The darkness in Yù Méi's mind gave way to a dull roar.
It was not the noise of the room. The grave sound came from beneath her own ribs. The hollow, desiccated vacuum that had condemned her to mortal frailty no longer existed. The girl's chest rose in a violent gasp, and air invaded her lungs with the weight of molten lead, filling the newly forged Spiritual Veins that now pulsed thick like taut steel cables.
She blinked her almond irises, vision still blurred by the chamber's penumbra.
The sweet, inebriating, purest smell of distilled nectar asphyxiated the youngest's nostrils. It was a hot, heavy perfume exhaling absolute attraction, impregnated in the thick texture of the charcoal-gray tunic against which Yù Méi's face was resting. The adolescent's body was entirely slumped over Zhì Yuǎn's rigid thigh and the base of his lap, supported by her brother-in-law's broad forearm. The cold breeze of the room brushed against the girl's pale sternum; the golden dress remained tugged downward, exposing her shoulders and the upper curve of her chest where the Primordial Gold had collided.
The torpor of the faint evaporated in the time of a single heartbeat.
Thick blood boiled in the adolescent's widened neck veins. The girl's stomach plummeted. The burning rose to the tips of her ears upon realizing her own partial nudity resting on the man's legs. She recoiled in a brusque jolt, heels scraping noisily against the dark limestone floor. Both trembling hands grabbed the cotton collar, tugging the fabric against her bosom with such violence that the finger joints cracked. She hugged her own knees, hunching in the center of the stone, the fine linen undergarment providing the only pale barrier left beneath the crumpled dress, without courage to raise her gaze above the man's leather boots.
Quiet cemented Zhì Yuǎn's posture. The arm that had supported her rested back on his own leg, unshakeable. The broad-shouldered man observed the girl hunched on the floor, dark gaze dissecting the structure he had just forged dry. There was no malice or tension on his face; for the master carpenter, the youngest was a support beam in his wife's own house. Rustic logic demanded cementing her with the thickest possible walls so the young woman would survive the rubble of their journey.
"Now yes, Méi." His grave, direct voice vibrated through the inn's thick air, natural pragmatism ignoring the girl's scarlet face. "Congratulations. You are officially a cultivator."
Yù Méi swallowed the pasted saliva, teeth grinding her lower lip. A predatory force demanded space beneath her skin.
"Now I will give you the ability to cultivate naturally," the carpenter sentenced, rustic urgency dictating the diagnosis. "The parchments of these cultivators only have slow and inefficient methods. They ignore the shell that forms us and focus only on swallowing treasures to compensate for the rarefied Qi of this world. But your internal channels were already born far superior to anything this scum could dream of. We only need to open the millions of pores in your skin."
Zhì Yuǎn raised his calloused hand, finger pointing at the girl. The breaching of the external shell was about to begin. Yù Méi's breath locked in her chest.
"Take off the dress," the young man ordered, focused strictly on the physics of purification. "The breaking will vomit the coagulated scum and black blood from your viscera outward. The thick cotton will only stick the boiling rot back onto your new dermis."
The young man inclined his face slightly. "You do not need to remove the undergarments." He reminded her, breaking the rigidity of his face with a small, quick smile.
Near the heavy sequoia door, navy-blue silk rustled.
The acid of bile had risen to the base of Yù Qíng's throat while watching, in funereal silence, her sister's sweaty head resting on her man's thigh. The woman's teeth ground until the roots of her gums throbbed. However, upon absorbing Zhì Yuǎn's unshakeable voice demanding the stripping for the cure, the woman's tense jaw relaxed. The eldest would never allow her sister to display her own trembling skin and execute the act alone before his gaze. Control of the room needed to remain strictly in her hands.
Yù Qíng's reddened lips drew a mild, courteous smile. She leaned away from the wood and slid across the stone until stopping exactly behind the hunched youngest.
"Let me help you with this, little Méi," Yù Qíng's soft voice slid through the air, dripping lethal hospitality.
The elder sister's icy hands descended over the adolescent's tense shoulders. Thin fingers grabbed the golden dress collar at the girl's back. Yù Qíng displayed no fraternal gentleness; nails subtly scratched her sister's skin, pulling the fabric laces with possessive and purely territorial firmness, stripping the upper part of the girl's dress dry to keep the situation entirely cemented under her authority, guaranteeing the youngest made no unnecessary or exhibitionist movement in the center of the forge.
