. Sang Xuan's wool boots stepped across the ice, and in the ripples that were stirred up, the female corpses suddenly opened their eyes. Instead of eyeballs, what emerged from their eye sockets were the larvae of dead leeches that had tied the red rope around his wrist.

"The daughters of the Sang family reach adulthood at sixteen, and the sons begin feeding insects at nine."

Sang Hong's bone knife sliced ​​open his wrist, and nine drops of black blood fell into the pool, miraculously forming miniature dragon turtles on the hearts of each female corpse. Sang Xuan stared as his blood mingled with the fluorescent blood seeping from the female corpses, and saw his nine-year-old self and his sixteen-year-old sister overlapping in the bloody light—the lotus birthmark on the back of his sister's neck was being eaten away by a swarm of insects, while his reflection raised the bone knife, stabbing it into his own heart.

Suddenly, the silver bells rang in unison, causing the pond's surface to freeze. Sang Xuan then noticed that each woman's bell was engraved with a different variant of the character "Xuan," ranging from "One Xuan" to "Sixteenth Xuan," corresponding to the sixteenth generation eldest daughter of the Sang family. The red string around his wrist suddenly tightened, and as the larvae burrowed into his veins, he heard his mother's low murmur from the bottom of the pond: "Xuan'er, remember the sound of the lotus withering..."

When Sang Xuan was thirteen, his older sister Sang Li celebrated her sixteenth birthday.

On the night of the winter solstice, the bronze incense burner in the side hall was filled with the blood of a spirit deer. Sang Hong used a golden hairpin to lift his sister's long hair, revealing a lotus birthmark about to bloom on the back of her neck. "A pure yin body needs pure yang blood." His father's bone knife sliced ​​across Sang Xuan's forearm, and his blood dripped onto his sister's birthmark, causing the lotus to instantly turn black. "This is to protect her from disaster."

Sang Xuan stared at his sister's gradually jade-like skin and noticed that the "Yi Xuan" engraved on the silver bell on her wrist was bleeding. A swarm of insects flew out of the furnace and burrowed into her ear canal. Her expression changed from fear to intoxication, and her pupils reflected her own image in the pool of blood jade—that reflection raised a bone knife and was cutting open her chest.

"The Soul-Cleansing Worms will devour her fear." Sang Hong pushed his sister into the Blood Jade Coffin. The inside of the coffin lid was engraved with worm-shaped runes similar to Sang Xuan's blood vessels. "Once she becomes jade, you can use her blood to nourish the core of the Blood Jade."

As the coffin lid closed, Sang Xuan saw his sister's lips curl into a strange smile, just like his father's. A silver bell fell at his feet, the character "解" (jie, meaning "to resolve") inside the bell now reduced to dust by the insects, revealing the newly carved character "饲" (si, meaning "to feed").

On Sang Xuan's sixteenth birthday, his father handed him his first bone knife for raising insects.

"Awaken her with your blood." Sang Hong pointed to the newly brought-in female corpse in the Blood Jade Pool. It was his cousin, just turned sixteen. The lotus birthmark on the back of her neck had been gnawed away by the insects, leaving only a faint remnant. Sang Xuan gripped the bone knife tightly. The moment the blade pierced her skin, a blue light suddenly surged from the bottom of the pool—it was the broken jade his mother had hidden at the bottom of the pool years ago. The character "解" (jie, meaning "unravel") on the surface of the broken jade resonated with his cousin's birthmark.

The swarm of insects suddenly went out of control, devouring his cousin's corpse. Sang Xuan was horrified to discover that the blood jade fragment in her heart reflected his own face, and his reflection was sneering. His father's swarm of insects arrived just in time, using the sound of their wings to weave a "suppress" incantation, thus stabilizing the core of the blood jade.

"Remember, the fear of the Sang family women will taint the Blood Jade." Sang Hong's scales grazed his wound. "Only by completely washing away their humanity can the purest nourishment be refined."

Sang Xuan watched as scales gradually covered his cousin's skin, the patterns on the scales mirroring the death of the worms in his veins. When she opened her eyes, only vertical lines remained in her pupils, and a mechanical smile, as always, graced her lips—this was the first jade corpse Sang Xuan had personally crafted, numbered "Seventeen Xuan".

