Chapter 52

Three days ago, when Duke Qi smashed the celadon cup, the splashing glaze burned a red mark onto the back of her hand.

"Though titled Inspector of the Lacquer Garden, the post appears a demotion yet holds vital importance."

The old man twirled the snake-patterned jade thumb ring. "Among the thirty-five imperial lacquer gardens of Great Zhou, only this one yields the shady lacquer condensed at the midnight hour—and that is the key ingredient for crafting the Demon-Locking Casket."

"Three inches to the left!" The willow demon's emerald tail coiled around the treetop, its scales shimmering with ripple-like radiance in the moonlight.

"If you miss this drop of midnight shady lacquer again, Aunt Hua's newly brewed wild berry wine won't have a drop for you."

Zhuang Yun knelt on the knotted tree roots, the cuffs of her official robe mottled with lacquer stains.

The gold thread at her wrist suddenly trembled. She snapped her head up just in time to see a golden shadow tumble into the grass.

"Official, save me!"

The childish voice startled the willow demon, causing its tail to slip and nearly overturn the wooden bucket.

Zhuang Yun flicked her ink-silk ribbon to scoop up the rolling fledgling. A talisman paper brushed across the back of her hand, revealing crooked handwriting—the very same symbiosis talisman she had drawn using her elder brother's inkstone when she was seven years old.

The approaching torches illuminated the forest, and the hunters' steel forks reeked of realgar wine. "This demon stole the mountain god's offerings!"

"The Lacquer Garden Inspector is on official business." Zhuang Yun tucked the fledgling into the front of her robe, the incised runes on her jade tally casting an eerie blue light. "Article 320 of the Great Zhou Code: eighty blows of the heavy staff for lynching the demon race."

The hunters stared at the icy blue embroidery along the hem of her official robe, then suddenly stepped back with pale faces.

Embroidered in covert shark-silk thread down there was the single character for "Execute," written in demon script.

"Fish or bird?" she frowned.

The fledgling poked its golden beak out from her collar and spat out a lacquer-fruit bubble. "It's all their fault for snatching my golden feather robe! It was clearly hidden last night in..."

"Another peep and I'll stew you into soup." Zhuang Yun poked its round belly, and her fingertips suddenly stung—how could the legendary demon god who ruled the netherworld have fallen to such a state?

When Mingxie awoke, his wings brushed away the aged lacquer dregs at the bottom of the box, revealing the "human-demon symbiosis" doodle Zhuang Yun had carved in her childhood.

"Don't move." She poured the last half-flask of hemostatic powder onto the demon's wound.

A searing pain shot through her palm, and Zhuang Yun's pupils constricted—this was no ordinary demon; this was a fallen demon punished by the heavens!

Hoofbeats suddenly sounded from outside the lacquer grove.

"Lord Zhuang! Monsters are wreaking havoc in the western suburbs again..." The bailiff's cry stuck in his throat.

Her waist tally suddenly grew scalding hot, the relief characters "Patrolling the Realms on Behalf of Heaven" appearing on its surface—while delivering a hundred fallen ghost soldiers from the battlefield last night, the Yama's phantom had bestowed this decree upon her in a dream.

"Saddle the horses."

After eradicating the rampaging demon, Zhuang Yun removed her mask in the steam-filled bathhouse.

The bronze mirror reflected the girl's slender silhouette, and the ferocious burn scar across her collarbone resembled a coiled centipede—that was the restriction the old Daoist priest had branded with a cinnabar brush when she took her brother's place to enter the Daoist temple at age ten.

The wooden box suddenly burst open, and a dark figure tumbled into the bathwater.

Amidst the swirling steam, the shoulder blades of Mingxie, pierced by iron chains, were oozing blood. The dark golden blood turned into swimming fish upon meeting the water, carrying lacquer liquid to repair the scars on Zhuang Yun's collarbone.

Dark golden patterns crawled up his pale face along the ripples of water, forming a complete totem with the scalding restriction on Zhuang Yun's collarbone.

"So that's how it is." The raspy male voice carried a teasing note. "Lacquer can seal the soul, water can nourish the spirit. Lord Zhuang truly has impressive methods."

Mingxie's feather tips inadvertently brushed against the old scar on her wrist, sending the gold thread slithering from the scar straight toward her heart.