---
The golden silk fell, forming a puddle of crumpled fabric on the dark limestone floor.
Yù Méi remained seated cross-legged, spine arched and rigid. The fine linen undergarment was the only thin barrier remaining on her torso, leaving her back, nape, and shoulders entirely bare and exposed to the cold morning air. The girl ground her teeth, small muscles trembling beneath the colossal shadow that swallowed her entirely.
Zhì Yuǎn did not utter chants. Bone carpentry required no prayers.
The man took a single step forward. The immense, calloused hand spread directly between the adolescent's pale shoulder blades. The weight of that palm did not carry crushing force, but absurd thermal density.
The Primordial Qi boiling in the young man's blood did not invade the girl's body this time; it acted as a mechanical traction vacuum. Zhì Yuǎn imposed gravitational pressure against Yù Méi's skin, forcing the energy he had planted in the youngest's core to expand violently from inside out.
The pain was immediate and absolute.
Yù Méi's spine stretched in a brutal spasm. A hoarse squeal tore from the girl's throat, jaw locking until the facial bones cracked. Beneath the pale dermis, the millions of mortally sealed pores began to swell. Internal pressure demanded space, pushing the fourteen-year sludge against the skin barrier.
Crack. Sssshhhh.
The sound of flesh yielding echoed in the room's quiet, resembling the sizzle of dirty water boiling against a red-hot iron plate.
The locks burst. A thick, black, absurdly fetid slime gushed through the newly breached fissures of the adolescent's entire skin. It was the scum of the Mortal Realm: remnants of impure foods, pathogenic cold, organic dust, and stagnant blood that had sickened the young woman's entrails since birth. The viscous liquid like pitch ran down Yù Méi's back, arms, and nape, dripping onto the limestone floor with wet, heavy thuds.
The purest smell of nectar and sandalwood that dominated the room was instantly strangled. A nauseating odor of rotten leaves, old meat, and oxidized iron permeated the oxygen.
Yù Qíng retreated half a step. The eldest's pale nose wrinkled in pure disgust before the filth leaking from her sister's body. The wife's icy hand rose, covering her own face with the navy-blue silk sleeve to protect her purified breath from that asphyxiating rot, black eyes observing the sludge with aristocratic disdain.
In the center of the stained floor, Yù Méi collapsed. Trembling, pitch-covered hands struck the stone floor. The girl coughed in a dragged manner, spitting a final dark, bitter clot onto the limestone.
But exhaustion and pain lasted only the time of a single heartbeat.
The instant the last drop of black mud abandoned the skin, the internal vacuum created by the breaching pulled the world back. Yù Méi gasped. The inn's thick air did not enter only through the girl's nose or mouth; the millions of open, empty pores on the adolescent's back and arms devoured the environment's energy all at once.
The temperature around her dropped, sucked by the hunger of that newly awakened flesh. The invisible Qi of the atmosphere inflated the thick Spiritual Veins with an electric, predatory freshness. The lethargic weakness evaporated from the girl's marrow. The kinetic force of a true cultivator cemented the youngest's hands against the limestone. The floor's smooth stone cracked beneath the involuntary pressure of her small fingers.
She was finally breathing with her skin.
Zhì Yuǎn retrieved his arm. He rubbed the dark soot that had stained the tip of his calloused fingers on his own thigh, dark, unshakeable gaze evaluating the clean foundation of the structure and the black damage sprayed on the floor.
"It is done," the man sentenced, grave, dry voice descending heavy over the room's fetid air.
The rigid face turned toward his wife.
"Qíng. Take your sister to the bath chamber," the order descended irrefutable and direct. "Help remove that pitch from her flesh so she can truly breathe."
Bile still burned at the base of Yù Qíng's throat before the rot soaking the limestone. However, the absolute authority of that command crushed any trace of revulsion in the same instant. The eldest lowered the navy-blue silk sleeve she used to protect her own breath, jaw relaxing beneath the readiness of obedience.
She slid across the stone, immaculate shoes stepping on the edges of the black puddle without the slightest retreat. The wife's icy hands grabbed the youngest's trembling, slippery shoulders. Completely ignoring the fetid sludge beginning to stain her own pale fingers, Yù Qíng lifted the girl from the floor with implacable firmness, dragging her sister's exhausted weight toward the heavy oak door of the bath annex to fulfill her husband's law.
