A cold shaft of dawn light cut through the penumbra of the room at the Nine Clouds Inn.
The purifying ice-lotus incense burning in the building's corridors had been completely strangled inside that chamber. The air between the four walls exhaled a thick humidity, saturated with the purest, sweet, inebriating perfume of nectar distilled throughout the entire night. The newly refined flesh of the couple overflowed a dense, clean heat, free of any mortal filth.
The massive wooden structure of the bed groaned in a continuous, torturous creak. The force of successive collisions had pushed the furniture millimeter by millimeter until the headboard locked definitively against the solid sequoia wall at the back of the room.
There, pressed between the mattress and the bare wood of the wall, Yù Qíng kept her spine arched. The young wife's pale face burned in a feverish red, sweet, pearly sweat clinging black strands to her forehead. Her thin legs wrapped around Zhì Yuǎn's broad hips, heels locked with force against her husband's back.
The man's immense, calloused hand grabbed both of his wife's thin wrists at once, pulling the girl's arms upward. He pinned her hands above her pale head, crushing the slight bones against the sequoia planks in an absolute and non-negotiable immobilization.
His thick, burning shaft drove into the girl's drenched channel. The brutal friction of burning flesh plowing her icy moisture tore a ragged gasp from crimson lips.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
The sound of small fists pounding the heavy oak door from the other side of the room cut the breath of both.
"Sister! The sun is already hitting the corridor!" Yù Méi's strident, impatient voice echoed muffled by the thick iron bar. The noise of shoe soles striking the limestone floor outside denounced the youngest's famished restlessness. "The entire inn has already gone down to eat! How much longer are you two going to stay locked in there?!"
Yù Qíng contorted. Black, dilated irises bored toward the entrance, jaw grinding with a mute snap before the audacity of that interruption in her territory. The girl pulled her arms, trying to free her hands to gesture, but the press of flesh and bone on her wrists did not yield a single millimeter.
Zhì Yuǎn completely ignored the noise in the corridor. The carpenter's breath maintained firm cadence. The broad chest rose, and he lowered his face directly against the sensitive skin of the immobilized woman.
The man's hot mouth attacked the curve of his wife's pale neck. The rough tongue licked the sweet sweat, teeth digging in and sucking the flesh of her throat with predatory force. In the exact instant of the bite, Zhì Yuǎn increased the cadence of his hips, driving his pelvis in faster, longer, and absurdly deeper thrusts, crushing Yù Qíng's womb against the limit of the planks.
"Nnnngh!" the reprimand Yù Qíng intended to spit at her sister transformed into a strangled moan.
The girl's slight body trembled beneath the feverish invasion, melting without defenses before the leaden weight of that man. Yù Qíng ground her jaw, trying to withstand the double shock of his lips on her throat and the friction that widened her interior. Sweat dripped from her chin as she forced her voice out between clenched teeth.
"Go… ahn… to your… room, Méi…" the order hissed, trembling and violently broken by lack of air. The girl gasped, neck stretching backward as his lips descended to her clavicle. "Give me… nngh… just one more… minute."
The corridor floor creaked beneath the adolescent's feet as she muttered an inaudible frustrated grumble before marching back to her own shadows.
Inside the room's penumbra, the corner of Zhì Yuǎn's lips curved in a mute, warm smile against the woman's marked skin. The cynical promise of that single minute evaporated instantly beneath the sweet breath of the room. The gears resumed with even greater brutality. Friction dictated its own possessive rules, and the sequoia wall would continue groaning beneath the weight of that carnal shock for at least one more long, merciless fraction of an hour before the iron bar on the door was even touched.
---
The dull thud of leather and glass colliding against mahogany cut the morning quiet.
Dressed in clean charcoal-gray linen, Zhì Yuǎn spread the heavy parchments extorted from the Pavilion of Exchanges' West Wing across the main table of the chamber. The smell of aged cinnabar, bone dust, and dry paper rose in the air, asphyxiating the last remnants of the sweet perfume of dawn.
The young man's large, calloused hands unrolled the old cylinders. His darkened, lethargic gaze swept the cartography of the human body drawn in faded ink. The carpenter's rough finger traced the thick red line that tore the center of the torso in the diagram: the Ren Mai Meridian, the Conception Vessel. The route operated as one of the eight hidden reservoirs of human energy, driven into the anterior central axis of the body, dragging from the base of the pelvis until emptying into the throat. Right beside it, the ramifications of the Taiyin Lung Spiritual Vein embraced the foundation of the ribcage.
Zhì Yuǎn's rustic Wisdom superimposed the old ink onto the vision he had engraved of his sister-in-law's bones days earlier.
Yù Méi's structure was not merely weak. It was a hollow shell. The Taiyin meridians in the adolescent's chest were brutally frayed, and the Ren Mai channel housed a dead, desiccated vacuum at sternum height. Injecting the hyper-dense mass of Golden Primordial Qi directly into that broken space would be equivalent to pouring molten lead into a cracked clay cup.
The expansive pressure would not flow; it would shatter the girl's ribs and spray her viscera against the room walls in the blink of an eye.