The rising steam condensed into frost flowers on the mirror's surface. As Mingxie raised a hand to wipe away the water droplets on the mirror, Zhuang Yun noticed that the chains on his wrists originated from the same source as the Daoist temple's restriction.

"Do your demon god clan also make a habit of wearing shackles?" She purposely let a drop of lacquer fall into the water. In the shattered reflection, the gilded patterns were fading from the corners of the demon's eyes.

Before her talisman paper could strike, the demon's slender fingers had pressed against the side of her neck. "Rest assured, I have no interest in denouncing an imperial official."

"However, Miss's sleight of hand is far more exquisite than your lacquer arts."

The night watch drum sounded from outside the window, and Zhuang Yun suddenly remembered that today was the full moon.

At this time every month, the restriction planted in her spiritual platform by the Daoist temple would flare up.

Cold sweat slid down her spine as she forced a cold smile, "Knowing I am an imperial official, why don't you hurry and..."

The instant a sharp pain tore through her spirit, a chilling palm covered the back of her heart.

Amidst the chaos, Zhuang Yun heard the crisp sound of chains snapping, and the restriction billowed out from her seven orifices like pale blue smoke.

The demon's breath brushed against her ear. "This curse seal sealed seventy percent of your spiritual power; no wonder you had to rely on lacquer arts to conceal it."

At dawn, Zhuang Yun awoke amidst a floor of shattered mirror fragments.

The bathwater was empty, save for a single dark feather floating on the surface, its ink-black edges shimmering with gilded dark patterns.

As she gripped the feather tightly, last night's fractured conversation suddenly grew clear—when she mentioned returning home to visit family, the demon had seemed to let out a light laugh.

"Beware of old acquaintances."

***

As the carriage rumbled along the imperial highway, Zhuang Yun recalled the rain on the day she left the village.

The ten-year-old girl was wrapped in her elder brother's blood-stained hemp robe, clutching the Daoist temple's jade tally to her chest.

Three new whip marks scarred the fracture on the symbiosis stele at the village entrance.

"My lord, we can't go any further ahead!" The driver suddenly reined in the horses.

Zhuang Yun's hand, frozen mid-motion, hovered over the carriage curtain.

The green tiles and white walls of her memory had turned to scorched earth, and only half of a blackened trunk remained of the locust tree at the entrance.

Heatwaves mixed with the stench of blood washed over her, and a faint, pure scent of lacquer trees mingled strangely within the charred earth.

She stumbled and stepped on a hard object—half a peachwood hairpin, given to her by her mother on her birthday last year.

"Zhuang... Miss Zhuang?" A raspy call came from among the ruins.

When Zhuang Yun turned, her talisman paper was already drawn, yet she forcibly reined in her spiritual power upon recognizing the figure.

The blind granny was curled up beneath a broken wall, holding a swaddled infant whose cries tore through the dead silence.

"They said they were purging demons..." Blood and tears streamed from the granny's empty eye sockets. "The county lieutenant led a group of men in black robes and slaughtered everyone who could draw breath..."

A sharp peal of thunder split the heavens, and a torrential downpour lashed down.

When Zhuang Yun dug up the seventh corpse from the mud, she finally caught sight of the brand on the deceased's chest—not a demon's claw, but the standard-issue arrowheads of the imperial government.

She trembled as she pulled back the corpse's sleeve; on the wrist of the young man who once helped her gather herbs was a restriction curse seal identical to her own.

"So that's how it is." She suddenly laughed aloud, rain and blood mingling as they carved crooked trails across her mask. "Subduing demons and slaying monsters? Nothing more than the powerful eliminating dissidents."

The infant in the swaddle suddenly wailed shrilly, and Zhuang Yun turned to see the tip of a sword protruding from granny's chest.

The clanking of iron armor echoed through the rain, and the last things she remembered were a sky full of flying arrows and a pair of dark wings that suddenly enveloped her entire body.

While unconscious, the gold thread on her wrist suddenly bit into her soul—this was the mechanism where the contractor automatically triggered a nether-trial upon nearing death.

The moment Mingxie, whose shoulder blades were chained in the blood pool, raised his head, the fish-bird feather in her arms suddenly embedded itself right between his brows.

"Close your eyes." A deep male voice blended with the stench of blood. "Such filthy sights are not worth looking at."

Three months later, on the border of the State of Lu.