---
The scalding water in the heavy cedar tub darkened in the time of a single breath.
The fetid sludge covering Yù Méi's skin began to dissolve. In silence, Yù Qíng poured hot water from a copper pitcher directly over the youngest's nape. The eldest's icy hand wielded a hard-bristle brush, scrubbing her sister's spine with mechanical, merciless force. There was no fraternal compassion in the friction; Yù Qíng operated purely to execute her husband's non-negotiable order and extirpate that olfactory offense from her territory.
Yù Méi ground her teeth, accepting the caustic abrasion without releasing a single moan.
"The thick crust has yielded," Yù Qíng's velvety, dry voice cut through the annex steam, throwing the dirty brush back into the basin. She turned her back. "Finish cleaning yourself and get dressed."
The rustle of navy-blue silk vanished through the annex door.
Alone and submerged to the nape in the murky water, Yù Méi gasped, scrubbing her own scalp with small, feverish fingers. The scum had been purged even from the foundation of her marrow. Upon pulling a wet lock forward to rinse it in front of her face, the girl's almond irises locked.
The strands, once tawny-yellow and opaque, had changed.
The thermal impregnation of Primordial Gold that now cemented her organic foundation had pushed its own density to the skin's surface. The wet lock between her fingers shone in a purest, heavy, incandescent blonde, reflecting the bathroom penumbra like threads of metal freshly out of the forge.
The girl's stomach warmed. The grip in her hands intensified against her own flesh. She was no longer a fragile shell; her own body had become armor. Her lips curved in a fierce smile, showing the tips of her teeth.
The youngest emerged from the water, dried her stiff skin brusquely, and dressed in fine linen undergarments, covering herself again with the golden cotton dress.
The newly purchased fabric assumed an unprecedented tension. The violent expansion of the ribcage and forced muscular widening by the thick Qi flow pulled the cotton seams, evidencing the predatory, newly awakened curves of her hips and breasts. The new foundation transferred massive inertia to the limestone floor when the adolescent pushed the annex door and marched back to the main chamber.
In the center of the cold room, Zhì Yuǎn rested seated on the stone in lotus position.
Charcoal-gray linen covered the man's broad shoulders. His immense, calloused hands held open the aged acupuncture parchments extorted the previous afternoon. His dark, analytical gaze dissected the anatomy routes drawn on the paper with mechanical attention.
Sprawled in absolute possession, Yù Qíng entirely occupied her husband's lap. The eldest kept her body crossed over the young man's crossed legs. Her pale face rested glued to his broad chest, warm breath brushing the base of Zhì Yuǎn's neck. The young woman's black irises wandered across the ceiling, boredom cementing her features while thin fingers played distractedly with the edge of his tunic, reigning in her own territory.
The thick rustle of the golden skirt made the carpenter raise his face from the faded ink.
Zhì Yuǎn's dark gaze swept the adolescent from head to toe. He evaluated the impenetrable verticality of her spine, the density of flesh tensing the cotton, and the long, heavy blonde hair falling damp over firm shoulders.
Zhì Yuǎn let out a low, evaluative murmur. "What an exceptional change. The skin and organs have already undergone slight organic nutrition with the remaining energy… Even the hair improved in color," the clinical, grave observation filled the room. The young man lowered the parchment.
The corner of his rigid lips curved millimeters.
"The process worked. You became beautiful, Méi."
The youngest's breath locked at the base of her trachea.
The burning rose like a punch. The mechanical force of her newly forged heart pumped dense blood brutally, staining the adolescent's cheeks vivid red. Yù Méi's teeth ground audibly. She dug her shoes into the limestone, nails sinking against her own thigh until nearly tearing the fabric, fighting fanatically to strangle the predatory euphoria that made her want to throw herself into his arms right there.
On her husband's lap, Yù Qíng turned her face just enough to drag her abyssal gaze over her sister. The eldest absorbed the pathetic blush of the youngest and the capillary transformation without emitting any trace of threat. Disgust gave way to veiled pride. The girl's irreproachable aesthetic result served solely as a visual attestation that her man's forge operated perfect miracles.
Roooonc.
A hollow, deep, cavernous noise burst in the room's silence.