On the day Sang Xuan became the Grand Elder at the age of twenty, sixteen jade corpses were arranged in a dragon-turtle formation.

Each corpse had a blood jade fragment engraved with the character "Xuan" embedded in its chest, the fragments connected by threads from leeches. Sang Hong's skull was placed at the center of the array, and swarms of insects crawling out of the wormhole in his skull gathered to form the character "Da" between Sang Hong's eyebrows. Abbot Chen Mo pressed the dragon tortoise jade tablet onto his wound, and the spiritual liquid seeping from the tablet mingled with his blood, weaving sixteen insect-shaped veins under his skin.

"From this day forward, the souls of these sixteen jade corpses are under your control." The abbot's scales landed on the silver bell on "Yi Xuan's" corpse, the patterns on the scales overlapping the character "Si" inside the bell. "Their blood can keep the core of the blood jade active, and your blood..."

Amidst the excruciating pain of the jade pendant embedded in his skin, Sang Xuan saw sixteen jade corpses simultaneously raise their hands, the silver bells on their wrists ringing in unison, the frequency of their sounds synchronized with his heartbeat. A swarm of insects burrowed into his heart, weaving sixteen small nests there, each containing the remnant soul of a Sang family woman.

Every twenty years, Sang Xuan would welcome a new sixteen-year-old daughter of the Sang family.

They were imprisoned in a side hall, where they were brainwashed by a swarm of insects from the age of ten: they drank a spiritual liquid mixed with the Forget-Me-Not Gu every day, fell asleep to the sound of bells engraved with the character "Xuan," and the lotus birthmarks on the back of their necks were gnawed away by the insects, forming tiny insect-shaped patterns. On their sixteenth birthday, they would be fitted with silver bells, each engraved with their own unique "Xuan" number, and then pushed into the Blood Jade Pool to become the next jade corpse.

"The pupil of the one numbered 'Thirty-Two Mysteries' has impurities." The abbot pointed at Xin Chengyu's cousin, whose eyes still held a trace of fear. "Wash it away with your blood."

Sang Xuan slit her wrist, and blood dripped onto her pupils. In the blood droplets, she saw her own nine-year-old reflection—the boy was crying, and his tears fell to the ground and turned into worms, gnawing away at all the humanity in "Sang Xuan".

Sang Xuan found a fingernail inside the silver bell of "Yi Xuan".

Those were his elder sister Sang Li's fingernails, with half a grain of cinnabar embedded in them. The word "save" written in cinnabar was already blurred, but it would occasionally appear when he warmed the silver bell with his blood. Over the course of three hundred years, he collected all the silver bells from the sixteen jade corpses, and in the insect mist of the secret chamber, he pieced together the words of his mother before her death: "The one who tied the bell must untie it."

Whenever he repaired the core of the Blood Jade with the swarm of insects, he would touch these silver bells with his divine sense. The swarm of insects would devour most of the fragments of memory, but there would always be a glimmer of light left—that was the character "解" (jie, meaning "solve") carved by the Sang family women with their last bit of consciousness before they were completely jadeified, which looked just like the ice cracks on the surface of the Blood Jade Pool when he was nine years old.

Sang Xuan touched the newly made jade "Forty-Eight Mysteries" silver bell, the seventeenth variant of the character "Mystery" engraved inside. The insect-shaped pattern on the back of her neck had not yet completely covered the birthmark, and the exposed pink skin looked just like the lotus flower that her older sister Sang Li had worn in her hair on her sixteenth birthday.

It turns out that the three hundred years of nurturing jade was nothing more than repeating the same sixteen-year-old ritual. As Sang Xuan's blood dripped onto the heart of "Forty-Eight Xuan," watching the faint light of humanity in her pupils gradually fade away, he suddenly remembered the low murmur he heard at the bottom of the pool when he was nine years old—it was not his mother's voice, but the silver bell sound of Tian Xue'er three hundred years later, gently tapping the "unseal" seal on the heart of each jade corpse beneath the ice.