Lin Yiwen sheathed his sword as the severed limbs of a vine demon still writhed on the ground.

His sword tassel was stained with demon blood—this was the seventy-third vine demon he had slain with his own hands.

He frowned as he looked at the figure in cyan clothes who had suddenly appeared. "How much longer does Your Excellency plan to watch?"

"Fine swordsmanship." The newcomer leaped down from a treetop, a dark iron mask concealing half their face while a lacquer gourd at their waist clinked softly with the movement. "Pity that unless the vine's core is destroyed, it will regenerate in half an hour."

Lin Yiwen tightened his grip on the hilt.

The spiritual power wrapping around this person was bizarre to the extreme—neither purely Daoist nor purely demonic.

Just as he was about to speak, he saw the figure suddenly flick out a lacquer rope, and the long ink-colored ribbon slithered into the vine demon's remains like a spiritual snake.

"Found it." The cyan-clothed person chuckled, pulling out a vine core that actually encased the skeleton of an infant. "Nurturing demons with resentment—truly a standard tactic of the imperial court."

Lin Yiwen's pupils constricted.

An silver bell on the skeleton's wrist was engraved with a familiar insignia—the very same standard design he had seen half a month ago while investigating a missing persons case.

Before he could demand answers, a fierce ghostly wind whipped through the forest.

"Careful!" The cyan-clothed person shoved him aside violently.

A dark feather arrow grazed past his ear, exploding into an eerie blue ghost fire the moment it pierced the tree trunk.

Lin Yiwen spun his sword around to deflect a second arrow, catching a glimpse of the dark markings on the assassin's black robe.

"Spirit-controllers." The cyan-clothed person's voice grew abruptly cold. "If Young Master Lin is innocent, you'd best leave immediately."

"This Zhuang detests those who bully others by virtue of power above all else."

The ink ribbon rolled and coiled like a dragon, and wherever the lacquer liquid touched, the ghost fire was instantly extinguished.

Lin Yiwen stared at the figure's retreating back, suddenly recalling a rumor from a month ago—a masked demon-slayer had single-handedly wiped out three demon-refining camps, and the official bounty had reached a thousand gold.

Amidst the melee, a feathered arrow pierced straight through the cyan-clothed person's shoulder.

Lin Yiwen flew forward to rescue them, only to see strands of dark hair lift from behind the fallen dark iron mask.

The blood-stained profile flashed briefly in the moonlight—it was a woman!

"Don't look." A chilling hand covered his eyes, and breath scented with lacquer brushed against his ear. "As for tonight's events, you have seen nothing."

After Zhuang Yun departed, she stared at her reflection in a pool of water; the burn scar on her collarbone had faded away.

Since losing consciousness that day, she had never seen Mingxie again, save for a single dark feather left beside her pillow.

***

"Taking the soul as the guide, blood as the medium..."

She bit down on her fingertip, tracing a talisman in the empty air.

The pool suddenly boiled, and pale hands reached out from an ink-black vortex.

When Mingxie stepped out across the ripples, dark golden chains wrapped around his entire body.

He looked over Zhuang Yun's male attire, a mocking curl at the corner of his lips. "Is Lord Zhuang planning to change professions and become a demon catcher now?"

"I want the truth." Zhuang Yun brandished the jade tally recovered from the demon-refining camp. "Why are officials everywhere secretly capturing demons? How much does Duke Qi know? Why did the Daoist temple take me in back then?"

Mingxie closed in abruptly, his chains clinking. "Little Daoist, knowing certain secrets will get you killed."

His fingertips brushed across the illusion spell disguising her throat. "Just like you right now—clearly terrified out of your mind, yet still putting on your brother's guise."

Zhuang Yun batted his hand away. "Then why did you save me?"

He raised a hand to shield Zhuang Yun's eyes. "Because your eyes..." His voice lowered abruptly, "...look very much like an old friend's."

The cry of a night owl shattered the stillness, and Mingxie's figure began to grow transparent. "Remember, let no one see your true face, especially..." Before he could finish, he dissolved into blue smoke, leaving behind only a single dark feather drifting downward.

Zhuang Yun gripped the feather tightly and turned around; Lin Yiwen was standing right beneath the lacquer tree.

The moonlight illuminated the scroll in his hand, and the yellowed paper clearly depicted a young Zhuang Yun in coarse hemp robes, sweeping the grounds of the Daoist temple.