Yù Méi's stomach contracted noisily. Cellular burning and forced widening of the pathways had ground the girl's organic reserves. The void in her entrails was a predatory abyss; her stomach forge boiled dry, demanding raw meat and dense blood immediately to prevent the newly forged foundation from beginning to devour her own musculature. Humiliation tripled the temperature on the adolescent's face as she sank her chin against her own chest.
Zhì Yuǎn's chest swayed beneath Yù Qíng's head with a low, mild laugh.
"You have not swallowed anything since yesterday afternoon," the young man observed, pushing boots against the floor. He rose, supporting Yù Qíng on his lap for a second before setting her on her feet beside him naturally. "Let's take a walk and fill your stomach."
---
The midday sun punished the irregular tiles of Qīngshí's east square, cooking the sweat and animal urine that permeated the gutter cobblestones.
The trio marched in unison.
The massive inertia beneath Zhì Yuǎn's pearl-gray tunic not only opened a physical vacuum in the thick flow of merchants and load slaves; it crushed the atmosphere itself. The lethargic heat exhaling from the carpenter's skin acted as a thermodynamic shield.
The thick smoke of fat dripping over red-hot charcoal dominating the dusty corners tried to advance against their faces, but deviated erratically centimeters from the man's tunic, repelled invisibly by the predatory gravity of that refined flesh.
Zhì Yuǎn threw slivers of extorted silver onto the grease-soaked wood of the stalls, clean metal striking against puddles of old blood and cheap oil.
The vendors, drenched in acidic sweat and panting beneath the city haze, instinctively recoiled trembling hands upon delivering the thick, steaming chunks of roasted meat. They were asphyxiated by the unconscious, terrifying perception that those three outsiders did not perspire a single drop of sweat beneath the scorching sun, their skin exhaling an impossible freshness for the urban slaughterhouse.
Behind the wall formed by her brother-in-law's body, Yù Méi walked chewing the fifth consecutive skewer. The adolescent's teeth ground cartilage with pure ferocity, hot protein juice running down her chin as the predatory gear of her stomach vaporized the food almost the instant of swallowing.
To Zhì Yuǎn's left flank, Yù Qíng's navy-blue silk slid immaculate. The black veil concealed the woman's pale nose, wrinkled in icy revulsion before the smell of the mortals around. However, no market blowfly or grain of dust raised by the carts dared touch the hem of her skirt; her husband's heat aura enveloped the wife in a dome of static pressure, keeping her perfectly clean and untouchable in the center of the metropolis chaos.
The uninterrupted walk toward the end of the square halted.
Zhì Yuǎn's leather boot locked against the hot cobblestone. Yù Méi's noisy chewing paralyzed in the same instant, meat stopping between her teeth.
Zhì Yuǎn's immobility did not result from a physical obstacle. The lock originated from the millions of open pores on the carpenter's skin, which had just scented a drastic, static fluctuation in local atmospheric weight. The metropolis air exhaled musky sweat and dust, but an invisible, static thread cut the pollution.
Beneath the large brim of the black straw hat, the young man's face turned slowly toward an extremely narrow, shaded corridor sandwiched between two weaving stalls.
"There is a dense smell of oxidized blood and old parchment leaking from that gap," Zhì Yuǎn's voice descended. The man's dark gaze dissected the structure of the alley shadows. "The air inside is stagnant. It does not circulate and does not accompany the square's heat. It is an interesting anomaly."
He turned his broad shoulders, altering the cadence of his walk in a non-negotiable manner toward the darkness.
"Let's go," he ordered, clinical tone dictating the next movement. "I want to take a look."
They abandoned the asphyxiating clarity of the sun and crossed the dividing line of the alley. Temperature dropped vertiginously. The buzz of commercial square was swallowed by dark, slime-covered walls.
At the exact end of the blind corridor, a massive door of wood decayed by pathogenic cold blocked the way. A rusted iron plaque above the frame displayed deep carvings: Gǔ Dào — Ancient Path.
Zhì Yuǎn stopped one step from the entrance. The man evaluated the oxidized hinges and the sparse vibration leaking through the threshold.
"A cheap trick to keep normal mortals' eyes from the street and appear mysterious," the young man observed, tone exhaling dry humor before the city's bureaucracy.
The large, calloused hand spread against the worm-eaten oak, forcing the doors of the past to open with a violent snap.