The man's hand dug into the table edge. The massive wood creaked beneath the tips of thick fingers.
The solution did not inhabit the delicacy of floral elixirs and sweet pills. The answer belonged to the mechanical violence of the streets, to the structural principles of stretching tendons and realigning matter through raw force: Die Da traumatology.
Zhì Yuǎn locked his jaw, the physics of the surgery assembling in his mind. He would need to pull Yù Méi's skeleton dry, tearing the bones from place to realign the crushed sternum cartilage through levers and impact. The Golden Drop of energy would not be injected like smooth water. The incandescent Qi would act as the caustic lead soap of a Gao Yao — a burning black plaster. The energy would be rubbed directly against the open fissures, melting the rotten stagnation and soldering the torn tips of the Spiritual Veins from inside out.
An excruciating and absolute process.
The soft rustle of silk dragged across the stone floor.
Yù Qíng stopped exactly beside her husband's right arm. The young woman had already dressed in the high-collared navy-blue tunic, covering the purplish marks of possession on her neck. Black hair, still heavy with moisture, fell straight down her back. The girl leaned slightly over the table. Her pale jaw moved in a dragged yawn, abyssal irises sweeping the intricate Spiritual Veins of human anatomy with the disdain of one facing empty carcasses hanging in a slaughterhouse.
"You found the right mortar to plug the holes in her Dantian," the velvety voice floated, dry and literal.
Zhì Yuǎn released the paper edges. The aged parchment rolled back with a quick snap.
"The mortar already boils in my blood, Qíng," his rustic observation vibrated in the environment, broad shoulders turning to his wife. The quiet of the dark gaze assumed the implacable precision of a blacksmith before his own anvil. "The paper only showed me at which points her flesh will scream before breaking and accepting the patch."
The young man's calloused hand collected the documents and pushed them to the corner of the table, freeing the center of the room.
"Unlock the door," he sentenced, tone descending heavy and absolute. "Call your sister."
Yù Qíng's crimson lip curved millimeters. The deep, constant breath that accompanied her husband's order slid down the eldest's spine. Icy apathy evaporated from the woman's face, replaced by obsequious readiness. She spun her heels on the smooth stone and marched toward the thick iron bar of the entrance, ready to end the youngest's exile and drag her directly into the center of the forge.
---
The snap of the thick iron bar echoed in the west corridor. The heavy sequoia door was pulled back.
Yù Méi stood one step from the threshold, fists clenched at the sides of the golden dress. The adolescent held her breath the instant the wooden barrier yielded. The air that leaked from the main chamber struck the youngest's face, thick, hot, and loaded with the purest, sweet perfume of nectar distilled for hours, mixed with the dry dust of cinnabar and aged paper.
The girl's almond irises swept the room. The crushed mattress displayed the marks of the dawn's brutality. In the center of the dark limestone floor, Zhì Yuǎn waited standing. Charcoal-gray linen covered his broad shoulders, and the young man's chest radiated a silent forge that dried the oxygen around it.
"Come in. Sit in the center of the stones," his grave, rustic voice vibrated in the air, direct and without preamble.
Yù Méi crossed the threshold. Behind her, Yù Qíng's heel turned on the floor, pushing the heavy sequoia leaf back against the frame. The dull thud sealed the outside world, locking the three pieces of that gear in penumbra. The eldest leaned her spine against the door wood, arms crossed beneath full breasts, assuming the slaughterhouse vigil with a cold gaze.
The youngest marched to the center of the chamber. The cold of the stone rose through the soles of cloth shoes. She obeyed the command, bending her knees and settling with legs crossed on the hard floor.
"The ink of those papers showed that the Taiyin ramifications in your chest are ruined and your Ren Mai Meridian is a hollow abyss," Zhì Yuǎn sentenced, stopping exactly at the girl's back. The man's body projected an immense shadow that swallowed the adolescent entirely. "The burning matter running in my blood will enter tearing your flaws dry. The friction will burn the stagnant rot and glue your bones from inside out."
Before the girl could absorb the impact of his words, Yù Qíng's velvety, icy voice hissed near the door.
"We will not perform miracles with floral elixirs and peaceful prayers, Méi," the elder sister's black irises pierced the youngest's nape. "Your brother-in-law's mortar will act like a burning lead plaster. The dark blood clogging your chest will boil until you vomit the clots onto this floor. If your will falters or you try to retreat in the middle of the fitting, the pressure of his Qi will shatter your ribs and spray your viscera against the walls of our room."
A cutting chill rose up Yù Méi's spine. Saliva evaporated instantly from her tongue.
The visceral image of her own chest bursting in blood made the muscles of the girl's thighs tremble against the limestone. Terror froze the adolescent's knees, intuition screaming for her legs to rise and run desperately back to the safety of the empty corridor.
However, saliva pasted in the girl's mouth and carnivorous hunger crushed the retreat.
The suffocating memory of the pass dust, the rotten breath of the mercenaries, and the visceral disgust of her own impotence in the world of Qīngshí boiled the blood in the torn veins of the fourteen-year-old young woman.