"Zhuang Mengzhou." He unrolled the demon-hunting warrant, his gaze sharp as a sword. "Or should I call you Zhuang Yun?"

Lin Yiwen's sword tip pressed against Zhuang Yun's throat, and the cinnabar seal on the warrant burned into her eyes.

A fishy gale suddenly swept through the lacquer garden as dozens of paper cranes pierced through the barrier, each one clutching a piece of bloody demon bone.

"This is..." Lin Yiwen's pupils constricted.

The pattern formed by the paper cranes unmistakably mapped out the eye coordinates of the Daoist temple's Demon-Execution Formation.

Seizing the moment, Zhuang Yun flicked out her ink ribbon to entangle the blade. "Young Master Lin might want to ponder why every demon calamity you investigate ultimately points toward officials who oppose demon refining?" She pulled open her collar to reveal her collarbone. "This restriction isn't meant to guard against demons; it's meant to prevent me from channeling my true spiritual power."

Thunder crashed, and the paper cranes spontaneously combusted.

Blood-red characters emerged from the ashes: At the third watch of the midnight hour, rendezvous at the Hao River.

Mingxie's dark feather grew burning hot in her sleeve, and Zhuang Yun recalled the warning from the bathhouse that day.

When she rushed to Hao River, however, what met her eyes was her elder brother—supposedly long dead—standing upon the bridge, the familiar glowing runes of the restriction pulsing across his palm.

"A'Yun." Zhuang Mengzhou's laugh was laced with the grinding of metal.

As Zhuang Yun gazed at the puppet talisman embedded in her brother's chest, she finally understood why the Daoist temple had taken her in—they needed a vessel to nurture this body that had been backlashed by a demon core.

"You've lived in my place for ten years; it's time to return it to its rightful owner." Without warning, her brother plunged a dagger straight into Zhuang Yun's chest.

The moment the dagger pierced her heart, every lacquer tree in the entire lacquer garden burst into blood-red blossoms simultaneously. Cinnabar talisman water gushed from her brother's wounds, and the splashing blood droplets coalesced in midair into the tattered pages of a destiny ledger.

Zhuang Yun plummeted straight off the bridge.

The Hao River suddenly surged, and Mingxie transformed into a Kunpeng, catching the injured Zhuang Yun on his back.

As Mingxie soared over the lacquer garden, Zhuang Yun suddenly remembered the crooked little figure she had carved into the lacquer tree in her childhood.

That day, she had held a blood-stained lacquer knife, watching the tree sap roll down like teardrops, never knowing that three hundred years ago, a female lacquer harvester had also carved her lover's likeness right here—and now, out of those blurred incisions, the exact same golden threads as the scars on her palm were seeping through.

Even with all his spiritual power, Mingxie could not stem the torrential flow of Zhuang Yun's blood.

With a pale face, Zhuang Yun whispered, "Save your strength... Thank you..."

Mingxie pulled Zhuang Yun into his embrace, silent tears falling.

As Zhuang Yun fell through the void, she saw Mingxie smiling at her from the end of the long river of time.

In the lacquer garden a thousand years ago, a young divine official secretly altered the destiny ledger; on a moonlight night three hundred years ago, a fish-bird brought hemostatic herbs to place beside an injured female lacquer harvester...

"This time, let me wait for you." Mingxie's figure gradually grew transparent, finally transforming into a little fish-bird that settled into her palm.

Its beak gently nipped the gold thread on her wrist, and the terms of the contract torn apart three hundred years ago emerged upon the tattered ledger pages: the contractors shall share reincarnation, taking the soul as their boat and the spirit as their oar—this was the true reason Yama had chosen her.

A month later, Lin Yiwen flipped open a blood-stained ledger. One page recorded: "On the seventh day of the seventh month in the year of Guimao, Lacquer Garden Inspector Zhuang Mengzhou reported a demon calamity and was bestowed a Marrow-Cleansing Pill"—precisely the same day Zhuang Yun had assumed her brother's identity to enter the Daoist temple.

A blood-red petal drifted down from between the yellowed pages, and on its reverse side was a child's crooked doodle: a masked woman riding a fish-bird soaring into the sky.

At this very moment, Zhuang Mengzhou was receiving the worship of tens of thousands in the Yunyin Temple he had founded himself.