Yù Méi's teeth ground with such force that the jaw joints cracked. The adolescent raised both trembling hands to the collar of the newly purchased golden dress. In a brusque, impatient movement, she loosened the fabric laces, tugging the cotton downward until completely exposing the pale skin of her back, the soap-like shoulders, and the division of the sternum.
She offered her own broken foundation to the carpenter's blade.
"Burn the rot," the hoarse hiss escaped Yù Méi's throat, cold sweat already dotting her own temples. "Mend my bones. I will not move from the spot."
Silence reigned in the chamber for a dense second.
A grave, dragged, rustic sound vibrated at the base of Zhì Yuǎn's chest. The corner of the man's rigid lips curved in a dry, contained smile before the girl's animal precipitation.
"The thread of this cotton is not woven with dragon scales, Méi," his voice echoed calm, bathed in heavy humor that immediately disarmed the funereal tension of the room. "The matter running in my blood crosses solid stone. You did not need to tear your clothes and stay naked for me to touch your spine and fuse your channels."
Yù Méi's breath locked in the middle of her trachea.
Boiling blood rose like a punch from her neck to the tips of the adolescent's ears. The newly exposed pale skin burned in a scandalous red. The primitive terror of the surgery evaporated, crushed by an absolute shame that paralyzed her on the limestone. Pulling the dress back up now would be admitting her own dramatic stupidity before the untouchable monolith before her.
The girl ground her teeth, almond eyes fixed fanatically on the stone floor to avoid facing his smile.
"Just pour that fire soon…" she murmured, voice vanishing in a humiliated, stubborn grumble, refusing to move her hands to cover her shoulders. "You can do it like this."
Near the door, the temperature wavered.
Yù Qíng's black irises narrowed into sharp slits. The possessive instinct boiled in the eldest's blood at seeing her sister's exposed skin offered so brazenly to the vision of her man. However, upon absorbing the mild laugh in her husband's throat, the murderous intent melted. Rancorous jealousy bowed, crushed entirely by the weight of his unshakeable command. A short, velvety, scorn-laden laugh escaped the eldest wife's reddened lips, openly mocking the pathetic embarrassment of the youngest without interfering in her master's workshop.
Zhì Yuǎn did not prolong the adolescent's verbal torture. He raised his right hand in the thick air.
Absolute Will pulled the Primordial Gold from his own core. At the tip of the index finger, the hyper-dense matter broke through the pores. A microscopic drop of that golden sweat condensed in the penumbra, exhaling a thermal mass that sucked the humidity around it.
The carpenter's two large, calloused hands descended.
The left palm dug heavily into the center of the girl's back. The right hand, carrying the golden particle, spread with force against Yù Méi's exposed chest skin, striking exactly over the Hollow Sternum Temple — the Shanzhong point.
The impact was not merely physical. The Golden Drop invaded the dead abyss of the Ren Mai.
The sizzle of wet flesh frying exploded in the room. The purest fire collided against decades of icy stagnation and rotten blood clogging the young woman's Taiyin ramifications. Agony calcined the spinal nerve network instantly.
Yù Méi's spine arched backward in a brutal jolt, teeth grinding until threatening to crack her own jaw. The adolescent's body temperature boiled, skin bronzing beneath the forced injection of thermal energy.
The shock expelled the Pathogenic Cold all at once. The girl's stomach suffered a violent spasm. She leaned the torso forward and vomited a thick puddle of black, fetid, hardened clots directly onto the dark limestone. The rotten sludge blocking her cure had been purged from her viscera.
But Zhì Yuǎn did not allow her structure to collapse in her own filth.
The man's massive hands operated Die Da with the clinical cruelty of one adjusting the beams of a collapsing roof. He held the girl and pulled her bare shoulders backward with extreme mechanical force.
Crack.
The sound of the sternum and ribs cracking and repositioning audibly echoed in the asphyxiating room. Golden Primordial Qi flowed like boiling lead soap through the gaping bone fissures. The caustic energy incinerated the dead vein fibers and expanded, cementing and soldering the torn tips of the meridians from inside out.
The youngest's anatomy was brutally distorted. The newly forged Spiritual Veins did not assume the thin, fragile thickness of an initial cultivator. Beneath the merciless gravity of the gold, the channels swelled, pulling the pectoral musculature to accommodate their own aberrant and hyper-dense diameter. The scalding emanation of Primordial Qi refused to stagnate only in the veins; the burning matter infiltrated tearing the fascia and driving directly into Yù Méi's bone marrow. Temperature calcified the skeletal structure and tensioned the tendons like steel cables stretched taut in the time of a single breath, hurling the girl's own flesh irreversibly against the laws of raw body tempering.
Anatomical torment obliterated the adolescent's last drop of fleshy resilience. Yù Méi's eyes rolled back in the penumbra, and the girl collapsed unconscious, supported only by her brother-in-law's broad forearm.
The unbreakable foundation of her flesh was cemented. The abyssal void of her chest now housed a network of monstrous channels, operating in the dark and locked beneath millions of mortally sealed pores, patiently awaiting the carpenter's tool so she could finally breathe and devour the dust of the outside world on her own.